A round of applause for not making a totally lackluster uninspired poster; the next Massacre looks like it will have some meat and merit. I'm turning in my grave in anticipation to see the chainsaw in all it's 3-dimensional glory!
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Silly tagline, grim poster! TCM 3-D!
Curse of the Thorn comic covers
Here are some covers to the planned "Thorn" Halloween series to get you in the mood for the season of rot from the defunct DevilsDue comics that never saw the light of day...
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Halloween 2 official mask...
http://www.trickortreatstudios.com/
Check out the link above for an officially licensed Halloween 2 mask...more of the night He came home. I can't wait for Halloween this year!
http://www.trickortreatstudios.com/blog/the-antomy-of-the-halloween-ii-mask/
Texas Chainsaw fun at Halloween Horror Nights Universal Studios
Hey head cheese fans, check out this ultra-fun poster for the new TCM feature upcoming at Halloween Horror nights at Universal Studios. I might make a trip out there sometime to see what if it slays...
Friday, July 27, 2012
POPCORN
POPCORN
The Possessor will possess
your dreams. The Possessor will possess
your body. The Possessor will possess
your life! In the 1970’s hippy film
maker and movie cult leader Lanyard Gates created his abstract masterpiece; The
Possessor. Having been scoffed at and
ridiculed for his previous ill received failures, Gates set out to create the
ultimate horror movie experience as a revenge on his critics; a movie so
dastardly it would instantly invoke true fright in the audience and possess
their very souls with terror (but more likely laughter). The film would climax in the death of his
family; sacrificed live on stage in ritualistic fashion before a crowd of half
baked onlookers tripping on acid. Before
Lanyard can complete the filming of his sadistic swan song a terrible fire
engulfs the theater, and the movie cult as well as Lanyard are presumed dead
and crispy.
Cut to 15 years later and
local high-school’s film club is looking to re-open the Dreamland Theater for
one last all night horror show. Maggie
is having some bizarre dreams, the kind you wake up screaming from, which
happen to be my favorite kind. She
dreams of a fire kindling and a man’s face, smiling at her, mocking her,
calling out to possess her very being. The
fire in her nightmares is so hot she can feel it singe the short willowy hairs
on her arms, almost as if she’s lived through it; almost as if the dream was
being recalled from repressed memories rather than fabricated from her
subconscious. Maggie thinks she’s kind
of psychic, but her aunt and legal guardian knows the terrible truth; she is
the long lost daughter of cinema wack job Lanyard Gates. She’s been getting mysterious phone calls
where the caller claims the 9th circle of Hell is reserved for
her. What a lucky lady. I tried reserving the entire 9th circle
of Hell and was told I would have to call months in advance. The aunt sneaks out late at night to the Dreamland
theater, confirming her worse fear; The Possessor is back and looking to wrap
up the movie he started 15 years ago.
She’s armed but not so dangerous.
Someone dressed like the undead finds no problem taking her down and out
after distracting her in the darkened theater with some loud horror movie sound
samples.
There’s a music video montage
of the film club renovating the dilapidated Dreamland Theater for its final
show. That’s how you know that while
this was released in the 90’s its heart and soul and guts certainly belonged to
the 80’s. The film club itself consists
of the typical stalk and slash selection of prime cuts. There’s a kid in a wheelchair, a ditz, a laid
back party dude, the teacher’s pet, the sassy Latina, and the nerdy shy outsider. The crew is motivated by a former theater
owner who regales them with tales about the schlock shows and movie gimmicks of
the past. He compares the audience to
turkeys, and says it’s their job to cook them.
The Possessor however will do all the carving.
Later they discover a copy of
the avante-garde film The Possessor, a movie previously thought to have been
completely destroyed by the fire that claimed Lanyard’s life. It consists of close up shots of an eyeball,
a man’s bearded face, lasers, and Lanyard Gates repeatedly telling the audience
to “Come into my head” as he pulls his skull apart. Maggie however wants Lanyard out of her
head. When she sees the movie her mind
reels with incredible déjà vu and she passes out. Tobe can’t wait to play it again…hint,
hint…and he’s good at making latex masks…hinty, hint, hint…
The all night horror movie
marathon kicks off, and the party is off the hook. The film club pulled no punches when
decorating the joint; and the costumed crowd of movie goers is licking it up
with glee. This is the kind of
horror-thon I’d love to attend, with audience participation through the roof
and gimmicky attractions like “projecto-vision” where movie props suspended by
wires are launched toward the audience, or “aroma-rama” where the audience is
dosed in a raunchy smelling fog. I also
enjoyed the idea of a “shock clock” screaming when a new feature starts
playing.
Unfortunately for the film
club this is the kind of horror marathon where people in front and behind the
screen will be screaming for their lives.
During the first feature the film class teacher is grotesquely impaled on
a mosquito prop. The killer quickly
fabricates a latex mask replica of the teacher’s face and is able to lure the
ditzy class slut to her demise. During
the electroshock feature the wheelchair bound student is electrocuted and left
sizzling. Meanwhile Maggie is stalked by
a strange old man with burns on his face.
She suspects Laynard Gates, but soon enough Tobe takes her “down the
rabbit hole” to his lair beneath the movie house and reveals the horrible
truth; Maggie is really Lanyard’s daughter Sarah Gates and her aunt is the
person responsible for killing him and setting the theater on fire. Tobe and his mom were part of the unfortunate
crowd locked in the theater. His mother
burned to death in front of him, he lost most the flesh on his body, not to
mention a good piece of his sanity. Now
he aims to undo the past by replicating the sacrificial ritual Lanyard was
originally going to perform, except this time it will be completed. Tobe’s warped idea (something he calls
geometric logic) is that if he brings the ritual to conclusion it will bring
his mother and him together again. With
Suzanne and “Sarah” captured, he has time to kill before the midnight ritual,
and spends it doing just that…killing!
Tobe’s facial skin has been
completely burned off but his proficiency at mask making is unparalleled,
meaning he can make whatever face he wants for himself. He plays doppelganger to the class slacker,
pisses on him in the men’s bathroom, then disposes of him with poisonous
gas. Tobe closes in on the short haired
blonde from the film club but finds out she secretly had a crush on him, which
scares him away and sends him on another emotional tirade. Soon it’s midnight and Tobe has the stage
setup for the final blood sacrifice in front of a live audience of people who
falsely believe it to be all part of the show.
At the last possible moment Maggie’s horn-dog boyfriend swings in to
save the day, causing the mosquito prop to malfunction, drop and impale Tobe,
thus ending the horror of the night.
Popcorn is a
fun film full of buttered up stalk and slash goodness. The main antagonist, Tobe does a great job of
channeling the crazy with his spastic emotional swings and outbursts of
destructive homicidal rage; it would have thawed this ghoul’s cold black heart
to see Tobe fill the screen for any potential sequels; the character, despite
being a deranged lunatic, had a certain dash of class and charisma that
reminded me of Vincent Price spun up on 5 hour energy drinks and huffing gas. Those fried egg eyes carried a lot of emotion
and the master of disguise bit separates him from other famous cinematic
stalkers. I enjoyed his over the top
reaction to finding out about his secret crush.
Love is such a foreign, alien concept to him that even considering it
sends him into a fit of fury. It
confuses Tobe, and I think upsets him because he thinks it will get in the way
of his ultimate plan, his “geometric logic”.
The kills, although not overly
gory, were original in the way they coincided with the movies being played in
the theater. There were a few members of
the film club I was left wondering what happened to. It seemed like Tobe just ran out of time and
wasn’t able to get to them all, like the Latina
girl in the lobby. And we never come
back to see what became of the blonde with short hair that professed her uber
crush on Tobe the film student (as opposed to Tobe the skinless killer).
I really disliked Maggie’s
boyfriend in the film (Mark), and it’s annoying that he gets to save the day,
because the guy is a real dick. I mean
he dumps Maggie for some bimbo because she won’t put out on demand and he can’t
be bothered with helping her deal with her night terrors. He gets beat up and has to be defended by
some sassy broad with shoulder pads, then spend the rest of the movie bumbling
around until he figures out Tobe’s true identity after the audience already has
that information. He swings down from
the balcony to stop Tobe from stabbing his ex-girlfriend, his one big heroic
moment, but killing Tobe with the mosquito prop was just dumb luck. This crypt dweller would have loved to see
the Tobe-ster skin Mark alive and dump his body in the popcorn machine.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Hospital Massacre (X-RAY)
HOSPITAL MASSACRE (AKA X-RAY)
It’s Valentine’s Day, and at
the Jeremy residence that means one thing; the annual Valentine’s Day toy train
races of course! Who doesn’t race trains
on Valentine’s Day? Heathens!? Susan Jeremy and her boy crush are so caught
up with gambling and rooting for the races that they don’t notice a jealous
onlooker, lurking right outside the window.
Harold longs for Susan like the desert longs for rain. He wants her to be his valentine, but when
she receives the letter she scoffs; big mistake. She goes to the kitchen to retrieve some
sweet Valentine’s Day cake for her and her boy toy, but returns to a murder
scene. Her friend is suspended in the
air, head impaled on a coat hangar, and from this point forward I knew this
movie was going to be a real treat; one filled with oodles of golden delicious
cheese just oozing from its pores. The
victim’s body is most certainly a doll, not a body cast or latex thingy, a
cheap ass doll straight from the store shelf.
They didn’t even bother adding any blood for effect, so it took me a
second to register what it was, or really what they wanted the audience to
believe it was. Another thing that kind
of gets my goat right off the bat is that this is another Valentine’s Day
slasher put out a year after My Bloody
Valentine, and the killer’s name is basically the same “Harry”. I guess the hospital setting differentiates
it from MBV, as we cool slasher kids like to call it, but I thought all the
similarities were pretty ironic.
Nineteen years later and Susan
Jeremy is a fully grown and rather voluptuous woman. A real independent 80’s kind of gal;
struggling with a divorce while trying to break the glass ceiling. It’s Valentine’s Day and she’s due for a
medical checkup following a recent promotion at work, but her fiancé Jake warns
her that strange things have been going on at the hospital. He doesn’t know the half of it. Rumors aren’t enough to slow her stride, but
she soon finds out that the hospital is indeed one whacky place. It reminded me of a hospital if it was
operated by Troma. It’s the kind of
place where mental patients walk about the halls freely, drinking booze and
smearing hamburger ketchup everywhere.
Nurses are as pushy as the Gestapo and liable to manhandle seriously ill
patients. And Heaven help you if the
doctor’s find some malignancy with your x-ray.
They won’t allow you to leave and force you to strip down for a creepy
ass checkup by Dr. Saxon, who will feel you up while staring at you with cold compassion-less eyes. I guess a general
rule at this hospital is to never tell the patient their diagnosis. Susan tries desperately to figure out why
they’re forcing her detainment with no luck.
They just won’t budge on that rule and basically act like she’s totally
bonkers for asking, same with her fiancé Jake.
Then they lock her up with a bunch of crazy senile old ladies for good
measure, who gang up on Susan and call her names. Is this Obamacare?
Meanwhile a maniac dressed in
hospital scrubs and wearing an operating mask is slaying the staff and falsifying
Susan’s medical records. He spends most of his time stalking the 9th
floor of the hospital, which has been closed to fumigate for bugs, but this
doesn’t seem to stop hospital staff from being easily lured there with
anonymous messages from the telecom speaker.
The gawking janitor gets a bubbling deep cleansing acid facial and a
nurse gets stabbed and stuffed in a closet; fairly standard stalk and slash
fare. One nurse gets wrapped in a sheet and injected with toxic sludge; she
takes a few painful steps down the hall after then succumbs to the toxins. The inclusion of the sheet seemed rather
bizarre, as well as the way she stood there screaming at the evil surgeon
running at her with an open sheet in his arms until it was too late for her to
escape. He doesn’t show the needle full
of slime until after nabbing her, so she was apparently just screaming at a man
running in her direction with a sheet wrapped in his arms like a sail, like he
was a flying squirrel ready to take flight.
Perhaps she had a phobia about flying rodents. Susan’s big bf gets bone-sawed, his
decapitated head sent to her in a valentine from the killer. The kill scenes towards the end are so back
to back it gives the impression that the sadistic surgeon is out to eliminate
the entire staff of the hospital, until it’s just him with Susan sprawled out
on an operating table.
They try to hide the true
identity of the killer by peppering the cast with off kilter characters, but
it’s fairly obvious who the blood thirsty physician really is, I mean they
don’t even change up his name much, and they make him out to be the only
character with a lick of common sense, so it’s just got to be him. Susan, helplessly strapped to the operating
table asks Harry what he wants from her.
After a dramatic pause a ghoulish grin spreads across his lips “What I
always wanted…your heart!” She
miraculously breaks free, the final chase commences, and Harry ends up taking a
swan dive off the roof of the hospital, screaming all the way down and lit on
fire. Exactly how I want to go, except
there would be a lot more laughing and less screaming. Make your death interesting, you only die
once!
Hospital Massacre (aka X-Ray)
is pretty silly, but it plays it all with a straight poker face which kind of
makes it more endearing to me. I caught
myself laughing during several scenes until I realized they were expected to be
taken seriously (then I laughed more), and the soap opera soundtrack gives it that daytime drama
feel, like it came on right after Oprah but before Judge Judy.
The whole premise of detaining a patient during a checkup and refusing
to let her leave was really wacky, but the entire story seemed to hinge on it
like the death dealing doctor couldn’t just follow her home. By the end when Susan is screaming
hysterically that the entire hospital is nuts I couldn’t help but agreed with
her. There’s
enough kills to keep the pulse from flat lining, and just enough gruel
stew to get me to come back and make another appointment with X-RAY!
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