The Year Comes for Us

December was kind of weird.

Despite managing to post some reviews from a truncated project, and a Crapfest recap, I was largely off movies for the month. That’s not unusual; Hubrisween – or any similar movie challenge – usually leaves me with a hangover. So I engaged in some other braincell-killing pursuits, until I could bear to watch a movie again. Which is good, because I’m trying to gear up for another challenge in March, one that will ease me none-too-gently back into the world of Movies I Should Have Been Watching. I do really enjoy wallowing in the Cinema of Diminished Expectations, but there are so bloody many conversations I cannot take part in because I was watching Sausage Party instead of A Quiet Place.

Let’s do the non-movie stuff first.

I couldn’t afford a new laptop, but I still needed a portable computing solution, so I got a refurbished Chromebook instead, and I love it (of course, I love it because I’m not using it for its intended purpose). It does everything my phone does, with a larger screen and keyboard. My phone had started to be a transistor radio to me months ago, when I started using Amazon Music to sing me to sleep (their phone app has a sleep timer). I started to explore music podcasts for the same thing, since most podcast apps have a similar timer, or simply stop after an episode finishes. My favorite in this period was Trance Paradise, hosted by Euphoric Nation (yes, I am 61 years old and listen to a lot of Trance). That led me to the Internet radio station After Hours. Now, I sighed, if only I could find a podcast or radio station for my other love, late 60s – early 70s psychedelic rock. Exploring apps on my Chromebook, I find one that has links for Trance stations… and another for largely more electronia, but had the occasional oldies station, so say hello to my other new love, Psychedelicized Radio.

Which is all to the good, as I like music playing while I work, but it wasn’t using the potential of the Chromebook to its fullest. Then, by golly, enter Whizical Digital Imaging and their app, Kaleider. It’s an image-mirroring program that can produce some stunning, moving kaleidoscope images, and though I can find nothing that says it’s triggered by music (it has its own music player) the shifting of the images in time with either of those music stations is often more than can be chalked up to happenstance. This provides an experience that’s closer to meditation than anything I’ve managed in years. If I had this toy back in my heavy acid-dropping days, I would never have come down. I’m reminded of some parts of Ernie Kovacs’ TV show that were simply recordings of classical music with kaleidoscope images. In black and white. This is better.

For instance…

It’s also been fun tracking down images of old black light posters to feed into the program. I briefly considered trying to make a video of Kaleider in unison with some music, but then I realized the reaction would be something along the lines of “Oh, you stoned fool,” and went back to playing Gems of War (something else the Chromebook can do, and my dumpster-diver PC could not).

But what’s this? Christmas, and a number of Amazon gift cards? Hello, suddenly affordable replacement PC! It’s not magnificent, but a very definite step up. (I still can’t play No Man’s Sky, which is something I’ve wanted to do for three goddam years, but hey) What I can do is run Plex, which suddenly put the sneakernet in my house out of business. I had been jealous of my pal Dave’s home networking, and now I don’t have to be! Movies stream like magic to my TV! I feel like I’m finally living in the year 2000!

So. Movies. Let’s do the rare theatrical outings first.

Aquaman: I loved it. The further the DCEU gets from the Snyderverse, the better. As my son Max exclaimed, “There was actual color in this movie!” Strong cast, good director, and the sort of visual overload I once moaned that you could only get from Chinese movies. My major takeaway from The Expendables was “My God, Dolph Lundgren actually learned how to act!” and he is great in Aquaman! I have never been so happy to reassess my opinion of an actor. I’m also impressed that the DCEU hasn’t tried to movie-up their costuming as Marvel did. That didn’t work out so well with Deathstroke in the post-credit scene in Justice League, but damned if they didn’t make the gold-and-green for Aquaman look good. Amber Heard had already proven she could pull off the classic green Mera look. Hell, I didn’t even mind the minor rewrites of Justice League to make the timeline in this movie work.

I know, I know, you’re sick of superhero movies. You’re where I was with slasher movies, romcoms and 80s movies reboots. They’ll fade into the past soon enough. In the meantime, let me have my fun.

Ralph Breaks the Internet: I’m torn. I really, really loved the first one and its videogame-centric worldview. This is a sequel that did everything a sequel should: took our established heroes, gave them new challenges and vistas to explore. The satire is much wider here, but still pretty geeky. Overall, I liked it a lot, I think: the take on the Disney Princesses is pretty funny, and I liked that the animators cared enough that when they’re mucking around the Marvel part of Disney, they included a Stan Lee avatar. I’ll need to watch it again when it hits home video. Also, the post-credit scene was perfectly timed to answer a question that occurred to me.

Speaking of home video…

My local movie resale shop has a deal where if you buy 3, you get the 4th one free, and that is how I went home with Sausage Party (the others were It Follows, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and The Black Cauldron, if that matters). This is the R-rated version. I understand there is an unrated, unexpurgated version out there, and holy shit, am I not interested. The R-rated version pretty much took me to the limits of where I was willing to go. The world-building was fairly okay; the supermarket as a place where food waits for “Gods” – people – to come and take them to the promised land, and those that sit on the shelf too long are gathered by the “Dark Lord” and taken to the hell of the trash can. You probably already know about the overtly sexual relationship between hot dogs and buns, but you are not ready for the oversexed nature of all food. From there we fall into too-easy racial stereotypes as ethnic foods enter into the story, the discovery that the “Gods” are monsters who will eat our main characters and the eventual war between the two, climaxing – quite literally – in a food orgy, which is at least inclusive of all possible gender combos, and has one impossible act. The question that is going to linger with you is why?

Well, I may have given up on Pixels after five minutes, but I’ve seen Sausage Party all the way through.

Not sure what that proves.

“Complete and unexpurgated” had caught me by nasty surprise recently, too, as I had a copy of the extremely strange Italian movie Nude for Satan that claimed to be this. I had gotten really tired of the “Die Hard is a Christmas movie” thing (jesus, people, I was making that joke years ago), posted “Oh, so I suppose you’re going to tell me Nude for Satan isn’t a Christmas movie” and slapped that thing into the player, thinking this was likely a prime candidate for Crapfest. What I didn’t know was that there was a Dutch version of the movie into which some wily entrepreneur had spliced actual hardcore porn footage. There are few things like being entertainingly puzzled by a demented Italian flick and when your protagonist opens a door and reacts in shock, you are slapped across the face by several minutes of well-lit, enthusiastic fellatio. On Christmas Eve, no less. This would happen over and over again, with only a minimal attempt to actually connect it to the movie surrounding it (and often not even that bare – *snicker* – minimum), rendering the plot even more confusing. Something about Satan trying to switch our two stars with versions of themselves from the past, and lecherous giant spiders and oh yes, more porn.

Obviously the only way to follow that up was by finally watching Venom (please do not inquire about this train of thought). I’m okay with Tom Hardy finally getting his superhero movie, but I’ve never been a Spider-Man fan, nor of any of his morning zoo crew. It’s pretty standard stuff, with crusading reporter Eddie Brock (Hardy) finding out that Earth-Sony’s version of a not-stupid Elon Musk (Riz Ahmed) has managed to bring back some alien symbiotes via his own private space program. The symbiotes have to bind with a compatible host to survive in our atmosphere, and most people aren’t strong enough to survive the binding. Brock is, and is soon talking to himself and turning into a whole bunch of shapes as Venom (and biting off a couple of heads). The upshot is that a more powerful symbiote, Riot, has taken over Ahmed, and wants to bring all its symbiote buddies back to Earth to eat us. Venom wants to stop this, which is a character turn that feels entirely unearned, but we agree to let art wash over us. Venom made a ton of money at the cinemas, and I’m not sure why; I don’t regret ceding 90 minutes of my life to it, but it’s not something I’m going to grab people and say “Hey! Watch this!”

Last watch of the year was something I had meant to get to for a while, unsuccessfully: The Night Comes for Us, Timo Tjahjanto’s action follow-up to Headshot (preceded by the equally Netflix-produced horror movie May the Devil Take You). Ito (Joe Haslam) is one of the Six Seas, Triad drug lords in charge of keeping the trade efficient and problem-free. When a few members of a village skim the Triad’s profits, Ito and his crew are sent to massacre the entire village as a lesson to others. Ito, however, hits Kill Critical Mass, and instead of letting his men finish off the lone surviving 6 year-old girl, kills them instead, and that is where the problems begin.

Ito’s attempt to leave the country with the girl and start a new life gets very complicated when the other Six Seas want the girl dead to complete their message, and Ito six feet under as well. To do this they call in his childhood buddy Arian (Iko Uwais), as well as the female assassins The Five Lotus Petals. What that really means, though, is this movie is basically one long fight scene, and is already infamous for its brutality. That’s it. Theoretically the movie’s about the different paths Ito and Arian’s lives have taken, but it’s really just a Macguffin surrounded by fight scenes. It’s fun to see Uwais play on his reputation as a good guy.  Julie Estelle (the formidable Hammer Girl of The Raid 2) is on hand as The Operator, an impressively deadly lady whose job is to exterminate the Six Seas. At the end, The Operator, five of the Six Seas and at least two of the Five Lotus Petals are still alive. That’s a sequel I would watch.

You might want to bring plastic sheeting to a viewing, though. Pretend it’s a Gallagher concert.

New Year’s Eve was spent talking myself out of watching The Emoji Movie, on the faulty theory that then 2019 couldn’t possibly do anything worse to me, but I finally decided it was best not to tempt the bastard. Now I suppose I should start thinking about teeing up those movies of (harrumph) quality I was talking about.

Right after The Emoji Movie.

 

 

 

 

January 3, 2019
Categories: Mindless Blather, Movies That Do Not Suck, The Wonderful World of Crap . Tags: , , , , , , . Author: drfreex . Comments: 2 Comments

Crap Friday

This Dawn of the Dead reboot sucks.

If nothing else, Black Friday has simply become another reality show opportunity; a chance for the well-off to sneer at news media reporting on the less fortunate engaging in impromptu gladiatorial battles for the possibility of affordable consumer goods. I’ve only been badgered into journeying out on Holiday Fury Road once, and all I came out with was a five dollar blu-ray of the Nick Cage movie Drive Angry. For the record, I enjoyed the movie. Then Rick watched it on my say-so and proclaimed me a horrible human being, so that was a nice bonus. In any case, that one experience did not convince me that poking my head outside the relative safety of my home on Black Friday would be made a yearly event.

Which is why the day was perfect for a Crapfest.

In attendance were myself, my son Max, Rick, Erik, and of course, Host Dave. Alan was a bit late, and poor Paul worked for Communists, so he could not attend. Erik made a truly wondrous mess of Rice ‘n’ Beans with attendant sausage, which we filled up on, and then rolled ourselves into the Mancave to see if we could make ourselves lose that lunch.

In the gap since the last Crapfest, Dave had to switch out some elements in the AV setup to construct a death ray or something, so the first portion of the evening was spent making the new setup work. The guinea pig for this process was the pilot episode of the Japanese TV series, Magnificent Zubat, which is going to require some explanation.

Our hero is Ken Hayakawa, a wandering, guitar-strumming detective. In the first episode, he rescues childhood friend Asuka (“a penniless scholar with an interest in mountain climbing”) from the gun-slinging henchman of the “Consortium of Evil, Dakkar”, unquote, by proving he’s a better gunman. He does this by shooting the dude’s bullets out of the air. This will become traditional in the series, as Ken is just that damn good at everything. YouTube only has this showdown from a later episode:

So I think you get the drift. It’s a kid’s show, pure and simple, with little grounding in any sort of reality not associated with the smoking of certain herbal substances. Asuka is eventually murdered by someone in the Consortium of Evil, Dakkar, and Ken will spend the rest of the series trying to find out whom. To do this, he visits the “penniless scholar”s high tech lab and finishes his projects, the Zubat suit for space exploration, and the Zubat-mobile (excuse me, Zubacar), for flying around. The Zubat suit can only be used for five minutes, which certainly moves the episode’s closing minutes along, but seems a really odd feature for a space suit.

Anyway, if you have a love of the absurd and a penchant for seeing black-clad bad guys beat up women and orphans, this is the series for you. I’m quite certain that the Magnificent Zubat will return in a future Crapfest.

I also have to bear some responsibility for the next part.

Erik had wanted to bring the 1987 movie The Barbarians and had ordered the new blu-ray for that purpose. The problem: Amazon wouldn’t be delivering it until the Tuesday after Crapfest. The solution: ask Freeman if he had a copy of it, or the co-feature on the blu-ray. No to one and yes to two, as Buckaroo Banzai would say, and that is how we wound up watching The Norseman.

Possibly the best part of the viewing was the introductory crawl, referencing lusty blonde giants on longboats, which made the poor unsuspecting among us think that we were in for a comedy. Alas, no, what you get is an adventure movie written, produced and directed by Charles B. Pierce, best known for Legend of Boggy Creek and The Town That Dreaded Sundown. At least this time he didn’t cast himself as the comic relief.

It is the tale of a Viking expedition led by Lee Majors (!) to what will be eventually known as America, because their king Ulrich (Mel Ferrer) led a similar voyage the year before and vanished. What we will discover is that they encountered a tribe of the whitest Indians ever (well, theoretically they’re supposed to be in Canada, so I guess that possible). The two bands of warriors apparently hit it off pretty well, until the comely Indian princess Winetta (Susie Coelho) started making time with one of the Vikings, and the jealous chief captured them, had them blinded, and now they’re slaves continually pushing a stone mill. Good thing Winetta doesn’t agree with this, so she helps Majors and his men rescue them.

And truly, Cornel of Wilde didst wonder what happened to his career, that he did find himself playing the second of bananas to a cyborg.

There’s a good movie in there trying to get out, and almost succeeding. MGM certainly thought so. That cast includes Cornel Wilde, Jack Elam as a wizard (who needed more screen time) and TV staple Kathleen Freeman as the evil medicine woman. As it is, though, it is largely a case of watching Lee Majors run along the beach in slow motion, and Historical Inaccuracies on Parade. Of course all the Vikings have horned helmets, with the same fur from the same skein of faux fur lovingly attached to each one, although that was dreamed up by the costume designer for a Wagner opera some 1100 years later. The Vikings are also wearing what appear to be Roman armor breastplates. And using crossbows. I’m still not sure about Majors’ helmet, which has no horns but for some reason incorporates a Lone Ranger mask. I haven’t even addressed Deacon Jones as Thrall, the Black Viking, who is given absolutely nothing to do, but at least I got to name him Motherfucker the Barbarian.

“No I will NOT call you Kimosabe!”

Such wasted potential is pretty much the byword for The Norseman. What would have been the best scene takes place offscreen: Majors and the rescued Vikings are trying to make it back to the boat, with the tribe’s braves in hot pursuit. Olif (Jimmy Clem), a Viking who has shown himself adept at drowning Indians, starts slipping into a berserker rage, and stays behind to buy time for Majors and crew. That would have been an incredible sequence, and it happens offscreen. I now demand that scene with Iko Uwais’ fight team doing the choreography.

The Norseman is pretty much a displaced Saturday afternoon matinee, looking unsuccessfully for a second feature, probably a Western.

Then it was Dave’s turn, and he opened up Amazon Prime Video to inflict Chatterbox upon us. Alan and I had already seen it, so the damage to us was minimal. This is the tale of Penelope (Candace Rialson) who one night discovers that her vagina can talk. That’s the joke, folks. Tip your waitress.

This of course ruins her love life, as the vocal vagina (named Virginia) criticizes her lover and eventually drives her out on the streets dressed like a hoochie mama to get laid (she eventually has to go to a basketball team for protection, with predictable results). Virginia also has a nice singing voice, so Penelope’s psychiatrist (Larry Gelman) convinces her to go into show business, even getting the FCC to allow her to appear on TV bottomless, so Virginia can sing her hit song, “The Wang Dang Doodle”. Hopefully, you’ll like that song, too, because you’ll hear it a lot. Though not as much as we did, because Dave left the room and then sadistically ran the movie back so he could hear it. Eventually Virginia lands a film deal and it’s during the big opening number “All I Need in the Morning (Is a Little Cock-a-Doodle-Doo)” that Penelope freaks, runs from the studio and decides to kill herself.

Want to know how it ends? Go watch it on Amazon Prime. Alan and I have had to watch it twice, you can manage it once.

There are some bit players worth looking out for, not the least of which is Rip Taylor as Penelope’s boss, and Professor Irwin Corey (I was the only one to recognize Corey, because I hang out with kids). Penelope’s mom is played by Jane Kean – that’s Trixie Norton from The Honeymooners, you heathens! There is a subplot about Penelope/Virginia going on The Dating Game and the resulting date, which for padding, is actually pretty good. Max counted as many as eight jokes during the course of the movie that were not specifically talking vagina-related. This movie is shot by Tak Fujimoto, for God’s sake. And if there is a silver lining to this second viewing, it is that I was able to notice that Candace Rialson is really good in this bizarre role. Pity that she gave up acting a couple of years later.

So now it was my turn, and a return to Crapfest’s roots with Fred Olen Ray’s Bikini Drive-In. The genesis of this choice goes back a few Crapfests, when Dave showed The Great Bikini Off-Road Adventure,  and I started wondering exactly how many movies have “Bikini” in the title (I stopped counting around 115). Most of them seem to follow the formula of a cherished family business in deep financial trouble, which is salvaged through the magic of wearing bikinis with a sprinkling of R-rated nudity. How this formula is applied in something like Bikini Hoedown is beyond me, and I have a lot more movies to watch before I’m going to be tempted to find out.

In this particular case, it’s Kim’s (Ashley Rhey) grandfather’s drive-in theater, left to her after his death. Grandpa believed in family entertainment and only showed G-rated movies, hence the theater is in the hole to the tune of $10,000, due at the Bank after the coming weekend. Local shady businessman J.B. Winston (no less than David F. Friedman himself) wants the land for a mall. His goons (Ross Hagen and Peter Spellos) are more the breaking legs sort than handling financial jiggery-pokery, so Winston’s son Brian (Richard Gabai) gets the job. Too bad Brian is smitten by the plucky Kim, and decides to help her save the drive-in. He has a plan, and it involves bikinis.

It also involves getting a Scream Queen to make a personal appearance – Dyanne Lynn (Michelle Bauer), by telling her the President will there that night. And finding out that the projectionist Paul (Conrad Brooks) had been saving the movies that Grandpa wanted to throw out, which means they’ll have a full evening of potboiler material, climaxing (no pun intended) with Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (“I love that movie!” Brian exclaims).

That night at the newly-rechristened Bikini Drive-in is the main reason to watch the movie. There are a ton of cameos by which you are going to be able to rank your nerd-dom: Forry Ackerman is easy to spot, as is Gordon Mitchell in a joke trailer for Goliath and the Cheerleaders (mined by Stomp Tokyo for one of their April Fools gags years ago). You’re going to have to be up on your personnel lists to spot David L. Hewitt, Anthony Cardoza, Donald F. Glut, and Jim Wynorski. Fred Olen Ray crops up as a DJ, and John Carradine appears as a picture of Kim’s grandfather. Conrad Brooks, as we all know, was Kelton the Cop in Ed Woods’ Plan 9 trilogy.

Nikki Fritz is in there, too, and had one scene that made me go “Holy Mother of God!” while previewing it for (harrumph) quality:

And it doesn’t end well for him, either

This is the sort of movie where a guy is forced to wear a Syngenor suit  (look it up, non-nerds) and we immediately started a betting pool as to how long it would be before one of the goons wound up wearing it. I think Erik won with ten minutes.

After the movie finished, Dave looked at me and said, “That was a really stupid movie.” Yes, it was, and it was glorious. If I had one complaint, it’s the schizophrenic nature of the flick: the stupid part (my favorite) and the commercial parts, where we have our softcore porn and the movie style suddenly switches into Cinemax slickness for a sex music video. Prior to the opening night sequence we mainly busied ourselves making fun of Kim’s best friend, who was so white she could have been one of the Indians from The Norseman. No fooling, she was so pale that she blew the white balance for any other characters photographed near her. We were really hoping for a Haunted Drive-In subplot, and every time she was in a scene, we could pretend it was The Grudge.

Thank you! Tip your waitress! Again!

The Christmas Spirit is upon me, and so long as the YouTube Gods are, also:

The next day I was going to  have to get up early and drive Max back to college, so I had to squelch the “One more?” urge. Well, wait, there was one thing on my flash drive, labeled “Thanksgiving Treat”, that I knew was only 40 minutes long. We could do that.

And that was how I got Crapfest to watch He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special.

I’ve already gone over that in length, so I’ll direct you there. You only need to know A) Dave does a very good Skeletor, and B) Dave was actively angry that Stinkor did not show up, make of that what you will.

That was actually a fairly typical Crapfest outing, looking back. There wasn’t a real breakout hit (except for my son demanding I turn over every single episode of Magnificent Zubat I possessed), but there wasn’t a soul crusher, either. A fine way to wrap up the year.

Especially since I made the write-up last almost to New Years! See you on the other side!

December 27, 2018
Categories: The Wonderful World of Crap . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 2 Comments

He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special (1985)


I was 26 when He-Man and the Masters of the Universe premiered, meaning I was way out of its target demographic. In fact, the only reason I knew it existed was due to the insert in DC comic books at the time announcing the fact. It didn’t even appeal to the stoner in me; the stories were too simplistic and preachy, the animation style too limited (and oddly peppered with rotoscoping). No, that part of my heart went out to Robotech (even a bowdlerized Macross was pretty damned good) and later Thundercats. But the kids loved He-Man, and that’s cool. Not every piece of entertainment needs my seal of approval to exist.

Somebody noticed that girls liked He-Man, too and thus was He-man’s long-lost twin sister Princess Adora, aka She-Ra, introduced, and the mythology expanded. It turned out Skeletor wasn’t the ultimate evil, it was a literal shadowy figure called Horde Prime, and Skeletor was only one of his/its minions. The other was Hordak, who had taken over Adora’s planet with an army of robots and some toyetic henchmen equally as incompetent as Skeletor’s. The tone of She-Ra‘s adventures seem different as well: her fellows in the resistance are more focussed on helping and supporting each other than punching the enemy, though She-Ra is not adverse to letting loose with an occasional rotoscoped roundhouse kick.

I’m going to have to leave it to someone who is actually female to judge if this was empowering or not. I do find the inclusion nice, though.

“Hey, a floating space wizard! No problem!”

But we’re here to talk about the Christmas Special, aren’t we? Eternia is prepping for a birthday party for our title characters, and I am surprised to find out that Queen Marlena is from Earth, as she reminisces about preparing for Christmas about this time (like I said, I didn’t follow the show. Probably this was common knowledge among fans). Meantime, Man-at-Arms is preparing a new toyetic jet called the Spy Eye, and floating imp Orko (traditionally referred to as Dorko) breaks into it and while futzing around, accidentally breaks the controls and takes off. After He-Man and She-Ra foil Skeletor’s attempt to steal what they think is an unmanned craft, the Spy Eye breaks some barriers and crash lands on Earth. Dorko… um, Orko… actually gets his magic to work to rescue two lost children from an avalanche. The kids are Miguel and Alisha, and they take shelter in the Spy Eye. They pass the time by telling Orko the Christmas story, though Orko’s more interested in Santa Claus and the gifts than some kid in a manger. They also teach him “Jingle Bells”.

“We would TOO have fetched more than 99 cents at Kay-Bee!”

Meantime our pals on Eternia have figured out that Dorko was on the Spy Eye and are trying to get him back, but She-Ra has to perform an impromptu quest to obtain a Water Crystal to power the Transport Beam (why nobody asks Man-at-Arms how he invented such a powerful device that could only powered by something rarer than unobtainium is open to debate). This she does, but only after encountering the Monstroids, giant robots who are obviously failed toy designs, and are quite bitter about it.

The Transport Beam does bring the Spy Eye and Orko back, but also Alisha and Miguel. So it has to be figured out how to get them home in time for Christmas. Luckily, the Water Crystal only has to recharge, no additional bullshit quests are required. However Horde Prime has sensed a tremor in the Force a new force for good in the universe, and sends Hordak and Skeletor to capture it and bring it to him/it. (It’s the kids and their spirit of Christmas, you see).

“At last I have the means to finally conquer – WHAT THE HELL?!?!”

And there, finally, is our plot major. Bow (the She-Ra male counterpart to Teela) writes a new Christmas song with Alisha and Miguel (gaaaaaah) just in time for them to be kidnapped by Hordak, then captured by the Monstroids, so they get involved with the war between them and the equally failed toy concept race, the Manchines. Then they get scooped up by Skeletor, who gets shot out of the sky by Hordak, and now Skeletor is trooping two kids (and a toyetic robot dog) through a snowy landscape. First he creates arctic wear so the kids won’t freeze, and that is the chink in his armor that lets the children’s innate goodness and love of Christmas leak through.

Skeletor: Tell me more about this “Christmas.”

Miguel: Well, it’s a wonderful time of the year. Everyone has lots of fun.

Skeletor: You mean they get in fights?

Miguel: No, no – they have fun!

Skeletor: Fights are fun. I like fights!

Miguel: And you give each other presents.

Skeletor: And when you open them, they explode, right?

Miguel: No! They’re nice gifts.

Skeletor: Nice? Doesn’t sound like much fun to me!

“Now, He-Man, I am going to destr – WHAT THE HELL?!?!”

All leading up to the final battle, where Skeletor gets knocked out, Horde Prime’s ship grabs the kids in a tractor beam, and Skeletor is awakened by the robot dog licking his bony face until he wakes up and shoots down his boss’ ship to save the children, the most bizarre character turnaround since Jaws turned good in Moonraker. The act makes him feel nauseous, But She-Ra and He-Man assure him that Christmas comes only once a year. “Oh, thank goodness!” Skeletor cries. General laughter.

Oh yeah, the kids get back home. The end.

It’s a generally easy way to beat 50 minutes to death. The most interesting thing for me, only sort of conversant with the world, was wondering who the fuck that was and entertaining myself with imagined names. Skeletor had a double-headed henchman that I was sure was called Twoheador but I later found was the more clever Two Bad; Hordak had a similarly lumpy guy with the more prosaic name Multibot, not Doublebodyor.

I was right about Spikor, though.

“And a Merry Christmas to al – WHAT THE HELL?!?!”

The character that actually triggered my research is only in two scenes at the beginning and end, a guy with an elephant’s head and a telescoping trunk . That was Snout Spout. To think I could have died without knowing that!

People endlessly bitch about Filmation’s limited animation, but the truth is they kept a lot of American animators alive when most of the production companies were going to cheaper Asian houses. I see founder and Executive Produce Lou Scheimer credited with branching out the He-Man universe to girls, and later insisting that the main character of the science-fiction series Bravestarr be a Native American. Those are pretty ballsy moves for a kiddie industry, and deserving of some respect. Even if those closing bumpers were always cloying and highly mockable:

Prince Adam: Not everyone celebrates Christmas, but the spirit of the Christmas season is within us all. It’s a season of love and joy and caring.

Orko: And presents!

Prince Adam: Presents are nice, Orko, but Christmas means much more than that.

Orko: I know, Adam. Christmas is a time of peace and caring and happiness.

Prince Adam: That’s right, Orko. And what would make you happiest this Christmas?

Orko: Presents!

Prince Adam: Oh, Orko!

December 13, 2018
Categories: The Wonderful World of Crap . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

The 12 Disasters of Christmas (2012, of course)

There was going to be a category in this non-event I was going to call “Christmas-adjacent” but then this one doesn’t quite fit smoothly into that; I mean, it has Christmas right in the title. But what it has to do with Christmas is pretty slight.

You have this idyllic little town in the mountains. Beautiful place, trees all around. It’s apparently Christmas Eve, and the 18th birthday of Jacie (Magda Apanowicz), the daughter of Joseph (Ed Quinn), a local shopkeeper who’s pretty ambivalent toward the building of a MegaDeals mall that will block access to his favorite climbin’ mountain. There’s been some weird weather lately – unseasonal heat waves, mass bird deaths, red water running from the taps. Jacie’s grandmother gives her a ring along with some cryptic utterings that she should have given it to her sooner, that she should have talked to her about it sooner, and then Grandmas gets impaled on the latest climate disaster: Giant icicles falling from the sky like spears. Oh, did I mention Jacie’s donning the ring gave her a tremendous shock and made the weird birthmark on her arm glow?

Grandma! Noooooo!

Let me spare you a lot of exposition – although the unveiling of this berserk mythos is half the fun of the movie, so just stop right here if necessary – this movie likes to trot out the term geomancy quite a bit. Turns out geomantic forces build up over centuries until such time that they can destroy the world unless the Chosen One gathers five rings and stands in exactly the right place at the right time. The last time this happened was during the age of the Mayans, and this is all explained in an ancient picture book with an arcane compass in the cover that will lead our plucky heroes to the rings. And since it is, yes, 2012, it is high time.

“Karen! There’s a cheap CGI tornado right behind you!”

Okay, a visual guide is very handy, but don’t you think the Mayans could have done a bit more in warning us, besides leaving behind calendars that ended in 2012, and spawning a lucrative market of doomsaying literature and cultism? Well, turns out the laugh’s on you, Mayan doubters, because the plucky indigenous Mesoamericans did – by writing “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, a codified explanation of what was going to happen. (Come on, you picked that up from the necessary five golden rings, didn’t you?)

The filmmakers don’t push that agenda too far, because I’m still puzzling over what lyrics are connected to which of the various doom events that unfold. It’s also to their credit that they keep things moving fast enough to minimize thinking too much about what is unspooling before you. To do this, they wind up ripping off a couple of Stephen King tropes, like a force field dome shutting off the area completely from the outside world, and the villainous Mr. Megadeals himself, Kane (Roark Critchlow) getting ahold of the Mayan book and misinterpreting the final image to mean that Jacie has to die to save the world (another thing you should have noticed by now were the Biblical character names).

Pretty much every disaster that comes our way is of the cheap CGI variety that turns you into cheap CGI so you can shatter or dissolve (also: I had no idea electricity could make you explode). They apparently did pay for a life-size icicle spear, though, because they use that one twice. None of this makes a damn lick of sense, but as I said, it moves quickly and the tension-mounting moments are well-executed and exciting. It’s not something that would substitute for an actual Christmas movie, mind, but it’s a far better alternative to treacly Hallmark movies that leave a film of saccharine on your TV set.

December 9, 2018
Categories: The Wonderful World of Crap . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 6 Comments

Christmas Evil (1980)

I figured we might as well get this out of the way.

The psycho Santa is a sub-genre all on its own – without straining, I can think of around twenty of the damn things, and we’re talking feature length, not vignettes as in the Amicus Tales from the Crypt movie. To All a Goodnight (directed by David Hess, no less)beat this one to the holiday slasher punch by a good 10, 11 months. The thing is – though we have a poster that invokes Halloween and Friday 13th (sic), and though it seems to always be lumped in with the other Christmas slashers – it’s not a slasher. What it actually is proves to be a bit confounding.

We do start in solid slasher territory, though, as thirty years ago, two young boys and their mother watch Santa come down a chimney, enjoy some nice bread and butter and milk, leave presents, and go back up the chimney. Later in bed, the younger brother, Philly, tells the only slighter older Harry that it was obviously their father wearing a costume. Harry sneaks back downstairs to discover Santa drooling over Mom’s garter belt (to be fair, Mom is hot). This breaks something in young Harry (just like the Christmas snow globe he uses to slash his hand), and if that poster led you to believe this leads to some carnage a la Pieces or Nightmare, please allow me to apologize on behalf of the filmmakers.

This is perfectly normal.

Thirty years later, Harry has grown up into Brandon Maggart (who was in Dressed to Kill that same year) who has a, shall we say, thing about Santa Claus and Christmas. He works at the Jolly Dream toy factory, where he was only recently promoted from the assembly line to middle management. He is disappointed that his former comrades on the line don’t really care about the quality of the toys they turn out, like in the old days. Then Frank (Joe Jamrog) bullies him into working his late shift so he can take off early for a weekend trip with his family. When Harry sees him in a local bar after the shift, drinking and laughing on the one he pulled on that jerk Harry, the decay begins.

Did we mention that Harry spies on the neighborhood children with binoculars? And that he has two enormous books, one for the Good Children and one for the Bad Children, with a page devoted to each’s good deeds or misdeeds?

The breaking point arrives at the Jolly Dream Christmas party, where a taped message says the company is donating to a local hospital for children with special needs, only to find out it’s all optics, and the guy who came up with the PR campaign has never even been to the hospital. Harry makes his own Santa suit (a pretty good one, at that) makes a slew of old-fashioned tin soldiers and tomahawks and other toys, paints a sled on the side of his van (the man is multi-talented, to say the least),  superglues a beard to his face, and heads out on Christmas Eve.

A simple holiday craft project – for the kids!

First stop is his brother Phillip’s house (Jeffrey DeMunn), leaving gifts. Then to the factory, to steal the toys for his next stop, that children’s hospital, where he is first greeted suspiciously, then joyously. High on his success, he heads to midnight mass where he knows his boss and the PR man will be, to tell them of his success. Unfortunately a couple of drunken New York effetes decide to heckle the Santa waiting outside the church, with the result that they eventually get a tin soldier’s rifle through the eye and a tomahawk upside the head (it seems that pressed for time, Harry just decorated a hatchet with cheerful holiday colors and feathers).

Harry speeds away and happens on a club social where he’s welcomed in and actually has a pretty good time. Before he leaves, he addresses the children there:

But now I want you to remember to stay good boys & girls. Respect your mothers & fathers and do what they tell you. Obey your teachers and learn a whooooole lot! Now *if you do this*, I’ll make sure you get good presents from me eeeevery year. Ha ha ha… but if you’re bad boys & girls, your name goes in the ‘Bad Boys & Girls’ book, and I’ll bring you something… horrible.

There is a tense moment, and then Harry laughs, and everybody laughs, except for one mother who looks rather disturbed. Then Harry heads over to Frank’s where he tries to smother the jerk with his toy bag, which doesn’t work very well, so he winds up slashing his throat with the star from a nearby Christmas tree.

First, I have to ask who keeps a Christmas tree in their bedroom. Second, I have to ask who the hell sharpens their Christmas ornaments?!?

Things go rather downhill from there, culminating in Harry being pursued by a literal torchbearing mob, driving his van off a bridge… and then the van flies away to the moon as Harry quotes from A Visit from Saint Nick

But I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight, “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

That ending is one of the reasons this movie endures, and it’s the first thing and probably only thing most people know about it. As you may have noticed, Harry has a pretty paltry body count. This isn’t a slasher at all, it’s more a character study of the disintegration of an already damaged personality into madness. The other reason this movies endures is Brandon Maggart himself, delivering an empathetic performance that could have crossed the line at any point into parody, yet never does. He’s had a good career, and there’s a reason for that. He deserved it.

We can’t say the same, alas, for writer/director Lewis Jackson, who apparently started collecting the Yuletide paraphernalia for Harry’s house in 1970, back when was making his first project, The Deviants, and continued to do so for the ten years it took him to get the backing for Christmas Evil, or, as it was originally titled, You Better Watch Out. Make no bones about it, it got made because of the success of the two movies referenced in the poster above. About Jackson himself, details are scarce on the ground; there is apparently a director’s commentary on the Vinegar Syndrome disc I have, which might yield some information, and if I hadn’t done something insane like deciding to watch 25 movies and review them in almost as many days, I might have dug into that.

Or, and let’s be honest here, if the movie had inspired me enough to do so.

Somebody on the Internet put together everything the average joe wants to see in just over a minute:

December 1, 2018
Categories: The Wonderful World of Crap . Tags: , , , . Author: drfreex . Comments: 3 Comments

Z: Zoombies (2016)

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So. Back around 2004 or so, I declared a personal moratorium on zombie movies. There were just too many of them, almost all laughably bad. Before you ask, yes, I’m pretty sure it was the one-two punch of Resident Evil and House of the Dead that put a bullet through the brain of those movies for me. I didn’t even rouse myself to watch George Romero’s Land of the Dead until seven years after it was released. So I’ve been very picky about what zombie movies I will watch, and I discovered while watching [REC]³: Genesis that my old zombie fatigue was waking up and gnawing on my skull again.

Since for some reason all movies beginning with a Z (except Zelig) have something to do with zombies, this could be a problem in an A-to-Z movie challenge. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps the problem is with human zombies. Maybe I should check out this Zoombies people are asking about. In the interest of transparency, I should admit that I put it off primarily because I thought it was about fast zombies, or maybe zombies on motorcycles. It’s not.

Let’s start with a promotional video for the Eden Wildlife Park, a combination safari park and endangered animal refuge. This is hosted by Dr. Ellen Rogers (Kim Nielsen, who has simply impossible cheekbones), the granddaughter of the conservationist who started the refuge. We’ll find out later that she’s added such things as a rock-climbing wall and a zip line to attract families and therefore more money for the park.

But never mind that, let’s go the veterinary clinic, where workers have brought in several monkeys that have all contracted an unknown virus. One goes into cardiac arrest and dies, and the desperate vet injects some adrenaline in an attempt to save the endangered species; when the monkey revives, hoo boy, the carnage starts.

See? CARNAGE!!!!

In parallel with that, Dr. Rogers is bringing in her new interns. The newly renovated park isn’t open yet, so she confiscates all their cell phones so no interpark espionage can take place. While their shuttle distributes the interns to their new jobs, they run across a security guard on his bike, headed to the veterinary clinic because they’re not answering the radio.

You can probably write the script from there, if you’ve seen any movies at all in last ten years. Virus spreads to the other animals, has to be stopped before it gets outside the zoo, oh god what about the aviary, we can’t let a single infected bird fly out . Some of you will groan when the credit “The Asylum Presents” appears at the beginning, and those people need to seriously check their B-movie cred, because these guys have been doing yeoman work in that realm for years. Much of Zoombies is done by the numbers, sure – there are a lot of things in the first twenty minutes, like the new security card system acting dodgy, that will have you stroking your beard (or chin, if you are not particularly hirsute) and murmur, “Hmmm, I wonder if that will be significant later.” (Frankly, I was a little disappointed that they never managed to work in the rock-climbing wall)

I will give them this: you are presented with a fairly large cast of characters – which start being winnowed down almost immediately – but among the remainder, you are fairly uncertain who is going to survive, and who might grow into the hero role. I, at least, got surprised a couple of times, and if you can violate my jaded expectations, good on you.

Which is not to say there are no blemishes, oh good heavens, no. They make fruitful use of their location, but obviously, live stunt animals were way out of their budget, so CGI is the order of the day. The devil monkeys in the clinic are pretty good, but later beasties – giraffes, elephants and the like – look like they’re jobbing in from the original Jumanji. I can forgive a certain amount of “Sorry, this is the best we could afford”, but others won’t be so charitable. Lala Nestor, who plays Rogers’ young daughter, Thea, has been directed to say all her lines with an odd smile that shows no teeth, because somebody deemed that “cute”. It takes twenty minutes for it to look psychotic. The fact that she’s written to be precocious and cute and barf-worthy does not help the poor girl, either. She does have the best twist in the movie, though, and at least after that they said she could stop smiling.

Ah, which brings us to the writing. I’ve got absolutely no problem with the plotting (some difficulty with some of the physics, sure, but…) it’s the dialogue. I am painfully familiar with this type of dialogue. It seeks to give us exposition in a clever, amusing way. It is dialogue that looks great on paper but feels entirely too stagey when uttered. I spent most of this movie thinking, Jesus, this is the sort of stuff I would have written twenty years ago, and probably still do. It’s not awful, but the shock of familiarity stayed with me through most of the movie.

Also, I’m not sure why people trying to get away from zombie monkeys think climbing up a tree will do the trick, but it does give the zombie giraffes a chance to shine.

The bitching done: the sequences that are supposed to ramp up the tension actually do, and those are the reason folks watch movies like this. None of the actors are bad, they’re just written that way. Some surprising gore, and some of that is even practical. It’s is a pretty painless way to kill 87 minutes, and remember, that’s a zombie hater talking here.

October 31, 2018
Categories: The Wonderful World of Crap . Tags: , , . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

Y: Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare (1968)

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So it was *mumblemumble* years ago that the late 60s Japanese Yokai Monsters movies were released on VHS: this one and the earlier Along With Ghosts, and 100 Monsters. I think I wrote about 100 Monsters somewhere back there: I found it diverting, even charming at times. I always intended to check out the others, but life got in the way, and so here we are.

In an utterly cool prologue, we are told that an ancient Babylonian demon is sleeping in some ruins, which is a pretty good arrangement until some treasure hunters show up and unearth his magic staff (I am endlessly amused by the fact that the raiders are dressed like Bedouins but speak English). The demon (conveniently named Daimon) awakes and wrecks everything, burying the despoilers under styrofoam rocks, and then leaves for greener pastures.

Which means, as so often happens when it comes to monsters, he is now Japan’s problem. Ever the dick, Daimon’s stormy passage sinks a fishing boat.

It’s medieval Japan again, though, so when the local beneficent lord is checking out his turf before the oncoming Daimon storm, he finds his samurai sword is useless; Daimon drinks his blood and takes over his body. The sudden change in the lord is noticible (after all, he goes into his compound and starts wrecking all altars and holy items, calling for them to be burned), and when the steward inquires as to what is going on, Daimon drinks his blood and takes over his body, too.

A Kappa living in the compound’s pond sees the demon in his true form, and challenges him. In the ensuing fight, he is severely overmatched and kicked out of the compound. He goes to his fellow Yokai monsters in the local graveyard, but they don’t believe him. At least, not until Daimon tires of exsanguinating servants and sends his lackies out to kidnap children from the village. Then the good-hearted monsters decide it’s time to kick some foreign monster butt.

Spoiler: Daimon is still too tough for them, so they have to call on every monster in Japan to fight Daimon, who naturally grows to giant size to do some Yokai-stomping. KAIJU BIG BATTEL!!!! (I thought I was going to be showing my age again with that reference, but nope – they’re still going!)

I see where the IMDb now has this listed as Big Monster War which is a better title, if a bit misleading. The last fifteen minutes delivers on it, but for the most part, so much time is spent on the samurai drama of dealing with a Babylonian vampire, there are times I found myself wondering, “Wasn’t this movie supposed to be about yokai monsters?” It’s 1968, so prepare yourself for the suit technology of that era. The monsters are pretty nicely detailed, but largely unable to so much as crack a smile. The Kappa gets a movable beak, though, and is a good choice for comic foil, the actor moves so expressively; the rest, save for the two with human faces, have to rely on their voice actors.

Heyyyy, Karakosa!

It still manages to be pretty charming, in a creepy fairy tale kind of way. Despite some blood, it’s the sort of dark fantasy you could show the kids. It does help to be familiar with the folklore monsters referenced. I’m glad that it features my favorite, the karakasa kozō, the one-legged , one-eyed umbrella creature who likes to scare people by licking their cheek with its long tongue. Do not judge me.

It is also well worth mentioning that no less than Takashi Miike remade this in 2005 as The Great Yokai War and that is all I need to know.

Man, like I needed another movie to track down and watch.

October 30, 2018
Categories: The Wonderful World of Crap . Tags: , . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

X: X Moor (2014)

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Honestly, any year when I don’t have to cheat to get a horror movie starting with X is a good year. So I’m not going to have anything to with it’s alternate title, The Beast of X Moor.

X Moor is based on a true story, for a certain definition of “true”; it uses as its basis the urban legend of a great cat resembling a panther or puma sighted in the Exmoor region of southwest England. The bulk of the sightings referenced on that page are from the 1980s, but let’s not let that get in the way of our movie.

Upon learning of a £25,000 reward for proof of the Beast’s existence, Georgia (Melia Kreiling) convinces her boyfriend Matt (Nick Blood) to “borrow” some fancy equipment from his job to get some footage of the elusive kitty. They’ll be aided in this by professional hunter Fox (Mark Bonnar), who seems to feel that catching the creature is a very personal challenge. Perhaps too personal.

After a couple of violent encounters with local hooligans, our documentarians set up their network of motion-controlled night vision cameras and the control center in their central camp, only to discover a dead body – in fact, several dead bodies – and their survival on this expedition is suddenly in question.

There is a plot twist in X Moor I did not see coming, so I’m going to keep mum about it. The story developing from that is itself full of twists and turns, not all of them logical or deserved. It’s fairly well done, and although as a whole the flick just didn’t gel for me, I recognize there are other folks out there that will enjoy it. It might be also be appreciated that although it seems to be setting up a found footage movie, it’s not that at all.

October 29, 2018
Categories: The Wonderful World of Crap . Tags: , . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

U: The Uncanny (1977)

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Another anthology already?

The first thing you’re going to ask is, “Is this an Amicus Film?” Which is fair, since the name Milton Subotsky is right there in the credits. But no, at this point Amicus’ grave wasn’t even cold yet, after The People That Time Forgot. Subotsky relocated to Canada, and tried to get the ol’ anthology (“portmanteau”, if you want to get fancy) mojo workin’ again with this and The Monster Club. That didn’t work out so well, alas.

Our two big stars for the framing device are Ray Milland (yay!) and Peter Cushing (double yay!). Cushing is a very high-strung writer (his previous books were on flying saucers and ESP), who has made his way to Milland’s house with a thick binder. He’s Cushing’s publisher, you see, and he’s doubtful about the new book. Cushing responds that he has proof going back years that cats are horrible monsters that actually control the world.

Most of us who live with cats will shrug “well, duh”, but we already bought the ticket so let’s see what Peter has to say.

In 1912 London, a rich old matron (Joan Greenwood, rather wasted here but still managing to steal the show) dictates her new will, cutting out her wastrel nephew (Simon Williams) and leaving her vast estate to her multiple cats. Our snoopy maid (Susan Penhaligon) however, is also the lover of that nephew, and they hatch a plan to steal the old lady’s copy of the will. When she surprises the maid during the theft, there’s an employer murder, bringing down the wrath of all those kitties. I liked this story better when it was called Eye of the Cat and starred Michael Sarrazin, but that movie didn’t have the murderer trapped in a pantry for days, living on cat food, or the gruesome discovery that the hungry cats figured out the old lady was made of meat (Joan Greenwood, ladies and gentlemen – even dead, still upstaging everybody).

Oh, that’s never a good sign.

Then, in 1975 Quebec, the Blakes (Alexandra Stewart and Donald Pilon) take in their young niece Lucy (Katrina Holden Bronson) when her parents die in a car wreck. She brings with her dead mommy’s black cat, Wellington. Mrs. Blake doesn’t particularly like this, and she definitely hates the cat. Their daughter, Angela (Chloe Franks) is a nasty little shit who proceeds to make Lucy’s life hell. Mom finally steals Wellington away to have it euthanized, and burns Lucy’s mother’s book on black magic. Not all of them, though, and the euthanasia doesn’t take, and Angela is about to be in a lot of trouble.

Lastly, in 1936 Hollywood, a tragedy happens on the set of Valentine De’ath (Donald Pleasance)’s latest horror movie, when somehow the Poe-inspired pendulum over his co-star – his wife Madeliene (Catherine Bégin) – turns out to be quite real. Luckily for the desperate producer (John Vernon sporting a really weird accent), Madeliene’s stand-in Edina (Samantha Eggar) is willing to step into the role. As I’m sure you’ve figured out, Edina is Valentine’s mistress, the accident was murder, and Madeliene’s cat is going to be tossed out as soon as possible. Just to make sure you know Valentine is a cad, the cat has kittens and he drowns them. Well, that doesn’t go over well at all, and not only does the wily cat evade every trap Valentine sets out for it, it starts engineering on-set accidents to avenge its mistress.

Back at the framing device, I’m sure you can figure out how things shake out. Cushing is murdered by a mob of cats on his way home, and Milland burns his book while giving his cat nice dish of milk. The end.

Most of Subotsky’s anthology movies had four or even five stories, and cutting them down to three isn’t justified by the stories, which get so padded out that your wristwatch arm will get lots of exercise as you check how much time is left. The only story that doesn’t have this problem is the third one, where everybody – especially Donald Pleasance – seems to be having a lot of fun. Sure, Bram Stoker should have gotten a writer’s credit because it rather shamelessly rips off “The Squaw”, but, we take our entertainment where we may. I pondered if my reaction to The Uncanny was due to its close proximity to the more feral and kinetic Tears of Kali, but no… this one creaks in the wrong places. Oh, it’s a fair use of 90 minutes, the actors and game and uniformly good, but some patience will definitely be called for.

October 26, 2018
Categories: The Wonderful World of Crap . Tags: , , , , , . Author: drfreex . Comments: 6 Comments

S: Slither (2006)

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This is going to be a tough one to write. There’s a number of reasons for that. The most pragmatic is that my keyboard is screwing up (I do indeed pound the hell out of my keyboards).

Less pragmatic is that writer/director James Gunn was fired off Marvel movies for tweets he made in his youth (Too bad you weren’t running for a Supreme Court slot, huh, James). And dammit, I loved Guardians of the Galaxy. That does put some of the things in this movie in a unfavorable light.

Downright personal is the fact that I’m really tired of this subgenre. Watching Cute Little Buggers on basically a dare was a big mistake.

So.

A meteor falls near a sleepy little deer season-lovin’ town. In short order we will meet local policeman Bill (Nathan Fillion), competent but easy-going, and his longtime crush Starla (Elizabeth Banks), who is unfortunately married to the possessive Grant (Michael Rooker). After Starla’s not in the mood that night, Grant heads out in a huff to get drunk and runs into Brenda (Brenda James), an old acquaintance who professes her hots for him. They head out to the woods, but Grant gets cold feet and breaks off with Brenda – just in time to find that meteor, and a trail of slime leading from it, to a sluglike creature that wastes no time in infecting Grant.

Movies like this live and die on bringing something new to the party, and in this case it’s that the slugs inhabiting Grant (and later a lot more of the cast) burrow up to the brain and are capable of acting like their host for a time. So Infected Grant has Starla thinking he’s become a nicer guy, giving him enough time to meet back up with Brenda and turn her into a human slug incubator. By this time Grant is starting to exhibit some physical changes, murderous tendencies, and it’s not long before Bill is leading an armed posse to find this creature that used to be Grant and the missing Brenda. Too late, as it turns out, as she explodes in a shower of slugs and suddenly actual uninfected humans in the town are outnumbered.

“There’s somethin’ wrong with me.”

The slugs also have a hive mind – now thoroughly entangled with Grant’s mind, so every slug-zombie in town is hunting for Starla, because Grant wants her back. Add to this mix a teenage girl, Kylie (Tanya Saulnier), who got a slug halfway down her throat and half a Vulcan mindmeld before she managed to pull it out and killed it with a curling iron, so there’s someone on the team who knows how the slugs operate. After that, you just need a halfway novel way to kill the main creature and stop the invasion, and Slither does that.

Nathan Fillion could do stuff like this in his sleep, but thankfully the man’s always awake and giving 110%. Elizabeth Banks has an odd role to play here, and I’m not sure the script did her any real favors, but by God she’s game. And anybody who watched this movie that didn’t realize that Michael Rooker is a far more versatile actor than folks had credited, they were not paying attention.

So why didn’t I like the flick? We’ve been here before, back when I watched I Married a Witch. Is it fatigue? Just in a bad mood that night? Is it because – just to bring back that Supreme Court reference – there’s a scene where Gregg Henry (playing the worst mayor ever) has a temper tantrum after most of the cast is turned into zombies because there is no Mr. Pibb and I watched this the day after Kavanaugh’s famous meltdown?

Most likely the fatigue – as I said, I’ve seen a lot of these movies. But this one is well-made, and aims to be an alien-invasion movie for fans of alien-invasion movies, with plentiful easter eggs in the background and an eye toward entertaining. You can still feel Gunn’s days with Troma hanging on here and there, the source of those troubling Tweets (which were really kinda expected when he was working for Edgelord Central), but overall, it’s a good, entertaining flick with a solid fanbase. It doesn’t require my appreciation, and that’s fine.

Except for that “oh no the monster’s not quite dead yet” post-credit scene. That can go straight to hell.

October 24, 2018
Categories: The Wonderful World of Crap . Tags: , , , , . Author: drfreex . Comments: 2 Comments

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