Meanwhile at the GARTH MANOR....

HELL NIGHT

Gothic style horror seen through a pair of pink 80’s shades; Hell Night blends classic spook house freaks with the modern horror show creeps. Hell Night launches with one of the most kinetic parties to ever grace the silver screen. Hundreds of people fill the screen, energy off the charts, chugging beer, crashing cars, spraying shaving cream, and getting down to disco like nobodies business. I think I even spotted a goldfish doing keg stands. This rip roaring block party is all in celebration of “Hell Night”, a night where the college co-ed pledges stick it through a night at Garth Manor battling a bad case of the willies. Little beknownst to the frat pledges the old, creaky mansion is still inhabited by a big mongoloid “Gork” looking to turn these party monkeys into chunks. Pray for day indeed! Keeping it simple and dripping with atmosphere, Hell Night is a sure-fire repeat watch for slash heads looking for another classic fix. Linda Blaire is there (uncharacteristically bearing nothing), but holding it down on the acting front along with a Californian surfer type guy, an English party girl, and the typical preppy slasher movie good guy (who takes a deep dive after revealing he once saw a real elf, kind of like Dan Haggerty, except his career took the dive). The mansion has all sorts of hidden passageways and secret chambers, giving ole Gork-o plenty of places to jump out at his prey and the film makes plenty of room for dime store scares. Hell Night might not peg anyone’s top horror movie list, but it’s got enough cheesy charm to keep me coming back. Did you know that, dressed as Robin Hood, it is plausible to steal a shotgun from the police station, unnoticed? Stick that one in your pipe and smoke it!

Chopping Mall

Chopping Mall

Shopping malls in America used to be chaotic, dangerous, and downright deadly. Liken the dust strewn streets of the Wild West, or some lawless post apocalyptic land where life is a white line nightmare where the weak are battered and smashed; family shopping malls were a deadly gambit of beauty pageants, skateboarding kids, and wailing Casio key-tar beats. That is, of course, until we hired robot protectors to help us safely navigate the aisles unharmed by toxic scab heads or Splatter Punks, to pick out our favorite colored socks (green like The Shape). These treaded, laser spewing, torso crunching death machines will finally introduce order to the shopping experience. I can finally peruse the antique wooden limb aisle in peace…or if it’s up to the robots…pieces…

It’s Beverly Hills. People chew gum with intensity unknown to the rest of the free world. In the food court there are Forbidden World and Slumber Party Massacre posters decorating the walls; which, in case you didn’t know because of your abysmal lameness, is totally tubular. What can I say you saps, it’s Beverly Hills, and they obviously have taste. Life is pizza, parties, fridges bristling with crisp sudsy silver bullets, and bodacious babes. It’s all pancakes until the Chopping Mall droids show up blowing people’s heads off with lasers. It’s a major bummer, but fuck it, it’s Friday! Break out the sweater vest and send those buckets of bolts a Rambo-gram they’ll never forget!

Chopping Mall is the ridiculous over the top brain wave crushing experience that you hope it to be. It’s that perfect storm of 80’s spunk and sloppy gore. It adheres to the movie rules that all robots are bullet proof, despite the material they’re made out of, and all the typical slasher ground rules. Some people might call it garbage, but use gutter suckling guppies know better; this is the meatloaf dinner of soap kitchens. Any movie where they point out how working in a pizza joint can prepare you for battling robots gets this crypt’s appraisal…may I please see your identification?