BLOGGER TEMPLATES Funny Pictures

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Happy Birthday to ME?

In belated dishonor of my birthday, a gift for you goober gobbling cretins, a review for the classic 80's stalk and slash HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME.







HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Happy Birthday To Me is a riddle with no real answer.  The film makers present a mystery to the audience but there is no real way for the viewer to connect the dots in the story or guess who the culprit is that’s slaying the “in crowd” of the posh and privileged Crawford Academy, so don’t try.  Don’t use your grey matter; revel in the visceral delights and scares of the slasher film, but don’t play a guessing game with the movie.  You will lose, loser.  We are merely expected to ride the film to the end and find out through a twisted Scooby-Do like reveal who the killer in the film is.  Ignore the red herring-a-thon as well.  They’re just there to tease you.  Just pay attention to all those matching blue scarves.  Let yourself be drawn into the awe of the movie’s one special effect; a lightning bolt.  ZAAP!  Woah.     

The “in crowd” that find themselves the target of the killer in the film are a bunch of snotty brats and ego stroking donkey dicks.  And they threw a rat in a beer!  Blasphemy; ruining the golden nectar of the gods with rodent flesh; that wasn’t a Guinness assholios!  They also like to dangerously drive drunk over separating bridges, and generally place social status above all other qualities in a person.  If this film had one ongoing theme it’s that the pursuit of social status as an empty, and sometimes dreadfully harmful endeavor.      

These “in-crowd people choose to define themselves by the reaction other people have to them.  This is a common folly as people, like most animals, are fickle, simple minded, selfish creatures likely to form snap opinions of others based on irrelevant and often filtered information, thus rendering the benchmark of social standing useless at best.  That’s why I prefer to be defined by the Cat-fish man monster from ZAAT.  Social standing and the quest for popularity is a pursuit that the sociopath excels at and the foolish abide by.  The tragedy that unfolds for the main characters alive by the end of the film is something that could have been avoided had these people not placed such importance on how popular they are, or what kind of clique they fall into.

Happy Birthday To Me is a film with all the classic slasher trappings.  Scenes in the film were shot on Phoneix Bridge, giving you Upstate NY’ers another reason to check it out, so pretend it’s your putrid spawn day and party it up with a deadly double dose of Happy Birthday To Me.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Have yourself a BLACK CHRISTMAS!

Silent Night, Deadly Night 3

Silent Night, Deadly Night part 3 sadly ends the Santa slaying saga of Billy and Ricky. Ricky’s all pooped out from his hysterical “garbage day” massacre and finds himself sitting in coma with his brain in a Tupperware container while playing guinea pig to a mad scientist with a hard on for ESP. Of all the people to choose to give *telepathetical powers the genius in charge chooses a psychotic serial killer. Well played kind of, sort of mad scientist guy!

Soon enough Ricky is ESP broadcasting his holiday hang-ups to anybody willing to tune in, and tune in someone does. A blind chick with natural psychic abilities gets a full facial of Ricky’s heebie jeebies, a psychic link is made, and Ricky wakes up from his comatose on Christmas Eve in time to kill off a drunken Santa by his hospital bed.

Someone keeps pumping the brakes on this movie. The trash train begins rolling, Ricky begins to methodically make his way to the blind chick’s grandma’s house, people take cat naps, there’s some mildly amusing banter about car phones, some mildly amusing if not sappy brother/sister dialogue, and some mildly amusing shots of a guy with his brain in a plastic container hitch hiking and killing folks, but it’s all kind of vanilla. Someone pass the Dr. Pepper, this Christmas party needs a jolt! Even when people die they don’t look as surprised as they are relieved that something exciting happened to them. If the first entry was an all out dash for sleaze greatness this was the puttering sleepwalk through the finish line. It’s nothing to hoot about, then again it does have a killer with a brain dome, a blind psychic that spends all her time listening to The Terror on television, Canadian tuxedos, and actresses that look too much alike, so it’s worth giving a spin on a lazy Sunday, especially if you’re a fan of the first couple entries. On a Christmas pastry scale, this ranks somewhere next to fruit cake.

Silent Night Deadly Night 4

Silent Night, Deadly Night part 4 is a completely batshit crazy departure from the previous entries. It takes place during Christmas but really has little to do with the holiday itself. Rather its main focus is on black magic, cock roaches, women liberation, cult ritual, and Clint Howard’s dildo helmet. Seriously.

I’ve watched this film twice and still haven’t really figured it out. It begins with a women spontaneously combusting from the waist down and throwing herself off of a building. Not bad. A female reporter who feels like she is being discriminated against in her office and home because of her gender and because of her Jewishness investigates the scene of the combustible woman. So far we’re on track. She runs into Clint Howard who shows her a giant insect larvae, then runs into a book store where an older woman comes on to her like a raging softball playing bull dyke and feeds her dried up dates. I’m getting dizzy. She picks up a book about magic from the book store and begins seeing cockroaches and spirals in her kitchen condiments. My head feels light. She goes out for a picnic with the book store owner and her pals and begins hallucinating about even more insects and spirals. My brain begins eating itself. She learns she is being recruited into a witch coven that wishes to free her from her worse fears, which would result in her being free of the male patriarchal order, but first she needs to ingest and puke up a giant cockroach, get fucked by Clint Howard’s dildo helmet, roll around a slimy meat locker while changing into a larvae creature, or suffer a fiery spontaneous body explosion from the waist down. Blood erupts from my ear drums in a crimson waterfall. This is either one of the most brilliant pieces of cinematic trash the world has ever seen or an exercise in completely senseless befuddlement. I can’t decide, my brain is still in a sloppy puddle of gray goo at my feet.


BLACK CHRISTMAS is really Bob Clark’s anti-Christmas movie because it is about abortion and murder during a time when people are in celebration of Jesus’ symbolic birth.  The abortion of Claire’s baby is really the utter destruction of Christmas cheer.  Maybe it’s Bob Clark’s way of saying “sorry for all the Christmas Story reruns on PBS”.        

----------------------------------------------------
Sorry about the lack of updates my miserable misfits of the video wasteland.  The cryptkeeper is enjoying his winter hibernation under the dark soil of Camp Blackfoot.....but in 2012 the bodies begin dropping again....the horror returns...you've been warned!

Monday, December 5, 2011

The Sleeper coming 1/31

VHS?  YES!  It will never die!

Thursday, November 24, 2011

BLOOD RAGE...the turkey day slasher!

Hope everyone is gobbling up lots of guts this crisp cool Turkey Day!

Time for some suds and BLOOD RAGE!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Preview: 2 slashtastic new shirts from CREEPY TEES

CREEPY-TEES has done well for slasher themed tees.  On any given day you could probably catch me covering up my thorax with a fine cotton shirt from these fine chaps.  Check out their preview of these two upcoming slasher shirts from the company (still waiting on my Friday the 13th part 2 shirt fellas!!!):


www.creepy-tees.com

Monday, November 14, 2011

Stalk and Slash calendar ( update 12/05/11 )

For the fanzine I was going to include a slasher calendar, featuring a mini-calendar indicating when slasher films were supposed to take place, but alas my lazy ass forgot to do it.  The idea is that if you want to watch a slasher on the day it was supposed to happen, like watching Halloween on Halloween, then you'd refer to the handy dandy calendar here.  I will post updates to the list as I run across them and then over them like roadkill. 




STALK AND SLASH CALENDAR

New Years Evil 1/1
Malevolence 2/1
My Bloody Valentine 2/14
Maniac Cop 3/17
Slaughter High 4/1
April Fools Day 4/1
THE FOG 4/21
TCM: Next Generation 5/22
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER 7/4
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 8/18
Happy Hell Night 10/31
House of 1000 Corpses 10/31
HALLOWEEN 10/31
Student Bodies 11/22
Christmas Evil 12/25
BLACK X-MAS 12/25
Silent Night DeADLY Night 12/25


Friday, November 11, 2011

Veteran's Day

Happy Veteran's day.  If you're like any true red-blooded vet you are probably doing what most vets like myself are doing right now...working!  But when you get home from work, put THE PROWLER in...follow it up with some UNCLE SAM...order a meat lovers pizza, crack a beer, and let the ghoul times roll!



This is a message brought to you by your pals at CROPSYS CRYPT.   Now get outta here ya punks!

Thursday, November 10, 2011

The Deadly Bees


The Deadly Bees

You walk into a dank saloon, frothing at the mouth for a night cap to warm the old engine. Your eyes slowly adjust to the darkness; nondescript wooden keg barrels line the back of the bar, surely housing amber beer swill. Patrons shack up in corners of the lodge, speaking in muffled tones as wisps of heavy smoke dances in the empty spaces, clinging jealously to anything that gives movement. The stout bartender, movement slowed to a crawl from the burden of years of punctual tavern keeping, advertises his intention of pouring you a nice tall tankard of Ole English White. You refuse. Tonight your jowls will feel the tingle of scotch. He pours you your drink, you find a seat in a finely crafted leather bound chair, and let the liquor wash between the teeth and engage the senses. After a few short swigs your disposition falls in line with the ambience of the pub. Although you are not accustomed to ease dropping, your hearing quickly hones into a conversation happening behind you; two rather stuffy English fellows of the academic sort:


Cheeky fellow 1 (while huffing smoke from a pipe): Good sir, let me propose an idea if you may.


Cheeky fellow 2: Please propose you cheeky bastard. I haven’t all night.


Cheeky fellow 1: Let’s weave a tale, right here and now, of a man, a bee keeping man, who plans on ruling an island.


Cheeky fellow 2: What’s on this island, and why does he scheme to rule it so?


Cheeky fellow 1: Wouldn’t you like to own an island my good man? Is it not a man’s desire to be a land baron of some sort?


Cheeky fellow 2: Why yes, I think I see your point, having an entire island all to yourself would be quite splendid, but why the insect taming? Does this man have a sweet tooth? Is he addicted to honey?


Cheeky fellow 1: No…he….urgghh…has a shelf full of bees…..hates his nagging wife….beautiful buxom…old farm…..groovy beats…mysteries..useless juxtapositioning.....my god man what concoction is this (staring at his glass)….never mind my ranting and raving, I’m plumb drunk sir.


Cheeky fellow 2: Well cheerio.


Cheeky fellow 1: Cheerio….(blearghhhhh)….


And that is how Deadly Bees should have stayed; a fevered dream of a plumb drunk chap. But no, I had to suffer through it anyways, and let me tell you, the best shot of the movie is of flies glued to someone’s face. Actually, you could really forgo even seeing this film and have a bushel more of fun by gluing flies to your own face and staring at yourself in the mirror for two hours. Get drunk beforehand. It’s pure, clean, retro-fun, and it won't bore you into miserable tears.


Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Rainbow eyes!

I love me some ROCKTOBER BLOOD!  I've got "rainbow eyes", and you will too with the new CROPSYS CRYPT: The Revenge...uber fanzine for slash-heads and night stalker maniacs.

Email me at cplchud@yahoo.com for a copy.  5 bucks for 2 fanzines, a barf bag, and other fun!



Best heavy metal slasher evar!

Friday, October 28, 2011

CROPSY'S CRYPT: The Revenge OUT ON HALLOWEEN!


Preview of the cover and the ass end of the new rag:




Slithering out of the printing press on HALLOWEEN!  You've been warned!

Friday, October 21, 2011

Shriek of the Mutilated




I hate boring movies. I set the bar pretty low for some B-grade trash, but as long as it isn’t boring, I’m in. Oh how I’ve suffered through the last couple weeks. Each tape I clumsily slapped into the VCR was more boring than the last. My mind eroded from sheer soul trampling boredom; wrinkles smoothed out like a sheet dancing in the breezy sunshine. The search and thrill of finding that one flick that would trample its closet room budget and exceed beyond the limitations of acting ability, technical aptitude, and shoddy, exploitive plot line was slowly waning from me. My resolve was fading. My eyes and senses and very joints ached. Slush puppies lost their flavor. Children cried in the streets. Life was bad.

Then Shriek of the Mutilated came and revived my sense of purpose. This was the dreg that made watching basement produced flicks so much fun. This was the forbidden cream filling of the cinematic Twinkie. This was the b-vitamin booster I needed. Fuck yeah, someone threw a surprise pizza party in my mind; pin the tail on the donkey and all that jazz. How have I gone so long without finding you Shriek of the Mutilated? Will you bear my babies? Will you be my cock sheath?

What’s that? You’ve heard the buildup, now you want to know what this gem is actually about? Well, I’ve got two words for you….bigfoot….sneakers. You want to know more? Ok; there’s a search for yeti, there’s college “kids” (ie thirty somethings we are supposed to believe are kids), there’s rampant racism surrounding native Americans, there’s a bald man in khakis sporting a pony tail, gore, scuzziness, hysteria, twists, turns, thrills, chills, spills…I’m spent. Every moment I was enthralled. Boring? I think not mon frer. This is the finest trash served on a silver plate, smothered in gravy, begging consumption. There’s so much I can comment on, but I won’t, and not because I’m lazy (which I am), but because spoiling the fun of it would be a sin. You’ve got to sit through it yourself. You’ve got to experience Shriek of the Mutilated on your own. Explaining why it’s fun would be like explaining why a water slide is a hoot, or why Chucky Cheese ball pits are always a holler (or were). I’ve given you enough….bigfoot….sneakers…..keep the remote ready, fingers poised over rewind……..

There will be more about Shriek of the Mutilated in the future.  It's a movie too goregasmic to visit just once!

RAZORBACK


RAZORBACK


Razorback is essentially Australian for Jaws; a giant, dangerous, irrational creature that attacks humans on site with little or no motivation for doing so, all the while obscured by the theatrics of fog, light, and perspective. By no means a bad movie, and by no means a great one either; while the photography in this film is beautiful and oftentimes haunting the pacing is more erratic than a shithouse rat. More than once I found myself questioning motivation or felt rather jilted by the sudden change in scene and dialogue. It may have worked great for the director while firing off music videos but it makes for a somewhat unsettling movie going experience, not to mention a killer headache.

What Razorback lacks in ambience it makes up for in pure visual storytelling. There were several pieces in the film that had a haunting dreamlike quality to them, where reality and fantasy blending and coalesced into something that seemed completely out of place for a film about a giant roaming menace on trotters. In a matter of fact the threat of the giant beast pig seemed secondary to everything else happening on screen. We hardly see the aforementioned animal as most of the plot dances around the plight of several revolving characters, but never long enough to get a clear idea of their moral grounding or motivation. The thick Australian accent and rapid fire line reading did little to help either. The scenes that worked the best for me were those completely devoid of dialogue, as they managed to build some tension, but for the most part the film seemed very touch and go, trying to fit as many scenes as possible to keep the story moving within its two hour timeframe.

If some of the set pieces and dreamlike visual were the main attraction to the film then the offbeat redneck twins Benny and Dicko were the secondary pull for me. Their erratic behavior and junkyard dog mentality livened the proceedings of the film up a bit and provided much more of an anchor of despicability than the main monster did. For all intents and purposes they seemed to be the main villains of the movie, often crashing through scenes with crazy abandon and a punk-like anti-social attitude that would make most “normal” people more scared to transverse the outback than any pissed off hog would. Even their surroundings provided some of the cooler visuals of the movie; like the steamy, hostile meat packing plant and their makeshift underground lair. Needless to say I’d love to share a six pack of Fosters with these nut jobs while hunting down some kangaroos on safari. I’ve got good money that says they’d love listening to a bout of Whiplash and Vomitor.

All in all Razorback makes for an enjoyable ride. Monster romps don’t need too much flair to keep them pumping along and this flick has enough eccentricities to keep me coming back, even though I could of used more B-rated flavor like heavy doses of gore, boobs, and bad words to make the time pass this gets an easy ride for being so damn serious about the subject matter without transversing too far into the land of hokey (even though I’d have to say that my favorite scene was a humorous piece were one guy gets his living room ripped in half by the giant pig). Plus all those cool Australian backwoods locales make for an interesting sit through, so crack open some piss warm beer and lay on back. It’s fat berserker boar time!

Thursday, October 20, 2011

BLOOD TRACKS

Do you remember those Mad Scientist play sets for kids from the 1980's? They friggin ruled. They had an alien autopsy one where you could cover an alien's organs in that smelly green slime stuff and simulate cutting out this pour things organs. I WISH I still had that thing. It explains sooooo much about my personality now that I played with something like that. They also had these cool play sets where you'd mix two different things that they'd name something like "monster jizz"* and "lizard shit"* and it'd make some sort of crazy reaction, like....ummm....fizzing. Well I've got a confession for you. When I was a kid I dropped a Scorpion music video, a few delicious Swedish gummi fish, and some fake blood into a time capsule, buried it, and now it fused together through some mad scientist reaction (read fizzing) to form Blood Tracks; the cock rock horror movie straight from the alps of Sweden and delivered into the sanctuary of your living room.

This movie is essentially The Hills Have Eyes meets the rock group Rat in the snow, and in the dark. Well, mostly in the dark. Half of the movie I couldn't tell who was who (they just list the actor's names for the credits, which is kind of weird by itself because apparently there is some person out there named Zim Zam…no shiting you), where they were in relation to each other, and well, anything really. People drop off and nobody seems to notice in the film and in the audience. This movie made me feel like I was high on speed, coke, tripping on acid, and huffing paint at the same time without actually doing any drugs at all. It's THAT disorienting. I had to self administer a breathalyzer to make sure I wasn't drunk, even though I hadn't had a beer all week.

I can tell you that it features the band Easy Action. They even perform the theme song for the movie on the side of a mountaintop. There are scenes that look like they were shot in the bottom of a sewage tank. There are dirty inbreeds that just want be left alone to live in their septic tank sanctuary (which is a huge step up for them considered they used to live in a closet with a single tea cup being their ONLY possession). Easy Action steps on their filthy toes by making that new fangled rock music so close to their home. Dozens of people die from traps laid by the family, but you're not sure exactly how some of the traps actually worked because my screen was dark, and because some questionable artistic choices meant that the sides of the screen got cut off at parts. An avalanche displaces a bunny rabbit. It's really as simple as that....sprinkled with a lot of boozing and drugs, but what'd you expect when people are rolling hard with arm tassels and string bikinis in the middle of the Arctic Circle?

This movie does make up for its shortfalls with tons and tons of Velveeta. Blows that look like they'd result in minor wounds end up being geysers of blood. Drugs and rock and roll must make skin vessels really fragile and susceptible to rupturing. And there is no lack of skin and laughable bad dialogue, but sadly enough, no tracks of blood that I can remember. Maybe it's the imaginary drugs clogging my memory. The theme song was right, damn it all. I'm in the danger zone!

*no...not really

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Visitng Hours

This one really took me by surprise. It's such a mean spirited, well played slasher flick. It reminded me of Maniac, which is rare because Maniac is one of my favorite movies. Michael Ironside (Colt Hawker) plays the grade ‘A’ badass motherfucker in this movie. He's such a sleazy looking, slithering huckster; constantly dripping in some mung-like goo that has the consistency of bowling alley oil, constantly raging, constantly on the hunt, constantly winning the hearts and minds of guys everywhere with his fervent psychotic episodes. What a real man; a pinnacle of macho bravado, a master of the art of disrespect. I’d be best buddies with him except for the distinct possibility that he could go apeshit wild bananas on me at the drop of a dime and rather break off toothpicks in my eye sockets than discuss the intricacies of 18th century Elizabethan taxes. Then again, maybe I’d do the same. And then again, maybe he just takes his boiling inferno of rage a couple more dance steps than what I’d be comfortable with. Ironside’s character is also a total and complete bastard, so that’s another reason why I don’t think we’ll be giving each other high fives anytime soon. He’s the type of guy who chokes old ladies in their hospital beds while taking pictures of them grasping for life. Plus he doesn't leave tips for waitresses at greasy spoon diners. I can’t abide that. The no tipping part I mean.

Hawker's such a fiery ball of rage and hatred that he has to carry a black stress ball around with him every where he goes. He even sweeps the floor with a zamboni in a manner that just conveys that he's seriously pissed off. If you could bottle all that hatred and stick it into a rocket ship it'd fly to Jupiter and back and still have fuel in reserve. He's so mad in this movie that he focuses most of his time on stalking TWO main characters, which crazy for a slasher film. The main baddy usually has his hands full just focusing on one target, but not Hawk Colter...oh no...he picks two because he overheard a nurse referring to him as a "creep". That's gotta chaff you enough to make it your undying mission to wipe her and her entire family, friends, and pets off the face of the planet!

And what the hell was up with the jewelry thing? He gets naked and covers himself in every piece of jewelry this lady owns and smears makeup all over his face. What a friggin bag of screw boxes. I bet he didn't even know he was being filmed, he showed up to work dressed like that that day at Home Depot or something and the director spotted him and knew he had the perfect man for the role. Not to mention the bell thing on his necklace. You'd think a slasher wouldn't be running around with a bell strapped around his neck. It's be really tough to sneak up on people jingle jangling around. Maybe it's his own personal joke, like he is showing up to slice your throat and he's so psyched out about it he came literally with bells on. What a cracker jack.

William Shatner is in it too, but I'm not sure why. I mean he spends most of the film eating hospital food and looking smug; not that I'm complaining or anything, it's fucking Shatner after all. At one point he's allowed into a fresh crime scene and you can't figure out exactly what the fuck he's doing there. Up to that moment in the film he was being portrayed as some sort of studio director, and last I checked they didn't have first dibs on trying to solve crimes. I guess the detectives were just like "Oh shit, it's Shatner, let him take a crack at this". Fucking Shatner man.

For the people wondering about the plot I'll break it down quick and dirty; it's a film about a lunatic that has a hard on for killing some news anchor/editorialist who's full of moxy and exposes pro-feminist, anti-violence, pro-bunny sentiments, all of which totally piss Ironside off. He freaking HATES bunny rabbits. His first attack on her landed her in a hospital, so never wanting to leave a job unfinished he pursues her from there, and nobody, not the cops, not helpless hospital patients, not annoying schmoes that look like Mario from Super Mario Brothers with huge ass 70's staches, and not even Shatner in all his ice cream slurping glory can stop him. They eventually describe where all his rage comes from, which of course is from some cliche bad childhood trama, but really they could have left it out. The question is sometimes way more exciting than the answer.
For people looking for one of those fluffy "popcorn" horror films this ain't it. There's no tongue in cheek antics, no directorial hyucking, no funny business to be had here; but that's not to say this movie ain't fun to watch.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Cinema Du Meep - October Slasher month

Check out Meep's blog; during the month of October he's reviewing a slasher a day.  What a bodycount!  Tell him Cropys's Cryptkeeper sent you packing from the morgue!


http://www.cinemadumeep.com/

SYNEGOR!

SYNGENOR!


In the abysmal, black, soulless heart of cinematic tinkering lies a beast so unscrupulously dumb that it makes the higher brain functions of a California peach seem like sonnets from the world’s finest poet. Well, maybe that’s taking it a bit too far. Syngenor isn’t that terrible of a film. Its stupidity is actually kind of endearing in some ways and brutally unforgiving in others. If you’re in the mood for a complete reality zone out session lasting roughly a couple of hours, then this is your bacon wrapped enchilada. There is something about a film that has no qualms dancing in the sewer of bad taste, really kicking up the brown stuff and never looking back to see who gets sprayed that gets to me every time. It’s got lunatics, corporate yuppy greed, drug abuse, and synthetic monster soldiers whose weakness includes….well….everything. Even water burns them. That’s right, water. That’s something I never thought I’d see since hanging out with the Neon Maniacs. Bravo Syngenor! You’re my new best, worse friend.

The plot is basically about a company that’s run by complete morons that happened to create some sort of sentient spinal fluid sucking soldier. Every stereotypical megalomaniac is present, plus it’s got every standard bad horror flick character you can possibly imagine. There’s a nosey reporter. There’s a lazy, borderline retarded detective. There’s the woman trying to find revenge for her uncle’s untimely death. There’s a scientist that blows up oranges. It’s got it all, and sure, some of it is entertaining to the lowest denominator of all bad tastes. It’s so dumb it comes around the bend and becomes funny, then becomes dumb, and then becomes painful, then you just don’t give a shit anymore and your mind enters this dumb, lethargic state of blissful ignorance. Maybe the purpose of the film is to transform the audience’s mentality into that of the slow moving, grumbling, stumbling, Synegors on screen by pummeling your mind with one idiotic antic after another.

Unstoppable soldiers these are not; the advertising was greatly exaggerated. The Syngenors are really kind of weak. Their combat tactics include standing there and letting themselves get riddled by bullets until they die, or standing in front of cars and letting themselves get run over, and that’s about it. I’m pretty sure some of them even died off camera, probably from something really lame like high blood pressure or Parkinson’s disease. Their special move is basically just picking people up and throwing them against the wall and they never move faster than say, the speed of smell. The fact that they suck ass is conveyed within the first fifteen minutes of reel time when a flower pot full of water slows one down, melting some of its skin off. Then you realize that water fucks them up., thereby eliminating any kind of threat these things may have posed. God forbid it rains outside and they forgot their umbrellas. The rest of the movie is kind of a loose string of sci-fi and b-movie clichés gone horribly wrong. I could spend a long time talking about all the ways this movie wraps in on itself and implodes, but the art of being this bad really needs to be seen and experienced to truly sink in. I’m afraid if I think about it for too long my brain will become hungry for nourishment and eat itself.

What’s truly amazing about Synegor is its persistence at contradicting and defying its own logic at every turn. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more derivative or silly something else happens that leaves you feeling like you just got slammed in the brain pan with a megaton of stupid. What is that green shit that the CEO of the company keeps shooting into his neck? Why does everyone insist on parking in the handicap spot when the parking lot is clearly empty and it’s not even the closest spot to the building? How is a company smart enough to develop laser weapons but not smart enough to teach the Syngenors how to use them? Why does everyone keep following the orders of a man that is clearly out of his fruit loops? What happened to the Synegors that escaped right at the beginning of the film? How did the reporter and that chick end up crawling out of the building through a ventilation shaft that was clearly leading them down when they started out in the basement? What did Stan Armbrewster have to do on his Saturday besides eat donuts and become vaporized by a laser beam?

And maybe that’s why I ended up liking this movie; it just doesn’t give a flying fudge how it may hold up to any ounce of critical review. It basks in its own warm glow of dumb and never lets up with the craziness. You can’t gauge what’s going to happen from one moment to the next. It’s wild, untamable; like chimpanzee with Down syndrome and a perchance for tossing shit at anyone that comes close to it. Fuck you Syngenor…..I love you!

Friday, September 30, 2011

THE DEMON


THE DEMON

The Demon was created in a supernatural dimension where Halloween was actually filmed and produced in South Africa.  I can imagine the theatres were packed during its theatrical run and it subsequently inspired a slew of other South African slasher films.  It plays all the same cat and mouse, stalker-in-the-background games as Halloween and features a faceless killer that is described as an inhuman demon by his “Ahab” (Cameron Mitchell), but as it is from another dimension there are many key differences.  The demon wears gloves with razor tipped points but many times he chooses to choke his victims or body slam them rather than stabbing them.  I could only imagine that he chose to suffocate people rather than stab them to death because in this supernatural otherworld metal is really, really flimsy.  The claws must have been made out of the equivalent of aluminum, but I can’t really be sure.  Cameron Mitchell plays a psychic Sherlock Holmes (ironic if you know the Halloween series), but his tele-pathetic powers end up boiling down to smelling pillows and drawing shitty pictures and getting shot in the face.  There’s an odd subplot involving a budding courtship between two minor characters that might eat up too much screen time if you’re a picky sissy pants; I thought it paid off in adding a certain emotional weight to their subsequent deaths at the gnarled hands of the demon.  I was almost sad to see them go.

Scenes come from nowhere and pop and fizzle out of existence.  There’s a club named Boob’s Disco.  Gratuitous nudity and awkward, almost completely nonsensical cuts round the whole shebang out.  Written and directed by the immortal Percival Rubens, whom I’m sure is a big name in dimension-X, be sure to pop this bloke into a rusty old VCR on a rainy day if you want Halloween but tire of convention. 
         

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Humanoids from the Deep


Hope all you crusty cretins out there enjoyed some of the HALLOWEEN 2 slop I had to offer from the crypt.  I'm dragging up some B-grade reviews from the icy abyssal depths of the ocean for your viewing pleasure...hope the season of rot is treating you all well. 

HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP

The creature rise; a hulking mass of seaweed and entangled hermit crabs, it throws its head back gurgling slime and salt through a thousand unseen gills, its struggled breathing sounding like a scuba respirator full of sludge, and you can see in wide mouthed horror the fin stretch, the dark thin skin between expand, the twisting veins pumping dark blood in this fold of flesh is backlit by the gleaming moonlight, and this impossible monster becomes real.  Before it was too silly to consider, a child’s nightmare, something the adult mind can’t spend time seriously pondering, there were other things to worry about ,like taxes, gossiping neighbors, your bank account, whose your friend and who isn’t your friend; adult matters, no time to entertain fancies of magic fairies, or Santa Claus, or sea monsters.  But here it is, like an exclamation point negating everything you thought you knew, and your final thoughts as it digs it’s black claws, black as plaque, into your neck, severing your arterial vein, is how absurd it is, to be killed by something that can’t exist…..

From the cold and smothering black depths of cinematic depravity comes a movie unashamed to deliver the creature gore that gushing red blooded horror freaks truly relish. Humanoids from the Deep is a Corben flick that delivers all the scaly, slithery, slimy mayhem your eyes can suck up into your cortex. Plus the crux of the plot centers around fish-men raping chicks; mull over that one in your scrub tub late at night.

The story takes place in a sleepy fishing community where a big bad corporation is coming in to give everyone jobs at a newly proposed fish hatching plant. A local Native American sees through this ploy, notices the subtle changes in the wildlife, like dead dogs and giant humanoid fish men, so naturally he opposes this plant. There's a lot of conflict between him and a bunch of racist rednecks, leading to wacky black and blue brawls where uppercuts go "bamf" and have the heavy sound of bare knuckle punching raw meat, but that soon takes a backseat to the real issue at hand; mermen are raping their women and by golly they got to do something about it. The cool headed main goody two shoes fisherman and main protagonist Jim, sides with the Indian after he sees some evidence indicating something is amok. They team with a hot body scientist named Dr. Drake (these type of flicks always have a beautiful babe biologist, don't they?), who seems to know a little bit too much about these new creatures. After locating a hive of the humanoids and filling it with buckets of bullets and spear gun darts, they retrieve a fish monster cadaver and one of their recent rape victims, a girl who is still covered in fresh humanoid man spunk. Dr. Drake ends up revealing that the new plant, or cannery, is the source of these creatures, and that they are attracted to big tittied buxoms. Naturally. This sets the stage for the sea men's big offensive push out of the water and on to land at an annual carnival. Chaos ensues, women are taken as sex slaves, men are made into sushi, but eventually the people rally together and repel the onslaught of horny amphibians.

The humanoids are sufficiently slimy, there’s a bodacious boob count, and the gore is on par with slow decapitations, face rips, and torso tears; this has the right mix o' cheese to keep most B-flixsters happy. I love how un-reactive, and stone faced everyone in this film seems to be after discovering what could be the find of a century. It's all dealt with in such a matter of fact manner that it makes me wonder how many times monsters from the ocean venture to this place to inseminate some poor lady, so obviously the acting is pretty much what you'd expect given the type of flick this is. I really dug this slop. Anything that capitalizes on the fear of rape with creatures from the murky depths of the ocean should be checked out at least once.


Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Halloween 2: rare pics

Some rare Halloween 2 pics I've yoked....

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Halloween 2: The Novel





The Halloween 2 novelization by Jack Martin is a worthy item for any collector or fan of the film.  The descriptions of Haddonfield around Halloween really took me away to the icy steel air of October.  The candy wrapper strewn gutters and the cold pale moon pitched high in the sky; beaming its indifferent face in all directions and nowhere all at once, all of these things really sucked me into the moment and perfectly encapsulated that atmosphere of a typical autumn night in suburbia as described in the text.  The novelization is also of particular interest to fans because it includes entire sequences cut from the film that, in my humble opinion, makes the story flow in a more logical progression.  It details how Michael kills the electrical power to the hospital (thus answering those nipping questions about why it’s so dark in the hospital during the film), and it also includes the death of a new reporter only briefly seen during the film.  The death of the reporter also ties into how The Shape enters the hospital, which is slightly different than what is shown in the film.  The novel does a good job of adding a layer of extra characterization to cast, fleshing out the players before they shed blood at the hand of The Shape.  The ending is also slightly different; reconciling the fact that her life is completely different following the events of that Halloween night, Laurie tells the ambulance driver, upon asking where to drop her off, that she truly didn't know.  Her life has been turned inside out and upside down...she feels homeless and off center and those additional lines at the end demonstrate that.

 I highly recommend this book, it’s cheap and relatively easy to track down, and the text is easily readable and flows fast.  Even after watching this movie all these years I can find extra things to take note of or think about while watching Halloween 2 and his book only multiplied what I saw or thought about during the film.  Definitely a good purchase for the Halloween nut.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Halloween 2: Scaring up some observations...


 Halloween 2
 Beware for beyond lies spoilers....

Halloween 2 has recently come out on BOO-ray, scaring up sInematic musings from my trash entrenched mind.  Halloween 2 is sugary slashtastic fun; although the film is a direct follow up to the original Halloween, taking place during the same night, I consider the two separate, stand alone films with entirely different styles.  The original’s meaning changes when bounced against the revelation that Laurie is actually Michael’s sister.  The revelation implies different things that the film makers never anticipated when committing the film to that white hot light coming out of the projector, thus it is better to consider the movies separate.  Even the continuity from the onset of the film is inconsistent from the ending of the original; Michael falls from a different room in the house and the gun shots are miscounted.  When considering Halloween 2 one must keep these ideas in mind, and view the sequel as the series first foray into franchise territory, where the original was created with the intention of a stand alone film, ending with the boogeyman’s whereabouts “Unknown City, anywhere-town USA”.
 

Ben Tramer and Omens of the Future

By watching Ben Tramer die, engulfed in flame, was Dr. Loomis seeing a future vision of the demise of The Shape at the end of the film? Maybe not, but it does make a lot of sense when considering Loomis’s speech about the festival of Samhain and the made up Pagan tradition of burning criminals and outcasts in baskets to receive visions of the future.  Ben Tramer (the very person Laurie said she had a secret crush on in the original film, singing to herself as The Shape watches from the shadows “I wish I had you all alone, just the two of us”); is even dressed up as the Shape.   This kind of alluding to future events happens again in the story when Michael suffocates the nurse in the hot tub by bobbing her head in and out of the scolding water after overhearing her talking about how she would never bob for apples again for as long as she lived.  Irony is one of the Shape’s strong points; in another scene the Shape, the living embodiment of evil and death, a modern day grim reaper, chooses to hide in the hospital’s maternity ward, standing over rows of innocent newborn babies.   It’s apparent that the film makers intended for Michael’s actions to be deviously ironic, like a good trick or treat prank.

Both Ben Tramer and Myers die by fire and Dr. Loomis gives a completely made up explanation about what happens during Samhain.   Dr. Loomis’s talk about witches and ancient Pagan ritual sounds spooky, but it is done with a greater intention within the context of the movie, it connects the Shape to the holiday, and eludes to the fact that Myers is more conscious about what is happening around him than a mere madman motivated by pure instinct.  The connection between Loomis’s speech about Hallow’s Eve and what happens at the end of the film is undeniable and definitely adds another layer of complexity to the story that most people seem to miss.  A point that Dr. Loomis doesn’t seem to miss however is that “2,000 years later we’ve come no further”; we are still as superstitious as our Celtic ancestors from long ago.  Despite being a man of science Dr. Loomis recognizes “pure evil” and speaks of Myers as if he were a mystical force.  He simply isn’t human.  Loomis abandons pure scientific endeavor and must rely on superstition to explain Myer’s existence.   

I don't think that the audience sees these connections right away because at the end of the film you aren't thinking about what Loomis said twenty minutes ago. You're thinking about Laurie and Dr. Loomis getting away and eradicating the threat of the Shape, but when you take the movie in as a whole it makes sense and explains why the writers (or writer John Carpenter), would make up some false explanation of Samhain.

Alice

Why did Myers kill Alice?  She was not in his way to getting to the hospital, so what was the point (besides padding the body-count?).
 
Alice was a nubile teenage girl (much like Judith), alone in her house on Halloween, the cops were on Myers trail, he was already switching up some of his MO with the infamous Bob kill from H1, why not toss another body on the pile to really toss the police off? When they start finding bodies in household after household on the same street they will start seeing Michael "on every street corner", which fits perfectly with the Ben Tramer death and might also explain part of the reason he broke into the elementary school to etch “Samhain” in blood. 

Myers turned his attack on Laurie into an attack on Haddonfield itself. He wanted the police jumping at their own shadows, spreading the police force out thin in a panic, leaving The Shape free to pursue his own dark intentions. Alice's death was a means to an end. He needed the police shaken up enough to start running over their own citizens in patrol vehicles. That sick irony is something Myers thrives on.

Dr. Mixter

I enjoyed the fact that Myers used a syringe to kill him after his last scene was with Laurie, tapping her vein, drawing her blood with a needle. Nobody taps Laurie but Michael. How Freudian.  The shower represents purification, like the "baptizing" shower from Psycho. Dr. Mixter never made it to his shower. He was never absolved of his sins, or at least his drunkenness.

Blood on Black

While Laurie dreams in her drug induced nightmare, recalling memories long buried in her psyche, perhaps shaken loose from the night’s terror, we are shown intercut shots of blood splattering against a flat, black surface, like crimson tears in a void.  The terror of remembering is a powerful, sometimes terrifying thing, and perhaps on some sort of animalistic level Laurie felt her repressed memories and nightmares boiling to the surface of her psyche after suffering from the shock of being attacked by The Shape, whom through musical cues is also alluded to as “Mr. Sandman” in the film.

The very first thing Laurie tells any hospital personnel is to not put her asleep.  On the surface it would appear that she wouldn’t want to sleep out of fear of Myers attacking her in her vulnerable state as she slept, but if you interpret the “Mr. Sandman” song by The Cordettes as an allusion to Michael Myers (within the context of the film), then Laurie’s fear of sleep takes on a duplicate meaning.  She not only is fearful of the vulnerability associated with sleep, she is afraid of seeing “Mr. Sandman”, or Michael Myers in her sleep, a fear that is soon realized when recollecting the time she first saw him in Smith’s Grove Sanitarium during a nightmare.  As the jagged memories come flowing back to consciousness and Laurie recalls her relation to pure evil, the spots of blood on black becomes a still lake of blood, perhaps representing the nightmare struggle she finds herself drowning in.  It’s interesting to note that the next time she sees Myers (or anyone for that matter) she’s drugged and dazed, her sight unclear, the Shape appears to her as if in a vision, offering a fresh kill for his muse, further eradicating any sense of security Laurie might have. 

The blood on black lake is revealed to be from the slow bleeding of Mrs. Alves.  The same blood is what Jimmy later slips in and bumps his noggin; makes sense, after all Jimmy was always slipping up around Mrs. Alves…..     

Regan finds a new home in the Crypt

As you can probably surmise, this crappy Crypt-keeper is absolutely coo-coo clock for Halloween decor, and after a quick trip to the local curios shop I returned with Captain Spaulding from THE EXORCIST; completely pea soup splattered in all her spinning head glory.






Demon possession is so grand, I can't wait until it becomes the cool thing to do. 

Finally got down with some Halloween 2, BOO-ray action.  Love the candy coated hi definition color, but am not so happy about the credits switcheroo at the beginning.  The crypt space will be filled with Halloween 2 black mass worship all week, so keep peaking here for some gushy Halloween movie love....  

Monday, September 12, 2011

Count Dracula and his Vampire Bride

Over the weekend I felt the itch; the itch for voluptuous lesbo vampire broads, old dilapidated mansions that go creek in the night, Dracula spouting the dark poetry of the damned, and hellish experimentation performed by some mad German doctor....in other words I felt the itch that could only be scratched by HAMMER.  So I laid back in my easy chair and dosed my brain with some dusty classic vampire yarns, such as Count Dracula and his Vampire Bride.


Dracula is sick of the game.  Yes sick.  And the damned creature wants out of it.  He's sick of monster hunters separating his coffin lid in the throes of a good midday nap, he's tired of feeding the vampire chicks chained to his coffin, he's sick of humanity mucking it up for him.  It's time for the dark days; the all or nothing days.  It's time for the apocalypse, the big end game, and with the help of some hypnotized higher up British officials and a brand new strand of the bubonic plague, aka the Black Death, he seems closer to ever to bringing the world to the end, if it weren't for that meddling Van Helsing standing in his way...

Peter Cushing and Christoher Lee mix it up in this classic HAMMER sinema great, and with this being Christopher Lee's last Dracula flick, it makes me wonder if the whole deal about Dracula being tired of living had some other implications, like Mr. Lee was tired of playing the living dead, even though it's a FACT that nobody on Earth can bulge their bloodshot eyes out of their skull in hyno-Dracula trance like he can.   There's some political intrigue, actually it wasn't as intriguing as a chore to sit through until the movie got to the classic HAMMER stuff, but I'd recommend it if you're looking for a good vamp flick that doesn't make vampires look like cry baby emo goth kids. 

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Bereavement

I just saw the follow up to Malevolence a few days ago. I think I'll have to watch it a few more times before doing a full blown review, but right now I'm thinking Bereavement > Malevolence. It's a sprinkle of TCM, a dabble of Psycho, with a dash of stalk and slash. Nothing anybody here has never seen before, but I thought it came together nicely with some dark twists at the end and a journey into the psychosis of a madman that will unnerve the tame. The most compelling part of the story for me was the utter tragedy of all the people involved, everyone is fucked from the first frame. It’s more than another dead teen flick; it deals more with the nature of tragedy, how in an instance someone can come along and take away everything you know and care about, and the impression violence and evil has on the development of a child’s psychological makeup.  Malevolence showed us the boogeyman Martin Bristol would later become; Bereavement sets the table in a way that doesn’t insult the viewer’s logic.

A child (Martin Bristol) afflicted with a rare disease, one that prevents the young boy from feeling pain, is kidnapped from his backyard swing in a scenario that would give any warm blooded parent a serious case of the heebie jeebies.  Later the same child is subjected to psychological and physical torture that would break the resolve of full grown men.  The movie seems to suggest that Martin’s nerve affliction helped him survive the trials of the madman he’s held captive by, but the psychological damage done to him is irreversible.  Nurture and nature have equal play in his development, but due to the perfect storm of tragic circumstance he becomes a living ghost, unfettered by the morals of modern society; Martin is a silent stalking killer, a moon faced boogeyman, and his “father”, his cruel captor, seems proud of his son before Martin swiftly buries an ax into his chest. And why not…he has become a twisted reflection of his own lunatic teachings…keeping a legacy of evil alive that had begun with his father..

Some might call this a torture porn, but that’s really not the case.  There was one scene that displays torture that goes far beyond psychological; but I believe the movie was just playing to the conventions of the genre.  You have to add a little visceral punch to your product when you wear influences like TCM, Psycho, and Halloween on your sleeve; the rest of the “torture” is purely mental, like in a Buffalo Bob from Silence of the Lambs kind of way.     

 

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Midnight Movie - book review from the abyss



Midnight Movie is a story narrated through interviews, internet blogs, news stories, a splashy diarrhea laden media dump in a documentary style format, no doubt retreading the same tone as Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s pseudo-documentary style; siphoned through a tangled narrative about a mysterious zombie outbreak which supposedly had been caused by the screening of a "lost" Tobe Hooper classic Destiny Express.  Hooper plays a major role in the action along with several other fictional or mostly fictional characters (I’m unsure if some of the people he refers to in the novel were cooked up by Tobe and co-writer, as the novel is semi-autobiographical of Tobe’s own life). The zombies, instead of being the brain hungry, mindless, shambling creatures popularized by Romero’s ilk are sex crazed fiends; Hooper (and co-writer) were going for a different kind of id, one that spews blue cum and generally acts like a hyper sex crazed teen that will literally fuck itself to death.  If this had been a movie it’d resemble a Southern fried, low budget take on The Crazies mixed with a dash of Necromantic while borrowing elements from The Ring told through media breaks and talking heads, all underlined in Hooper’s dry devil-may-care sense of humor.

What I enjoyed most about the story had nothing to do with the story at all, it was reading into some of Tobe's own inner monologue, dialogue which sometimes caters to nerdgasming slashheads like yours truly, that got my goat and I suspect is the main pull for many people purchasing the book.  The characters in the novel are just as eccentric as some of the characters in his quirkier movies (think Eaten Alive) and there’s certainly an effort made to entertain above all else even if the horror is reduced to the slapstick over the top antics of some splatter flicks; tongue planted firmly through the cheek.  The mystery surrounding the outbreak kept me going as the clues were evenly spread throughout the book, revelations came to the reader at a satisfying pace, although I pretty much guessed the true catalyst for the outbreak from the onset.

Where the novel falters is in its inability to remain focused and tonally consistent. One of the main themes in the book is about how society easily sheds its cultural center when faced with a crisis; going through denial of said crisis then spinning the narrative of events to cartoonish extremes to sate the sensibilities of the public.  Catch phrases are attached to terrifying events to rob the tragedy of its horrible power to spread fear, to reshape perceptions, to loosen the control of society.  When the zombie outbreak happens the government steps in to erase the digital footprint of related events and information from the internet and by blaming the incidents on meth heads.  The result is a society that seemingly continues to plod on with horse blinders on, dealing with the menace by internalizing the events in rose colored glasses, or by plain denial.  People continue with their 9 to 5 as best as they can while dealing with these crazy people spewing blue slime out of their pee holes.  There is only a general sense that something is amidst, something is wrong with the country, but like Tobe Hooper says, when isn’t there something wrong?  He’s not even aware of the outbreak until it literally knocks on his front door. 

However later in the novel people begin reacting to the threat of the rising zombie menace by locking themselves into their own homes or leaving town all together as violence escalates in the cities.  The streets are described as dust strewn and clogged with rolling tumbleweeds, deserted and ghostly with the foreboding sense that the infected could be anywhere.  When the threat is dealt with and reversed society reconvenes back to a seemingly normal state of affairs as if the screw happy zombies were but a bump in the natural progression of civilization, a temporary throwback hardly marked in the history books to be trivialized by later generations.  If the threat caused society to lose its cultural center how did it find it again?  It’s unclear and inconsistently presented in the book; it’s hard to imagine a culture that would ignore the zombies on such a large scale, a government capable of hiding the threat as easily as it had in the book in the age of the superhighway of information, and people’s uneven reaction to it.  It’d be hard enough to censor social networks, none the less silence the entire interwebs.  The book doesn’t focus long on the aftermath; it seems satisfied in its conclusion of the story as an entertainment piece but does nothing to address the themes presented and subsequently abandoned through the novel, none of the narrative threads seemed to knot together evenly at the end with the exception of recounting the fate of all the major players.  If it had something definitive to say the crux was lost in Hooper’s staunch musings about Hollywood and the gross-out antics of the zombies.  The novel slides between observations about the meta-culture and oozing orifices; a jubilee of nihilism and amorality run amok while examining the ugly social trends of a media saturated world.        

The third act of the novel shifts focus from the sprawling zombie apocalypse to Hooper’s mission to recreate the amateur shoestring budget movie that is suspected to have kick started the whole humping deadhead epidemic.  Exhausted, flying on fumes and guided by intuition, Hooper decides to remake the film Destiny Express gambling that whatever black cinema magic might had spawned from original could by undone by filming another. Again it’s difficult to see the underlining message when the passages are riddled with road kill and the narrative thread is broken by idiotic tweets and blog passages by chicks with the blue goo with unstable libidos.  Perhaps there’s something to be said about movie remakes robbing or dampening the magic of the original, but that seems kind of pedestrian.    

All in all I couldn't recommend this to anyone that isn't a gushing Tobe Hooper fan.  The day I read this book I was bed ridden, suffering from a summer plague during a stiffening heat wave, with Lifeforce, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and Eaten Alive playing on the cathode ray throughout the morning and afternoon hours. The only breaks I had were to spill some fluids in the bathroom, either from pissing or puking.  Bow to the porcelain goddess.  Zombie films seem so much more pertinent when your sick and suffering, but the Tobe Hooper love-fest did little to help elevate the material in the novel and my enjoyment of it.  Buy at your own risk.  This is a library loaner for sure.