The Hills are trippy!

Check out this rad The Hills Have Eyes art...best fit for the movie me thinks!

GI JASON ALL AMERICAN SLASHER!

Check out these rad shirt designs from FRIGHT-RAGS in honor of FRIDAY THE 13TH!

Happy Friday the 13th!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to camp….a lurking hooded menace…prowling Crystal Lake...lusting for revenge…this summer the bodycount will continue......on the day you can count on for TERROR…

Friday the13th part deux

The summer fun begins with a child singing about the “itsy bitsy spider”, the poor schmuck got washed out with a water sprout.  Water sprouts are super dangerous; my head is always on a swivel looking out for water sprouts.  You never know when a water sprout is going to pop up and ruin your perfectly fine day.  The good news is that the spider was O.K.  He came out when the rain was dried up.

I guess you could say that the spider represents Jason and the reference to the water sprout, the cycle of water washing the spider out only for it to rise again is like Jason drowning in Crystal Lake only to rise again and again to witness teens consummating their freckled face love, and shatter that harmonious exchange with a pick axe.  Life is a graveyard……dig it!?  Jason does.  Fucking respect.

Jason’s back; isn’t that grand!?  He grew from a mongoloid forest child to a jacked up, pissed off, behemoth of a red neck all in just a couple year time span.  Isn’t retcon grand?  He must have ate his fill of bears.  He’s gunning for Alice big time, seeing as how she cut the head from the proverbial snake* (Big J’s momma) in the first Friday outing.  Jason hates using the phone but he does so to prank call Alice.  You’ve been punked Alice.  Alice is still up to her old antics, boiling water every five minutes, and we see evidence that she really does like to draw.; truly character defining moments.  However Jason punks her again by fast pitching a cat at her through a window and leaving his dear mom’s noggin in her fridge; I think he did it only because everyone knows that decapitated heads do not stay fresh for long, like cabbage, and they reek worse than a C.H.U.D.’s cleft asshole.  Then its curtains for Alice; we knew ye well.  You liked to draw right?

Cut to Crystal Lake and the head honcho of the new summer camp is giving his new group of youthful counselors the lowdown about bears; menstruating women….beware!  What he didn’t mention until later was that there was also a plaid clad maniac storming the woods looking to maim anybody that crossed his path.  Not even poodles are safe from his wraith.  Fer REALZ.  Even Fluffy gets filleted.

Ginny shows up Paul with her sass, Paul warns her of bears too, Crazy Ralph swings by and the gangs all here for the sultan of slaughter to rock the camp grounds.  Camp BLOOD is back!  It’s not long before people start dying through backward machete slices, Crazy Ralph gets killed by barbed wire** and has his body dumped in the some closet (which looks like the same one we first see him in the original).  Ginny pisses herself in sheer terror (bladder splatter), we see the shack that Jason’s been chilling in all these years, and in the end the nerdy drunk guy that chose to stay at the bar survives the night.  Beer saves, Jason KILLS!

*On moonless nights in the crypt, locked deep in my slasher studies, I have often mulled over the scene in the original Friday the 13^th where the campers chase down and decapitate a garden snake in one of the cabins.  Could the snake be some sort of subconscious representation of Mrs. Pamela Voorhees; liken a snake in Eden?  Certainly the death of the snake and Pamela’s demise share some commonality. Can we contribute this to the “science of coincidence” that Bill speaks of in the first movie?  I’ll let you mush brains decide that one for yourselves!  Squish, squish.

**How did Jason come from over the tree with his arms to kill Ralph with the barbed wire?  Was the tree short or something?  The logistics in Crazy Ralph’s death don’t really make much sense as they are presented on screen and thus makes me feel bat-shit insane.  

2012...year of the saw?

TERROR TRAIN - A slasher for the NEW YEAR!

Terror Train

All aboard, the terror train is on the tracks…chugging along at maniac speed….a hard cold steel death machine….for the people trapped on board this new year may be their last….Kenny Hampson’s got some tricks up his sleeve and revenge on his mind ….he’s ready to make your life go….*POOF*…disappear!  

You’ll only need a one way ticket when you ride the TERROR TRAIN!

Whenever I reminisce of Terror Train I think of the story that a friend of mine once told me about David Copperfield trying to “cop-a-feel” from his mother after cutting someone in half on stage.  I think of magical peanut vending machines.  I think of a man dressed as a parrot, speaking in a parrot voice, and fully expecting to be taken seriously.  Terror Train is essentially The Great White North’s poor man’s answer to John Carpenter’s Halloween; except on a crazy train, and by ZHUUL I am sold on that idea.

There’s a fraternity prank, some nerdy never-do-well named Kenny Hampson gets tricked into crawling into bed with a corpse.  I don’t see what the big deal is, dead chicks don’t say “no” Kenny.  He totally flips his lid and spins himself into a fangled mess of curtains, as if wrapping himself in that shocking moment of time.  Poor Kenny; should have known that movie-land frat pranks typically pave the trail for tragedy.

Kenny liked to play with trains and was an amateur magician, so guess how the same frat house knob jobs that wronged Kenny decide to celebrate their graduation; on a train watching a hired magician.  These guys really love tempting fate with bad cine-karma.  When the train leaves the station (and even before) the bodies start to drop.  One crappy Groucho imitator gets impaled and grinded up in the train tracks.  Good thing too; that guy’s jokes were killing me.  Hardee HAR!  

I love the long dark train hallways in the later half of the film, the shots of the dimly lit mahogany interior of the cars after Mo dies and they abandon the train briefly in a panic. That dark, foreboding, tunnel-like vision underlines the single minded tunnel vision mindset of the killer as well as compliments the claustrophobic elements of the film; like when Doc Manley and Alana try hiding from the killer in a locked room. The pastel lighting is also an interesting choice; it always reminded me of some sort of dream-like, spaced out dementia, like a glimpse of the world through Kenny's eyes.

     
Another aspect of the film that stood out to me was the train conductor Carne. He brought a real salt of the earth sensibility to the play. Out of all the characters I think I enjoyed him the most; a genuine old school good guy. I like the fact that they resisted the temptation to make him too much of the stereotypical tough guy who swoops in to save the day at the last moment. If this had been a recent release they would have replaced Carne with some daytime television soap opera heart throb. He struck me as an ordinary guy doing his best in extraordinary circumstances all the while managing to remain frank and cool headed. Bravo sir!

There’s some hooey about he said, she said, typical B-flick wishy washy romance crap, but this movie has true red slasher blood running through its veins and none of that candy ass filler really detracts from the good times, so don’t sweat it.  If you find your mind wandering just think about what a bag of tools David Copperfield is, it won’t be long before a sword ruptures someone’s spleen and all will be right in the world.  No Halloween-on-rails would be complete without James Lee Curtis screaming ITS ragged face off, and this has got that too.  There’s costume switching hijinks, magic shows, a slow dancing secretary in a wheel chair, and all sorts of fruity crap to keep your toes curled, not to mention cold hard DEATH in the caboose.  The last chase scene is as bloody suspenseful as schlock comes.   So don’t delay, seek Terror Train before the party leaves the station!

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.

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”.        

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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!