Medusa (2020)

 

Look, I didn't expect to much when I originally placed this version of Medusa on my review list at the beginning of the year because it just looked stupid-and for the most part, I ended up being correct. Medusa 2020 ended up being the most perfect example of a purgatory flick I could have possibly imagined because there just isn't anything here that would make anyone in their right mind want to pay another visit sometime in the near future. Basically everything contained here is extremely bland, mid, meh and completely forgettable. There are a few things that do stand out however and for starters, we have to talk about the atmosphere and the score of this film because they are both very good. The overall music implemented at certain points here really make you feel like you're a part of what's happening and you just don't want to be there and that's a fantastic feel for the score of any film to have. When if feels dark and depressing, so do you. When it feels creepy and oppressive, so do you. I really enjoyed the music written for Medusa 2020 and it's unfortunately the only great thing about this flick I can really point out besides the acting itself because it really went for the overall feel of what the film was supposed to be, which was a darker and more serious tone. I really think that this flick would have been so much better if it was what I thought it was going to be, which was some kind of cheesy, shitty, horror comedy type of deal-but it wasn't. It was basically the antithesis of that, and I personally think that it drug this picture down way further than it should have been. Also, one last thing that was pretty solid was the cinematography. The shots and lighting were really good and I had no complaints about that. Deep reds were used sparingly, but it served well to what was going on and to giving the audience the vibes it was supposed to. Now, everything else-yeah. Medusa 2020 sucked. I mentioned earlier that this was the most perfect example of a purgatory flick because it ticked every box that it possibly could for being boring, for garnering lackluster characters and for the entire build-up and overall situation to just leading down a path that no one is going to remember. Nothing incredibly exciting happens. Hell, I'm already forgetting certain details about what happened here as I'm writing this and I really wish that wasn't the case. There are two scenes that do stand out however and the first one I'm going to mention is when Carly finally starts shedding her skin getting towards the end of this thing and she looks like a snake-you know-because Medusa is the queen of snakes? The practical effects for this scene were really great and I wish there were more of them, which leads me to the second scene I'm going to point out which is the ending. The ending first of all is stupid. I'm not even going to say what happens-all I'm going to say is that it's really fucking dumb and the CGI used when Carly starts having the snakes in the back of her head come out because she's fully starting to transform into Medusa is legendarily bad-I'm talking here that you can actually see the line around her head where the animation of the snakes begins and ends and where it was placed in post when it was edited. Not even joking. It was baaaaaaddd. So, how does all of this even play out? Basically, Carly lives in this absolute trash trailer park in the middle of Australia somewhere and the way that these women make money is turning tricks. Yeah. And Carly's boss (or whoever this asshole is-he's basically a pimp) is a cocaine smuggling piece of shit that shows up whenever he needs something or to bring men to this little sex ring. Hi name is Jimmy. But one night for whatever reason, Jimmy takes Carly to this Dennis Rodman/Simon Phoenix looking guy's place and he tells her to ask for some woman named Alexis. Except Alexis isn't a woman-it's a snake. A snake. So Carly and Dennis Phoenix end up getting freaky a little bit and then Alexis bites her in the leg a few times, which of course slowly through the rest of the film turns Carly into Medusa. Beyond everything that I've mentioned here good or bad, Medusa 2020 is the straightest purgatory movie of all time. I never thought that I would ever run across the flawless version of that type of a film, but here I am still embarking on this quest. If you're interested, give this a shot. You'll probably see it as nothing more than a movie sporting a button up light blue shirt with it's sleeves rolled up. It always puts the work in, but it's never going to make it to the top. Or just listen to the Anthrax song titled Medusa. I'm done now.  

   

In The Willows (6th Chamber Pictures/Ian Messenger)

 

I have in the past ingested and reviewed other works from Ian Messenger such as his Friday The 13th short films Friday The 13th: Revenant and Friday The 13th: Legacy as well as his found footage flick titled Wendigo Falls. The video on my Youtube channel for all of those in one fell swoop is still there if you're at all interested in checking out my thoughts on any of those, and once again on good ol' Instagram, I was contacted by him to review the new slab sewn together by him and his crew-In The Willows. I want to say thank you right away again for thinking of me to write something on my site for this because there's already so much I want to watch and review, but I will always make the the time to review someone's work in the indie scene if they ask me to. So, for this piece it was directed by Ashley Messenger (which may be his sister or wife? I'm not actually sure) but just having a film like this directed by a woman is really cool and adds something a little different to the mix-sure, this sort of thing has happened before in the past to a greater extent, but it's still awesome to see to switch things up a bit. But In The Willows focuses on a group of friends that want to help their pal Jackson with his addiction issues, so instead of staying in the city and trying to help him grind it out with every chance and convenience he's used to by way of getting some smack or whatever his drug of choice is, they take him literally in the middle of nowhere to some downtrodden, beat-the-hell-up farm/survival resort place for him to "be away from the wi-fi and to get some fresh air". Sounds like a great idea, right? It wasn't. Because at the opening of In The Willows we have three guys fishing and shooting the shit in some lake or pond in the area of where these "rehab" grounds stand, and in between them drinking and talking about God knows what, a couple of weirdos in burlap clown and jack-o-lantern masks appear out of nowhere and start snuffing them out. I was intrigued right away because who are these fellows and what's their purpose? I mean, this is a dark backwoods styled slasher so what else are they going to do-they're going to kill people. That's what. After the three randoms are sent to heaven or hell here in the beginning, we meet all of our main squeezes and really the people you will be spending the most time with are Jackson and Gabby-they have this whole past that starts getting dug into because they dated previously and Gabby starts shouting all of the sacrifices that she made for Jackson to his face to try and save him and to get him clean-but what do junkies do? They don't want to do that-they want to wallow in their lifestyle and hide in the corners so they can keep up with their habits. There is an underlying layer to the weird people with the masks wanting to kill all of them-and very quickly, my favorite of them was actually the overweight, Leatherface looking guy named Father Abner I believe-he was the only one that actually talked a couple of times and he shot one our main characters with an old school single shot shotty. So that was a good time. But with these killers with the masks and the woman with the little bell that she keeps ringing-I think that they are some kind of physical manifestations presented to all of them maybe as what they're afraid of or some kind of spirits to make them pay the toll for their sins? I don't know-maybe I'm looking to far into that aspect and maybe they're just a cannibal family looking for some lunch. Whatever is really going on here with In The Willows, I'm going to sit here and say that I enjoyed it quite a bit and I'm also going to state that I want a second part to this or even a full 80-90 minute feature so we can dig in a little more. I as well as you want to know more about our main group, we want to know what happens to them after Gabby is choked to death by the guy with the clown mask and what does happen after Father Abner carries the woman with the bell through the fields and into the end credits. Yeah-hear me 6th Chamber Pictures-I think a sequel or a full length version is in order here. Because Jackson needs to get sober and he needs to get back with Gabby again. Dug it. 

  

Revenge Of The Red Baron

 

About a week ago, my brother-in-law sent me a clip of this hilariously bad film on Youtube by the name of Revenge Of The Red Baron. The clip was in the middle of the movie where Tobey Maguire's character-Jimmy Spencer-has been brought into a mental facility based on the fact that his dad was murdered in his own swimming pool by his hand, tossing his giant bug zapper into the water while it was turned on, frying those little blood sucking bastards into oblivion. Except that's not what took place. Not at all. Jimmy's dad was killed by The Red Baron himself because he in fact is the one that did a nose dive right into the device and pushed it into the pool to effectively electro-shock his father into the afterlife. So the cops were called by their dumbass neighbor who can't seem to never be an asshole or have a cigar in his mouth because he's nosy, and the main detective is great because he's freaking Bob Pinciotti from That 70's Show. That's right-Don Stark makes an appearance here and I really enjoyed his candor and over-the-top leaning for this particular cameo because all he's here for is to send Jimmy's ass to either juvenile hall or some kind of shrink hospital for his rantings and ravings about a killer German Baron flying a little mini triplane from WWI. If this shit actually happened, no one in real life would believe him either because it's hilarious, delusional and of all the things to randomly come alive to try and murder you, why would it be the red baron of a German triplane from WWI. That's some serious imagination cranking there and it for sure warrants a straight jacket. But here's where the story for this starts-it's France 1918, and there's a dog fight taking place between The Red Baron and what seems to be a few American biplanes, and for my sake, yours, and a tad bit of historical accuracy, I actually looked up a bunch of photos of these types of aircraft while this opening was playing out just to see what I was dealing with in the moment and the planes that were used as American ones in this scene weren't American at all-they were British Sopwith biplanes being posed as American ones. Most people when this film first came out probably didn't realize the difference or even gave a shit (and to be honest if I was just watching this just to watch it instead of writing about it, I probably wouldn't have cared that much either) but I just wanted to point this out because I felt like I had to and it actually kind of adds to the overall cheapness and lack of quality that this film holds. In the entertainment department, I was all smiles and ridiculous cackles when it came to sitting through Revenge Of The Red Baron, but when it came to pretty much everything else-I was groaning and rolling my eyes at how inept this thing became. So at the end of this dog fight, The Red Baron himself is shot down and explodes in one of the crappiest explosions I think I've ever seen, and then after some embarrassingly bad score music, we are cut to Jimmy playing some flight simulator looking game on an NES, which looked like it should have been running on an early Windows 95 pc of the time or the original Playstation. That in and of itself is just insane because the writers and director clearly didn't know anything about video games at the time, and once again adds to just how quirky and terrible this film actually is. But the baron is brought back to life because Jimmy is sent to his dad's house where him and his Grandpa live so he can get some discipline and/or course correction because he's always fucking up at school and is always getting into fights with other students and teachers. His Grandpa ends up being the fighter pilot in WWI that shot down the baron in the beginning of the film, and his hobby now is that he builds and flies WWI era RC planes, and of course wouldn't you know it-he built the exact triplane that the baron was flying when he shot him down all those years ago and it's hanging from the ceiling on display. For some bizarre reason, he tells Jimmy to cut that plane down and one of the "American" ones, they fly them outside together and pretend to have a dog fight, when all of a sudden a storm comes and bolts the baron's plane with some lightning, and now he's alive and full of some of the shittiest German war era one-liners possible. The puppet that was used for the baron is so stupid looking and it almost made me feel like I was watching a lost Puppet Master film or something, which to be fair would actually fit into that canon somewhere because there's a whole WWII lore going on there with Toulon and all that-but I'm not going to get into any Puppet Master shit here. After all of that happening in the opening moments of the film, it's basically the baron following Jimmy and his grandpa around after he ends up in the hospital from having a coronary, trying to do whatever he can to eradicate him because he blasted his ass into smithereens back in WWI. There is a scene in here-and this is where the baron gets ammo for the guns on his plane-where Jimmy and his mom are actually trying to shoot him down skeet shooting style with duck hunting shotguns and lever action repeaters-they of course miss a million times and never hit him-but his mom goes to the gun cabinet for more ammo, she drops the whole box on the floor, leaves it there, and the baron sees it when he flies into the house to chase Jimmy's mom only to say "Ah, bullets. Danke schon." Then after that for the whole rest of the film he has seemingly unlimited ammo and ends up mowing down quite a few people who get into his way up until the very end. I normally do what I can to not spoil how any of these trash heaps end because it's just a better experience if you've never watched any of the movies that I review, but here's the ending for Revenge of The Red Baron-Jimmy uses the RC "American" plane to fly in circles until the baron finally screws up and flies into the power lines hanging above his grandpa's house, but he doesn't get electrocuted. So grandpa stands up out of his wheelchair next to the cut power box that's supposed to power those specific lines and he stretches those wires together to fry himself and the baron so this mess is finally all over and they can live happily ever after. I highly (and I mean HIGHLY) recommend looking up Revenge Of The Red Baron on Youtube because the entire film is there for anyone to enjoy and this is a rare one that was suggested to me that I actually ended up digging a lot because of how insane it was. Me putting this review together really doesn't even scratch the surface of how hilariously bad this flick is because I didn't even talk about any of the one-liners that the baron spits out or how much of a shitty teenage attitude Jimmy bares on his shoulders, his dad's dickhead of a neighbor, the hot nurse in the hospital where his grandpa ends up or piles and piles of other things that you just need to see for yourself. Go watch this and may historical accuracy be damned.

The Greenskeeper

 

Oh boy, this one's par for the corpse. I wish the actual contents of The Greenskeeper was as cool as the cover art, but once again this is just another film that became a victim of great poster art and great marketing to push a lame, boring-boring-boring-fucking boring movie to slasher fans and horror comedy fans. It fails miserably in both categories and the setup really enticed me because it looked and sounded like it may have been a cheap alternative to the seminal slasher classic known as The Burning. That flick kicks all kinds of ass and has some of the goriest and most violent kills I think I've ever seen in an 80's slasher-and unfortunately The Greenskeeper falls way short of that prestige. This was a slasher that I wanted to be good and I wanted it to have gorgeous chicks with their boobs exposed (there was one scene where the only attractive chick in here does just that-every other female is between a six and a seven) and I wanted there to be awesome kills, funny jokes, cool characters and a great back plot to fill in the gaps where they needed to be filled in at. But, none of that took place. I will state though that the kill at the end where Allen's "dad" (it's in quotes because he's not really his dad as you find out) actually kills his real dad by shoving a freaking sprinkler head into his chest and after he falls over as his heart keeps beating, the sprinkler starts going off by spurting his blood everywhere as if it was water watering the grass on the golf course. Clever, kind of funny and a pretty cool kill that was actually done well considering how shit the rest of this snooze-fest ended up being. I was so damn disappointed by The Greenskeeper that I honestly didn't really even pay attention to half the film while it was playing because 90% of this flick felt like I was watching some garbage late 90's/early 2000's low budget sex comedy with no comedy and barely any sex. None of it worked and now it's just another stink fest that I have to toss onto my list for worst of the year. Oh yeah, another kill that I want to point out is there is one scene where one of our resident retards does get nekkid with one of the girls here in the middle of the night while they are riding around in a golf cart, and as they are getting to work, they're interrupted by The Greenskeeper version of Cropsey, and he shoves the guys' dick in one of the ball cleaners out on one of the courses and keeps pushing it up and down, up and down, up and down and up and down. It feels like he does it waaaaayyyy to many times and I actually said out loud "okay, that's enough-I think this dude's dick is squeaky clean now!" pretty loudly at the screen. I really, really want to write more about The Greenskeeper, but there honestly isn't much else to write about. If I ever do a video about this flick on my Youtube channel, I don't think it would be every long because it's so fucking boring, empty and uneventful that I just don't want any of you zits and zombies to have to endure it. It's not worth your time and it sure as hell wasn't worth mine. Hell, I started reading Ghost Rider by Neil Peart a few days ago and I could have spent my morning ploughing through more of his 10,000 mile motorcycle ride for self healing and preservation than having to contract a mental version of walking pneumonia through The Greenskeeper. Whatever man-it's on the worst of the year list now. I'm not turning back. Stab me with a sprinkler head-I'm done.

Psycho Party Planner

 

I'm probably wrong on remembering this, but I think the last time I even remotely thought about watching a Lifetime movie was when my wife and I lived in Champaign. I chose Psycho Party Planner because the title sounded titillating and I was just ultimately curious as to how far could a film of this ilk go? I mean, we all know how hilariously bad and how hilariously low Lifetime flicks can reach to portray a story, but this entry was different. It was still pretty lame in specific spots (especially in the beginning when it's trying to setup everything to get going) but I don't know zits and zombies-I actually enjoyed myself with this one. Was this good enough to escape the clutches of being tossed somewhere onto my worst of the year list? Yeah, kind of-I threw it on the runners-up list for the moment because it still didn't steep my tea hot enough in the end, but this thing does have plenty of twists and revelations that did exceed my expectations. And I'll be honest, the acting from Lindsey McKeon, Katrina Begin and Cathryn Dylan went further than I thought it would in believability and prose to deliver what this plot eventually unfolds to. Basically here we have Kerry (Dylan) who is about to turn sixteen, and her parents want to throw her a sweet sixteen party to celebrate her. So since neither of Kerry's parents have the time to plan it themselves, they take the time to hire someone to plan it for them. Right away this is kind of ridiculous because if you don't have the time to plan the party, would you even have the time to find someone to do it for you either? I mean, I know that would take less time, but shit-okay, I just went with it for the situation that was happening. So, before any of that crap with Kerry's parents takes place with them talking to her about hiring someone to plan her birthday party when this film opens, we have Lindy (Katrina Begin) and her husband in bed fighting about how she can't physically have children and it's not part of what he signed up for when he married her and all of this other bullshit-he's a fucking prick to her outright, they end up in the hallway by the staircase and oops-his ass goes tumbling down the winding flight which is a symbolic foreshadowing to the downward spiral that Lindy is about to embark upon to keep her career going after his dumbass is dead. There's actually a lot of foreshadowing that happens in Psycho Party Planner that I don't know how you would ever miss unless you're just blatantly not watching the movie and have it on for background noise. So when Kayla (the ever sexy Lindsey McKeon) starts interviewing women who are party/wedding planners to put together something for Kerry, the first one she interviews is very likeable, knows what she's doing and is just all around reasonable. And judging from when we see the inside of her house later when Lindy bumps her off, she seemed pretty damn good and successful at what she was doing too because that was one ballin' place to live. But Lindy doesn't like the fact that Kayla wants to hire Dulcie over her (the first party planner) so she steals her resume from the table that it's sitting on to get her address and so the psycho part from here starts building up. Lindy kills Dulcie in her own house, then she starts living there I guess? Later on in the middle of the film, Lindy brings Kerry over there to figure out some stuff for the party and she lets her drink a pretty full glass of wine (she's supposed to be fifteen, remember?) and it's Dulcie's house, but Kerry doesn't know that. And then slowly but surely, Lindy just starts popping up everywhere that Kerry is-during her dance/cheerleading practices, and school in general, driving her home, when she's hanging out with her friends at some outdoor café-it gets really creepy really fast. Even thought I didn't end up being a massive, over-the-top fan of Psycho Party Planner, I did enjoy it way more than I thought I would. Out of all the Lifetime slop that I've seen randomly over the years, this really has to be the best one. The plot is rock solid, the main ladies here give pretty excellent performances and the ending is an ending that literally came out of nowhere, even though it was pretty predictable. The main issue I had with how it ended though was is that it was abrupt and the info you find out from Lindy right before her demise felt kind of shoehorned in at the last minute because whoever wrote the script couldn't figure out where else to put it, so it ended up right when this thing was about to end. Even though I enjoyed this one and I would actually recommend you inspirational undead to give Psycho Party Planner a go if you're in the mood for fare like this, it's still going on my runners-up list for my worst of the year. I can't praise it any higher than that because of the layers of lameness that plague Lifetime flicks. It's there, it will always be there and there is no cure. It's just how these movies are made. I'm turning 42 this year-maybe I could hire Lindsey McKeon to help me plan something for my birthday. Damn-dreams are so much better than reality. 

Cinderella's Revenge

 

So, there's a Winnie The Pooh horror movie and a Mickey Mouse horror movie and a Popeye horror movie, and even a fucking Little Mermaid horror movie-but now, there's also a Cinderella horror movie. One of many I guess. You barely have to dig online at all to take a plunge into this new world of terror that seemingly came out of nowhere because I have to ask the question-who the hell are these flicks made for? Are they just being made as a joke to poke fun at the fact that Hollyweird is out of ideas? Are they being slapped together to ruin our childhoods and the next generation of innocence? Are they ultimately being funded because even indie horror directors are becoming bored and just need something to do? There is a massive line of inquiries that I hold onto whenever I run across a film in this shiny new sub-genre of horror because I don't know how I feel about them. I know how to have a good time with a piece of shit that was made purposefully for us fiends to actually have a good time with-and some of them were made with the best of intentions just to get a piece of work out there because the people behind them wanted to do something different and creative. But taking something like The Little Mermaid or Cinderella and turning it into a slasher of sorts is just fucking hilariously bad. Was Cinderella's Revenge actually good or entertaining? On both accounts, to certain degrees, yeah, it actually was. But I immediately threw it on the runners-up portion of my worst of the year list because it's a massive purgatory flick. I would never want to watch this ever again and I wouldn't expect anyone else to want to either. The acting itself really isn't half bad considering the cast is seemingly a bunch of nobodies, and I have to say that the woman that plays Cinderella's step mother is particularly bitchy and reminded me at full speed of Hillary Clinton. She straight up looks just like her and I couldn't shake that fact the whole way through. Plot-wise it's the same old shit from this particular story... we have the glass slipper, a prince looking for a beautiful bride, the evil, horrible stepmother and the evil, horrible step sisters and Cinderella herself who's beaten and abused by said sisters and stepmother. They even go so far as hiring some asshole to whip her in one of the barns they have out back while Rachel and Josephine watch, laugh, and get giddy at the fact that he's destroying her body because they hate her so much for being low life scum. Let me tell you something-there's a reason why this is called Cinderella's Revenge-and we'll get to that soon. But first, let's talk about the beginning of the film and the most over-the-top moment here. The setup is that Cinderella's dad is executed by these two clowns in Spirit Halloween skeleton masks who were hired by-you guessed it-her stepmother. She has him beheaded for stealing some treasures from the king. But you find out later that she herself stole the shit and killed him as a cover up. So now Cinderella has to do her bidding because her father isn't there to protect her anymore. Also, really quickly before we get to the insane moment I just mentioned, here's what happens when the fairy godmother gives Cinderella her "carriage" and her dress and all of that crap-the "carriage" isn't a "carriage", it's a damn EV from our time period and the guy that gets out of the car when it shows up is supposed to be Elon Musk, but he sure as hell doesn't look anything like him. Also, her hair gets done by Vidal Sassoon (I think it's actually him in the movie, but I'm not sure on that one) and her dress and glass slippers were made by two other fashion designer guys that I don't know dick about. So there's that to unpack. But here's where shit peaks and gets hilarious. So after the ball, we all know about the prince going around to find the foot that fits the glass slipper. The first sister (Rachel) tries shoving her foot in it, but it's to big. Josephine does the same thing, but when the guys go to the kitchen for a minute to get some water, the stepmother gives the cake knife to Josephine so she can cut her two smaller toes off her foot so it will fit in the glass slipper-and she actually does it! And it's fucking gory! I was not expecting this at all when this happened! After that nonsense, we get to where the fairy godmother gives Cinderella one of the Spirit Halloween masks those guys were wearing in the beginning of the movie, it turns her into a nigh invincible killing machine and she slaughters her family members one by one. And Hogan, who is one of the guys who killed her father in the beginning. And Bennett, who is the other guy who killed her father in the beginning of the movie. I'm exhausted. I didn't think it was going to take this much out of me to write about Cinderella's Revenge, but this is it. Zits and zombies, if you're already invested heavily into these weird childhood slasher films, go right ahead with this one because you'll probably enjoy it. But if the very title just makes you laugh or worried, don't bother. Unless you want to watch Josephine slice her toes off to try and make her foot fit into the glass slipper. That shit was hilarious and threw me for a loop. Maybe there will be a Snow White horror movie next. Seven killer dwarves-sign me up. 

 

R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead

 

I've tried out a couple of Tubi exclusives in the past and they never worked out. At least for me. But R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead is different. Even after seeing what the poster art for this film entailed, for some really dumb reason I still thought it was going to end up being his version and vision of a remade Pumpkinhead from the 80's-but that's not what this is at all. Not even. You could call a film like Jack-O 'pumpkinhead' because the monster in that movie actually has a giant pumpkin for a head, and the actual film of that name that was released in 1988 does not have the main monster pulsate with such a thing-the villain there is a giant xenomorph looking creature reminiscent of those yellow aliens from the original Ninja Turtles cartoon. But it does not actually have a pumpkin for a head. So the title for that franchise just doesn't even make any sense. It does make sense here however because we finally have a title that fits what actually happens in the film and the main baddie itself-because kids are being sacrificed to this cursed foliage mound that slowly turns the recent offering into-well-a literal pumpkinhead. If you're familiar at all with R.L. Stine and his writing, this flick has his energy, sensibilities, charm and twists written all over it-and it made me wish that this was a book of his that he wrote at some point. And maybe it is and Tubi sought to it to adapt it into a movie. I didn't bother looking up if this was the case or not, but either way R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead ended up being a fantastic piece of work from start to finish. There's no way you could be a fan of his and not fall in love with this flick because it straight up has the tone and feel of any of his Goosebumps, Fear Street, Mostly Ghostly, Rotten School books... or really anything he has written. I loved this flick from the moment the gates opened because it's exactly what you want and expect from something that he would be involved in, and it never felt weak or began to falter. Our basis for R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead is rooted in the story of Cassie, Sam and Finn moving to the rural town of Red Haven. It's never actually said, but I got the implication that the husband/father passed away at some point and that's why it's just them three and why they're moving out of New York. Why is it always New York? Anyway, right after they move in the Sheriff is there to greet them and talks up the town as if it's the greatest place to live on the entire planet-veggie festival and all. I'm going to side step for a second and say that this flick ended up being a really solid coming of age story out of what Sam and Becka have to endure to bring Red Haven back from the brink and save everyone and everything-and the ending actually ended up being kind of sad and one that I won't forget for awhile. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. So Sam is sick of Finn and their mom's "shit" (I put that in quotes because at the beginning here Sam is a snotty thirteen year old punk that needs to learn about life still) as well as being annoyed about constantly getting reminded that Finn is going to be eighteen in a couple of days. That plays a role in a minute. Sam decides to steal Mr. Palmer's prized pumpkin out of his barn as a way to rebel and to be an asshole, and this is when everything starts opening up about the curse of the town and Finn suddenly disappears because he becomes the new sacrifice for the cursed mound to keep the harvest going... and the year for kids to be "ripe" for this to happen is when they turn eighteen. Also, once this happens, everyone automatically forgets they even existed as part of the curse as well. Fun. R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead surprised me in quite a few different ways and to be honest, I already knew that I was going to dig this flick in the first place. The only other R.L. Stine flick that I remember watching some years ago to write a review on here for was Haunting Hour: Don't Think About It and now that I do think about it-that movie was a lot of fun too. I'm not going to say anything else zits and zombies-just go on Tubi and watch this piece. I don't care if it's right now, I don't care if it's your birthday and I don't care if it's Christmas time-you owe it to yourself and to R.L. Stine as a fan to have a good time with this one. It's time to move on out to Red Haven and figure out what this curse is all about. And pilfer a pumpkin from Palmer's farm.