Don't Take Your Booze-Addled Tantrums to Town

While I admit that I am no Murder, She Wrote, I like to think that my deducing skills are somewhat substantial. The swirly thing on the stovetop turns orange, I deduce that it's hot. I eat a berry and begin to die, my penultimate thought is "That girl is poison!" (my last thought would be "Am I really to shuffle off this mortal coil with a Bell Biv Davoe song stuck in my head?") because deduction. And so, I see this poster for Ruby (1977) and I immediately set about to deducerizin'.

The title: clearly a Carrie rip-off a la Jennifer.
The Piper Laurie: clearly a Carrie rip-off a la the episode of Matlock that Piper Laurie was in LOL just kidding but can you imagine an episode of Matlock that rips off Carrie, come on that would be one of the reasons life is worth living.

Okay, so I somehow deduced from the totally not obvious clues that Ruby is going to somehow rip-off Carrie. But! don't go thinking that the girl who takes up 2/3 of the page is Ruby, oh no. Read the fine print and school yoself- Piper Laurie is Ruby. And I dunno, there's definitely a Rosemary's Baby kind of thing alluded to, like maybe Ruby is all evil and has sexytimes with Satan or something and then this girl is born and sixteen years later the girl goes all telekinetic and there's, you know, death and whatever.

Anyway, that's all what I deduced from the poster. Not gonna lie, I was totally excited to watch this...not only because of the perfectly perfect movie I was imagining in my head, but because of such Amazon user endorsements as

Knowone remebers the good movies! but, I still remember " Ruby " That's a great movie.

and

REAL GOOD, DIDN'T EXPECTED!!!

Ruby and I, we were gonna be friends, see. Friends. I could picture it clearly: Ruby and I running hand-in-hand through fields of gold, laughing and singing the theme from Family Ties together. I imagined in every future conversation I'd ever have I would blurt out "Holy fucking shit, have you ever seen Ruby?" because it would need to be seen. I'd become a Jehorror Witness, clutching a DVD whilst knocking on every door in every neighborhood to ask "Have you heard the good word about Ruby?" I felt as if my life were truly about to begin.

Man, I gotta stop doing that!

Although I suppose I can't really blame Ruby for being not at all what I was expecting. Ruby is what Ruby is, after all. But! What Ruby is is pretty terrible, and that's not my fault.

Ruby and Nicky (Sal Vecchio) are out for a moonlight-n-champagne tour of a swamp when Nicky is ruthlessly gunned down by a vicious mob of mobsters. Ruby, all stressed out, immediately goes into labor- christened in blood, indeed.

Before you can say "Wait she was pregnant what is up with drinking that champagne, was it actually sparkling cider or something", it's 16 years later and my, how things have changed! Ruby owns a drive-in, appropriately called Ruby's Drive-In. The mobsters now work for Ruby, selling tickets and crappy concession stand burgers or running the film projector. Leslie the Swamp Baby (OMG WHAT IF THAT WAS A MOVIE) has grown into mute weirdo who sometimes bites people. Ruby loathes Leslie because she'd rather have Nicky back in her life than be all alone, saddled with their offspring and her Bud Cort-ish face always looking looking LOOKING.

I mean, it's Harold in drag, amirite

Before you can say "Wait how can Ruby's Drive-In be showing Attack of the 50ft Woman when it's supposed to be 1951 and everyone knows that movie came out in 1958, duh", the mobsters start dying courtesy of some invisible force. As the bodies pile up, ex-mobster and erstwhile Ruby lover Vince (the ever-stalwart Stuart Whitman) grows concerned. However, all of his "Hey Ruby, everyone is dying in strange, awful ways...maybe we should do something about it?"s are met with a "Aw, shaddap!" for you see, Ruby is still a real moll, the type of woman who wears feather boas in the home- in the home- and maintains a constant, fine patina of booze buzz.

Vince takes matters into his own hands and calls in a psychic expert who determines that yes, something is indeed afoot. But what?

What indeed. Leslie is possessed by Nicky, who apparently has been offing his murderers for revengeance. At this point, Ruby turns into a quasi-possession flick which, if you know anything about me you know normally I am seriously into...but Ruby is too little too late and more than a bit too wait why is this happening. Why did Nicky wait 16 years for revenge? Why would he possess Leslie when he was perfectly capable of getting shit done as the aforementioned invisible force? Questions remain unanswered as the film culminates in a freeze-frame ending (always a treat- ALWAYS I SAY) apparently disavowed by director Curtis Harrington. Sure, it's a slapdash and nonsensical, added solely for the shock value, but it has a bit of a nice EC Comics-vibe that marginally redeems it.

total moll

While Piper Laurie is terrific, but I can't help feeling a bit bad for poor Ruby, neither classic nor cult classic, destined to be remembered by only a few- Knowone remebers the good movies!- and forever relegated to the Z List. It's too bad, because the film feels as if it was dealt a real disservice by it being shoved into a Designer Impostor Carrie/Exorcist box; had it been treated as a proper ghost story, it coulda been a contenda. As it is, it looks like I continue to run through the fields of gold alone.

By: Unknown On 17.29

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Black Belt Lilith Aensland From Darkstalkers Cosplay

By: Unknown On 05.55

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Di Gi Charat Ero Cosplay - Dejiko Higurashi Rin

By: Unknown On 07.42

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Art vs Cancer

Hello everyone! So check it out: cancer is an asshole, right? Yes, we all know this. Also asshole: all the bills and financial debt that come along with fighting cancer. Friend of Final Girl and actress Michelle Tomlinson (The Cellar Door) is gonna give cancer what for...and to help her give the costs what for, she's set up a GoFundMe page where you can donate as much or as little as you please.

I've also put a bunch of sketch cards on eBay, and I'll be donating all monies raised in the auctions (minus fees) to the cause. There's some horror goodness in there, check it out!

There are also cards from other movies (Escape from New York, Silence of the Lambs, whaaaaat!), comics (Batfolk, yeah!) and video games (Halo, boss!), so give a consideration to bidding, won't you? You get some art, Michelle gets some help paying for treatment. It's a win-win if I ever heard a one!

If you can't bid, holy moley, I get it. You can still help by spreading the word and the link to my auction page. That don't cost nothin' but 10 seconds. Everybody got time for that! Thanks, gang.

By: Unknown On 16.47

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Zombie vs Shark vs T-Shirt

Hey, so I drew this! It's based on one of the best scenes in not only horror, but in EVER. Zombie vs shark, from Lucio Fulci's Zombie.

You can get it (and a bunch of other designs) on a t-shirt or a pillow or even a print at my Society 6 shop. Annnd if you use THIS LINK to do it, you'll enjoy free worldwide shipping through April 14. That is a tasty treat! 

By: Unknown On 07.40

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Evil Dead (2013)

Remakes, amirite? Boy, that train just keeps on a-rollin', bypassing torture porn, zombies, found footage, and all the other horror trends of the last decade. Because remakes are here to stay, most horror fans have relented and called a...well, not a truce with them, per se, but more of an uneasy cease fire à la that between North and South Korea. There's a never-ending standoff at the demarcation line, with constant vigilance on both sides: remakes pull their pants down and wave their asses about, taunting not only to remake the most beloved films in the genre, but also to remake the remakes. Over the line, fans fume and foam and rage, moan and bemoan, and then hand over their dollars. So it has been and so it shall ever be.

As for me, I try, at least, to be largely open-minded about these things. Sure, I don't much see the point of a new version of whatever. Sure, sometimes I see a trailer (like this one for the most recent Carrie remake) and I am all "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, TRAILER FOR THE MOST RECENT CARRIE REMAKE"...but hey, sometimes remakes are good. Sometimes they are really good! And they're not much worth getting our collective thongs in a twist over- no matter what, the originals ain't goin' nowhere. You can't touch old Carrie, new Carrie! I'll just watch that! And as for you, middle Carrie remake, I've never seen you, so just keep quiet!

You know, something like that.

Anyway, all this brings us to Evil Dead, director Fede Alvarez's rehashening of Sam Raimi's beloved 1981 film. Man oh man, when this project was announced one hundred years ago, you could feel the burning gaze of indignant horror fans right through your computer screen and smell their smoldering black novelty t-shirts on the wind. Was Diablo Cody really going to write it? Was there really going to be an Evil Dead without Bruce Campbell? Would someone really dare to make Ashley J. Williams a girl? Froth froth froth.

Then last Friday came, Evil Dead opened, and fans around the world started touching themselves over Alvarez's efforts, hailing it as one of the best horror films of recent memory. But is it, though? Is it? THIS IS THE TIME WHEN I TELL YOU WHAT I THINK.

As in the original version and also 63% of all horror films, Evil Dead puts five young folk in a cabin in the woods, then later violent mayhem ensues. Rather than the typical sex-n-drugs-n-Jenga setup, however, Alvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues ground the weekend getaway idea with a wee bit of gravitas: Mia (Jane Levy) is at the cabin to detox, her friends and estranged brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) are there to hold her hand, hold her hair while she barfs, and help her through it.

It's an admirable attempt by the filmmakers to elevate Evil Dead above the typical brainless horror fare, but ultimately the drug angle is only a MacGuffin to get the gang into the middle of nowhere. It doesn't prove as central as it could have, or maybe as it should have. As a narrator, Mia is highly suspect and hey, maybe she's just seeing things or making shit up so she can go home. Are these happenings really happening? I am just saying, maybe a little suspense would have been nice, a little metaphor use to jazz things up. After all, this is Evil Dead and we all know how it's going to go: you find a book bound in human flesh and inked in human blood, you read from a book bound in human flesh and inked in human blood, everyone goes deadly nutcake, the end.

Maybe it's best that there was minimal setup, though. Don't get me wrong, I loves me some character development (I yearn for it, really) and I'm willing to wait a long while for things to actually happen, but here is a sample of the dialogue:

"Mia, exposition exposition. Exposition."
"But David, exposition! Exposition exposition EXPOSITION."

And so on. It was pretty dreadful. Couple that with a few Telegraphed Horror Movie Moments™(gee, I wonder if that nail gun we're seeing in close-up will be used on a person an hour from now!) and unfortunately, I was getting impatient for these fools to wander into the basement, open the book, and get on with it already. Then they did, dropping any pretense at character development, metaphor, or whatever. They really got on with it. What I mean is, Evil Dead is profoundly violent and so effing gory, I can't believe it was playing next door to, you know, Tyler Perry's Whatever Whatever at the cinemovieplex. It's rated like a pirate-level ARRRRRRR, the R is so hard. Razor blades, needles, electric knives, chainsaws (of course), yes, the aforementioned nail gun...I haven't seen this much blood flying on the screen since...well, ever.

The gore, in fact, is likely the biggest thing Evil Dead has going for it. Jane Levy does an alright job as Mia- she's best when she's possessed- but ultimately the acting and the script are the weak links in the chain. Remember when everyone was so concerned about the possibility of a "girl Ash"? Well, for most of the film "David" fills that role and let me tell you, a Real Girl Ash would have been about as exciting and emotive. Not that one goes into Evil Dead expecting a well-acted treatise on the human condition or what have you (the original certainly wasn't that), but pile up enough questionable actions by the characters and all the dopey dialogue and you realize it's really just an okay package in an exceedingly dazzling wrapper.

There is fanservice aplenty throughout the film with winks, nods, and Easter eggs, from Cheryl's demon voice to Sam Raimi's infamous Oldsmobile to the sly use of the original's iconic poster art. It's fun, if nothing else.

And then there's the tree rape.

Of the sequence in his film, Sam Raimi said, years later, "I think it was unnecessarily gratuitous and a little too brutal." He's right, but then The Evil Dead is a pretty brutal film, nearly as gory as its remake. The sequence returns in 2013, but it's surprisingly tamer- see, it's not the trees raping Mia as they did Cheryl; it's more of a wormy, slimy, branch-y thing barfed up by a deadite witch that then makes its way between Mia's legs. It's more Cronenbergian than its predecessor, but it's still gratuitous. The rules of possession in Evil Dead are fast and loose- sometimes it's transmitted by bite, sometimes...not? It just...is?- and so there's no reason the wormy, slimy, branch-y thing couldn't have been barfed out of one mouth and forced down another. It would have provoked the requisite hoots and hollers from the audience, which, you know, would have been more palatable than a rape scene doing the same.

Sure, the old "Well, what do you expect from a horror movie?" arguments can be trotted out here, but when we live in a culture where defense lawyers claim that 11-year-olds are willing participants when they're gang-raped, when politicians bandy about terms like "legitimate rape" and offer up scientific "facts" about pregnancies resulting from rape, scenes like that in Evil Dead do matter. They're worth talking about, even if it's fantasy.

So all in all, I suppose it depends what you're looking for; I mean, it's not as if the movie isn't fun in that exceedingly gory, "is this really fun?" kind of way. Strip away the blood and guts, though, and there's not much left. When it was all over, my lasting impression was an intense desire to go home and watch the original.

By: Unknown On 12.11

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real talk

You guys, what the heck. It's been about five months since I have posted anything here. FIVE MONTHS. Can you believe that? Just think! If you got pregnant on the last day I posted, you would have, like, half a baby by now. That is mind-blowingly nuts.

Anyway, I thought it was time I showed my face around here, so to speak, to give you some what for.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS!
(note: by "frequently" "asked", I mean "I think someone might have asked once, or maybe it was only a dream I had")

Is Final Girl dead?
If by "Final Girl" you mean me, then no, obviously not because here I am typing this. Unless, of course, maybe I blogging from beyond the grave.

Are you blogging from beyond the grave?
No, I am not.

Okay, so what about Final Girl the website? Is that dead?
It may seem that way, but again...no! I would say it's not dead, it's merely in a cryogenic stasis chamber. At some point in the near future it will be thawed out and resurrected, I swear. Awakened after oh so long, Final Girl will then gaze upon an unfamiliar world with wonderment, a little trepidation, and maybe some indigestion...but she'll adjust, and it'll be as if she were never gone. You know how she do.

Well where the frig have you been?
Dudes and y'alls, here is the R.E.A.L. T.A.L.K., which stands for "real talk": I have been so totally and completely burnt out on horror movies, it is not even funny. Not even! Funny!

say what now?

Yup, it's the truth. "But how could it have come to this??" you are probably saying screaming to yourself as you rend your clothes and roll around on the floor. Well, friendos, there are a lot of reasons for it. The biggest, maybe, is that in recent times, more often than not I found myself writing about horror movies I didn't give two shits about. Never mind two shits, I didn't even give one shit about 'em. Wait, never mind one shit...I did not even have a ha'shit to give.

I think we can all agree that unless you are an asshole, it is best to review movies you have actually seen. Because of science, in order to see the movies I had to write about, I also had to watch them. Many of these films were bad. Most of them, though, were just...there. Uninspired, dull, samey-samey stuff that I wouldn't watch unless I had to, which...you know, I did. For me, shrugging off the apathy and figuring out something to say about those movies was like pulling teeth. Or, more succinctly, like having my teeth pulled. And then put back in. With a hammer. With a Mjolnir.

If that sounds "wah wah, I had to watch horror movies and write about them", well man, I guess I just don't care. You see, I started Final Girl to talk about horror movies I love (even if they stink), not whatever happens to be coming out on DVD next month. It should go without saying, but I will say it anyway: this does not mean that I am railing against new horror, or that whatever happens to be coming out on DVD next month isn't going to be wonderful. It just means that hey, writing can be difficult, watching movies you don't really want to watch can be difficult, and I just. Burnt. Out.

And boy do I mean it! Believe me, I haven't been, you know, watching a shit ton of horror and not telling you about it; I've probably seen...mmm, four scary movies? maybe?...since I last posted here. (One of them was Mama and you know what? I really liked it. SO SUE ME.) Here's what is up: I try to give something in the genre a go- by which I mean I browse my Netflix queue- and everything looks the same. All the plot synopses sound alike. None appeal to me enough to give 'em a go. I think about sitting through them, and I start puking boredom out of my eye holes every time! And then I watch something else entirely, like a documentary or an episode of whatever (great show). Or I read or I play a video game. Or I draw some comics. Or I do anything besides watch a horror movie.

It is the worst!

Yeah, so okay, what?
Man, I don't know. I've been talking horror movies a lot lately, and I feel the love coming back. I can't wait for the new Evil Dead. THAT'S RIGHT, I SAID IT. I miss writing like you would not believe, and I need to start doing it again on the regs, as none of the kids would say. Most of all, I'd like to get Final Girl back to where it started: me talking about stuff I love, even if said stuff stinks...because you know why? Because it is time. You know why it is time? Because here's why:

Earlier tonight, during my weekly Friday "me" time (not a euphemism), I was a-sippin' Riunite and a-listenin' to Delilah and she gave out a dedication that caught my ear holes: "From Final Girl to Final Girl" was all she said, and then this song played:
I mean, what else can I do? Eff this cryogenic state! It's thawenin' time!

By: Unknown On 20.45

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