It’s here – that special time of year when I drink eggnog, watch the Star Wars Holiday Special, and try to find some new Christmas horror or crime movies that hit the spot. This year I watched one that’s a distant cousin of the killer doll movie.
In fact, the kind of doll that’s a Christmas present. POOKA! (2018) fulfills the important holiday horror movie duty of having lots of seasonal content. It centers around this Christmas season fad toy. Multiple scenes take place at a Christmas tree lot. The protagonist practices a monologue from A Christmas Carol for an acting audition, and the story includes a supernaturally-looking-back-at-your-life aspect vaguely similar to that or IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. There’s a (weirdly birthday-like) Christmas party. And lots of red and green lights. So it does the trick. (read the rest of this shit…)
TOY SOLDIERS is a kid’s movie clashing with an action movie. It’s rated-R and surprisingly legit, opening with chaos in Colombia, where Luis Cali (Andrew Divoff, WISHMASTER), the son of a captured narco-terrorist, has a court room held hostage. Within the first four minutes of the movie they throw a woman out of a high window and a judge out of a helicopter (an impressive skydiving stunt). Later they will take over a boarding school full of the children of American politicians and super-riches, and being that Columbine has not happened they will have no compunction about shooting the place up.
STAND BY ME is Stephen King’s latest chiller, a spooky tale of kids going on a long walk singing TV show themes. Okay, I guess it’s more of a coming of age drama type deal, and it came out in 1986, and I don’t generally use the term “chiller.” This opening paragraph could use some work actually.
Well, not too many people got a chance to examine the evidence, but MR. STITCH was the first solid proof that Roger Avary could stand on his own without reminding anybody of his video store co-worker Quentin Tarantino. Two years after winning an Oscar for PULP FICTION he was directing a DTV movie. Of course around here we know there’s no shame in that, but I guess it was not the original plan, just what happened when him and Rutger Hauer couldn’t agree on anything, according to 
