"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Hellboy: The Crooked Man

If you knew there was a new Hellboy movie this year – the fourth live action one – chances are you weren’t thrilled about that fact. For most people, it seems, HELLBOY was two movies directed by Guillermo Del Toro and starring Ron Perlman and since those guys aren’t making a third one that’s it, end of story, no further questions your honor.

That was the response in 2019 when there was a third one made on not much more than half the budget of HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY, with a different tone, directed by Neil Marshall and starring David Harbour as Hellboy. The makeup just isn’t as good, it’s jokier than I wanted, but hell, it won me over. It’s less reverent than the Del Toros, more in the style of 2000s CG-driven studio b-movies, and even has Milla Jovovich as the villain. In some ways I thought it was more in the spirit of the comics by Mike Mignola than the Del Toro movies were, though with a whole bunch of different stories crammed into one movie, so it feels pretty hectic.

Before greenlighting HELLBOY: THE CROOKED MAN they must’ve checked around and found out I was the only person who liked the 2019 one. So they started over with a new Hellboy (Jack Kesy, DARK WEB: CICADA 3301), a new director (Brian Taylor, MOM AND DAD), and less than half the budget of the previous lower budgeted one. In the U.S. it went straight to V.O.D. with an ugly poster and publicity stills that made it look like a fan film.

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December 19th, 2024 | 21 Comments »

Desperate Living

DESPERATE LIVING (1977) is the fifth feature film from John Waters, the one he did before dipping his toe in the mainstream with POLYESTER. Its opening – not counting the credits sequence showing a fancy place setting where a (real) fried rat is served and (fake) eaten – introduces us to Baltimore socialite Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole, NEIGHBOR), returned early from the mental hospital. Her husband Bosley (George Stover, WRESTLEMASSACRE) insists she’ll be fine, but she’s immediately throwing manic fits. When a kid accidentally hits a baseball through her window, for example, she believes it’s an attempt on her life, and is sure to squeeze the maximum amount of drama from it.

As we laugh at Stole’s crazed rantings, we can see the trick of Waters’ distinct brand of outrageousness. In reality (or realism) this would be incredibly sad. This poor mentally ill woman is detached from reality and in constant fear and mania. But the purposely stiff style of most of the acting and dialogue creates a distance for us and an appreciation for the fact that everyone in this world is an absolute mess. (read the rest of this shit…)

December 17th, 2024 | 5 Comments »

The Christmas Spirit

When I was slasher searching on Tubi in October I was surprised how many wrestling-themed horror movies I was coming across. And now I went looking for Christmas horror on Shudder and the first one I watched turned out to have a pro wrestler character in it. I guess the whole world is wrestling now anyway. We can’t escape it. At least it’s fun in movies.

THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT is a Canadian movie from 2023, and once I started watching it I understood why its plot description (“A lone man with the Christmas Spirit trapped in his head must kidnap a teenage girl on order to save Christmas”) was so vague. Its strength is that it’s odd and doesn’t really follow any of the usual formulas. (read the rest of this shit…)

December 16th, 2024 | 6 Comments »

Eraserhead

You know that guy, Henry Spencer (Jack Nance, GHOULIES)? Guy with the tall hair? Yeah, he works at a printing press I believe is what he said. Supposed to be very gifted. Anyway he knocked up his girlfriend Mary (Charlotte Stewart, Little House on the Prairie). Very awkward. Went to meet her family, it was like the quietest, saddest dinner party of all time. Darkest, too. Turn on some lights in there, people. They asked him if he’d do the honor of cutting the tiny little chickens they cooked and yes, I’d be honored, but also… is there some specific way you want me to do this? I could use some guidance here.

I don’t see him much, mostly stays in his cramped little apartment. Had a hard time sharing it with her and the baby, I tell ya. Baby’s a little lamb or maybe lamprey type of guy. Little crying worm head poking out of a ball of who knows what wrapped in bandages. Just lays on his little pillow all day. Doesn’t even have a crib. Good kid, though. Handsome little guy, in a way.

They don’t really talk. Not much to say. Henry just lays chest down on the bed staring at the radiator. Sometimes there’s a tiny lady in there (Laurel Near). Perky little thing, weird puffy cheeks, big forced smile. It looks like a stage inside there so she puts on a show. Shuffles from side to side, sings him a song about “In Heaven everything is fine.” (read the rest of this shit…)

December 12th, 2024 | 25 Comments »

Frankie Freako

FRANKIE FREAKO is the new one from director Steven Kostanski, who I started paying attention to when he did PSYCHO GOREMAN (2020). He’s Canadian and he’s part of this group called Astron-6 who also did MANBORG, THE VOID, LEPRECHAUN RETURNS and others. I’m gonna have to give those a shot. He was also prosthetic makeup effects lead for IN A VIOLENT NATURE, among other things. They got a fun scene going on up there, those Canadians.

This one is primarily the Astron-6 version of a li’l bastards movie like MUNCHIE or GHOULIES, but it’s also kind of a RISKY BUSINESS “party while the parents are away” movie, and also they work in some 976-EVIL – the kid whose parents are away summons a little guy called Frankie Freako by calling his phone line. Except it’s actually not a kid, it’s a sexually repressed adult man who does this while his wife is out of town on a business trip. The beginning part is lit like a noir-inspired erotic thriller and it plays like a dangerous foray into forbidden sexual desires or some shit. But it’s actually just funny puppets. (read the rest of this shit…)

December 11th, 2024 | 14 Comments »

Thelma

THELMA (2024) is a cute little comedy about a 93 year old lady (June Squibb, NEBRASKA) spending a couple days feeling like her life is an action movie. She’s widowed and lives on her own, but her very nice twenty-four-year-old grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger, EIGHTH GRADE) visits often, drives her places, helps her with checking her email and things.

Then one day she gets scammed by somebody who calls her pretending to be Danny in trouble. In fact Danny is fine, but sleeping in and not answering his phone, so she puts the whole family in a panic, and by the time they figure out what happened she’s already mailed ten thousand dollars cash to a p.o. box. The police can’t do anything except tell her don’t worry, you’re not the first to fall for this, and apparently “Zuckenborg” can’t even do anything even though they might’ve gotten her information from social media. She specifically asked about that. (read the rest of this shit…)

December 10th, 2024 | 9 Comments »

Adult Swim Yule Log 2: Branchin’ Out

Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the holiday spirit, the cozy, crackling fire is back. ADULT SWIM YULE LOG 2: BRANCHIN’ OUT is a sequel to the brilliant 2022 Christmas surprise ADULT SWIM YULE LOG. If you’ve never heard of that, it was a yule log video that aired without explanation at midnight on Adult Swim, now viewable on [HBO] Max or on a special edition blu-ray from Dekanalog. As you watch the fire in the fireplace you start to hear conversations in the cozy cabin where it takes place, and someone comes to the door and there’s a murder. It becomes a found footage horror movie slowly zooming out to show more of the cabin and eventually changing format as the story turns increasingly absurd and surreal.

And now, in secret as far as I know, writer/director Casper Kelly (Too Many Cooks, the Cheddar Goblin commercial in MANDY) has made a continuation with a totally different, but still very impressive, Christmas/horror/comedy conceit. It centers on part 1 character Zoe (Andrea Laing, Step Up: High Water), revealed to have survived the massacre at the cabin (though her fiance did not). She wakes up in a hospital, haunted by hallucinations of the ultimate villain of the first film – the cursed yule log that flies around bashing people to death. Her failure to adjust to the trauma ends up costing her her job, so her fun gay friend Jakester (Chase Steven Anderson, “Ticket Booth Operator,” THE COLOR PURPLE [2023]) convinces her they should go to Cancun to get away from it all. But their car breaks down at the exit to a picturesque little town called Mistletoe, in time for “the festival.” You know – the annual yule log festival. (read the rest of this shit…)

December 9th, 2024 | 7 Comments »

Sting

STING is a 2024 killer spider picture, but it’s not the French one that I already reviewed. That’s INFESTED. This one is set in New York City but hails from Australia. I remember seeing a trailer and being interested, I think I heard not-great things when it came out, but then when I saw it was on Hulu I noticed that the writer-director was Kiah Roache-Turner. That’s the guy that did WYRMWOOD: ROAD OF THE DEAD (2014) and WYRMWOOD: APOCALYPSE (2021), two fun movies about people roaming a post-apocalyptic world with cars powered by zombie breath. Well shit, yeah, I’ll watch his spider movie.

Just like he did in WYRMWOOD, Roache-Turner uses an absurd and inexplicable sci-fi disaster to set up the scenario he wants to tell a story within. A news broadcast tells us we’re in the midst of the worst ice storm in New York state history, and that it’s believed to be connected to the asteroid shower that came unusually close to Earth. During the opening credits a tiny rock from space shoots through an apartment window and a dollhouse inside the apartment.

The rock cracks open and a spider crawls out and through the floors of the miniature home. The sequence is very stylized, and foreshadows that this spider will grow to this scale in relation to the actual building, so I wasn’t sure until after the credits that yes, this literally happened in the story – a spider fell from the stars, like the Blob or the Body Snatch plants or Venom in SPIDER-MAN 3. (read the rest of this shit…)

December 5th, 2024 | 7 Comments »

Blue Giant

Look, I’m not trying to be a role model here, I’m just telling you what happened. I saw that there was an anime movie about jazz musicians, and I was intrigued. It’s called BLUE GIANT, and it’s from 2023, directed by Yuzuru Tachikawa (DEATH BILLIARDS), based on a manga by Shinichi Ishizuka, adapted by someone who goes by “NUMBER 8” and served as “editor and story director” for the manga. The studio behind it is called NUT. You can get it on blu-ray and it’s also on Netflix.

It’s about this young guy named Dai Miyamoto (Yuki Yamada, SHOPLIFTERS, GODZILLA MINUS ONE) who’s introduced living out a Bleeding Gums Murphy fantasy, playing saxophone alone, outdoors by a river bank on a snowy night, the sound of the wind and his gasps of breath as prominent as the squawks of his horn. He vows to become the greatest jazz musician in the world, and moves to Tokyo, where he surprises Shunji Tamada (Amane Okayama), an old friend from back home in Sendai, by showing up at his doorstep. (read the rest of this shit…)

December 4th, 2024 | 9 Comments »

Skinned Deep

SKINNED DEEP is a movie released direct-to-video in 2004 by Fangoria and Gorezone Video. For that reason I recognized the cover but never paid any attention to it until Mr. Majestyk recommended it. Turns out it’s a really interesting one – if not great, at least very distinct. It’s the directorial debut of Gabriel Bartalos, a makeup effects guy who worked on DOLLS, the LEPRECHAUN movies and the BASKET CASE sequels. More recently he did the zombie horse in ARMY OF THE DEAD and worked on DESTROY ALL NEIGHBORS.

Different parts of it reminded me of HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, THE ROAD WARRIOR, THE HILLS HAVE EYES and TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE 2, except with acting out of a John Waters movie and a few characters that would work in FREAKED or a Brian Yuzna movie. It has a grimy indie look to it and okay, I’m doing the math in my head here and it does seem that 2004 was 20 years ago, but I definitely would’ve guessed this was older than that – in a good way. This does not seem like the same year as DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, SEED OF CHUCKY, CURSED and EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING. I don’t know, maybe it’s that low budget rawness.

It opens with a (reportedly done for real) scarification ritual branding an S and a D into skin, which is not part of the story, just an intense way to lead into the title card. Next an old man driving at night is killed by a monster-faced man with goggles bolted into his head and a bear trap jaw who swings a grappling hook at him and causes his car to flip. This is intercut with close ups of a bodybuilder flexing. We don’t see the muscle man’s face, and much later we’ll learn that he doesn’t have a head at all. This one is pretty different from other movies, is what I’m getting at here. (read the rest of this shit…)

December 3rd, 2024 | 5 Comments »

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