amazon one-star reviews: THE HAUNTING (1963)

Not gonna lie, I was so super excited to see that one of my favorite favorites, The Haunting, would be getting a Blu-Ray release (this Tuesday, hooray!). Just in time for the film's 50th Anniversary, hooray again! Surely this would mean a super awesome special deluxe edition...maybe with a documentary and the alternate edit with all that additional footage I've never seen.

Not gonna lie, my metaphorical boner was completely killed when the Blu-Ray features were listed: a trailer and a pieced-together commentary from cast and director Robert Wise. Both lovely, and both available on the DVD I already have. That's it! It's the 50th Anniversary! Must I live forever without the bonus features I want? Am I only to get improved picture quality? I am stomping all of my feet, slamming all of my doors, and throwing myself on (all of my) bed(s) to cry all of my tears.

I'd say it's an even bigger tragedy that there are people who don't like this movie, people who would give it but one star on amazon.com, but those people are jerks. Hey, here's one now!

WHAT THE CHEESY HAUNTED HOUSE!!! I just bought this DVD because all these hip and all, looks really cheesy and cheap made .is not horror whatsoever, Is Barely Suspense, This is not a movie, Is like documentary and makes me laugh of this B.S, IS rated "G", how crappie and lame can be, Is not even worth the rental either, If u real wants see a classic haunting house movie, Rent or buy "The Entity" Is superior and is real haunted house and true & chilling story. Skip this lame old trash.!! 

Oh my. See, here's the thing: I'm not actually surprised that people have been disappointed with The Haunting, or perhaps just don't like it. It's widely touted as so scary, one of the best, terrifying, blah blah blah, and sometimes when expectations aren't met movies seem all the worse.

It's also dated in that the acting tends toward the melodramatic, it's got a slow pace, there's plenty of voiceover narration and it's not some big razzle-dazzle with the effects. Some jerks people just don't go for that sort of thing, I understand. It's okay. Hey, I loathe the remake, and some people enjoy it. I wouldn't want those people in my house, but they can certainly feel however they'd like to.

But to call it "crappie", well that is just going way too far!

By: Unknown On 15.21

Continue Reading

The Wind Beneath My Blood Wings

Another day, another horror movie, another life lesson. The movie is Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings, the 1994 direct-to-video sequel to Stan Winston's directorial debut. I looked up my review for the original film and lo and behold, I mentioned the sequel in my closing paragraph:

There is a Pumpkinhead 2 (Blood Wings) which is most likely awful. But the cast...the cast, man- look at the caaaast! Soleil Moon Frye (that's Miss Punky Brewster if you're nasty), Kane "Jason Voorhees" Hodder, Linnea Quigley (and her bare boobs, I'm sure), Roger Clinton as...the Mayor, Steve Kanaly- who played Ray Krebbs on Dallas...oh man, you know I'm all over this one.

It's been almost eight years since I wrote that and finally- finally!- I have, in fact, been all over that one. And what of this life lesson I have learned courtesy of ol' P-head?

How can I put this? Despite my predictions, despite every Magic 8 Ball giving me a "SIGNS POINT TO YES" when I asked if Pumpkinhead II was going to be awful, the movie isn't awful. It isn't even bad! Actually, it's a shit ton of fun- and I don't mean that in some ironic, MSTK, make-fun-of-it way. I mean it is quite enjoyable to watch. Not a good movie, but a good time. I was all ready for craptaculosity, and I got none. Well, there was all the 1990s realness going on in the atrocious patterns, velvet chokers, sheer tops, high waists, mullets, and McDonald's golden arches hair, but that's not Pumpkinhead II's fault. That's the fault of an entire era! Besides, any non-jerk who's watched a movie made before five minutes ago knows that fashions and the such aren't a reason to deride a film as a whole. Still, it cannot be denied that the 1990s were a low point in human history, aesthetically speaking.

Remember when Roger Clinton tried to be a thing? Ah, the days of innocence and $1.10 gasoline.

Anyway, back to that lesson I learned. Hmm, it's all getting a bit fuzzy now, but it has something to do with the idea of watching movies ironically and whether or not one should do it. I can't say that I don't do it, but at the same time...okay, what I think I mean is, the crap I love, I love genuinely and whole-heartedly. You know, not solely because it's crap or because it's make-fun-of-able. Take something like Sharknado. I have not seen Sharknado and I have no desire to see Sharknado because looking at it from the outside at least, it seems to have been made simply to be made fun of. It looks as if there's nothing genuine about it, and I'm not just talking about the obviously CGI special effects. It's not a comedy, but it wants you to laugh at it. That trying-too-hard obviousness doesn't hold much appeal for me.

Maybe I'm fooling myself by thinking that my love of Shark Attack 3: Megalodon and the love the entire world/internet felt for Sharknado are two unrelated things. I'm likely presumptuous in my thinking that when I say "it's so bad, it's good" I mean it differently than the unwashed masses do. I'll figure it (and myself) out someday. An unexamined life is not worth living, gazing into the abyss, et cetera et cetera.

My point is that when I fired up Pumpkinhead II, I had Sharknado goggles on, you know? I was ready to make fun of it, ready to post a review that tore it apart but good. Then I realized I was enjoying it, and I kind of hated myself for not giving it a fair shake from the get-go. Not that I'm a moron who expects every movie to be terrific; why, sometimes your only hope is that a film won't make you want to kill yourself. No, I hated myself because I was watching it ironically, my only intent to tear it down. How gross, right? What a jerk.

While not a horror-comedy, Pumpkinhead II is much more light-hearted than its predecessor and its sad tale of noble dirt farmers. Broadly-drawn bad guys get pulverized by the titular demon of revenge and it's a delightfully gory affair. The highlight, no doubt, comes when a jerk, knocked through the air by Pumpkinhead, lands head-first in a l'il coop and gets his eyes pecked out by chickens. I rewound it three times, just so you know.

I have to say, while I wasn't right all those years ago in thing that PII would be awful, I was right regarding one thing two things, and those are Linnea Quigley's boobs. Of course they make an appearance! Then poor Linnea is terrorized by Pumpkinhead and she screams herself into catatonia, which gives my favorite character, the always-on-the-verge-of-panic doctor, a chance to shine:

SHERIFF (played by YES Andrew "Hellraiser" Robinson): It's like she's not even here!

ALWAYS-ON-THE-EDGE-OF-PANIC DOCTOR: She's not! Whatever she saw, it scared her so bad, her mind couldn't deal with it and shut down. It's one step away from being...scared to death.

It's so great that when the killings start, always-on-the-verge-of-panic doctor immediately dispenses with all doubt and heads right down to this is some fucked up shit town: "If an animal got ol' Ernst, it wasn't of this world." Really, only Halloween's Dr. Loomis can compare in a willingness to expand one's professional mind beyond a proper diagnosis and DSM-IV. I love always-on-the-verge-of-panic doctor!

And man, director Jeff Burr doesn't skimp on showing Pumpkinhead in all his glory. He's huge and maybe a little awkward and slow in his movements, but there ain't a lick of computer on him. When he picks up a jerk and twists the jerk's head off, he really does it! In a fake way, but you know what I mean. It's pretty awesome and quite satisfying.

Plot holes and logic gaps abound for sure, but dammit, I'm just gonna let Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings be great. Well, not great. As I said, not even good. It's certainly inferior to the original film. Geez, I was expecting to point at this movie and laugh...but we had a good time together, ol' P-Head and I. And that's one to grow on.

By: Unknown On 17.27

Continue Reading

The Five Best Vampires

Lawd-a-lawdy, The Internet sure loves a list, don't it? And why not- they're easy to digest, like mashed potatoes. Who doesn't like mashed potatoes? Only jerks, no doubt. People also love getting incensed over lists: "I know this is a list of 10 zombie movies but I can't believe you left out these other 532986 zombie movies how could you you don't know what you're talking about this list sucks gfffarrrrgleeeeeee APOPLEXY"

Sometimes, when a person's blood is all fired up like that, he or she cannot understand that lists are generally meant to provoke conversation. Yes, if someone were to make a list of, say, the 20 most important slasher films and that list didn't include John Carpenter's Halloween, well, it would be right to question the exclusion and/or the sanity of the listmaker. In fact, that's exactly what I did many moons ago regarding a Top 10 Best Slasher Films list that included Cabin Fever. Final Girl was very young, and I was all "what in the what?" over it, all brazen brashness in a blazer (I WISH) as I took the mighty Kim Morgan to task over the inclusion of Eli Roth's film. What happened from there? She and I discussed that shit. In the years since (years, what the heck...Final Girl is a Final Woman now for sure), we have discussed much more. I discovered that although I disagree with her opinions once in a while, Kim Morgan knows her shit, I love her writing, and I'm always learning something new from her. My point is, lists! Debate! Learn! Grow! Hold hands and sway together, softly humming until you creep each other out.

Except this time.

That's right. My list of the Five Best Vampires is totally immutable! Why? Because it has been scientifically proven, in fact, to be a list of the Five Best Vampires.

Well, "scientifically proven" if you take my opinion as scientific fact, which you totally should.

Now then. You can just put away your debatin' hat and pull up your pants, my friends, because here it is, I'm layin' it down.

THE FIVE BEST VAMPIRES- in order!

1. All lesbian vampires (except for the ones in this movie)

2. Mr. Barlow or Nosferatu, aka any creepy gross-looking vampire

3. Christopher Lee as Dracula

4. The vampire puppy from the end of Zoltan, Hound of Dracula

5. Zoltan, Hound of Dracula

And that's it! I know, you're going to say "But what about the dirty vampires in Near Dark?" or "You asshole, why isn't Eli from Let the Right One In on this list?" or "Go kill yourself, loser, Gary Oldman as Dracula is the best, this list is so lame and I repeat: go kill yourself"...but hey, sorry, man. You can't fight science!

By: Unknown On 18.42

Continue Reading

I love Indian food!

Did you know that I love movies about demonic possession? I've only mentioned it 9256 times, so it's entirely possible that you don't know. Or didn't know, I should say, because now you do: I loves me some movies about demonic possession. The thing about this subgenre, however, is that there's pretty much only two ways to go: you either rip-off The Exorcist, or you don't. If a film is on the grounded in reality side of the fence, as are The Last Exorcism and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, then there's not much ripping off. But if the film is of a more shocking, straight-up horror bent, then it will pale in the shadow of The Exorcist. Mind you, The Exorcist is soooooooo much more than its most shocking moments- but the movies that came after (particularly in the late 70s and early 80s) ape nothing but the effects and therefore wallow in Pazuzu's shadow. Ovidio Assonitis's Beyond the Door (1974) is one such movie.

The film begins with a voiceover from Satan. Yeah, I'll just let that sit there for a moment.

Meet Jessica Barrett (Juliet Mills), a housewife from San Francisco. While her husband Robert (Gabriele Lavia, Revenge of the Dead) is off producing fabulously funky record albums (yes, record albums- it was the 70s), Jessica goes grocery shopping and deals with two of the most awful, obnoxious children ever committed to celluloid. Ken slurps Campbell's pea soup from the can (GET IT PEA SOUP) while Gail constantly has her nose buried in one of the dozen copies of Erich Segal's Love Story she's always toting (GET IT OH WAIT I DON'T GET IT) They bicker, they whine, they swear, and they're generally unpleasant. Imagine the joy the Barretts feel when they discover that birth control has failed and there's another jerk on the way!

domestic bliss: Jessica rehearses suicide (or tastes batter, whatever)

Meanwhile, Dimitri (Richard Johnson, The Haunting) wanders around, spying on the elder Barretts. See, he's Jessica's long-lost ex and now he's on a mission from Satan: in exchange for a few more years of life, Dimitri needs to ensure that Jessica's unborn baby completes its journey down the baby hatch. This is because, somehow, it's Satan's baby. That's right, Satan can infect a baby with evil just like that- sans chalky mousse or the aid of the Castevets!

As you may expect, carrying the spawn of Satan in your baby-place is not without its downside. See, Satan spreads his dominion beyond the door womb and things get totally craycray up in the Barrett household. Okay, maybe not totally craycray, but there's one night when the kids' room starts shaking and the floor lights up (like, through the floorboards-style, not disco-style. Unfortunately.) and toys move around and dolls get extra creepy via glowing eyes. It's some Poltergeist shit!

Jessica, of course, has it far worse. During some Paranormal Activity shit, she's visited in the night by an unseen force that cruelly removes her bedcovers. Then she floats around the room and...wait, did I say she has it worse? Fuck that! I'd love to float around.

The baby grows at an exponential rate and Jessica fears it's trying to kill her. She's sort of right, for her condition rapidly deteriorates. What starts out as vomiting blood and eating rotten banana peels off the street (???) soon becomes hi-Exorcist shenanigans like head-spinning, speaking in different voices, and puking up green stuff...although perhaps it's worth noting that her vom is more palak paneer than it is pea soup.

Okay, it's not worth noting, but I felt like noting it anyway.


As the screencaps show, Jessica also sweats and suddenly has weird eyes and corn teeth. During these moments, I felt hearts shoot right out of my eyeballs and into Beyond the Door. What can I say- I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.

Eventually Dimitri stalks Robert so hard that they end up meeting. Dimitri convinces Robert that he wants to help Jessica. Robert is all, "okay". I mean, what else is he gonna do? Oh yeah- he briefly tries some science with a doctor friend. The results prove nothing, but the...science apparatus did give me an opportunity to imagine that a possessed Jessica was visiting a hair salon, so all was not lost.

Once Dimitri enters the room beyond the door (SEE WHAT I DID THERE), things go from mostly incomprehensible to "dammit, we passed incomprehensible 20 minutes ago". Satan whines about always having to be born into another person's body and no one knows the suffering of a body-squatter Then he demands that Dimitri "plunge his hands into her" and rip out the baby. He refuses so Satan kills him, and the baby is stillborn. Hooray, the Barretts are back to normal! OR ARE THEY?

I know what you're thinking. That is some Zoltan: Hound of Dracula shit!

There's an awful lotta wrong in Beyond the Door. There are several lengthy passages where characters walk around the city while crazy 70s music plays; don't get me wrong, I dug the music, but the scenes went on too long and largely felt like filler. The time could have been better spent on things like...oh, you know, characters and the plot. Still, there's no denying that there's a certain...mmm, "charm" doesn't seem right somehow...there's a certain something to the scene where Robert is relentlessly harassed by a dude playing a recorder-flute-thing with his nose.

Everything's just too damn vague in this film and we don't much care about what's going on, never mind the undeveloped characters, which give us no reason to invest in their stories or plight. Dimitri explains things to Robert without explaining anything. Jessica is full-on possessed pretty quickly, and then suddenly she's not possessed. It's all sort of shrug-worthy, which...dammit, demonic possession is not supposed to be shrug-worthy! It's supposed to be terrifying and awful.

Still, there are a few things that work in the movie. There's a nugget of a worthwhile story buried deep under all the crap; we get peeks at it when Jessica confides in a friend that she dreams of running away from it all, or when she yells at Robert for not giving her "any room to breathe". If The Exorcist is in part a metaphor for puberty and burgeoning sexuality, then Beyond the Door is in part a metaphor for those- women in particular- who are dissatisfied with the idea of traditional domesticity. Granted, I may be stretching it a bit and that "in part" is a verrrrrrry small one, but it's there. Don't worry about having to think much, though, as it's never addressed in any real way. It's too bad, because it would have put some meat on the movie's bones.

The shocks, for what they are, suffice for the sub-genre. Yeah, we've seen them all before in The Exorcist, but if you dug 'em then, why wouldn't you dig 'em now? Demonic sweat is always good. And there's one bit with Jessica's eyes that- well, I don't want to spoil it but it literally made me gasp. It's a moment like that in The Exorcist when Regan has been acting out (if you can call masturbating with a crucifix "acting out") and suddenly throws her head back, her eyes stark white and her throat stark lumpy. Basically, it's that moment when "acting out" blows past "she's ill" and heads into "what the eff is going on here this is really not right" territory.

Like me, fans of possession movies will probably enjoy Beyond the Door, if only because it brings to mind thoughts of its far-superior predecessor. However, The Exorcist shouldn't get too high and mighty- after all, I didn't seen anyone play a recorder-flute-thing with their nose in that movie.

Buy Beyond the Door at Boulevard Movies and judge for yourself, judgey!

By: Unknown On 14.01

Continue Reading