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Christmas 2024 - Day 2 - Violent Night (2022)

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

...two snifters of brandy!

Much like Red One is getting a lot of attention this year (though apparently not so much at the box office), I recall there being a lot of talk around Violent Night a couple of years ago and, whilst I didn't see it at the time, it was one I tucked away in the back of my mind to cover on here. I probably had it earmarked to watch last year actually but, you know, old twofer over here had to skip out early. With the name and move poster I was initially worried this might be a horror movie that I'd have to put off until next year but this falls into the action genre with some comedy mixed in. Director Tommy Wirkola is someone I have stashed on the horror list in the shape of 2009's Dead Snow but looking at his other work, 'Spermageddon' might have just earned a place on my watchlist as well from the name alone. Violent Night opens with a disgruntled mall Santa taking a quick break on Christmas Eve to knock back a few brewskis and rant to a fellow patron about 'those damn kids' who don't even believe in the spirit of Christmas anymore, they're just take, take, take and only want Santa so he can deliver them some video games. As Alfred once taught us, there's a lot of bad isms floating around this world but one of the worst is commercialism. Erm, actually, I'm pretty sure racism is worse but maybe that's just me. The bar tender thinks she's going to have a job on her hands when he goes to leave but ends up taking a door that leads to the roof. When she goes to find him, she finds the roof empty but up in the sky…could it be?!

It is!

The majesty is lost a little when he promptly throws up seconds later, his chunks landing squarely on her head.

Meanwhile, seperated couple Jason, Linda and their daughter Trudy are visiting Jason's family home for the holiday's and it proves to be an icy affair despite being surrounded by such oppulence. As part of the wealthy Lightstone family, Jason's sister is vying to be the center of attention in their mother's eyes in the hope of being selected as the next in line to run the family business and inherit the power and wealth that comes with that title.

Santa just so happens to be passing back and makes his way down one of the many fireplaces in this grand mansion but, much like John McClane in Die Hard, Santa is in the wrong place at the wrong time as a band of mercanaries siege control of the house, killing the hired help and taking the Lighstone family hostage. At least Santa is still wearing shoes when all this goes down. For this is just one in a long line of 'It's like Die Hard but…' movies that brought us such classics as Die Hard but on a boat (Under Siege), Die Hard but on a train (Under Siege 2: Dark Territory) and Die Hard but in a football stadium (Final Score). This time we have Die Hard but it's a Christmas movie. No, wait, Die Hard but Santa is John McClane.

There's all sorts of little nods to the film along the way, such as Santa's use of a walkie talkie, a character named Al and Santa's 'Naughty or Nice list' serving as a checklist of sort of the baddies that are still alive. Sort of like that list that McClane makes as he's piecing together all of Hans' associates. I'm pretty sure the film even gets name dropped at one point when Santa pulls out 'Die Hard on blu-ray' whilst searching in his magic sack for a weapon.

There's also an extended homage to Home Alone which grated on me a little at first as it felt like a bit of a tonal shift and a bit too on the nose of a reference but they manage to save it by making use of their more adult rating to push the boat out a little on the violence. There's even a kill which Kevin couldn't even manage in 2 when he was lobbing bricks off rooftops, tricking people into dunking their flaming heads into flammable liquids and electrocuting people. Quite frankly, I'm ready to declare this as a new alternate Christmas classic alongside the likes of Die Hard, Home Alone or Lethal Weapon. The thing just oozes charm, the action is great, lots of funny moments, it had me invested in the characters and even got a bit schmoltzy at times which I'm not opposed to in a Christmas movie. That little deaf Dutch girl in Miracle on 34th Street gets me every time…

Santa is a total badass here but is also shown to be mortal and susceptable to injury. The suggestion seems to be that because he's grown so weary of the job, he's lost a little bit of that Christmas magic that is presumably kept him alive all these years. It adds a lot of weight to each fight that he gets involved in and feels like it has an element of that 'war of attrition' thing that McClane goes through where he's really fucked up by the end of the movie. The fights really lean into the thematic elements as well with nearby ornaments and decorations being used as makeshift weapons. Garotting someone with fairy lights, anyone? There's always a Christmas song to soundtrack the occasion too, including a Bryan Adams song I wasn't aware was a thing. Adds an interesting layer of juxtoposition as you've got this cheerful music accompanying brutal violence.

Luigi Mario himself, John Lguizamo, has a great turn as the main villain who starts off playing up to the occasions with all sorts of Christmas referneces, he's essentially doing schtick whilst his guys murder a whole bunch of dudes. But we also learn of Christmas essentially being responsible for his super villain esque origin story. At least he has something of a moustache here unlike Luigi, even if it's just stubble. Seriously, how did they fuck that up? You gave Bob Hoskins a moustache!

I feel like their showdown at the end could have had a better one liner to go out on. I was getting vibes of that 'Call an ambulance' meme: "The last Christmas…" "But not for me!" I totally called that ending as well, Pokemon The First Movie ass motherfuckers. If you haven't seen this one yet, absolutely go watch it. I can easily see this earning a place in people's holiday rotation for years to come alongside the classics. Sure it's a little derivative but I think the fact you're throwing Santa into this situation just adds a ton of novelty value and it's just tons of fun from beginning to end.

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Christmas 2024 - Day 1 - Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (1991)

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

...a killer centipede!

Sing your heart out with all of your love because Santa's coming for us, just not in the way that Aussie lady with the questionable reputation within the autistic community might have meant it but we'll come back to that in a second. For yes, it's December once again so it's time once more for us to give the 12 holiday adjacent pieces of media thing a try. We haven't managed that in a number of years and this year's Halloween wasn't a great effort but I endevour to at least better last year. 2? What a slacker. As ever we start with a horror related Christmas movie and in doing so we wrap up our little venture through the universe of Silent Night, Deadly Night. After uncharacterisicly starting with the remake, we've since seen a killer Santa, the same killer Santa but recapped by his demented younger brother, that same younger brother with a lobotomy and then a woman getting sexually assaulted with insect larva. What, you can't see the natural progression there? I say we're wrapping it up but there is talk of another remake on the way that is apparently due out next week. I can't say I'm familiar with the work of the director, Mike P. Nelson but he has a segment in one of those later VHS movies that I need to see one day. And before we start, no, subtitles don't count so we don't need to do another 'The' movie next time out. On to the show and, my goodness, I could just spend the rest of this just recapping the opening scene.

[IMAGE REDACTED BECAUSE BARE SKIN MAKES TUMBLR CRY] After the…unique story that was Initiation that seemed to deviate massively from the established series, we waste no time getting back to the heart of the series; young kids getting warped by seeing people banging. Little Derek hears a knock at the door and goes to get his mum, only to find her and her boyfriend going at it. No matter, he'll just go answer it himself. Truly a smart thing for a 7 year old kid to do in the middle of the night. Something his mum's boyfriend is keen to point out to him when he finds Derek playing with a Christmas present that was left on the front step whilst leaving the front door wide open. After sending Derek to bed, the boyfriend inspects this new toy…

Awww, it's just a musical box with jolly old St. Nick!

Well that can't be good..

As the music changing from a rendition of Jingle Bells to Chopin's Funeral March might suggest, that is indeed not good as the toy promptly goes all face hugger and starts suffocating the boyfriend.

Derek is less than enthused to see this play out. The boyfriend struggles desperately to free himself, frantically stumbiling around the living room and clawing at anything to hand. He only manages to crack his skull on the fireplace and send random items flying to the floor.

Including a set of pokers, one of which conviniently lands facing up and let's just say, as in last years The Mean One, ends up in a place that Tony from Hack the Movies would not be keen on.

We return some time later to find that Derek has been traumatised by the experience and in what seems to be some form of PTSD, refuses to speak. But at least he gets to watch the Rambo cartoon. Now, this is not something I've seen but is one of those weird examples of movies aimed at adults that suddenly became TV shows. Bill and Ted, Bettlejuice, Conan the Babarian, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Toxic Avengers, The Real Ghostbusters, Highlander, Police Academy, Robocop…the list goes on. I think they just made cartoons out of anything in those days, hell I used to watch Hammerman when I was a kid. You know, that show based on MC Hammer having talking shoes?

And here's a suprise, it's Kim and Lonnie from the last movie just showing up out of the blue. I don't know if I talked about Lonnie but he was the younger brother of Kim's boyfriend who ended up involved in the sacrifical plot before Kim came to her senses and shanked that witch that was shoving cockroach eggs up her snatch. Derek's mother, Sarah, figures she might be able to snap Derek out of his episode by taking him to get a new toy at the local toy store, Petto's. Everytime that name comes up it sure does sound like they're saying something else…

At the store they find the owner, Joe, and his son Pino. Wait just a second here…Joe Petto? Pino? Oh no, is this the non copywright infringing Pinocchio horror film 30 years before it became cool to do that sort of thing?! Apparently that Blood and Honey guy is actually doing that next year. He's really churning those things out, huh? There's going to be an Avengers esque crossover at some point as well that ties them all together. As much as I am resistant to these movies because they feel really baity like the Sharknado movies, I kinda do appreciate the commitment to the bit. I'm also burying the lead slightly here because, Jiminy Jillikers, it's Mickey Rooney! That Simpsons bit is probably the thing I know him most from but he seems to play Santa a lot, especially in those Rankin/Bass specials. I know he was a big child actor though and also had that unfortuate turn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, one of the most shocking cases of yellow face since John Wayne played Ghengis Khan.

And sure, he may look all smiles and sunshine here but as soon as the coast is clear, he's threatening to beat the shit out of Pino and getting drunk off his ass. I don't know how often Rooney made it a habit of playing against type but I can imagine this works a lot better if you already have that image of him. Still, it comes across well enough that he seems like this kindly old man and then suddenly he's got the crazy eyes.

There's also this drifter looking fellow that keeps showing up and seems to be taking an interest in Derek and Sarah so it feels like the movie is trying to misdirect you or leave it up in the air who the real killer might be but when you have Rooney going nutso every five minutes, it's hard to look anywhere other than at him.

Meanwhile, at the mall, the drifter is playing Santa and amongst his colleagues is…wait, is that Clint Howard? Holy shit, it's Ricky, also from Initiation! Now wait just a goddamn minute, I'm pretty sure you're meant to be dead. And if not, I have no idea how you passed a DBS check because you definitely killed like 5 people in that movie.

The drifter spots Derek out in the crowd of people waiting to see Santa and demands to take Ricky's spot in the seat. A little girl is up first but he spends the entire time distracted and staring at Derek which again Derek is a little perturbed by. My gosh, if it's not Mickey Rooney stealing scenes it's this kid. I swear you can just pause at random intervals at any point this kid is on screen and you have a meme worthy reaction face. It's like the fact that he's mute 99% of the time in this movie made him really sell his emotions through his body language or facial expressions and he just goes completely over the top everytime. This is unintentional comedy at it's finest because I laugh my ass off everytime he shows up.

Another highlight amongst the creepy vibes this movie is giving off is the clearly 40 year old man playing 18 who is dating Derk's babysitter here whilst making thinly veiled threats at Lonnie. Spoiler alert though because this movie embrace's the slasher movie lifestyle and he'll get his later when he commits the cardinal sin of trying to get his end away.

Speaking of which, cue 5 minute gratitious sex scene featuring those two, plus Sarah and the drifter getting it on in the back of his truck at Sarah's office. You know that trend that came up on Twitter for a while where everyone was being prudish and acting like anyone showing a hint of nipple was an affront to nature? They'd hate this. Just lots of heavy panting and dry humping.

During which Joe Petto dressed as Santa unleashes a bunch of killer toys on the unsuspecting 'teens' who begin to question where all these things came from.

The boyfriend doesn't notice a disembodied hand climbing up his leg though and just thinks his girfield is giving him a finger of fudge, dude really enjoys it though.

When Derek gets up to find out what all the noise is, he promptly gets bundled up in Petto's sack and whisked away which feels like there's any number of inappropriate jokes to make there.

It's only at this point once they're done banging that the drifter, who it's revealed is Derek's real father, reveals his true intentions of being back in town. When he was a kid, he grew up in the same town as where Petto had a store and apparently Petto was accused of tampering with some toys that lead to some kids being injured, maybe even killed. Oh sure, just wait until you've had your little fun to share that nugget of information why don't you. Now, I can't possibly hope to do the finale justice so I can only suggest you check it out yourself. Let's just say the concept of a robot with an Oedipus complex is a big factor. In fact, I would strongly suggest you check this movie out in general if, like me, you are a sucker for those 'so bad it's good' type flicks. After the middling effort of 3 and the bizzarities of 4, this entry really ends the series with a bang with it's off the wall plot points, cheesy effects and over the top acting. It really does capture the vibe of the first two movies that made me enjoy them so much. There's a suprising level of depth to it in the sense that, despite being obviously sub par on a technical level, it's still able to convey what it needs to in order to get it's message across such as the duality of Petto; all sweet and innocent to his customers but a surly bastard behind closed doors. Or the immediate sense of there being something uncanny about Pino from the first time you see him, with the reasons becoming apparent as the movie wears on (as if the whole Pinnochio thing wasn't already a give away). I can only hope this new remake attains this same level of enjoyment for me, I guess we'll come back in a couple of years and find out.

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Halloween 2024 - Day 8 - Halloween (1978)

Better late than never...

Well, that's another October in the books (in the pocket, out of sight) and I'm afraid to say it's been another sub par showing from myself. Technically a very slight improvement from last year but still a far cry from years previous where I was getting within touching distance of the full 31 most years. Must try harder. But what better way to round out the month and celebrate All Hallows Eve (now someway removed at time of writing but who's counting) than with our customary look at the Halloween franchise itself. But wait, didn't we just wrap this up last year with Halloween Ends? The movie franchise is dormant for now and that TV show is still just in development so what are we to do? In the words of the Average White Band; let's go round again.

Not all of them, obviously, just the ones I skipped over at points when I was being lazy. Which is namely Halloween (1978), Halloween II (1981), Halloween H20 and Halloween Resurrection. Though, those first two were ones that I had watched alongside Season of the Witch during 'year zero' before the start of this blog so I had continued on to 4 during year one in the interest of furthering my own journey through the history of horror. At our usual rate that will last us until 2027 at which point someone is sure to have pumped out another new Michael Myers related media. Failing that, there's probably a documentary or something that can fill a gap. Something in the vein of Crystal Lake Memories, though hopefully not as long because 6 hrs 40 minutes? Sheesh. Speaking of Friday the 13th and TV show adaptations, I didn't know they were doing a prequel series at the camp. Presumably it would culminate with Jason drowning? It's a novel way of keeping within the universe but not going the standard slasher route, at least I assume it wouldn't be. I'd picture more of a teen dramedy thing that maybe leans more into the horror later on. But to the business at hand and, as the title card above would suggest it's the grandaddy of them all, the original Halloween from all the way back in 1978. To think we'll be celebrating 50 years of this movie in just a few years time, crazy. Right from the word go here even through something as simple as the opening credits we're establishing the creepy atmosphere as that iconic theme plays the names of our various stars and a jack o'lantern on which we slowly zoom in until it almost envelops the entire screen. It's a theme that has to go down as one of the greatest pieces of music in the history of cinema, so itense, forboding and it envokes this feeling of urgency, not unlike what many of Michael's victims feel over the course of the franchise as they try to flee from him. It's becomes so versatile during the movie as well, whether it's being slowed down to fit a slighty different tone or being used as a Michael alarm of sorts to indicate he's nearby, or as a red herring when the movie is trying to trick you into thinking that he is just so it can mess with you. The use of sound adds so much to the movie, right down to the very end when think Loomis has banished this great evil forever but little does he know that this is just the start of a phenomenon that will last for decades to come, with Michael's heavy breathing just before the credits reminding us all that he's still out there, lurking in the darkness waiting to strike again.

Much like Peeping Tom that we looked out earlier in this marathon, this film too starts out with a unique POV shot, this time from the clown mask of young Michael as he butchers his sister to death. It's probably for the best that he went with something more subtle in his choice of mask upon reaching adulthood, I'm not sure if the character would have been quite as iconic in a clown mask.

That shot and the follow up of an almost catatonic Michael in his clown costume would be re-visited in Part 4 with Jamie Lloyd, Laurie's daughter and Michael's niece (in that parralell universe at least), when she stabs her foster mother to death.

A less obvious Michael trope his how adept he apparently is at driving cars despite logically never spending a second behind the wheel of one considering he's been in an asylum most of his life. Much like he would commit a little GTA in Part 5, he does so again here when Loomis goes to collect him ahead of a court hearing, only for Michael to jump in the car and speed off.

From here he makes his way back home to Haddonfield where we slowly piece together the stops he's made along the way that have been helping him create his signature look, whether that's robbing the local hardware store for his Shatner mask, rope and knives or the blue collar worker he kills by the side of the road before making off with his coveralls.

Michael seems to spend most of his time stalking Laurie, such as when she's in class and he's just standing conspicuously across the street gawking through the window. Laurie is discussing the idea of fate and destiny here which is almost certainly coincidental considering they couldn't possibly have forseen how succesful the movie would become but it feels apt that the two of them were destined to do this forever. Well, until Michael gets thrown into the wood chipper of course. Or maybe it's a subtle way of the filmmakers of aluding to a connection between the two characters. We wouldn't know about their family connection until the next movie so I'm curious as to whether this was planned at this point or if I'm just reading into this too much. Going back to sound, the movie isn't afraid to be quiet when it needs to in order to let a moment sink in or build some tension. It's something that makes seeing this again very interesting in having that comparison against something like Terrifier 2 which is very much in your face all the time, or even some of the later movies where Michael takes on this much more supernatural element given how invulnerable he seems to become. Everything feels much more grounded in reality, this mix of paranoia as we see Michael stalk his way through the town spying on Laurie and her friends, and Loomis raving to anyone who will listen about the danger that is being visited upon Haddonfield.

That's not to say Michael doesn't display some of that freakish strength he becomes known for when he impales one of the teens with a butcher knife. That's a strong knife if it can hold up a near grown ass man, you could sell that on late night TV like when they show them cutting shoes with knives. Whilst not as overt as some others in the genre, the subtext of horror movies advocating for abstinence makes an apperance whilst Laurie's friends are trying to arrange a place to meet up and bang during their baby sitting duties. Michael offs one of them when he goes for a beer and takes his place back upstairs whilst under heavy disguise. I'm very torn on this because you take one look at it and it's completely out of tone with the rest of the movie, not to mention the rest of the franchise. But then again, that's me using existing knowledge of the character and how he plays out over the dozen or so movies to make judgments towards this particular depiction. There would have been nothing to go on that this point so if Michael wants to dress up as a ghost, well maybe that's just his thing. Plus, as a young man he would have the same sort of urges as any other so maybe this was just his twisted idea of trying to get some. Disguise himself as the boyfriend and then make his move. He arguablly only snaps because the girl becomes annoyed in him not saying anything so she decides to phone Laurie instead, who knows what his next move would have been if she hadn't done that.

I've touched upon Loomis a few times so far but I'd like to take a moment to really stress my appreciation for him not only here but throughout his run in the franchise. He really does elevate some of those later movies whilst the series was on a decline and Donald Pleasance just generally brings a certain gravatas to proceedings that you don't get in things like Friday the 13th. You get to see how proceedings really take a tole on Loomis, both mentally and physically, as the movies progress as desperation takes hold and he's willingly to go to extremes to try and stop Michael once and for all. Whilst he's not at that level just yet, he really helps to sell just what we're dealing with in Michael when delivers that famous, haunting monologue about meeting Michael at a young age and coming to learn this was someone incapable of feeling, incapable of understanding right and wrong, and knowing that the only right thing to do was to keep that boy locked up because what was living behind that's boy's eyes was pure evil.

I'd also like to show my appreciation to this particular shot following Laurie's discovery of her friends bodies. As she backs into a corner, unable to properly comprehend what she's found, something sinister looks in the darkness as Michael's mask slowly fades into view before he lunges from the shadows.What could have easily been a jump scare instead lends an extra layer of sympathy from the viewer towards Laurie and just ramps up the tension further. For a brief moment we realise that he is there but Laurie remains oblivious, leaving us as helpless bystanders as we await Michael's next attack. It really is a joy to re-visit this and see from what humble beginnings this horror juggernaut spawned. Even down to the kills, where later entries would find themselves engaging in a never ending game of oneupsmanship with other movies trying to see who could come up with the most goriest, extreme and over the top moments, there are several cases here where Michael is more than willing to get his hands dirty the old fashioned way and simply choke the life out of his victims.

And as the movie reaches builds to it's crescendo and Loomis makes his showstopping apperance at the last second to save the day, you are left with a choice. Do you choose to believe that Michael has perished, treat this as a self contained story and move on with your life? Or do you follow Michael down the rabbit hole that will span the next 40+ years? As if there was any choice…Michael Myers will return next year in Halloween II. We can only hope there will be a full compliment of 30 movies before we get there.

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Halloween 2024 - Day 7 - Terrifier 2 (2022)

Send in the clowns...

A year ago on this very blog we watched a little movie by the name of Terrifier, a gore porn laden romp with an eeriely captivating villain in the shape of Art the Clown. I had initially prophesied that this would be the one and only apperance of Mr Clown because we don't take kindly that sort of hyper violence around here. Unfortunately, that prophecy hasn't come to pass for one reason…well, actually two reasons but we'll come back to that. The more pressing issue is something that is doing gangbusters at the time of writing; Terrifier 3. Quickly surpassing $55m in box office takings saw Art's latest outing shoot to the top of the US box office charts and take it's place as the highest grossing unrated film of all time. But why would that change my mind about proceeding on with this franchise? It's a Christmas movie.

They found my one weakness, a Christmas horror movie. Like Silent Night, Bloody Night and Black Christmas before it, I feel duty bound to see this movie but we can't just dive head long into the 3rd movie and leave a gaping hole in our knowledge of Art lore. There could be cruical plot points that we'd be missing so, despite an enourmous amount of trepidation, I reluctantly sat down to see this sequel. And frankly, as little as I would expected it, there is a lot of stuff going on here that is seemingly going to be vital to the franchise as it firmly sets it's sights on film number 4 at some point in the future. No longer is this a movie of disposable characters that are merely fodder for Art's depraved bloodlust, mere playthings for him to torture whilst the adoring viewers at home cheer him on as he commits ever increasing acts of horror. This time we actually have characters we can feel invested in and pray actually make it out alive by the end.

Namely young Sienna, our final girl who dons a valkyrie type outfit for a large portion of the film, fitting for her position as a sort of antithesis of Art. She is a beacon of hope amidst the darkness and almost seems to have been ordained as the one person that may be able to bring Art's reign of terror to an end. But if the first movie taught us anything it's that nothing is off the table here. We saw how Tara came a cropper there so who's to say that the same couldn't happen to Sienna? It brings a whole extra sense of tension when no one in the film feels truly safe, not even our protaginist. There's a feeling in every scene that Art could pop up at any moment ready to cave someone's head in or slit their throat, the dread building with each passing second as if someone were turning the crank on the world's most demented jack in the box. The human element is not the only thing that has been ramped up here, if you thought the first movie was disturbing then you haven't seen anything yet. Just utter the words 'bedroom scene' to anyone that has seen this and it's bound to elicit a reaction. But Art in general revels in his actions unlike his big name slasher brethern before him. I've said before that guys like Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees have a very ruthless effiency to them, kill and move on to the next victim. Art would much rather sit and watch you suffer, your cries of agony like a symphony, the pain on your face is a piece of fine art for him to admire. So why then does a film that I enjoyed much more than the first and one so dripping with atmosphere fill me with such ambivelance? (Which means feeling two opposite irrececoncilible emotions about the same thing) Well, that atmosphere arguablly goes a bit too far in creating an immensense sense of dread that permeates every single scene, an atmosphere so opprossesive that it's almost aniexity enducing when it feels like your favourites might be seconds away from being disembowled. It's a movie that feels so dark and grimy that I felt like I needed to shower afterwards. And what small measure of cathartic joy you might feel from seeing Art defeated is ripped away from you knowing he'll be back again for 3…and 4…and probaby 5, 6 and 7. It put's me in mind of something like Return of the Living Dead, being in this entirely no win situation as your droom draws closer and closer. Art is inevtiable, a reminder of our own fragile mortality upon this ever spinning world. At least the borderline comedic violence and effects during the kills does offer some scant relief, the victim's wounds looking like live action cartoons at times did break the immersion somewhat but at least they dragged me out of the deeply depressing world of Art for a second.

But it's hard to truly escape it when they have such unspeakable horrors as people watching Night of the Living dead in fullscreen. This is far more evil than anything Art could ever do. As much as I don't want to, I'm afraid that we'll be back here again for Christmas 2025 for Art to make it a truly red Christmas.. But wait, what about that other reason I wanted to see this? Just like in the movie itself, we're going to sneak it in as a little bonus at the end. For who should pop up during the mid credit scene?

Why, Chris Jericho of course! I had known about his apperance in this from his podcast some years ago, which is where the original movie found it's way onto my list, and we do like our wrestling adjacent media around here. Why, we can even do a CM Punk type recap! We'll keep this fairly limited rather than try to cover his whole career. As of late he has been seen leading a stable in AEW by the name of 'The Learning Tree', a moniker shared by Jericho himself who plays the role of an obnoxious and insincere veteran offering to share his wisdom with the younger generation but is obviously only out to further his own career. This has been met with negative reactions but moreso in a 'go home heat' sort of way with audible chants of 'please retire' during his matches and segments with many feeling his run is tarnishing the end of what has been a sure fire HOF career. Arguably, his opinions outside of wrestling and his wife's whereabouts on January 6th might also be going someway to tarnishing his career but that's another story. His 'technically correct' (the best kind of correct) boasts do little to help the matter either, just today on his podcast he was bragging about being in the number one movie in America, a statement that should carry as many asterixs as when he says his band, Fozzy, played to over 80,000 people in Wembley Stadium. Pretty sure when people bought those tickets it wasn't for Fozzy featuring support from AEW, just as Terrifier 3 isn't Chris Jericho featuring Art the Clown.

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Halloween 2024 - Day 6 - Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

If you die in the game, you die in real life...

If this wasn't at all obvious with movies 6 and 7, we're definitely into the 'sunk cost' stage of this franchise. The first four all had their charms despite tapering off and I'm on record as a fan of Inferno but Hellseeker and Deader felt like a bit of a chore. But, as much as my lack of keeping to a schedule might dispute this, I am a creature of habit and the end is in sight. And, if anything, we're really due to go off a cliff next year so all the more reason to stick it out and see what depths we can plumb with this series. Hellworld was filmed back to back with Deader all the way back in 2002 but sat largely unused, saved for a few showings over the years, until the pair were released direct to DVD in 2005. It's always stood out on the horizon for me as I've worked my way through the franchise given the plot ties into the world of online gaming. A strange turn for the franchise, sure, but given we're 8 movies in now I think any subject matter is fair game in order to freshen things up. Plus, this would have been right around the time of a boom in online gaming and, given the film pitches Hellraiser as an MMO, you would have had things like Ultima Online, Everquest, Runescape and even Final Fantasy XI (World of Warcraft wouldn't have existed at the time of filming but would have been out by the time the films actually released) so I can sort of see the potential in touching upon the dangers of addiction, both as an analogue to the pleasure seeking that is so prevalent in Hellraiser but also to tie in to the hot topic parent scaremongering of the day.

Nevermind all those other games though, who remembers Graal?!

The video game stuff though is largely glossed over. A friend of our main characters is said to have killed himself following his addiction to the game but it's all very vague and skimmed over during an exposition dump during his funeral.

Even the game itself is shown only briefly and I was going to compare it to a Flash game from the time but I'm pretty sure I was playing Flash games on the school computers at the time that had more gameplay than this. The Lament Configuration doesn't exactly feel like the kind of thing you would adapt into a video game either, it strips away that tactile feeling of handiling the cube, twisting and prodding to try and open it up.

What little we do see of the game is little more than a means to shuttle our main characters off to the meat and potatoes of the movie, an exclusive Hellraiser themed party taking place at Leviathan house. This is something that irked me early on with the movie, it's often said that these later movies are just a case of slapping the Cenobites onto someone else's screenplay and that they barely even show up but these fet a bit tryhard in trying to shoehorn a bunch of references in early as if to say 'See, we're a REAL Hellraiser movie'. Very quickly you get mentions of Hellraiser, Hellworld, Pinhead, Leviathan, LeMarchand, the Engineer…it's like the other extreme of not showing them at all but just trying to cram mentions in within the first few minutes.

Among our crew of party goers is none other than Superman himself (well, one of them at least) Henry Cavill.

Plus Lance Henriksen as the party host, a man with a storied past in the horror genre and notable for me at least for his role in Pumpkinhead, though I think that may have gone undocumented on this here blog.

Our friends are shown around the house but all start to experience strange visions, usually very brief and sometimes involving Pinhead making thinly veiled threats.

Spoiler alert, the twist of the movie is that Lance Henriksen's Host character is actually the father of the friend that commited suicide and he's out for revenge for what he percieves as their actions in enabling his addiction that resulted in his death. It's revealed that upon their arrival to the party, the Host drugged them with a very strong psychodelic drug and buried them in shallow graves outside with an airtube to keep them alive and prolong their suffering. The events of the movie have been playing out in their heads with cell phones left in their coffins through which the Host has been using suggestion to influence their visions. Now, this actually does bring some degree of interest to the film which had been largely boring up to this point and I did appreciate the idea of how this could play into the overarching story of addiction. If these kids are so immersed in this game then these monsters from within it could be making their way into their visions in a very violent way. The problem is that because they made pretty much zero attempt to re-contextualize this film's world and to potray the Cenobites as characters within this game, plus the fact that this movie does the exact same drive by Pinhead scenes (to borrow my own phrase from last year), these interactions just feel like more shoehorned references to justify the film bearing the Hellraiser name. If they had actually taken the time to show these kids playing the game and some digital versions of the Cenobites from which they would have formed these assocations, the whole idea might have worked better.

It would have been all moot anyway though as it's revealed at the end that the Cenobites are in fact actually real when they show up and tear the Host to shreds. Thanks for ruining my shades of grey for me, lads. Whilst I can appreciate the efforts to make the series a little more contemporary by taking this video game angle, it does also strip away a small aspect I've always liked in that all of these movies felt like they took place in the same universe. It's always come across as an anthology piece to me, the Lament Configuration managing to find it's way into someone elses hands who have these delusions of how this is going to lead them to pleasure undivisible whilst we get to sit back and watch as several hooks and chains promptly tear those delusions asunder. Ultimately, it's one of those films where I can see the genesis of a decent idea that goes unfufilled. And whilst I'm all for taking wild departures this deep into a franchise, it does feel like too big of a disconnect from the series to have ever been successful.

And so, given that this is the last appreance of Doug Bradley in this famous role, it's a run that ends in a whimper rather than a bang. Somehow I doubt his successors have much chance of living up to his mantle, especially when our next stop, Revelations, is the film that drew Clive Barker's ire and led to that very infamous tweet I have been mentioning all these years…

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Halloween 2024 - Day 5 - The Bride (1985)

Won't you be my girl Won't you be my girl Won't you be my, be my Be my girl

We do like a Universal classic monster around these parts but having previously exhausted the original line of Frankenstein movies, where are we to turn for the ongoing adventures of our stitched together friend? As the name might suggest, this adaptation very much centers around the part of the story when Dr Frankenstein intends to create a female companion for his creation. The movie is directed by Franc Roddam who interestingly helped revive Masterchef back in the mid 00's and was also the mastermind behind Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. He also directed the movie Quadrophenia. These latter two may go some way to explaining some of the casting choices here such as Phil Daniels, Tim Spall and, starring as Frankenstein himself, Sting.

This was only a recent addition to 'the list' having being on a ramble through Wikipedia that led me through Quadrophenia, Roddam and then seeing this listed amongst his filmography. I'm always on the look out for more Frankenstein adaptions and being a fan of The Police (the band, not the institution) seeing Sting in the leading role sealed the deal. I'm aware he was in the original Dune and has various other credits but the only thing I've seen him in previously is Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. Well, that and his cameos in The Simpsons and Studio 60.

His is a relatively inoffensive peformance, it's just that his parts of the movie are largely very dull for three quarters of the movie but we'll come on to that.

As mentioned, the movie starts with the Creature already in existence and his master looking to create for him a bride. Given the more sympathetic light that Frankenstein's creation is shown in during the film I'm going to go with Creature rather than Monster, just how KARLOFF intended. It almost feels like you've joined the movie partway through it and that there is a lot of assumed knowledge that the viewer will have of the general Frankenstein story and the Creature's place within it. But it does feel father apt the Creature is very much being pushed to the side within the story, Frankenstein is almost moving on and giving all of his attention to this shiny new toy and isn't interested in his flawed previous work.

I do love this shot amongst the opening sequence where Frankenstein and his associate are preparing to animate his new creation and the Creature is giving them major side eye. The Creature incidentally is played by Clancy Brown AKA The Kurgan from Highlander. This was another aspect that intruiged me given his imposing stature.

There's a lot of visual interesting set dressing during the procedure, all sorts of gizmos that Frankenstein has hooked up and various bodies and disembodied heads in jars, one that even comes alive during the lightning crashes. Though, there is potentially something fruedian about the large pole that is lowered towards the orb designed to collect the lightning and funnel it into the new creation's body.

The Creature's eagerness to be with his new partner draw's the ire of Frankenstein who promptly shows the Creature his pimp hand. This enrages the Creature who starts wrecking the place, causing an almighty explosion and raging fire that it is assumed his perishes in. Unbeknownst to Frankenstein, the Creature manages to escape into the night.

It's from here that the movie goes into two branching paths, almost exploring a nature vs nurture type system where Frankenstein's two creations make their way in the world and we see how they grow in different environments. His latest creation, named Eva after the first woman, undergoes a My Fair Lady type metamorphasis where Frankenstein and his hired help try to mold Eva in a respectable woman. Whilst she does become very eloquent and educated, she's raised in a fairly cold and sterile environment emotionally and always seems to be yurning for something more, fixed upon who she is, where she came from and why she seemingly has no memory of anything in her life.

Meanwhile, the Creature through pure happenstance befriends a dwarf, Rinaldo, who is travelling to Budapest to seek his fame and fortune in the circus with hopes of one day visiting Venice. Though undoutedly Rinaldo is able to use the fact he has a great brute of a man by his side to his advantage, the two develop a closeness that is alien to the Creature and a friendship he's never experienced before. Rinaldo even gives him a name, Viktor, meaning 'he will win'. From a pure intelligence point of view, Viktor makes some strides in understanding certain things and learning from new experiences, but his English is still quite broken and he lacks the common sense to make it on his own. Still, he finds true happiness with Rinaldo by his side, save for the fact that he longs to be with Eva who he feel shunned him. Between the two, the movie feels very lopsided as Viktor and Rinaldo's story is very heartwarming, an endearing and charming tale of these two lost souls forming a bond as Viktor learns the way of the world. It's like a more elongated version of those sections of Bride of Frankenstein where the monster meets the blind man who gives him booze and cigarettes. But that's ultimately let down by Eva's side of the story which can be quite tedious for the most part, only really starting to develop towards the end of the movie when Frankenstein starts to become jelaous, controlling and brutish as Eva starts to attact some attention from the opposite sex. What might be seen as an almost Fatherly act of protection starts to take on a much more sinister look as it becomes apparent that Frankenstein's intentions towards Eva are much more carnal in nature.

I'm a little conflicted on this one ultimately, the Viktor/Rinaldo stuff I really liked but it is dragged down by the Eva/Frankenstein portion so this is probably gonna have to settle for a 5/10, thumbs in the middle kinda vibe. It seems it was a real flop at the time, both critically and commercially, failing to get anywhere close to it's budget. I can see where they would have spent the money as well because it's certainly a well put together movie with the oppulent setting of Frankenstein's castle, lots of exeterior locations for Viktor's story, lots of fancy costume design, stunk work and big scenes with dozens of extras. Perhaps with a bit of a tighter run time and with more teases of Frankenstein's darker side earlier on might have made it a bit more enjoyable.

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Halloween 2024 - Day 4 - The Last House on the Left (1972)

The Worst is Yet to Come? Is something going to happen to her Still Remains?

Having made it through the entirity of the main line Nightmare… films, today we're going to delve deep into the past of director Wes Craven and cast our eyes over his earliest release. Something that is considerably easier to do today than it was at the time given this would have absolutely been amongst the films on Mary Whitehouse's hit list as we touched upon during Censor last year. For we are very much in the territory of the 'rape and revenge' film which isn't something I've really touched upon either in this blog or in in non-blog related viewing aside from seeing the original 'I Spit on your Grave' many moons ago. I still can't believe that got a Hollywood remake which then got several sequels. They even went as far to make a sequel to the original but, oops, we already made a movie called I Spit on your Grave 2. Well, why not I Spit on your Grave: Deja Vu? Even this movie got a remake but we're sticking to the original today.

Inspiration for this movie can be traced back to Ingmar Bergman's 'The Virgin Spring' which itself is based on an old Swedish story. I never knew Bergman was into such things, I always thought he was more of a classy bloke. You know, Seventh Seal and all that.

Last House on the Left centers around young Mari Collingwood who, on her 17th birthday, plans a night out with her friend that soon goes awry. And I'm not just referring to the impending abduction. Whilst she's getting ready, her father questions whether she's wearing a bra and points out that he can see her nipples. Bloody hell, I know it's a cliche to have the dad question his daughter's choice of outfit but this feels a little too far.

At least it does give us our first nudity of the year. Good to see you, Tor.

It isn't long though until our two friends get inadvertently trapped by the requisite murders, rapists and junkies. Amongst them is Fred 'Weasel' Podowski, played by rampant pornographer Fred J. Lincoln. That's Fred J. Lincoln, director of such films as Coming of Age, 69 Hours, Sexual Healing and Garden of Eatin'. Not nearly as good as 'The Adventures of Dick Black, the Black Dick'.

It's rather jarring how the movie cuts between these girls suffering unspeakable horrors whilst Mari's parents are back home baking her a lovely cake.

This actually encapsulates the whole movie in a way because the tone jumps all over the place. One minute you might be seeing the humilation of one of the girls as she's forced to wet herself for the amusement of her captors, the next you've got the comically inept police chief and his sidekick as they try to hitchhike in the back of a passing farm truck. Whilst that did make the movie more bearable for me in the sense that it's not just 90 minutes of wallowing in torture porn, but it feels like the movie doesn't know exactly what it wants to be. It has that very grimy, exploitation feel to it throughout but all the attempts at levity to take you out of that. I don't know that, as notable as it is, this movie is really the best excution of this idea but I'm not that inclined to look for others. It come across to me a little bit like something that appeals to people who pulled the legs off flies when they were kids. It's not quite violence for violence sake given that there is some redemption in the end but it's exactly the most triumphant of endings. Like, I still feel pretty down having finished it. It's not so much a victory but moreso the best possible loss if that makes any sense? "Hooray, the baddies are dead! Oh, those girls were still brutally rapes, tortured and murdered though…"

It is interesting to see this as a follow up to Peeping Tom having read the backlash that recieved for it's content which pales in comparison to this and they're only 12 years apart, not a massive amount of time in the grand scheme of things. Maybe that's a sign of the way these things evolves and the ever increasing heights they have to go to in the name of creating shock value.

Such as one of the killers getting his dick bitten off, which is a big plus. I'm pretty sure one of the guys get's his knob cut off in I Spit on Your Grave as well. When will these psycho's learn that it's a bad sign that your victim is suddenly very interested in you. Stockholm Syndrome probably doesn't stretch that far.

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Halloween 2024 - Day 3 - Peeping Tom (1960)

He's a peeping tom!

It's the first of our trips back into the days of yore today, back into the space year 1960 and whilst some people may scoff at the notion of watching a film made back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I can very much appreciate it when it brings me examples such as this.

If for no other reason than that certain style you get with movies of this vintage. The above scene is one of the very first things you see in the movie and it's just gorgeous. It's like if Nighthawks was set in a dingy London back alley rather than a Chicago diner. Sure the buildings may be grotty and the refuse flowing freely having long overthrown the shackles of it's bin shaped prison, but the colours really pop off the screen from the oranage lamp lights or the vibrant red of that ladie's dress. Just this one frame alone exudes more atmosphere and life than the whole of Dead 7.

Given this is 1960, I feel like colour film would have still been realatively new and it often seems like people were trying to one up each other with it's use. Everything seems to be filmed in [insert name here]vision and it's not enough to merely have colour, each release has to be more vibrant than the last which can end up looking over saturated if anything. There's something slightly unnatural about the dirty blonde hair colour of our protagnist here, like when you see the zombie in the promo material for the colorised Night of the Living Dead where he seems to have orange hair at times, it just kinda off.

The intro has a unique feel to it as well as we see a lady of the night followed into her room before being set upon with a lust for blood, not passion. Distracting framing aside with the windowed lens type effect, it gives it a found footage type feel which is interesting for the time.

The bulk of the movie does follow a more traditional filming method as we follow Mark, a seemingly nice young man whose closets are certainly full of skeletons, figuratively and almost literally, as his obsession with his camera goes so far as far as creating his own snuff films whilst bumping off his victims.

He even has his own little theater tucked away in a spare room which allows for some more fanstic shots, the juxtoposition of the rest of his life being out in the open whilst his dark secrets live within the shadows of this room.

For as much as this movie does try to build up some degree of sympathy towards Mark when it delves into his past and the sins of the Father that don't appear to have fallen too far from the tree, it feels a little misplaced when it outright shows you he's the killer within the first few minutes. Plus, it never feels like he's conflicted on what he's doing until near the end and he does give off major red flags at pretty much every turn.

It is interesting to look at this in the fullness of time though, especially when this had an apparently turbulent release and was met with scathing reviews that effectively ended the director's career. It's that age old story of what was shocking then is tame by today's standards. Though there are frequent shots of Mark photographing in a boudier type setting, there's no nudity to be seen (though probably still enough skin to worry the Tumblr morality bots) and all the murder scenes are cut away just before the moment of impact. Interestingly though, to me it feels like the impact of the camera itself that Mark carries is an inverse of life today. Whilst obviously every man, woman and child carries a camera with them thanks to modern phones, and filming is promiment with things like social media, just randomly shooting out in the street would probably met with some suspicion and certainly shoving a camera in someone's face would likely result in being invited to shove said camera where the sun doesn't shine. For Mark though, it almost gives him this sense of respectability and influence at times, for instance there's a moment when someone mistakes him for a journalist. This isn't a toy, this is a tool for an artist to capture a work of art and it arguably opens doors for Mark find another unwitting victim.

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Halloween 2024 - Day 2 - Dead 7 (2016)

The best supergroup since The Traveling Wilburys...

Apologies for the immediate tangent but for once this is a fresh addition to 'the list' so I can actually document how it came to be there. Just the other day Butterfly by Crazy Town came up on my playlist and I was reminded how their lead singer, Shifty Shellshock (…okay), passed away earlier this year. It was on his Wikipedia that I learned that he has a very brief filmography of this film, Willowbee and 1994's Clifford.

Which incidentally is potentially one of my favourite movie posters of all time based purely on Charles Grodin's expression. This movie by the way isn't about a big red dog, Grodin only makes dog movies about St. Bernards.

And it was on the entry for today's film that I proceeded to sit in shock and awe at the text that in front of me. A post-apocalyptic zombie horror western movie written and starring Nick Carter, yes that Nick Carter, and produced by The Asylum. That alone would have me interested but wait, there's more. Nick is joined by a veritable supergroup of 90's boy band alumni with entrants from Backstreet Boys, NSYNCH, 98 Degrees, O-Town and All-4-One…oh my! Given The Asylum's reputation of being a mockbuster studio, this film very much smacks of The Magnificent Seven mixed with The Walking Dead, though they're about 6 years late to the party on that Walking Dead part. Releasing within a week or so of the original with a near enough exact same name is more their style.

In the post apocalytic world, a witch doctor priestess type woman named Apocalypta threatens to raise a zombie army to overthrow what little of humanity remains so that she can take over the world (of course!). It's up to a rag tag crew of miscriants from Desert Springs to fight back and save humanity, which is where our Magnificent Seven comes up.

Jeff Timmons (98 Degrees) as Billy Sullivan, generic hero man

Carrie Keagan (not musically inclined) as Daisy Jane, generic hero man's girlfriend with the big knockers to keep male viewer's interested

Nick Carter (Backstreet Boys) as Jack Sullivan, Rick Grimes lite

Joey Fatone (NSYNC) as Whiskey Joe, the only actual decent character by way of him being the fun drunk

Howie Dorough (Backstreet Boys) as Vaquero, the Hispanic one who picked the sniper class and instantly regretted it since I don't think there is ever a need for a sniper at any point in this movie so all of his shots are from like 2 feet away as the shuffling zombie horde ambles toward him

Erik-Michael Estrada (O-Town) as Komodo, the one that picked the Samurai class and spends an inordinate amount of time slashing zombies because he wants to show off how he maxed out the sword skill

Lauren Kitt-Carter (also not muscially inclined or pictured) as Sirene, generic Native 'tracker' type who mains a Shotel for some reason and is also apparently a nepo hire given she's married to Nick Carter

Debra Wilson (not musically inclined but apparently shoot bald) as Apoclypta makes up for the fact that the character is very one note and essentially just thrust at you as the big bad without any explination or reason. She spends half the time just screaming and pulling over the top faces so I can appreciate that at least.

Her minion, Johnny Vermillion (AJ McLean of Backstreet Boys) is a more convincing villain than her and he actually manages to off various major and minor characters. Plus he gets to run around in clown makeup and a bowler hat whilst he does it so points for that.

A special shoutout has to go to Jon Secada (solo artist) as well purely for his magnificent sideburns.

I say the setting and story isn't explained, it may well have been in the little intro sequence but I was far too busy suffering from a major headache at the editing job they did on that. There's so many fast edits and weird effects and the thing constantly shifts between various harsh color filters that it pained me to actually watch. Possibly they were going for a graphic novel type thing to tie into the Walking Dead thing?

And don't get me start on the transitions between scenes. So many establishing sweeping shots of the goddamned mountains and valleys. Don't ever use this as a drinking game, your liver would be destroyed within minutes.

Going through the introductions of all these various characters is kind of fun, going through the whole 'getting the band together' motions. The ending as well has it's moments as it's building to a crescendo with various characters laying down their life for the greater good but the middle third of the movie feels a bit plodding as the group makes it's way towards Apocalypta.

Fatone, Wilson and McLean go a long way to saving this movie as they're the one ones that seem to be having some fun with it. Everyone else is taking it far too seriously which I don't feel they have any right to given the circumstances, a movie starring this many boy band stars has no serious artistic merits. To say he's given top billing, Carter is particuarlly bland and monotone throughout but he is still miles ahead of Chris Kirkpatrick (*NSYNC), though we're at least spared him for the majority of the movie given he only has about 3 scenes.

All things considered, I have to give this movie some praise for just about living up to my lofty expectations of it to fulfill the bollocks-o-meter. By no measure it is a good movie (what else were you expecting?) given the edits that drove me crazy at times, the mediocre acting, generic story and just general vibe that only comes with these kind of movies. But some of the characters are engaging, it has some satisfying gore and there's no denying it's an absolute curiosity piece to see the cast of a VH1 type 'Boy Bands Forever' show suddenly whisked away to film a feature length zombie movie. The theme song kinda slaps too.

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Halloween 2024 - Day 1 - Nope (2022)

Whole lotta horse abduction going on...

What, October already? Better break out those horror movies then, and why not a continuation of sorts from yesteryears? Following on from the past successes of Jordan Peele with his direction of Get Out and Us, as well as his involvement in the new Candyman, Nope has been something I've been looking forward to seeing over the past couple of years so I figured I'd put it on the agenda for this year's marathon.

Daniel Kaluuya return's as the the protaganist, OJ, having starred in the aforementioned Get Out. There's also other familiar faces like Steven Yeun from The Walking Dead, Michael Wincott who was in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and The Crow, and of course my boy Ketih David. Though, his is only a passing appearance as he is killed off early on by a falling coin that is thought to be some sort of airline malfunction. See kids, this is why your parents tell you never throw things from the top of car parks.

It's David's untimely demise that see's OJ thrust to the forefront of the family business; horse training. Specifically for use in film and television. Unfortuately, OJ doesn't quite have the knack for this whole thing and gets dumped from an upcoming project after one of his horses get's spooked and lashes out on set. Speaking off which, in order to get some money back into the business, OJ has been selling some of the horses to a local western themed theme park called Jupiter's Claim, whose owner has a tragic background of being witness to a much more violent animal outburst on set.

As a child actor, he featured in a sitcom called Gordy which seems to be the kind of absurd show you normally see parodied on TV or film where a family has a chimpanzee that lives with them. One day though this chimp goes completely apeshit (pun intended) and kills some of of the cast. Now, granted you're probably not expecting that and the monkey probably got the jump on you but I dunno, is it wrong to think you could take a chimpanzee in a fight? Granted, they do have those nasty fangs and pound for pound they probably are pretty strong but they're only small. I do love those kind of surveys, if only for when they get towards the end of the list and there's a handful of people who are like "Yeah, I think I could beat an elephant."

OJ starts to notice some weird occurances around the family ranch like EMP type blackouts that even knock out cars and phones. He comes to suspect this is a UFO and hopes to document this in the hopes of becoming rich from selling the footage. Only to a completely reputable outlet that is, like Oprah. It's here that I start to have some problems with the movie. Like, it's not a bad movie and it did keep me intruiged as to where it was going. But it never seemed to really have a strong sense of dread behind it because whatever this UFO is is very vague and unseen for the bulk of the money. That's not uncommon in horror, with the old idea of what the mind imagines can often be scarier, but it felt like the characters in the movie weren't particuarly fussed most of the movie either. I think that largely comes down to Kaluuya as OJ who just seems completely stoic about everything the entire time.

When the UFO does show up, at first I thought it was a flying Stetson hat or something, like the overall Western theme going on had somehow manipulated it's form, kinda like when Gozer appears as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

And even when it does start racking up a body count, it's largely off camera and you just see what appears to be shots of it's victims being ingested like Augustus Gloop going up the pipe in the chocolate factory but even they seemed hard to comprehend and a bit hoky. I'd suggest it was meant to be emulating someone from the classic 50's era sci-fi but it feels a bit out of place amongst the rest of the movie. I guess it's tying back to the whole alien theme by being un-natural and un-nerving.

Which is echoed when the creature does reach it's final form which is something akin to a jellyfish. I think this aspect works well, getting away from the cliched humanoid forms you sometimes get in sci-fi movies, which is something they poke fun at earlier in the film. This particular shot where OJ is trying to lead the thing away from the rest of the group is particuarly mesmerising, just the sheer scale of thing. It has a bit of that 'Old Ones' vibe to it too, that it's just something so unfathmoably alien that your brain couldn't possibly begin to comprehend it and to try would send you mad.

The part where the creature hovers over the hose, regurgitating all the stuff it's eaten and showering the house in blood is also a really cool moment, like something out of The Shining or Poltergeist. Ultimately though, this one felt like a let down to me in that I went into it with such high hopes based of Peele's previous work. Some people seem to really love it and rank it amongst some of the best sci-fi movies ever made so all power to you guys on that one, it just wasn't for me. Even the underlying messages didn't really hit me that strongly, like I've seen people talking about how it's a look at the dangers of survellience and making allusions to faith and the ascencion to Heaven but it doesn't have that raw 'holding a mirror to society' feel that Peele's earlier work does. Though, I guess you don't want to do that in every movie lest you become pidgeon holed and you get those stupid people who think you're 'bringing race into everything' when you're making a Candyman movie. I still can't get over that.

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Not so random review: The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

You'll be hooked on the brothers!

Not so random because today is March the 10th which can mean only one thing…it's Mar10 day! Though he had appearances in the early 80's in Nintendo titles such as Donkey Kong and Wrecking Crew, it was the 1985 Super Mario Bros. that really catapulted Mario and Nintendo in general into the stratosphere. Their popularity continues to this day, with 2023's utterly charming Super Mario Wonder being another smash hit success. But I'm choosing to celebrate Mar10 Day 2024 by finally sitting down and watch his 2023 motion picture epic; The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Given the $1.36b performance at the box office, I was apparently one of about 6 people who didn't see this in the cinema at the time but it's time to wrong that right. Though, it's funny how that performance still wasn't enough to be the leading film of the year. *Shakes white gloved fist at Barbie*

I don't quite remember the general reaction this had when it was first announced. I suppose it would have been one of surprise given the…interesting adaptation we had back in 1993 which seemingly made Nintendo swear off such things. The part I do remember though is when the voice cast was revealed and every man, woman and child losing their collective shit at the idea of Chris Pratt voicing Mario. I suppose it wouldn't have been so bad if this was a character that had been played by lots of different people over time but Charles Martinet had been THE voice of Mario for over 30 years so he had become synonymous with the character. I can see how Martinet's portrayal might be seen as gimmicky or grating to be done over a feature length movie but it does smack of them just wanting to throw a bunch of Hollywood talent at the thing in favour of more traditional voice actors because that's what everyone else seems to do with this animated movies.

For what it's worth, Pratt is…fine? I have no qualms with most of the cast. Charlie Day I think was a great bit of casting, as limited a role as it is in terms of screen time, he helps sell the somewhat cowardly nature of Green Mario that I appreciate is still an eduring character trait having being such a prominent thing in titles such as the Mario & Luigi series. Though, it's easy to be a scardey cat when you have villains proclaiming to be 'the mustard of your doom'. I did forget that Jack Black was voicing Bowser until the sharp pivot his character took part way in. When the movie starts we see him laying waste to the Snow Kingdom as the native penguins ineffectively fight back with their snowball based offense. It makes for a great opening setpiece, really selling the intense threat that Bowser poses whilst also mixing in some comedy. Which is partly what I think they had in mind when Bowser breaks out into song later on professing his love for Princess Peach and states he aims to marry her. I was a little unsure on this shift at first as it does diminish the threat somewhat but this is a kids film after all so it helps to have something dumb in there for them. Plus I suppose it does give his character an extra edge than just being generic evil bad man. And it helps contextualize the existing game elements into this environment, there's a reason why Bowser is going after Peach other than just because without it we'd have no game.

Re-contextualizing is the order of the day throughout the whole film as it really is fan servicey as all hell but tries to make it so it's not just fan service for fan service sake. Just like those 'turn your brain off at the door' movies, fan service is good from time to time and we there's obviously there's wide appeal here in seeing this beloved game franchise adapted to the big screen but fan service can sometimes feel a little bit like some waving some keys in your face. Here though there's reasons behind some of the things we see in the game to help explain why they're happening in this apparent normal world. Like, why are Mario and Luigi in these bright outfits and wearing white gloves to their plumbing gigs? It's a gimmick, a calling card of sorts. Here's a part of the Mushroom Kingdom that looks like something of the games that Mario needs to run through, but that's because he's in training. On that last point, this ultimately is a really by the numbers movie, the kind of story you might see in a fantasy sword & sorcery movie where an outsider is drafted in to come slay the big bad that's threatening to destroy the world, complete with the aforementioned training montage with a backing soundtrack of Bonnie Tyler's 'Holding Out For a Hero', or at least a new recording of it for some reason. That's just one of various licensed songs that appear in the film which can feel a little out of place given that most of the movie has the obligatory tracks from the various games, down to such obscure gems as the DK Rap of all things. The story goes that Mario & Luigi are two down on their luck Brooklyn plumbers hoping to catch their big break whilst striving out of their own, with Mario facing fears of inadequacy as his family lament him giving up a steady job to follow a pipe dream, doubly so for potentially dragging his brother down with him. Not only that, but Mario is also apparently seeking validation from his own father who seems particularly dismissive of this whole venture. Who would have expected such depth from a Mario movie?! During a city wide flood, Mario spies a chance to play the hero as he and Luigi head downtown to check it out, figuring the source of the problem is in the depths of the city sewers. It's here they come across a strange green pipe that the two brothers get sucked through before being split up and deposited in separate parts of a strange new world; Luigi landing in the Dark Lands and Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom.

Mario is promptly lead to Princess Peach by our friendly neighourhood Toad who suggest she'll be able to help find Luigi, only for Mario to have to sneak in the castle before inadvertently attracting the attention of pretty much every guard in sight. Peach doesn't seem concerned by this random intruder in her castle though and agrees to help, provided he can pass the training course first. I was a little iffy on this at first but they do allude to Peach's mysterious past and question why she's the only human around here so I suppose it's natural that she would see some solidarity when another one shows up. I might be reading too much into that though as I'm not sure where you'd go with that as a story thread in future movies.

It's hard to be skeptical though when you get swept up in the joys of seeing all of your old favourites beautifully animated, all the characters, powerups, enemies, right down to the last question block. Including my favourite…

Baby Mario and Luigi! Given my deep nostalgia for the SNES, Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island, I did mark out a bit when these guys popped up in flash back. Yoshi's Island by the way remains one of the great video game intros of all time. Words truly fail to properly capture the majesty of a wizard koopa committing a drive by kidnapping on a stork whilst a music box lullaby plays in the background. I think that's what this movie is always going to come back to, if you've ever appreciated the Mario series at any point in your life you're going to get a kick out of this. It's a simple re-telling of Mario vs Bowser but serves as the groundwork for what will doubtless be an ongoing franchise, an origin story to branch out from. Aside from the teaser in the post credits, you also have Peach looking to the starry night sky at one point and talking of all the different 'galaxies' that are out there. Presumably we're a way off that though, you don't normally go into space until around the 4th movie. Luckily, we wont have too long to wait to find out what's next for Mario and Friends as just today Nintendo announced the next movie is due out in April 2026. Presumably they just need to find a Japanese movie they can re-skin and call Super Mario Bros. Movie 2.

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Christmas 2023 - Day 2 - The Night The Animals Talked (1970)

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

Two blue pigs!

So, events have conspired this year that meant the Christmas-a-thon and the Halloween-a-thon had to be sidelined, that you'd really notice compared to any other year I suppose, but we can't let a good 'The' title go un-paired so it's a last minute festive entry with a bible tale from all the way back in the 70's. As it is often want to do around this time of year, one of the entries from yesteryear, 'The Star', popped into my head. That odd but strangely enjoyable child friendly romp through the story of the nativity but from the lesser heard narration of the animals. And that put me in mind of another story much like it that had come years before that I had heard of but banished to the neglected watchlist. But it's been rescued today and thrust into the spotlight, if only so I can verify that there really is more than one piece of media that has run with this bizarre concept.

The animals actually talking can't start soon enough because this special starts with like 2 minutes of all manner of grunting, squawking, bleating and barking that feels like an assault to the senses. I know kids like to have colours and noises thrown at them to keep their attentions but I don't think the foley sounds of Old MacDonalds farm are the kind of things the kids are expecting.

Nor is the accompanying soundtrack prophesying that a miracle will take place there that night. If this is the music that is meant to play when two thousand years of our time has gone by then I think I'll pass. Maybe it's the bootleg quality shining through that seems to have survived in all of the finest potato quality recording but it sounds like whoever is singing is doing so from two rooms away.

But the requisite star finally makes it's showstopping appearance above the barn and bathes the surrounding area in it's wonderous light, a light that bestows the miracle of speech upon every ox, chicken and cow that happens to be within reach of it's rays. And what is that these creatures do with this most precious of miracles? Well, whine ineffectively at each other for all of the noise mostly.

And it takes the most wise and noble of all of God's creatures, the Ox, to point out what a bunch of nobheads they're being and that they're no better than that great evil they see every day…man. Luckily, that appeals to the vanity of the huddled masses and they all chirp up and begin prancing around the place singing about how great they are and how much better they are than their so called masters.

The animal arseholery continues when Mary and Joseph rock up and the barnyard dog offers the donkey and his owners a place to stay for the night when he hears the story of how every inn seems to be full. But when they're brought back to the barn, the donkey is told in no uncertain terms that the stable is full too. They even break out into another song as they go all Suella Braverman on their Ass: "If one of them's allowed in Just watch the way they crowd in I'm saying that no weakness must be shown."

#StopTheBoatsToBethlehem

It looks like the dog has just walked in on his mother having sex with Hitler.

The immigrant thing is a fitting analogy given that very much in keeping with the 'help our own' crowd, it's not just outsiders they've been shunning this whole time as we also find out the pigs are not wallowing in their own muck outside by choice, rather they too are excluded from staying inside. Even when that lefty, pinky, commie Ox manages to win everyone round and convince them to leg the heavily pregnant woman inside for a rest, they worry the place is worse than a pigsty and try to clean it as best they can, all the while complaining that it's not even fit for a pig in it's current state. Pigs clearly had it much better in the George Orwell universe.

But truly this is a night of miracles, for born unto you this day in the city of David is a saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And not only that, whilst every basks in the quite frankly absurd radiance omitted from said child, even the pigs manage to sneak in and are allowed to stay. It feels like this is meant to be some revelation on how the animals have learned to embrace their neighbours and to love one another but it seems like basic tolerance rather than acceptance.

The animals do seem emboldened by the arrival of this child though and are encouraged by their defacto Ox leader to take unto the streets en-masse to spread the good word, only to find their words turning back into the squawks and squeaks they omitted only hours before. This is, perhaps, the ultimate lesson; the Good Lord giveth and the Good Lord taketh away. Or perhaps it's all a metaphor on the oppression of Christians, it's either or honestly. Much like The Star, this premise only leaves me with a yearning for more. With The Star, it was a desire for follow up films on such other chapters in Jesus' life, maybe we'll get the camel's opinions on his crucifixtion. Here, I kinda want to see the eventuality where all the animals continue to speak and do so telling every man, woman and child how they're keen on Jesus. I can't imagine Christianity would grow into the juggernaut it is today if it's humble beginnings were a horse, a pig and three chickens knocking on your day asking if you're got five minutes to hear about our Lord and Saviour. Maybe there's a cleaner version out there (though by all accounts that seems unlikely) but the version I was watching didn't help matters with the random jump cuts I'm attributing to issues with the transfer rather than any editing mishap. The sound was off in parts too, with seemingly missing sound effects and what could be heard wasn't great. But, quality aside, I always appreciate a little cynicism around this time of year and it was appreciated during what I was expecting to be a saccharine retelling of this story for an age even younger that it normally is. And it gives us the faint hope that, if the animals can learn to live in harmony and forget their once bigoted ways, maybe in time man can too… ...yeah, not bloody likely.

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Christmas 2023 - Day 1 - The Mean One (2022)

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

A man dressed like a furry!

It's Dec 1st which can mean only one thing, it's time once again to lament on a not so 31 day filled Halloween marathon and shift to anticipating the arrival of a jolly fat man in an red costume. What better way to do that than with another round of holiday related media? And, being the purveyor of Grinchly related matters that we on this here blog, we're looking at a certain release from the space year 2022. "But Ellis…" I hear you cry as you erect your evergreen tree based shrine to capitalism, "it's day one. You only watch horror related Christmas movies on day one, right? Surely this is some sort of mistake…" There is no mistake, friends.

For what we have here is one in a growing trend of cheap, 'no copyright intended' spins on popular franchises in an effort to make a quick buck on shock factor alone. I say trend, it's realistically only one other one given The Banana Splits Movie was licensed, as was 'Arthur, malediction' which I'm just learning about which is a spin off of the Arthur fantasy novels which were adapted into animated movies in the late 00's. The other big knock off children's horror is the infamous Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, which I think is able to delve deeper into the actual characters because it's dealing with a property that, at least in some part, had just entered into the public domain. Here, they skirt around the stuff that's liable to lead to litigation with such lines as "His name is The Gr…" "FINCH, ORDER FOR FINCH!" which leads to our villain being referred to simply as 'The Mean One'. But they're quite happen to revel in some of the key points of previous iterations, such as our protagonist being a girl named Cindi and existing dialogue, such as when Cindy is studying a sketch of The Mean One and wonders if his evil is because his shoes are tied to tight or whether his head isn't screwed on quite right.

The film starts out innocently enough with Cindi (no Lou), who is way more than 2, finds a shadowy figure in her living room that appears to be stealing their Christmas related paraphernalia. She hands him her necklace as a gift and he scampers off into the night, only, this story doesn't quite play out that way, as the scene suddenly shifts to Cindy's mother confronting the intruder, only to get knocked to the floor and finds herself impaled on an errant nail on the floor that goes through her neck and kills her.

A young Cindy is asked to draw the intruder but leaves police puzzled when she draws a green, furry Santa. He looks surprisingly happy here, it's kind of a cute drawing if it wasn't tinged with the reality of bloody murder. Twenty years later, she's back in 'Newville' and looking to deal with her traumatic past at the behest of her therapist. She and her father roll into town with their car decorated with reindeer horns and a shiny red nose, only to get pulled over and told such things are illegal within city limits. Apparently it's too distracting for the other drivers. Honestly, Frank Costanza has the same problem with tinsel. Things only get stranger for Cindy and her Dad when they go to find decorations to spruce up their place for Christmas, only to find no store in town sells them. But no matter, Dad is able to find some old ones knocking about the place and promptly sets them all up.

But celebrations are short lived when a rampaging beast breaks into their home and attacks daddy, finishing him off by pinning him against the front door and driving a pointed candy cane through his skull and out of his eye socket. Tony from Hack the Movies would not be thrilled.

The movie hints at a few different things from here, with Cindy having a psychotic episode on account of the same green monster killing both of her parents some twenty years apart, staring at her bloody hands like she's New Generation Bob Backlund after choking out someone with the Cross Faced Chickenwing. You've got her trying to look for answers while a suspicious police force keep an eye on her and a frustrated mayor is on the scene trying to cover everything up Jaws style because she's worried about how the bad publicity will affect her attempts at re-election. And it's here that I feel the movie starts to fall short. We come to learn that The Mean One is alerted to all things Christmas and will come murder your ass if you so much as hum Jingle Bells to yourself so pretty much all mention of the big C has been eliminated in the town of Newville. But this movies feels so small that it's never able to fully run with that concept or show the ramifications of that. There's some obvious recency bias here but looking back at something like Halloween Ends, and the whole trilogy, I obviously waxed lyrical about how those movies really looked at the town of Haddonfield itself and focused on how the actions of Michael both 40 years ago and through to the present day shaped the town itself and it's inhabitants. But here, there's such a small cast of characters that we never really get to see how the townspeople have been affected by this or how they react to outsiders coming in. Even when Cindy and her Dad are after decorations only to find no one sells them, that all happens off screen. It would have been much more interesting to see the shopkeepers being nervous or even hostile to the idea of these two mentioning the word Christmas, alluding to some conspiracy as to why the town keeps the whole thing under wraps. Show, don't tell.

I think that could actually be a neat concept for someone to explore, Christmas is obviously such a ubiquitous thing in society and something that brings joy to so many, why wouldn't you want to go spread that with everyone? Wouldn't it be weird if you turned up somewhere and everyone was against it? Actually, to dip back into one of my ongoing tropes, this would actually be a really cool stealth 'War on Christmas' horror movie. Someone feels they're being persecuted in not being allowed to celebrate Christmas and goes to great lengths to break the rules of the town by putting up displays, playing music etc but is actually doing more harm than good as their actions bring this evil force into play and puts peoples lives in danger.

That's not to say that the movie is without it's charms, if you want gratuitous gore than it has that, specifically a scene where The Mean Ones slaughters a bunch of drunken revelers dressed in festive costumes. The Mean One is played by David Howard Thornton who also plays Art the Clown in the Terrifier movies which actually makes a lot of sense when looking back at this one scene because it's very Art like in the way he does this almost theatrical routine in front of his confused would be victims before starting his slaying. The movie isn't quite as cheap as I was expecting and I felt pretty engrossed throughout, it only takes a bit of a dive at the end as it really ramps up the stock footage and phoney looking news reports which very much smack of 'let's get one of my mates in a cheap suit and stick them in front of a green screen'. Maybe I'm too used to these big Hollywood movies that shell out to have respected news presenters like Sophie Raworth show up to tell us that the world is ending.

The acting feels pretty lame all round and, surprisingly, the whole thing is played way more seriously than I expected. I did like Doc Zeus actually, partly for his odd name and also for being somewhat convincing as a grizzled, old hunter who is out avenge his murdered wife who was chopped to bits by The Mean One. The movie doesn't really venture into the silly buggers territory until two thirds of the way in when it abruptly turns into Home Alone meets Terminator where Cindy goes all Sarah Connor and has a Rocky-esque montage to become skilled in all manner of hand to hand combat and firearms, before setting up her house with bear traps, machine guns and bauble based explosives to help her in her final showdown with The Mean One.

She definitely paid $5 for the Festive Gun Skin DLC though.

And SPOILER WARNING, I do kinda dig the anticlimatic ending somewhat where Cindy has The Mean One beat but hesitates in pulling the trigger on getting her revenge, that whole 'if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you' thing and actually forgives him.

This causes his heart to grow three sizes that day, only in the Moe Szyslak 'this is a serious medical problem' sort of way and his heart promptly explodes 5 seconds later. Huh.

The whole ending is another sign of them not having the scope to deliver on their ideas because they try to get across in flashback that The Mean One didn't mean to kill Cindy's mum, that he was horrified by his actions and Cindy's reaction to him after initially being so welcoming to him tipped him over the edge and made him into the monster he would become. Which, again not wanting to sound like 'let's just turn this movie into Halloween Ends', would have been an interesting thing to see play out. If you had The Mean One be at least semi-sociable like the 2018 Grinch that would be out and about in Whoville, only this accident makes the town ostracize him like Corey Cunningham in Halloween Ends, you're actually developing that sense of sympathy over the course of the movie instead of trying to humanize him with a 10 second flashback right at the end. So in a lot of respectives, this is a pretty lacklustre movie but I have to at least give it some credit for seeming like it had some decent ideas that it wasn't able to execute. I was going in expecting full on cheap explotation to come out somewhat pleasantly suprised is at least something. The costume on The Mean One is pretty good too. They put some effort into the mask and it helps sell the scary factor. The movie is just an odd curiosity and I can imagine some people might get some mileage out of it, if you just want a Christmas gorefest or a novelty piece of subversion on a childhood classic, it's got that going for it.

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Halloween 2023 - Day 7 - Halloween Ends (2022)

Does Halloween End with a bang or a whimper?

So, not quite Day 31 but this is indeed Halloween Ends in every sense of the word. Not just the season but the very franchise itself…sort of. But we'll come back to that. This is the last of the David Gordon Green directed trilogy, a man who has taken a sharp turn into horror in the last few years after that little stretch into stoner comedy back in the late 00's, early 10's. After this trilogy, he's moved onto The Exorcist with the newly released Believer, with another sequel Deciever planned in 2025. That seems to have opened to fairly poor reviews so we'll see if they'll make it to that next sequel. I kinda fell off that franchise after the third one but since we've wrapped up Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm St, there might be room for it to slip into the schedule.

Speaking of poor reviews, I remember this time last year when this was getting a lot of negative feedback. I managed to keep myself at a distance in terms of plot, trailers etc and only really had a vague sense of the feedback to go on where the word 'weird' kept coming up, in that it's weird for a Halloween film. That is something I would agree with but, for me, it's a good weird.

Does it reflect badly on me that the opening of this movie elicited a laugh from me? Not like a belly laugh or anything, I do tend to have this almost nervous laugh as an immediate reaction to something that should be considered scary or intense. And there's perhaps little more intense than a guy dropkicking a door open straight into the face of an 8 year old who is sent flying down a multi-storey building to his untimely death. Geez, this movie isn't fucking about, is it? Kids don't die in a Halloween movie, Michael Myers has at least some standards. Maybe that's what people were complaining about?

But the curious case of young Corey Cunningham, a young kid just trying to get through college before this accident sends his life into a tailspin is just the catalyst for the ever spiraling events of the movie but he's also a shining example of the kind of world building that I've come to love about these new movies. There's this idea that's brought up that for a town that has been living in the shadow of Michael Myers and his crimes for the last 40 years, and lest we forget still living in fear that he's still on the loose somewhere, Corey is the monster that the townspeople can see. He's the one that they can point their fingers at and unleash their angry energy towards. Arguably you're never going to have a good time of it if you kill a child, accident or no accident, but I like the idea that it's so much worse for him given that this is Haddonfield and it's residents are at the end of their tether with this whole thing.

Without wanting to delve too much into other people's criticisms at this stage before logging my thoughts, I am curious how much of it is down to the lack of Michael and the emphasis on Strode family drama, which is obviously something I was wanting them to lean into more in the 2018 Halloween so I was on board when it started playing out that way here. 'Where's Michael' is always the initial criticism of something like Halloween 3 and he is very much a peripheral character here. Or maybe it's more that as a movie presumably built up as this grand finale and a final showdown between Michael and Laurie, which we do get, felt like it was tacked on in a 'Okay, you sat through the meat and veg of our spin on Halloween so he's here's your treat.' Without going through the trailers and hype going into the movie I'm unsure if that's how they were building it but that's certainly the impression I got from the end of Halloween Kills.

After a run in with some punk kids, Corey is introduced to Laurie's granddaughter Allyson at the local hospital and the pair hit it off, a duo of nihilists whose trouble backgrounds seem to serve as a bit of a bonding experience. She's the survivor of a homicidal maniac, people think he is a homicidal maniac, they're just a perfect fit as they wallow in their collective misery and intent to watch the world burn.

But after another run in that leaves Corey injured, he's dragged into some sewers by a shadowy figure that we come to learn is Michael who promptly strangles Corey to near death but seemingly lets go. Michael is shown to be frail at times so did he just lose his strength, did Corey break free or did Michael see something in this youngsters eyes that made him set his victim free?

It's something that Laurie sees as well, particularly when Corey starts lurking outside her house like he's The Shape from 40 years ago. But as on the ball as she is, you do sound like the boy who cried wolf when you start protesting that he's 'just like Michael Myers' which is something you've been bleating on about for the past four decades. It's kinda like that meme about Boss Baby, when you spend your life fixated on Michael Myers then you're probably going to get a lot of Michael Myers vibes from this…

The only thing I am iffy on is the relationship between Corey and Michael. Corey is played off as this young apprentice of sorts but it's not as if Michael is readily accepting of help, even Dr. Sartain in 2018 he killed off pretty much the first chance he got even though they were meant to be buddy buddy. There are times when it looks like Corey thinks he's in control of Michael, which is probably just in his head, but there's moments when he's doing weird things with his hands and due to the scar he has, I did wonder briefly if they were going for some weird mark of the Cult of Thorn type thing here. I guess it is just this weird connection between them, like Michael understands this shared anguish they have or maybe a sort of 'passing the torch' thing given Michael's advancing years. Or maybe he just recognizes a greater evil than himself, like I said, even Michael knows when to draw the line when it comes to child murder so he's just paying his respects to Corey.

And I guess the ending in a way I'm a bit iffy on as well, specifically the Laurie/Michael showdown. I get that they felt obligated to include it, you probably would have had people rioting in the streets if you didn't show that after these 3 movies, never mind all the other ones in the franchise and especially given this is likely the last chance saloon for the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis. But the vibe I got from Halloween Kills was that there never was this connection between the two that Laurie seemed to play out in her head, it's all just some cosmic coincidence that she happened to be the one all those years ago so it seemed like plot convenience that Michael just happened to make his way out into the world now to track her down.

But the actual ending itself I really like because, spoiler warning, not only does she incapacitate him and slit pretty much every available appendage, they make sure this fucker is never coming back by taking him to a giant metal grinder that they promptly feed him into. Unless he's planning on reassembling the quivering piles of jelly T-1000 style, this guy is deader than he's ever been. Granted, they stopped short of burying whatever bits are left in a concrete filled coffin 2 miles beneath the Earth's surface like I would but they put a good shift in.

In the build up to that moment though, there's this whole procession where everyone in town shows up to witness this momentous occasion. Even when the cops look on uneasy about what's about to play out, like this isn't in the rule book, the sheriff from Halloween Kills shows up to stress that tonight it is. The whole moment is very cathartic, not only for the viewer in that we've finally seen good triumph over evil, but for the entire town of Haddonfield. Even if his timeline has been retconned six ways from Sunday over the years, it's almost as if every resident from every possible continuity is here to finally witness the moment his corpse is destroyed so they can get some closure on the vast body count he must have built up over these last 40 years.

So, whilst I can appreciate that people going into this movie last year with all that hype behind it might feel like they were on the end of a bait and switch, I really loved this. I've said it til I'm blue in the face over the years that slasher movies can be very hit and miss for me and something like Friday the 13th just bores me to tears. Something like Terrifier that I watched this year, it felt like it was just going for the immediate, visceral reaction but trying to be as gory as possible for cheap pops. But it hadn't earned the real weight behind those deaths because these are just disposable characters. When you have people like Dr. Loomis or Laurie Strode who bring some actual gravitas to proceedings, they can actually make you care, there are actual stakes involved and you're not just cheering for the bad guy and waiting for him to stab Camp Councillor #12.

If you want your bog standard slasher movie, go nuts. I'm sure there's hundreds of them out there. Hell, there's like a dozen other ones in this series alone so I'm all for when one of them wants to try something different. If someone wants to mix their indie, moody, coming of age teen drame in with Halloween then I'm all for it. It certainly has a unique atmosphere to it unlike anything in the series, it put me in mind of something like It Follows in artistic terms, the look and feel to it as well as that general overarching look at these younger characters and their lives being shaped by these traumatic events. Here we have this culmination of movies that has been building up Haddonfield as this deeply toxic place where misery is just a way of like and everyone in it almost seems cursed, with two characters specifically that have every reason in the world to want to get out, with things in their lives ripped away from them in harrowing events but ever after all of that, they feel trapped and bound to this place and unable to break free.

And what does the future hold for Halloween as a franchise when everyone has ridden off into the sunset, quite literally in Laurie's case? Well, everyone seems content for now to let things lay but considering the number of reboot and remakes we've been through, whose to say this will ever truly be over? This is easily one of the biggest franchises in horror, if not the biggest, so it's not going to lay dormant forever. This timeline might be over but I'm sure someone somewhere will start a new one in 5-10 years. Hell, multiverses are all the rage, they'll probably end up drawing in all the different iterations of Michael for some monster mash. And that's just speculation on the future of the silver screen, because we've already had word this month that Miramax has won the TV rights for Halloween so we'll be seeing that before too long.

But, for now, we must retire our Halloween cap as we look forward to the next major event of Christmas and the hopes that I might make the effort to round up the full dozen reviews this year. We live in hope…

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Halloween 2023 - Day 6 - Hellraiser: Deader (2005)

Still not from the arsehole of Clive Barker...

I'll admit this hasn't been the best year, feels like it's been a few years since I let it slip this badly but we're going out with a bang tomorrow with Halloween Ends and before we get there we need to look at one of our yearly staples; Hellraiser. Yes, after mentioning his potential cameo in Freddy vs Jason, it's time that we visit the world of Pinhead. After taking a detour last year to partake in all the Wokeraiser hot takes, we're back to our regular schedule of linear releases which brings us to part seven which is very much in the territory of crowbarring Pinhead into someone elses unrelated script. Apparently one of the potential names for this one was Jihad which I just dread to imagine what sort of weird exploitation movie that would be. The 9/11 terrorists are promised pleasure indivisible in the afterlife after carrying out their task but get a whole lot more than they bargained for…

What we do get is the story of Amy Klein, played by Kari Wuhrer, as she investigates a cult like entity in Romania before eventually running into the Cenobites. Wuhrer of course will be notable to many for her work in cult sci-fi TV series Sliders. Or perhaps Beastmaster 2, Anaconda, Eight Legged Freaks or some of the later Prophecy sequels. But, to me, she'll always be Agent Tanya in the delightfully cheesy cut scenes of RTS juggernaut Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. As much as she helped bring life to that character, I think the script and general tone of the thing can claim just as much credit. Nothing like a widescale invasion of the United States and nuking of Chicago to serve as the backdrop for some b-movie level chicanery. They certainly cast for it too with the likes of Wuhrer, Udo Kier and Ray Wise.

I digress because there's really not too much I can say about this one. We've touched upon the fact that the Cenobites are pretty much strangers in their own films at the best of times but these later ones really do become exorcises in drive by Pinheads. Like, it takes 30 minutes for him to show up for the first time and even that is for all of about five seconds. By my count he shows up in about 3 scenes across the whole movie, and whilst not long or anything, this is still a pretty standard 90 minute movie.

Wuhrer plays a reporter who after finishing off her expose on the seedy world of drug use, including what has to be a rather uncessary guide on how to become a crack whore (seems pretty self explanitory to me), her editor sends her to Romania to investigate a man who can seemingly bring people back from the dead.

All of which is hastily tied back into the Hellraiser mythology through exposition towards the end of the movie when it's said the leader of the cult is a descendent of the toymaker from back in part 4. He intends to become ruler of the Cenobites but is unable to open the box himself so is using his followers to do it. But Pinhead promptly shows up five minutes from the end like 'bitch please' and straight up murders everyone. Maybe if you like the sort of oblique storytelling found in Hellseeker this might be for you but I couldn't get on with it. There's some vague intruige in following Klein as she tries to piece everything together but ultimately this cult doesn't really amount to anything feels disconnected from the Hellraiser story despite the movies best efforts to try and tie everything together. Say what you will about these find and replace Hellraiser scripts but I think something like Inferno shows they can work when it still feels in universe. There it was very much an outsider looking in from the outside on all the weird shit that was going on and their reactions to that. This felt more like someones attempt at creative writing that they slapped Pinhead onto in an effort to get more eyes on it by putting 'and then the Cenobites showed up' at the end.

At least it has British actor Marc Warren in for local flavour, he of Hustle fame from the late 00's. Apparently he was in Homer Simpson's favourite movie about piano genius', Shine, as well as 2006's Colour Me Kubrick which is somewhat infamous for a scene in which Jim Davidson flounces down a staircase whilst singing Lionel Richie's 'Hello' to John Malkovich. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a scene far more bizarre than anything the twisted world of Hellraiser could ever conjure up.

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Halloween 2023 - Day 5 - Freddy vs Jason (2003)

Voices in the air I hear 'em loud and clear Telling me to listen...

OK, so I know I've been slacking this year so far but it's Friday the 13th and I sure as hell wasn't going to miss this. I've been building up to it since last year after all and, whilst I might not have documented it on here, I capped off the original run of Friday the 13th movies with Jason X back in January. Having the done the same with New Nightmare last year, all that's left (aside from the reboots) is this, the ultimate showdown…Freddy vs Jason. Given that I wasn't into horror back when this came out, it wasn't really on my radar so I don't recall any of the build up around it or how much anticipation there was from the general public but I can't imagine anything other than this being one of the biggest events of the year. It's Freddy vs Jason, man! You don't even need a trailer at that point, that name will sell you on the movie more than any sneak peek at moments from the film ever could. It harkens back to those school yard debates about who would win in a fight or the golden age of 'versus' movies in horror like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man or the House of… films.

Right out of the gate we find out that Freddy has been banished to Hell but is unable to come back to wreak havoc upon the next generation of Elm Street kids because he's been forgotten. No one even knows who Freddy is anymore and if's not remembered, there's no fear. No fear, no powers. But luckily there's someone else down there that he thinks he can use…Jason Vorhees. Jason can never truly die and is just buried somewhere, suddenly given fresh impetus to rise up when he sees visions of his Mother demanding his go take care of those naughty kids down on Elm St. Sadly, the role of Mrs Vorhees is not reprised by Betsy Palmer but Paula Shaw does a good job as this angry, Freddy-inspired version as she berates Jason. Given the name of the movie, we all know this alliance isn't going to last forever but I really love this idea. It brings this whole extra layer of danger to proceedings, this dual threat of being targeted in your sleep as well as when you're awake. Plus it gives a plausible reason to allow Freddy a route back into the dreams of his victims and it adds this extra edge to him. He's not just this violent killer, he's manipulating Jason for his own nefarious needs. It helps play in to this odd sense of sympathy the movie seems to be trying to elicit for Jason. He's being used here, there's a flashback to his mistreatment by the other kids and councilors back at Crystal Lake and he's often taking a beating during the later fight scenes with Freddy. Kinda weird to think of Jason as the good guy in any situation but when the guy is a half melted nonce with Wolverine claws, Jason is the lesser of two evils.

We soon meet said Elm St kids and amongst them, for some reason, is Kelly Rowland. I guess I never had her pegged as an actress. It's funny because I've been looking at a Japanese movie called Kairo recently which was then remade in America as Pulse which starred Christina Milian. Again, AM to PM is a banger but I didn't realise she did acting too so I guess having that on my mind made this Kelly Rowland appearance catch me even more off guard. She's fine here though, the role is just standard slasher movie fare as the friend of the final girl who doesn't quite make it through the whole show so there's not much you can do with that. Her character does refer to Freddy as a 'faggot' at one point which is a bit…of it's time to put it politely.

It doesn't take long with Jason to show up and start bumping everyone off, including one gruesome kill where he stabs a guy half to death whilst in bed, then folding him up in said bed like a sandwich. This first kill takes place at the old Thompson house so when the cops show up and see where it happened, as well as the violent nature of the murder, murmurs soon start about it being 'him', murmurs that are very quickly shot down. The local Sherriff isn't keen on people talking about he who shall not be named (not Voldermort) and with the kids being asked all sorts of strange questions about their dreams rather than who might have just massacred their friend, it does lend the whole thing a bit of a conspiracy vibe, like the parents are covering something up. Kinda brings full circle because the original had that as well.

Conspiratorial would be accurate given that one of the kids dad is killed and I did a double take thinking it was Alex Jones.

There's these other characters as well who are in a psychiatric ward who keep making references to 'dream demons' and being kept away from their families so there's a lot of moving parts in play here but it really adds to the whole atmosphere and I like the angle they're going for, it was something I really wanted in Freddy's Dead.

It's easy to tell this is an Elm Street sequel because only hours after the death of two of their friends, the kids are quietly ushered off to school where they're gawked out by their classmates. Aren't their regulations in place for this kind of stuff? Give the kids some time off at least, maybe a passing grade. You know, that 'passing by catastrophe' kinda thing, Dead Man's Curve? Maybe given all the killings they had to abolish it because they were having to pass everyone given how prolific Freddy was.

But it's not just subtleties and world building here, this movie can deal out some action when it wants to. Such as when Jason's 'fun police' alarm goes off and he breaks up the kids party out in the cornfields. Someone tries to fight back by setting him on fire, which only seems to make him stronger especially when he starts wielding a flaming machete. The power of the Charcoal Pine Resin strikes again!

Or a vicious scene where one of the kids is haunted by visions of his brothers suicide, the brother played by non other than Scut Farkus himself, Zack Ward. Scut Farkus staring out at us with his red wrists! So help me God, red wrists!

And when this movie promised Freddy vs Jason, it duly delivers. Multiple times in fact. You get the best of both worlds, with one fight taking place in the dream world after Freddy possesses one of the kids and uses tranquilisers to put Jason to sleep. Then, in the finale, Freddy is draw into the real world. It allows both of them to play to their respective strengths; Freddy with his powers and use of misdirection in the dream world and Jason being able to use his strength and invulnerability in the real world where Freddy is weaker.

It's a cool touch that Jason ends up being reverted to his child form in the dream world fight, obviously ties in to Freddy being a child murderer but also brings back that origin story of Jason as well. The actual ending, whilst it doesn't sour the overall movie in the slightest, I'm not overly happy with. I get that it's ambiguous and doesn't necessarily undo what came before it, plus are these characters ever really dead? But I think with the hindsight of this being the last big send off for both characters, it was nice to have this Double-KO as a way to write them out and send their franchises off into the sunset before their reboots several years later. The original ending was apparently disliked by those at initial test screenings. It featured one of the characters suddenly turning violent and wielding the Freddy glove as a final sting which doesn't seem out of place with the franchise. After all, right back in part 1 we had the false finish of everyone thinking they'd beat Freddy only for him to re-emerge. And whilst we're talking about endings, this apparently had all manner of different possible endings including a giant hand pulling both villains back down to hell to play out a Sissapyhian battle for all eternity to the amusement of onlooking devils and demons. Or one where they both run into Ash from Evil Dead, supposedly shot down because Sam Raimi insisted on Ash winning. Or, Freddy and Jason waging bloody war on one another, only to be suddenly pulled apart by hooked chains before Pinhead emerged from the shadows.

Maybe some people could argue that not having a definitive winner is a bad thing, I think it would have been cool if they'd done something where Jason wins in certain showings and Freddy wins in others. Probably wouldn't have worked even back then due to the growing prevalence of the internet, whilst not as widespread and immediate as today since it was before social media and the like, news would have travelled fast and it wouldn't have been able to get that sort of urban legend feel. How cool would that have been though, you're talking to your friends about the movie and you're like "Man, I can't believe Freddy won." and they're like "What are you talking about, Jason killed that motherfucker!". Think of the repeat ticket sales! As it is, I really loved this one. Certainly the best Jason movie out there, even if the likes of Part VII and Jason X had their charms (we'll get back to them one day). Certainly up there with the best Elm Street movies too. I just really dug the city wide cover up going on to try and suppress Freddy, really fleshed out the story and allowed it to be more than just padding whilst we waited for the main event showdown.

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Halloween 2023 - Day 4 - Nothing But Trouble (1991)

Valkenvaaaaaaaaania!

We take our first trip into the 'horror adjacent' realm today with this horror comedy from the mind of Dan Akroyd. For as much as he is revered for his early work on the likes of SNL, Ghostbusters and The Blues Brothers, Akroyd's later career seemed to go downhill with less favourably received showings and this is probably amongst the low points. It seems like people recognized the potential troubles with is as Akroyd had to write, direct and play multiple parts in the film which can't have been easy and perhaps spread himself a bit too thinly.

The film centers around a bunch of yuppy types, amongst them are Chris Thorne (played by Chevy Chase) and Diane Lightson (played by Demi Moore) who end up taking a wrong turn into a former mining village, Valkenvania, that has been picked clean and all but abandoned except for a handful of old timers who look suspiciously at these interlopers.

Valkenvania is overseen by a strange family, the head of of which Alvin Valkenheiser (played by Akroyd) has appointed himself judge and jury and personally handles even the most minor of infractions that place within the limits of his juristiction. Thorne and friends run a stop sign whilst passing through and chased down by chief of police Dennis Valkenheiser (played by John Candy) who has a tricked out cop car that is able to keep up with Thorne's top of the range BMW.

Given the genre of the movie and Thorne being the defacto good guy here, I was really hoping we'd get to see John Candy play against type here. Whatever movie I've seen him in he's just the nicest, sweetest guy so it would have been interesting to see him in a more edgier role as a bit of a bad guy. From the outset though, even though his character is stern, he's also lenient when he overlooks some of the groups infractions as they try to outrun him and tries to get the judge to give them a light sentence. He's even convinced to let two of the group escape later on and abruptly disappears from the movie.

Well, that character does at least, because Candy also drags up to play the role of Eldona, a master mechanic and strong as an ox as she's often seen dragging around criminals by the scruff of their necks. The character is a mute though so, other than through body language, it's a bit harder to get across that menacing aspect since she's little more than the family's muscle.

There's also a pair of grotesque twins that are the black sheep of the family, so to speak, being kept at arms length and not allowed within the family house. They're kept outside, smithing through the night like a Dark World version of those dwarven swordsmiths from A Link to the Past. Dan Akyroyd plays one of these two as well so, yeah, a very busy production for him here. It's these kind of characters that really try to sell the horror aspect of the horror comedy, definitely going for that 'fish out of water' thing of someone chancing upon some bizarre, unstable characters like something out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I definitely think the 'horror' aspect is overstated here though, given that the inspiration for the story was a run in Akroyd had after a speeding ticket and being made to spend several hours with the justice of the peace, but rather than just ramp that up by having a group of people trapped within a corrupt town from which they can't escape because of the stranglehold the law has on it, they try to take things in a different direction by making the family into these warped characters. But I'm not sure it really works because, barring the twins, everyone is relatively normal. The judge character is the most exaggerated character with his grotesque facial features but it's undermined by a performance that plays him more for laughs than going for anything menancing or intimidating.

It doesn't really help either that our protagonists aren't the most relatable either so you don't have much sympathy for their plight. Thorne is a bit of a dickbag, which seems to be Chase's go-to role from what I can tell, Lightson is the smartest person there but just repeatedly gets shutdown by Thorne and the other two are these loud, wealthy foreigners that are the aforementioned people that manage to escape so get written out half way through, leaving the unlikable Thorne/Lightson.

The movie does contain a rather interesting cameo though, as a hip hop group get hauled before the judge and amongst their members is a young Tupac. I can only imagine the movie had left over make up budget and, in addition to the judge's fake nose, Tupac's mate here got one as well. It's a very timely cameo to see given that this isn't the only Tupac matter being brought before a judge right now…