"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

New bonus on Patreon: Knight Rider: “Halloween Knight”

I realized last night that Halloween is a week away and I still feel like I’m just getting started on the seasonal festivities. Maybe October will have to be held over. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL review today, and over on Patreon I have a new post taking a look at a Knight Rider episode called “Halloween Knight.” There are some goofy Scooby-Doo elements, Halloween costumes and a bunch of references/homages/connections to horror movies, including the very obvious one pictured below and a slightly more obscure, much more surprising one that I’m excited to share with everybody.

CLICK HERE FOR “HALLOWEEN KNIGHT”

Thanks everybody, and there’s plenty more to come right here on outlaw vern dot com.

 
 

 

October 23rd, 2020 | No Comments »

Ouija: Origin of Evil

This is a rare event for me, to watch a prequel to a movie I haven’t seen and don’t plan to see. The original OUIJA from 2014 was a PG-13 horror movie co-produced by ghost-merchants Blumhouse and remakers Platinum Dunes, “based on Ouija by Hasbro.” It’s the same writers as KNOWING, which could be a plus, but I didn’t know that until just now. So it didn’t seem like a movie for me, and nobody told me otherwise.

But two years later I remember seeing the trailer for the prequel before some other horror movie and talking with my friend about it actually looking good. It’s a period piece set in 1967, with a real nice look to it courtesy of cinematographer Michael Fimognari (FAST COLOR) and this time it’s directed by Mike Flanagan – I’m not sure if I’d seen anything by him yet, but I’d heard good things about OCULUS. And since then I’ve seen ABSENTIA, HUSH and GERALD’S GAME – all quite good – and the 2018 made-for-Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House convinced me that he is a legit Master of Horror for our age, even before he knocked my socks off with DOCTOR SLEEP. So it’s cool to go back and catch up on this one and realize how much of a rough draft it was for Hill House (even more than ABSENTIA). It’s got the scary old house (smaller and suburban, though), the psychic gift passed through generations, the themes of trauma and loss, the period detail, and of course the freaky ass Mike Flanagan ghosts. (Flanaghosts?) (read the rest of this shit…)

October 23rd, 2020 | 3 Comments »

Books of Blood / The Mortuary Collection

Well! Heh, heh! Hello there boys, ghouls and non-DIE-naries. It’s me again, your voluble villain of vivacious vicarious violence, Vern! I don’t tend to review the anthologies nearly as much as other types of horror, but this year two of the SCREAM-ing services have new ones that seemed promising. So I’ve prepared for you an anthology of anthologies, a little two-headed review I call THE PAIR-ER OF TERROR!

Hulu’s BOOKS OF BLOOD and Shudder’s THE MORTUARY COLLECTION both find fresh ways to deal with the horror host/wraparound story tradition. THE MORTUARY COLLECTION is formatted as stories told by creepy old mortician Montgomery Dark (Clancy Brown, PET SEMATARY II) – he looks like The Tall Man from PHANTASM – to Sam (Caitlin Custer, Teen Wolf), a young woman he’s interviewing for a job. I like that some of the stories had me thinking, “Well, that’s a pretty simplistic moralistic kind of ironic ending” and then Sam would point out as much, to Montgomery’s increasing frustration. And then the last and best segment is a story about Sam, ending with a great twist that leads into the wraparound finale, which really works as the climax of the movie and not just a wrap up.

BOOKS OF BLOOD sort of does the whole thing in reverse – instead of establishing up front what the stories are (comic books, campfire tales, etc.) they unfold and explain at the end what they’re all about, like an origin story. If you’re familiar with Clive Barker’s short story collections of the same name you know what that means (SPOILER: they’re the stories of the dead whose names are carved into a guy’s flesh.)

(read the rest of this shit…)

October 22nd, 2020 | 15 Comments »

The Babysitter: Killer Queen

I had heard some not very good things about THE BABYSITTER, so I was surprised when I, a person who’s generally pretty picky about horror comedies, liked it more than my friends. And then as soon as I said that everybody told me “I liked the first one, but the sequel is terrible.”

And it’s true – the tight construction and sincere sweetness that I found so appealing in THE BABYSITTER are not as present in the sequel. It’s more scattershot, maybe in part because rather than the one original writer Brian Duffield they have a team of Dan Lagana (Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous) and Brad Morris & Jimmy Warden (co-producer of the first one) and McG. But it doesn’t feel crazy enough to say it’s McG going Full Throttle again. For the most part it stays true to the spirit of the first one, but the circumstances of sequelization corner it into being more far-fetched and having to stretch it more to keep the story going and bring back certain characters and stuff.

Luckily it’s also funny and gory enough to be a pretty good time. The returns are diminishing, but I’ll take ‘em. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 21st, 2020 | 12 Comments »

The Babysitter

It’s common during These Uncertain Times to say that time is moving slowly. I generally agree. But as a counterpoint, I sincerely thought McG’s straight-to-Netflix horror comedy THE BABYSITTER came out recently, and that I would get to it eventually. Turns out it’s been three years since it came out and there’s already a sequel where the main characters have grown like a foot taller. So eventually has arrived.

Despite McG’s checkered past directing Korn and Smash Mouth videos, I’ve always had a soft spot for him. I enjoyed his silly, joyful, aggressively style-over-substance CHARLIE’S ANGELS movies. In the Ain’t It Cool Days I didn’t understand why people hated him so much, bizarrely taking offense to his name. What the fuck does it matter to you? You think it’s unprofessional? What are you, a dad telling his kid to tuck his shirt in for a job interview? Get over yourself.

I was really rooting for him to pull off TERMINATOR SALVATION, but I concede that he didn’t (even if I like more things about it than most people). I kind of stopped paying attention to him after that, although about five years later he did 3 DAYS TO KILL with Kevin Costner, which I seem to be about the only fan of. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 19th, 2020 | 29 Comments »

Seized

SEIZED is the long-awaited new one from DTV superteam Scott Adkins and Isaac Florentine. Though lately Adkins has formed a strong actor/director partnership with Jesse V. Johnson, it was Florentine who first gave him a showcase in SPECIAL FORCES and then made him an icon with UNDISPUTED II and III, plus NINJA and NINJA II: SHADOW OF A TEAR. This is their first reteam in at least four years – I have my suspicions about 2016’s excellent BOYKA: UNDISPUTED (credited to another director), but officially Florentine’s last time directing Adkins was 2015’s CLOSE RANGE.

This one is closer to the latter – another story about a guy single-handedly taking on cartels to protect his family. This time it’s more like a Hollywood thriller, more emphasis on the high concept and complex action sequences than martial arts. He’s kind of a JOHN WICK, settled down as a widower raising his teenage son Taylor (Matthew Garbacz) and running a cyber security firm from a beautiful home in Mexico, when his secret past as an infamous CIA and/or MI5 commando called “Nero” comes roaring back. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 16th, 2020 | 27 Comments »

I was on Zebras In America again!

The other day I was honored to return to the podcast Zebras In America now that I finally have a book to promote. I definitely need to get better at discussing this thing, but I love talking film with Scott and Marcus (as we do for most of the episode). They know their stuff, they appreciate a spectrum of “high” and “low” culture even wider than mine, and they’re not afraid to get emotional. (So of course I ended up talking about movies that made me cry.)

Things I forgot this time: I wanted to ask them if they’ve listened to Public Enemy’s new album, and to congratulate them on their recent episode with Charles Burnett. How am I the next guest after Charles Burnett!?

Thanks Zebras, I had a great time!

October 16th, 2020 | 1 Comment »

The Hidden II

Now that I’ve finally caught up with the greatness of THE HIDDEN, it was also important to experience the let down of its six-years-later DTV sequel. None of the same people are involved, except in re-used footage, and it’s cheap and crappy. It does at least give me a little bit of a laugh from its audacious short cuts and the extremely dated choice to set a large portion of it at a rave.

Let me tell you about those shortcuts. The movie starts with 2 minutes of credits over black. Then it says it’s 15 years ago, and there are about 2 minutes of green text representing Kyle MacLachlan’s alien character sending messages back home, asking for backup. Then it goes into the end of the first movie, but not even just the climactic showdown like they do in, for example, some of the FRIDAY THE 13TH sequels. No, you get a whole shootout, then the climax, then the epilogue in the hospital. They add some new stuff in the middle to show a dog pick up a weird egg at the death scene, get implanted by an alien and then go to a warehouse, where slimy eggs crawl out of him. But it’s more than 15 minutes into the movie when it finally gets to the end of part 1 and says “15 years later.” I’m surprised they didn’t include the full end credits. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 14th, 2020 | 12 Comments »

The Hidden

Many of you have been trying to tell me this for years, and it has finally gotten through to me: THE HIDDEN is incredible. It’s kind of a sci-fi/horror/action hybrid, and it hits hard on all counts. Makes sense that it’s director Jack Sholder’s bridge between the horror of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE and the action of RENEGADES, but I’d argue it’s more cinematic than either of those. It opens with a thrilling, Friedkin-esque car chase after a buttoned-up looking guy in wire rimmed glasses (Chris Mulkey, FIRST BLOOD, BROKEN ARROW, BARE KNUCKLES, THE PURGE, THE STANDOFF AT SPARROW CREEK) shoots up a bank. He stays very calm, sometimes mildly amused as he tears through L.A. in a Ferrari, occasionally running over people (including a guy in a wheelchair), blaring a heavy metal tape, sometimes bopping his head a little. Police absolutely riddle him with bullets and destroy his car at a road block – he steps out and laughs before getting blown up. Even that doesn’t kill him.

It does put him in the hospital, where a doctor is offended by how the detectives talk about this seriously injured patient. It probly makes more sense to him after Detective Willis (Ed O’Ross, LETHAL WEAPON, FULL METAL JACKET, ACTION JACKSON, RED HEAT) spews a monologue about all the murders, injuries and robberies the guy is responsible for, ending with, “Six of the ones he killed he carved up with a butcher knife. Two of them were kids. He did all that in two weeks. If anybody deserves to go that way it sure to hell was him.” (read the rest of this shit…)

October 13th, 2020 | 24 Comments »

Welcome to Sudden Death

WELCOME TO SUDDEN DEATH is Michael Jai White’s new… addition to the SUDDEN DEATH franchise? I had heard it was officially a sequel to the 1995 Jean-Claude Van Damme DIE-HARD-alike directed by Peter Hyams, but I didn’t notice any continuity connecting them. It’s just a rehash of the same premise. So you could call it a remake, but since it doesn’t use any of the same names I suppose it is in the spirit of rehash DTV sequels like HOLLOW MAN 2, THE MARINE 2, WILD THINGS 2, THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT 2, KINDERGARTEN COP 2 and I’LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.

White plays Jesse Freeman, ex-special-ops guy who has a new job as a stadium security job after rehabilitating from some shrapnel he got after escaping torture and kung-fu-ing insurgents overseas. His wife (Sagine Sémajuste) thinks he’s away from the family too much, so he brings his worshipful daughter Mara (Nakai Takawira, Young Simone Biles, THE SIMONE BILES STORY: COURAGE TO SOAR) and unimpressed son Ryan (Lyric Justice) with him when he works the opening game for the Phoenix Falcons. You know, of the National Basketball League. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 12th, 2020 | 22 Comments »

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