"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Vern survives the FACES OF DEATH 30th Anniversary Edition!!

I know we got some home theater buffs out there, right? Let’s say you have an HDTV, a Blu-Ray player, 5.1 surround (or whatever the best is these days), the whole setup. How do you feel about using all that to watch a guy eat monkey brains?

What I’m getting at, my friends, is that FACES OF DEATH came out on Blu-Ray and a new 30th anniversary DVD earlier this month. I don’t think Harry covered it in his column, so I thought I would give my thoughts on this important event.

As you know, FACES OF DEATH is one of those movies with a reputation so vile, so putrid that it’s not even thought of as a movie. It’s just a tape. A tape more hated than BATMAN AND ROBIN or MEET THE SPARTANS – one most people are disgusted by without having necessarily seen it. Like I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE only worse, because it has REAL DEATH IN IT! (read the rest of this shit…)

October 17th, 2008 | 3 Comments »

1408

To be honest I had written off the possibility of good Stephen King-based movies a while back. It seemed like that whole thing had run its course, but then I saw THE MIST and that was an enjoyable one. So I gave 1408 a shot, what the hell.

John Cusack plays a writer of haunted places guidebooks travelling around to allegedly haunted rooms, testing them, staying the night and writing about them. But he’s kind of a dick about it and doesn’t even believe in ghosts. And it’s indicated that something tragic happened in New York that caused him to leave his wife. But now he wants to go back to New York for the first time to stay in this room he found out about, 1408 at the Dolphin, where a whole bunch of people have killed themselves. And of course he gets in, the room terrorizes him for real, he learns about himself and explores the traumas of his life and faces why he left his wife. Spoooooky. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 15th, 2008 | 6 Comments »

Reeker and No Man’s Land: The Rise of Reeker

I’d been meaning to see REEKER since it was mentioned in the Fangoria magazine, then I was reminded by some list of recommended slasher movies. I seem to have pretty much squeezed the juice out of this genre but every year around Halloween I start scouring again just in case there’s a couple drops I missed. And there probaly are still some good ones out there that I haven’t seen.

I’m not sure this one counts, though. It’s okay. It’s about a group of older-looking college students carpooling to AREA 52 – THE WORLD’S BIGGEST RAVE! Two women, three men, and one of the men just stole a box full of ecstasy pills from a psychotic corpse-fucker. And that guy is sort of mad about it. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 13th, 2008 | No Comments »

Rawhead Rex

This year they came out with a Clive Barker movie called MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN. Didn’t play anywhere near here so I haven’t seen it yet, but I did see the trailer and when they said the title at the end everybody laughed. Real mature, fellas, real mature. Well, this is an older Clive Barker picture and luckily nobody would ever be able to imagine a dirty interpretation of this particular title. I mean how would you even have a gay porno called that, unless you had a guy in it named Rex. But how many guys are named Rex in this day and age, I doubt something like that would happen.

Anyway this is your basic monster rampage picture but also with some of your typical Clive Barker themes. An American family is investigating their Irish homeland because dad’s writing some book. While checking out an old church, lightning strikes an ancient stone statue, resurrecting an 8′ tall monster-faced berserker bastard who we assume is named Rawhead Rex, although I don’t think anybody ever calls him that and he definitely doesn’t introduce himself. He is not so much a talker as a doer, he goes around mangling people, throwing people through walls, biting off people’s heads and those sorts of activities. Let’s say you’re a woman standing indoors, he might bust through the window and grab you by the neck and tear your clothes off and carry you out the door. That’s just who Rawhead Rex is, that’s what he does. You can make your own judgments on his lifestyle, and if you’re against it like I am don’t worry, he eventually gets defeated by that glowing magic they had in the ’80s that looked suspiciously like it was drawn on frame by frame. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 11th, 2008 | 13 Comments »

The Howling

If you ask me, AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON is the best werewolf picture mankind has developed so far. But watching THE HOWLING again reminded me there’s at least one giving a little friendly competition, keeping AMERICAN WEREWOLF honest. Even if it’s not as good.

THE HOWLING is directed by Joe “GREMLINS” Dante, so it has his usual Cormanite monster nerd business: Dick Miller in a supporting role, cameos by Roger Corman and Forrey Ackerman, some black humor here and there. But the tone is more serious than AMERICAN WEREWOLF and way more serious than anything else Dante’s ever done. Filmatically I would say it’s his best directing job by far. Instead of AMERICAN WEREWOLF’s contemporary twist on urban gothic THE HOWLING starts out as straight up sleazy urban noir, werewolves in the world of serial killing and bondage porn. At times it feels more like a David Cronenberg than a Joe Dante. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 11th, 2008 | 5 Comments »

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare

So here we are. The VERY LAST time we will ever see Freddy Krueger. Dead forever. Never, ever again will he appear in a movie of any kind, because this at last is the end of him. It says it right there in the title, twice. He is dead, and this is the final one. And what a journey it’s been. But thank God we have this precious last 89 minutes to spend with him.

I don’t know if all the New Line Cinema people were wearing funeral clothes when they made this, but behind the scenes it was kind of a family affair. Director Rachel Talalay had been working on the Freddy pictures since part 1, usually as a producer. This was her first time directing – she later did TANK GIRL. She’s also the only woman to ever direct a Freddy movie. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 8th, 2008 | 29 Comments »

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer

I’m surprised I haven’t seen this one hyped up on the internet too much. You know how internet people love to be the one who discovered some small time independent movie, so they overdo it in praising the ones they like. At the same time they love their horror mixed with wackiness. Even today, if they read that Bruce Campbell is appearing in a movie, their first thought is that it will be a great movie. And they have seriously considered naming their first child Shaunofthedead. Also they enjoy the hyperbole. And I honestly don’t think it’s because they know they could get quoted on the DVD, I think it’s just their personality to say everything is the BEST. THING. EVER. (or more often worst, but that’s a different topic.)

Despite all that I haven’t heard much about JACK BROOKS: MONSTER SLAYER, and only knew of it because of the cover story in Fangoria that I didn’t read. From the wacky title and the guy-you’ve-never-heard-of-painted-up-to-look-awesome-like-it’s-BIG-TROUBLE-IN-LITTLE-CHINA-or-something cover this seems like a movie I shouldn’t bother watching, but on a whim I did. I think it’s because I remembered a couple funny looking monster pictures in that Fangoria article. Didn’t read it, but I looked at the pictures. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 8th, 2008 | 6 Comments »

Red

Avery (Brian Cox) treats his dog Red like family. He doesn’t talk to him in funny voices or make him wear a dog sweater. But he does apologize to him for making him wait while he gets his things together to go fishing. The movie gets rolling in about scene 2 when three teenagers show up, pretend to make small talk, try to rob him, and then shoot Red.

Going in I really thought this was gonna be the rural version of DEATH WISH 2. Instead of his housekeeper and daughter getting raped it’s his dog getting killed. Instead of creeps infesting L.A. it’s brats in the woods of rural Oregon. Avery tris talking to the boy’s father, but the boy’s father is Tom Sizemore. So that doesn’t work out. He tries to go through the police, through the courts, but there’s not enough evidence and the kids are too connected, so the system fails him. But he knows guns. He’s a veteran. Time for revenge? (read the rest of this shit…)

October 8th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

The Flurry in Missouri

Riding the bus home everybody was talking about it. What do you think’s gonna happen? Did you hear what she said this time? Do people really like her? Young women carrying their potluck meals to get-togethers, or calling home for somebody to preheat the oven. Never in my life have I seen – or felt – such excitement for a fucking vice presidential debate.

But I think most of them were expecting a blowout, like Gibson vs. Palin, or Couric vs. Palin, or The View vs. McCain. But honestly I knew better. Yes, she’s a moron who in recent interviews could not name a single magazine or newspaper that she’s ever read, or a Supreme Court case besides Roe v. Wade, or a reason why the things she’s been saying in dozens of speeches or in other interviews (like the one about she knows foreign policy because she lives close to Russia) have any meaning or logic behind them. But I figured they could train her for this carefully planned debate structure. After her interviews made her look like the least qualified person to ever run for office (including Dolemite), the expectations were real low. Not to mention the lowered bar set by Bush, who made so little sense in the 2004 debates that to this day I believe the “conspiracy theory” that he had an earpiece and was confused about who was saying what to him. And he still won.

So as long as she comes out there with two shoes on, no drool on her chin, and never says the n-word, obviously everyone is going to say she did better than expected. And to be honest I was very impressed by her poise and eloquence. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 4th, 2008 | No Comments »

Miracle at St. Anna

According to the Rotten Tomatoes, Spike Lee’s new World War II epic has a 27% organic and plump rating (or whatever). In other words it has a lower approval rating than George Bush. Also, by the way, lower than CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK or DAREDEVIL.

I don’t think that’s fair. This movie is WAY better than George Bush. The other thing that’s been unfair is how all the pre-release coverage was about Lee’s alleged feud with Clint Eastwood. The movie is about the Buffalo Soldiers (or “experimental colored brigade” as a white commanding officer calls them in the movie) so some reporter got Lee to say something about there not being enough brothers on the wall in FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. Then somebody told Clint that Spike said some shit and got Clint to say some shit back and then the two quotes were taken out of context and repeated, so in the IMDb headlines and in the imaginations of movie fans around the world it turned into a battle between Spike and Clint instead of a movie that can stand on its own. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 1st, 2008 | 1 Comment »

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