Yeah, so I took last Friday and Monday off work so that I could relax for a couple of days, and just get a nice four day weekend in for myself and my wife. Relaxing? Fuck that, I spent two days shopping for a car I’ll hardly ever drive, one day running from wasps while trying to mow the back yard (the lawnmower’s still out there), and one day shopping at the mall – and not buying the one thing I did need. All in all, my relaxing weekend turned into tired feet and way too much adrenaline.

Fuck’s sake, one of these days I’m going to get a day off and it’s going to be all about me. Getting my shit done. Doing what I want by myselfF. At this rate it’ll probably be my funeral, and I know somebody’s going to make me dress up nice for that. So I get nothing. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying my wife made me do all this stuff. we were just hanging out. She’s fucking great. It all had to get done, you know? I'm glad I had her to do it with.

Meh, what am I complaining about anyway? What a fucking baby. Birth school work death, I’m at stage three. I’m almost done. I just gotta make it through the next 40 or 50 years, and even less if I keep smoking. Like the song says, I need to cling to something. Gimme my gold watch bitches, because I might not be here tomorrow to pick it up. I guess I had a pretty good long weekend…

Ever find yourself almost wishing for illness or a migraine just so you don’t have to be at the office? Ever feel like your life is trickling away while you waste your time with bullshit day to day tasks that are less than meaningless? Ever want to put your head through the plaster and pray you find a hidden 2X4, just to get away from the gnawing erosion of your soul known as Every Day?

Yeah, me too.

But you know, everything is relative. Put my head through a wall? Sure, I’ve thought about it. Have my spine severed? Mmm, not so sure. What am I getting at here? I’m getting at the fact that, as boring or mundane as your life might be… as much as you might crave excitement in your life, sometimes things are better left alone and you are better off not getting what you asked for.

I’m kind of talking about a movie I saw last weekend, one that I mentioned in my last new post. I’m talking about Wolf Creek. This is a great movie for people who love horror movies but haven’t had much stress in their lives lately. This is a movie for people who need a little fear but don’t get scared by demons or vampires; this is a movie about things that actually happen, or could happen. And as a lot of us have said, it’s that type of movie that is the creepiest of all.

Most horror movies dwell in the realm of fantasy. As a result, they may give you a few jumps here and there, but for the most part it’s obvious fiction. If you can get scared by such things then I have a little envy of your perspective. I thought The Ring was an alright movie, but I heard more than a couple of people say that they were afraid of their televisions for a week or so after viewing it. Man, if The Ring scares you like that, then I want to live in your world, where the sun is blue, asparagus tastes good and ghostly interactions are a matter of fact. Cuz that shit don’t happen.

On the other hand, as creepy as such movies can be (if you suspend your disbelief from a meathook in the basement and leave it there for a week or so), they don’t have anything on the much shorter list of movies that are either based on fact, or are psychotically sensible enough to conceivably take place here in the world with the yellow sun.

Wolf Creek falls into the latter of the two categories, and is reminiscent of other such “it could happen” movies like The (original) Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Spit On Your Grave, Cabin Fever and so on. But it is much more real than those other three. There are parts that are obviously fabricated here, but the movie is based on fact, on real events. Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s based on fact in the same way that TCM was (and has an atmosphere that's similar in a lot of ways). Inspired by real events but hardly a documentary. So that’s what you’re going into here. It’s not proven to be true but it could be as true as anything else you read in the paper every day. And that’s where it hits you. You read the paper, you come across some disgusting crime story about rape and torture and murder, you say eww and move on. But not here… at Wolf Creek you will be given about as much detail as you can handle.

So here’s the story; as much as I can give you without ruining the movie anyway. Three friends, two British girls and an Australian guy, hanging out and partying on vacation. The guy, Ben, has just bought a crappy car that they’re going to use for road tripping. They load up and take off for Wolf Creek, the site of one of the biggest meteorite craters on the planet (it’s actually Wolfe Creek, but, you know…). The movie takes its time here, letting you get to know the characters a little. Far from boring if you’re into that thing; I find it really helps the viewer once the dying starts. Anyway, it’s a three hour hike to the crater, three hours back, and it’s getting pretty late by the time they get back to the car. Which won’t start. And they’re in the middle of fucking nowhere.

So they’re sitting in the car, in the dark, trying to figure out what to do but eventually realizing that their only choice is to bunk down and wait for someone to come along. And the someone who comes along is a guy by the name of Mick Taylor, who seems pretty nice overall. A bit of a hick but a very friendly dude who offers to tow them back to his place where he can get their car going again. They don’t really have much of a choice so they say fuck it and take the offer.

So he hitches them up and starts driving. And driving and driving and driving. The three in the car take turns napping and talking, trying not to get nervous about being so damn helpless and ignorant and vulnerable.

And they finally, finally, get to Mick’s camp, which is an abandoned mining site. According to Mick there are places like it all over the Outback, where companies move equipment into the middle of nowhere, set up shop and just abandon it all at the end – it’s more expensive to dismantle and move the equipment than to just buy new stuff for the next job. A pretty good setup overall… They sit around the campfire for a while, shoot the shit, and the three travelers eventually go to sleep while Mick starts working on the car.

The next thing we see is one of the girls, Liz, as she regains consciousness the following afternoon. She’s tied up in a storage shed. That’s when she starts to realize her situation. And the more she learns, the less you have to chew on at the end of your fingers. And yes, oh yes, you will curse the suspense.

That’s as far into the story as I want to go right now. I don’t want to give any direction to the twists and turns in this movie. I want you to be thrown just like I was. But I will tell you that most of the requisite horror movie rules are thrown out the window, and that makes the viewer feel vulnerable too. You know that feeling you get when something bad is going to happen, and you know that it’s going to happen, but you can’t stop your heart from beating faster even though it’s only a movie? Yeah, it’s just like that except for the middle part, the one part that makes us feel in control. Who lives, who dies, who gets caught and who gets away? I’m not tellin’, but you’ll get at least one surprise there.

This movie has received mixed reviews, but both verdicts point to the graphic violence. Some people thought it was one of the most disgusting, gratuitously violent movies ever made, and hated it as a result. Others loved it for the exact same reason. And that’s just it. You either get it or you don’t. You’re not supposed to kick back and watch the story unfold; you’re supposed to be on the edge of your seat, cursing your adrenal gland while you keep watching, and then let it prod that gland a little more. How much can they take? How much can you take?

No demons, no magic, no titties, no zombie-shark throwdowns, nothing but the middle of nowhere and the same old battle between good and evil. And it’s one of the best, creepiest, skin-crawlingest movies I’ve seen in a long time. And you get to hear a spine being severed with a hunting knife… kinda sounds like a chicken wing.

Have you ever cursed suspense and tension? Have you ever watched a movie, wiping the sweat from your hands as you curse the screen for putting you through it all? Well now you know what you’re in for, and that puts you at a distinct advantage over those three kids.

I won’t even get into the ending, which is about as climactic as an ending can be while still being anticlimactic.


Dan likes to talk about climaxes.


Don't Go In There Archives

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The original from 1974, not the remake. The remake wasn’t too bad considering the amount of them being made these days, and the quality of said remakes, but the new one did lack in a few areas. I’ll blather on mindlessly about those areas at a later date, but today is the day that we all get to talk about one of the best horror movies ever made, baby, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. One of the most important too. Yes, horror movies are important, of course they are. Let’s not even start that. There might be movie spoilers here, but TCM is over 30 years old. How long do you want me to wait for you, I mean shit….

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Think about it as if you’d never heard of the movie before. A little bit more memorable than, say, The Grudge or I Know What You Did Last Summer. No man, this movie is about a massacre in Texas that involves the use of a chainsaw. There’s this one guy who is way more bad news than any horror villain who has ever appeared onscreen, including some prepubescent chick who pisses on the carpet at parties and stabs herself in the crotch with crap from the parish gift shop. That act was, like, so 1973.

That’s bullshit. The Exorcist is one kickass movie and I’ll be hitting it soon enough.

I was about 12 or 13 when I first saw this movie. The original, crappy, dark as night version. The sound wasn’t too bad but the picture sucked. I couldn’t watch it, as much as I wanted to. I could tell that something cool was going on, but I just couldn’t tell what the hell it was.

Then they remastered it and released it into the general population. Nice move. Well into adulthood, well seasoned in horror and desensitized to any kind of video violence, I was blown away. No wonder people freaked out when it was first released. Even though there’s hardly any blood in this movie, it’s gruesome and graphic and gory in a very unique way – it’s smart as hell without acting like it. The whole thing is well done and pretty disturbing.

You see, what’s missing from this movie – which is one of the things that makes it so great, by the way – is reason. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end, but if you’re not watching the clock it’s pretty hard to tell exactly where you are. Once the confusion starts, it rapidly escalates to terror and doesn’t let up until Leatherface is shaking his fist at the clouds. And there’s not a whole lot of sense to be made of the movie; it relates to the unknown. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is easy to understand; what I mean is that they were very successful in portraying that whole sense of, “What the fuck is going on?”, that sense of mental chaos, running for your life for reasons that, in reality, would almost be beyond your comprehension entirely. Most of us have run from something or other, maybe even run from getting killed by someone, but who among us has run from being chopped up with a chainsaw and made into sausages for other people to eat? And realizing that that’s what will happen to us if we get nailed?

Usually in a movie like this, you’re told why the villains are so damn villainous; you’re given a motive. A horror movie will either make no sense at all due to budgets and bad script editing, or else it’s a ninety minute box of logic with every last thing spelled out for you phonetically like you’re retarded. We’re treated as if we’re either too stupid to figure out any details or too stupid to care. For the price of a movie ticket you’ve come to expect the ability to see inside the mind of a killer. Not so in this one. This one is less explanatory and a hell of a lot better. The best motive you can possibly come up with for the villains in this movie is:

“I guess they like to kill people and eat them….”

Horror Karma (which states: commit an evil deed and die within 120 minutes) doesn’t even really come into play here, not to the extent we’re all used to. We’re used to someone smoking a joint or a dick before they themselves get smoked. Only one of the crew survives this ordeal and it’s not that easy to say why she lives and the others die. People start dropping, or getting hung on meathooks, before they show you why they should die. And that’s sweet.

They grab you right at the start. Right at the very beginning, with the credits. Just darkness, and then a flash of light revealing something you can’t quite make out, although it looks kind of gross. A weird sound effect too, every time the light flashes…. What is that? I think it’s a camera. Yeah, it is. Someone’s taking pictures. Then you can hear the words. A news report on the radio, describing illegal exhumations and thefts of body parts from assorted graveyards. The camera pans and you see this weird piece of, um, art. A bunch of bones arranged, just so, in a graveyard. Those effects don’t make any sense the first time you watch it, but they do in retrospect. The whole thing is unsettling right away…. You know why? Because there’s no rhyme or reason to it; it’s the unknown, just like the rest of the movie. Before the fucking credits are gone, they’ve ripped the carpet out from under you. You’re looking for something to cling to, so they give you….

A vanload of kids. A vanload of latter day hippies, really, so there’s little in the way of empathizing with the victims. All the same, they’re more or less human so we can categorize them as the “normals”, “good guys”, or “those guys that’ll probably die” if you will. Should we laugh when Franklin takes a spill on the side of the road? Sure thing! Should we laugh when the poor crippled guy in the wheelchair goes ass over tits down a hill and spills a jar of piss all over himself? Of course not. Wait, that’s the same scene. Mom always told me not to laugh at people with physical handicaps but Franklin was fucking asking for it, okay? Who the hell starts poking at a van’s interior with a knife for the hell of it? Who the hell thinks that the best way to find a lost person is to wait for them to find you? Who the hell thinks that a wheelchair will work as well in the woods as it will on pavement? Who exactly had a few things in common with the hitchhiker, such as knives and an interest in slaughterhouses? FRANKLIN! I’m not laughing at Franklin because he was handicapped, I’m laughing at Franklin because he was a fucking dolt. That chainsaw in the chest was long overdue and a welcome relief from the hell they call The Life Of Franklin Hardesty.

Speaking of which, just check out the way Kirk bites it. Which one is Kirk? He died first. Now, he kept his horror karma intact – he made the mistake of trespassing, going into a strange house uninvited don’t ya know – so he hardly made it past the front porch. Response was swift and brutal in the form of one Leatherface coming from behind a sliding metal door (some kind of heavy duty garage type door that opens sideways) and slamming Kirk in the forehead with a mallet. And down he goes! A couple of seconds to show his body’s nerves freaking out (anyone who’s ever killed anything from a fish to a deer to a human will know what I’m talking about) in that spasmodic dance o’ death. Pretty realistic. Leatherface leans down, grabs the fresh carcass and drags it to his side of the door, then slams the door shut in a way that lets you know the meaning of the word final. The kid just ain’t coming back and that slam is more conclusive than a coffin lid.

The one survivor, Sally Hardesty, is involved in what is one of the best scenes in the movie. Terrorized, she finds help in the form of an Old Man. His idea of helping is to throw the girl in a sack and bring her home. So they’re driving along, he in the driver’s seat and she on the floor of the passenger side, and of course she’s scared. She’s whimpering in fear, tied up in a smelly old bag on her way to God knows where. The Old Man tells her to calm down, that things are going to be just fine, just stop making noise and you’ll be fine, li’l girl. So she tries to calm down and stifle herself. So he starts laughing and poking the sack with a stick. Which makes her freak out, which makes him console her, which calms her down, which makes him start poking her with a stick again. Kinda hard. It’s one of the most twisted and realistic scenes of sadism I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s not particularly brutal or savage in its detail, but if you think about the experience, and the movie does make you do that, you’ll feel sick.

You’d expect her to be happy to get out of the sack, but you know what? When someone puts you in a sack against your will, you may be well advised to stay there. Once she got out of the sack she got to see that she’d been invited to dinner…. One she’d already been invited to and turned down, coincidentally enough.

“And I thought YOU was in a hurry!”

I fucking love October. So come on, tell me you’ve seen this movie. Or tell me that you haven’t and then curse me for ruining it. But watch it.


The preceding column was originally posted last October, and has been reposted today because Dan is a lazy fucker who sometimes eats people.


Don't Go In There Archives

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I haven’t talked about movies in a while, and that’s okay. Sometimes I get sick of myself, you know? Weren’t you starting to get a little sick of it too?

Thought so.

But I haven’t run into any wasps lately, and I haven’t had my ass kicked while wearing any kind of costume lately, so movies it is. I actually had a pretty good weekend for it too.

Saturday afternoon found me at a certain video store whose name I won’t mention. You know what one. I was checking out their used movies and ended up buying three; one of which was a genuine find because it’s supposed to be Lucio Fulci’s best.

First off, I grabbed Wolf Creek. I haven’t seen this one yet but I’m looking forward to it. It’s supposed to have a gritty, realistic feel to the action. One review said it was boring for the first hour, but another review mentioned the strong character development. I generally don’t find character development to be boring; if it pulls you in and helps you identify with the characters, it’s going to keep you pulled in as they die off. Then you can say to yourself, “Gee, too bad Jimmy died, I thought Jimmy was going to make it.”

It’s supposed to be pretty gory too, but I’ll have to wait and see for myself. I might as well stop talking about this movie now, because as stated, I still haven’t seen the damn thing. I’ll let you all know what I think in a couple of weeks… try not to lose sleep before then.

The next movie I picked up, which was the first one I actually watched on Saturday, was the remake of The Omen. Most of what I’d heard about that movie was fairly positive, and I have to say they did an alright job. It was a pretty faithful remake… and hey, on that topic, what is it with us and remakes? Most people have some kind of complicated views about them, or at least, I can’t figure out the logic behind my own view. If the remake is too different, then they weren’t faithful to the original and the work suffers. If the remake is too similar, people wonder what the point was of remaking the damn thing to begin with (money of course, but people still wonder about it). Remakes really are a mixed blessing. If it wasn’t for remakes there would be a lot less horror movies coming out, but at the same time, a lot of those remakes suck. What to do?

I liked the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but to this day I get pissed that they showed Leatherface’s real face. He was all deformed and shit, and that kind of somewhat gives you a piece of motive, or a look into his perspective. And that sucks because TCM is all about chaos, unimaginably panicked confusion. We don't need no perspective.

Anyway, after The Omen I watched Zombie, because it was late and I didn’t want to fall asleep halfway through something I hadn’t seen. And Zombie is a great movie. There’s a fight between a zombie and a shark. Yes I know I mentioned it a million times before, and I’ll mention it a million times again. Another reason to fall asleep watching Zombie: I have it on VHS. When my DVD player stops it goes back to the menu; depending on the movie, the menu might have sound effects. That’s why I don’t fall asleep watching Amityville, because I’ll wake up at three or four in the morning to the sound of a demon telling me to GET OUT.

Sunday night was mostly a great night, with one minor setback. I found out that my DVD player doesn’t want to play one of the movies I bought, and that really sucks. My DVD player is a finicky little bastard when it wants to be. The movie it wouldn’t play? Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond. That obviously sucks more than usual for me, because you know what other Fulci movie I like, right? Zombie! Fulci has a good list of horror movies to his credit, including The House By The Cemetery and City Of The Living Dead (I didn’t forget you, Courtney, It’s coming soon). The Beyond is considered by many to be his best, for everything from plot to special effects.

But you see, the situation was not all bad. First of all, I have another DVD player upstairs, so, you know, my biggest inconvenience is moving my body upstairs or moving the player downstairs. Another thing is that I bought it used but I don’t think anyone had rented it. It’s in fucking pristine condition, man. AND, I paid less than five bucks for it. So, ultimately, I don’t give a shit that my hella cool, less than five dollar, good as new copy of a horror classic doesn’t play in my living room. I can deal with problems like that.

And nothing is for no reason either! When I realized that we couldn’t watch The Beyond, I started looking for something else. I was just about to mention Wolf Creek to my wife when she came across a horror classic on TV that was just about to start. One that I’d never seen in its entirety and had always felt like a bit of a goof for missing.

The Thing. John Carpenter, 1982. A remake itself, loosely based on The Thing From Another World (I’ve never seen that but I think I’ll try to track it down).

Man oh man, what a movie. I know the story, I’ve seen bits and pieces over the years, I know all about it. But that’s not the same as watching it and I was as impressed by this movie as anything Carpenter has done. The special effects aren’t bad at all, but what really grabbed me was the atmosphere and suspense. The buildup.

Not a lot of character development here, just little hints here and there about the people. The beauty is that you don’t need much, because you’re just watching this group of people go from cold to confused to apprehensive to bat shit crazy paranoid, and so on. The setting was just about perfect for the average human viewer as well. I mean, there are a million “middle of nowhere” setting possibilities. A lot of people figure that space is the best of these settings, because it’s almost impossible to imagine the distances involved; it’s also unfamiliar to anyone who hasn’t been there. But you know what? That’s two unknowns for the viewer to deal with. And it gets old fast… remember Jason X? It’s not the worst in the series, but fucking space? C’mon.

But the Antarctic. That’s a good setting. Most of us have felt cold, walked on ice and so on, and at least the Antarctic is on this fucking planet. It’s like the movie is set as far away from civilization as you could reasonably expect. That made a big difference to me.

The downside of watching The Thing on a Sunday night on TV was that I fell asleep before I saw the end (damn back pills). But I am so happy for seeing most of it, finally, that I don’t even care. At one point in the first hour, I noticed that my wife and I were both sitting ahead on the couch, elbows on our knees, waiting to see what’s going to happen next. That shit doesn’t happen to me very often. If it makes me sit up then it must be good. And the best part of all is that I now have an excuse to go buy it.


Dan's got your horror movies and your back pills.


Don't Go In There Archives

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I’m pulling this week’s article completely out of the deepest part of my ass. Or my psyche. I’m not sure which, so let’s see where this goes and find out together.

The other day, I was riding my bike to work when I was attacked by a wasp. The more faithful of my readers will recognize what this means. This means that a wasp got within ten feet of me. No reaction is too strong for me when I see one of those fuckers. I’ve actually thrown my back out – a few times – from twisting my body into unnatural positions to avoid walking into a wasp. I can only imagine what I must look like to people driving by… like some kind of professionally retarded breakdancer, sadly entertaining with a mild aftertaste of guilt, that’s what I like to think. I got me some skills but I still need help.

Anyway, I was riding my bike when I saw a wasp coming right at me. Without thinking I swerved to the right and landed tits up on the grass. Which was just as well because I needed a break after that, man. I mean, did you see that thing? It was HUGE!

While giving my heart rate and adrenaline levels a chance to get back to normal, I started thinking about how, just a few days prior, I’d promised myself that I’d get some therapy or hypnotherapy or fucking brainwashing to get over this scourge of mine. It seriously detracts from my quality of life in the summertime, don’t you know. In fact, it had recently almost ended my life altogether, which was why I’d started thinking about getting help to begin with. Almost gave my Mom a heart attack too.

My Mom has just been in town for a couple of weeks, staying at the house with my wife and I. We went out for a drive one beautiful sunny afternoon last week. That kind of day where there isn’t a cloud in the sky, just a light breeze, and you almost want to turn on the air conditioner but find it more comfortable and much nicer to drive along with the windows down. Yeah. Wasp weather. Fuckers.

My wife was driving and I was in the passenger seat, turned around to talk to Mom. We were sitting at a red light, in the left turning lane, when I saw a wasp coming towards my wife’s window. She saw it just after I did (I may have screamed WASP, I’m not sure) and tried to swat it back out of the car. She did a pretty good job too, she knocked that fucker back a good two feet and put up the window before he had a chance to mount his counter-counter-attack. What was I doing? Well, I had my seatbelt off and was opening the door to dive out into the road, and I only stopped myself because my half-blind mother saw the truck coming in the next lane over and warned me. I was a second away from diving in front of a moving truck in order to avoid a wasp. Out of the frying pan and fuck me with a Jeep Liberty.

Behavior like that can lead to a certain type of introspection generally saved for the barely sane, the adolescent or the habitual acid dropper. Repeated thoughts of what the fuck is wrong with me, what can I do, I’m trapped with this feeling forever, etc. And you know, the worst part of all is that I don’t even know where it came from. I don’t have a fucking clue why I’m so scared of wasps.

Not one clue.

I don’t remember being stung by one. I don’t remember being scared by one as a kid, or seeing anyone else being particularly afraid of one, or anyone else being stung by one and having a bad reaction to it. I don’t have any rational explanation for it at all. I do know that I’ve always been afraid of them, and I do know that the fear has grown over the years. I’m more afraid of them now than when I was a kid. I act like a kid around them now. And it’s shameful to me; I know a wasp sting sucks but doesn’t hurt that much, and I’ve been in more dangerous situations in the past, but that one thing just makes me shit myself.

So I spend all summer hanging wasp traps in the front and back yards, checking the fence for wasp nests every week or two, and spraying any single wasp on my property with that Raid shit that fires a big spray of deadly wasp poison, like, ten or twelve feet. Die you fuckers.

Whatever it is, it’s strange how the mind works. When I was about six years old, I got in a fight with a kid from up the street and knocked him down. He hit his head on the sidewalk, and he was okay, but he’d cut his head open and was bleeding pretty badly. Didn’t make a sound for a few seconds, then wound himself up and started screeching. For a second there I thought I’d killed him or something. I was useless in a fight for three or four years after that. I was always afraid that I was going to kill someone. Oh shit what if I knock him down and he cracks his skull on the sidewalk and…

That kind of shit does happen but it’s a pretty strange thing to be thinking about when you’re in the middle of a fight… “I better not hit him too hard.”

After a couple of years of that, I started being afraid of being perceived as a pussy so I started fighting anyone at the drop of a hat.

After a couple more years I started being afraid of getting a lengthy criminal record for petty and/or violent crimes, so I started acting like a relatively normal person. And it seems to have worked out for me, more or less. But I still can’t deal with those God Damn Fucking Wasps.


Now, it might be easy to laugh at him. So go ahead.


Don't Go In There Archives

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The following post is a repeat of Dan's. A rerun. Dan is busy with Furnace Room Cyril this week; he won't say exactly how.

Well it’s been a few weeks since we talked about zombies here, hasn’t it? No it hasn’t. Hell, it probably hasn’t been 48 hours since somebody mentioned them around here. A lot of people at FTTW like some sweet zombie action, and I know you’re itching for it as much as I am. So let’s go.

Need a good zombie movie to watch this month? I’d feel bad if you had nothing, I really would…. Let’s see…. What do we have?

You seen the Italian Zombie (Zombi) series?

I mentioned the first and second of these movies a while back. Some people call Zombie (Zombi 2) a Dawn Of The Dead ripoff, and there is eveidnce to support that, but there’s definitely enough original action to call its own. And like I said, the action here is original. If it seems tired – and it doesn’t to me - it’s only because it’s been imitated so many times. I loved this movie, and all five of them did have their moments. Like any series I guess, they tend to decline the longer they go on, but that’s kind of like a zombie anyway, isn’t it? <

It can get a little confusing due to the different titles given to these movies in Europe and North America, so bear with me for a second. The first one, Zombi, is actually Dario Argento’s version of Dawn Of The Dead (I mentioned that last week, not sure if you were here for that). The second one, Zombi 2, was released in North America as Zombie. That’s the one with the underwater fight between a zombie and a shark – It’s worth renting it just for that, not to mention the nice little Italian titties they show just before the fight scene. Now that I think about it, the zombie warms up his underwater fighting skills by having a go at the topless scuba diver. Good times!

Zombi/Dawn Of The Dead

This movie is on my short list. My really fucking short list. Either version. It seems that George Romero had made quite a hit with Night Of The Living Dead, or rather, he made a hit for others. In another version of the same old story, he learned some hard lessons when he was young. He wanted a sequel but didn’t have the money. Then he got talking to Dario Argento, who had boatloads of cash from movies like Suspiria (yes, I’ll hit that later). They got together and made history with this one.

The Argento version has quite a few differences from the Romero version, some for the better and some for the worse. There’s a different feel to it altogether, and I’ve only seen it twice so far so I can’t really commit to liking one more than the other. It is shorter though, and that’s a negative. I don’t find that Romero’s movie to be very slow moving although others would claim just that; I find it’s pretty well paced overall. Argento’s movie just has a faster pace – and that’s a positive, depending on your mood. They both work well. All your favourites are there – the Hare Krishna, the ghetto fro bro who gets the first good kill, the priest in the basement with one of the best horror lines in history: “You are stronger than us. But soon… I think they be stronger than you”. If you like Dawn Of The Dead at all, then you really owe it to yourself to check this one out. If you’ve liked Dawn for a long time and have never seen the other version, kick yourself now, really fucking hard, and save yourself the trouble later. Then do what you know you must.

Zombi 2/Zombie

This is a movie that you don’t hear much about, and I’m not really sure why. It made a fair amount of money and was pretty successful internationally, it’s gory as hell, it’s got just about anything you’d look for in a zombie movie, but it’s not in every horror section of every video store and it should be. Fucking classic zombie action here. This gets played in my house at least once a month and I never get tired of it.
A guy named Lucio Fulci made this one (I’ve talked about him before and will again, the guy was a genius). He was inspired by Dawn and came up with a semi-sequel. Some people hated it but some people love it. It’s on my top ten list for unnecessary nudity, extreme gore and a dead cop. It’s almost too good. It’s so good that I want to save the details for another day. This is about you finding something good to watch this month, and I gave you that right here.

Zombie 3, 4, 5

Okay, by this time Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci had both pulled out of this beast. You can tell. All three of them have their moments, but they’re obviously hurting. Zombie 5 is mainly about evil zombie birds. Enough said. Even if it was good, come on, it’s a movie about dead birds. Zombie 4 has the coolest theme song ever created, however. The coolest. 4 is definitely my favourite of this group (3-5). Just watch the opening scene with witch doctors and dancing savages and teeth and blood. One guy groans really well as his life is taken… I swear, no matter how squeamish you are, you’ll laugh your ass off. It also has the tropical island setting, a very underrated zombie setting.

Don’t get me wrong, all five of these movies are worth watching if you are into zombies. Good for watching in the middle of the night. They’re just not all great. Perfect for staying up all night on Halloween with a stack of movies though. Besides, if you watch the first one and like it, you gotta watch the rest as a matter of principle. You’ve seen Jason Takes Manhattan, haven’t you? You’ve seen Leprechaun In The Hood, right? Right.

What else we got?

Well we got Return Of The Living Dead, parts one and two. Part one is the more popular and with good reason, it’s a classic, but number two is pretty funny too, not to mention icky.

The first one has a bunch of real 80’s punks. Just watch this movie and you’ll see yourself hanging out in the graveyard. Seriously. I know your nickname was Suicide back in the day. You know it’s not a costume, it’s a way of life. My favourite line in the movie: “What are ya gonna do… aaaaaaaahhhhhh!”

It’s a classic horror/comedy, and I really wish the list of horror/comedies was longer. There aren’t enough of them out there. There are lots that try but few can find the right balance between the two elements. And the worst part of it is that zombies make the best horror/comedy character of all. Nothing’s as funny as a zombie. Not vampires or werewolves or mummies or body snatchers or Blobs or nothing. Zombies are, for the most part, absolutely retarded. Their brains are rotten. So when they act like idiots it’s great. When they ask for more paramedics it’s out of character, so that’s great too.

Number two is based around a kid who is trying to avoid some bullies who become infected. One really cool thing about this movie is the reappearance of a lot of the actors from the first one. Not the same characters obviously, but the same actors. Even a line or two from the first one gets repeated in the second. If you have any respect for the first and you haven’t seen the second, then you know what you have to do. Watch for the carload of zombies cruising town and looking for brains.

One movie that gets mentioned a lot around here is Brain Dead, or DeadAlive. That was directed by Peter Jackson, the guy who’s done the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. He didn’t have as big of a special effect budget for this one, but. Trust. Me. If you haven’t seen this yet then you need to rent it and watch on an empty stomach. So fucking gross. You think that the dead lady eating her own ear is disgusting, but then you get to the lawnmower scene and you forget everything before that.

Here’s a weird zombie movie for you: Nightmare City. It was directed by Umberto Lenzi, who is most famous for movies like Eaten Alive and Cannibal Ferox (I’ll hit those later). The zombies in this movie are a bit different from what you’re used to. They run. They shoot automatic weapons at you. They hijack planes, apparently. This movie breaks a lot of rules; no regard for the standards is what makes this one so fun. Lots of unintentional laughs and a few good scenes, if you know what I mean.

And here’s a zombie movie to avoid unless you are the most dedicated fan of the genre, in which case you’ve already seen it: Hell Of The Living Dead, a.k.a. Virus. I don’t even know if there are any good scenes in this or not and I own the damn thing. I’m told that it’s an acceptable film if you can get past the long shots of aerial stock footage of the jungle, followed by aerial shots of the jungle, followed by stock footage of the jungle. I just haven’t been able to get past it yet.

So there it is, a few more movies to check out this month. There are a lot more zombie movies that I haven’t mentioned, so let us know what you like.

Contrary to popular belief, Dan is not among the undead. Though he secretly wishes he was.

Don't Go In There Archives

Posted by Dan Greene at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

This past Sunday gave us our first FTTW weekly horoscope, presented by yours truly. Me. I want to clear something up before we go any further with them, however; I’m just presenting the horoscopes, I’m not writing them. Not yet. I’m still at the beginning of a long apprenticeship myself. You see…

I’ve got an astrologer living in my basement now. Actually, in the furnace room in the corner of my basement. And something is definitely up with that cat. Something not supported by empiricism, and I’m not just talking about horoscopes here.

It started last fall. My wife and I went up north for a five day getaway at a rented cabin (I talked about it a while back). One afternoon I was out for a walk and decided to have a look at this old shack I’d noticed in the woods a few days before, when we first drove up. It looked abandoned and it looked pretty fucking creepy, man. That’s right up my alley so I had to go check it out. I figured it was probably just some tarpaper shoebox thrown up by some hunter, but worth a look anyway. It just looked cool sitting there in the woods with no trail leading to it. Who knows, I thought, I might get some good creepy pictures or something.

So I started making my way towards the shack, but all through the woods I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched by someone or something. I told myself that it was city-boy-paranoia, or that I was probably just being watched by a fuckin deer or something. Called myself a pussy and kept going. But all the same, it felt a little stronger than just paranoia or an overactive imagination. And when I got a little closer to the shack I almost shit myself… that’s why it felt like I was being watched… somebody had hung an old latex Halloween mask from one of the trees. Fuck’s sake! The last thing I expected to see was the big head of an old man hanging from a tree. I got shocked, good and proper. Not as shocked as I was about to become though, not even close. I walked closer for a better look at the mask.

It wasn’t a latex Halloween mask hanging from a tree, it was a real face belonging to a really old and really tall man. Who, I figured, lived in the fucking shack… I guess he’d been watching me for ages. I was on his property or his squat or something. Man, the guy was almost eight feet tall. Jesus.

When I saw that it was a real person, I gasped so hard that I almost swallowed my tongue. Jumped about three feet in the air, turned around and just started walking away quickly. I wasn’t exactly afraid, not by any means, but it was just that weird of a situation. I’d gotten a shock and I’d gotten the answer to my question (what’s up with the shack) so there was no real point in hanging around anyway.

Who am I kidding. I was nervous as hell but I didn’t really know why. The only thing I was sure of was that I was out of my depth on a level I couldn’t quite recognize. Something felt… not unnatural, but not natural in the sense that I’m used to. It’s almost impossible to verbalize the feeling; that’s as close as I’m going to get. Moving on.

As I was walking away I could hear him muttering to himself, but not loud enough for me to hear clearly. I could tell that it didn’t really sound like English though. Or maybe it was my imagination. The further I walked, the louder the old man muttered; the weird part was that my perception of the volume never changed, as if the volume of his voice rose in direct proportion to the distance I’d walked. Now that was starting to freak me out. The old man was about two hundred feet behind me but it still felt like he was muttering from about ten feet away. I turned around one last time – and he’d disappeared altogether.

But I could still hear his voice coming from that empty area in the middle of the forest. That was a touch too fucked up for me. Yeah. Time to go.

I turned again to get the hell out of there and almost ran right into the old man’s finger, which was pointed down, directly at my left eye (which was maybe shoulder level to this guy). At the end was a dirty, dirty fingernail, about an inch and a half long and almost as thick, cracked and jagged. Fucking dagger. Behind the daggernail was nothing but dirt. Dirty sleeve, dirty face, dirty top hat (serious, a fucking top hat), boots and pants caked in mud.

“YOU’RE A PISCES!” he taunted. “I SMELLED YOU COMING A MILE AWAY, FISH MAN DAN! NOBODY’S GOING TO LOVE YOU LIKE YOUR MOM DOES, FISH MAN! THERE’S NO HOPE FOR THE HOPELESS ROMANTICS, FISH MAN! YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!”

He knew my name, he just said Dan. Shit. He was just talking, but it sounded like a scream coming from inside my head. The screams of rocks breaking. Hard, old, dusty, gravelly. And you know, as dirty as he looked, he smelled really clean. The stranger it got, the scareder I wasn’t. Something was making me realize that he meant no harm, although I also realized that he fucking owned me. At the very least, he knew my name and I didn’t know his.

“Of course I mean you no harm, DAN”, he replied to my mind, “why would I want to hurt a helpless little fishman like you?”

Helpless? I thought in spite of myself.

“Yes, helpless. Do you know how to turn a man into a pussy? Conceive him in June, HAHAHAHA!” And he fell down laughing at his own joke, adding, “At least he’ll smell like a pussy… FISHMAN!”

Well that’s kind of dirty, I thought to him. He jumped back up and started punching the air with his finger, emphasizing the words he felt were most important.

“Dirty? You don’t know dirt. You don’t know the smell of dirt. How deep in this Earth have you lived? I can tell, anyone can tell from looking at your eyes that you’ve hardly been around as long as Jesus. You’re just a baby yourself, a young spirit. Your soul still pisses itself… your soul needs to be potty trained. And that’s why. Do you got any..”

He saw that I looked confused; he stopped talking for a second, watching me, and his features softened a little. “You don’t even know why you came here today, do you? You still don’t remember me?”

I had to admit that I didn’t. Remember him?

“This is going to take longer than I thought, but that’s okay if we’re not wasteful. We can’t be wasteful. For now, trust me. We are connected in ways you’ve not even thought of. Do you got any Bee…. Wait, wait” he said as he started fishing around in his pockets. Pulled out a little rock and held it up for me to see the engraving.

“Do you know what this is, Dan, Dan, my dirty fishman?”
“Uh, sure thing, it’s a rune.”
“Of course, but do you know what it does? What it does for you? What you do for it?”
“Well I’ve got a pretty good idea, I mean I’m no expert but I thi…”
Finger stabbing the sky again, “That’s exactly what you are, no expert. I just said you were young, didn’t I? You need to pay attention and not waste time; it’s all we have, you know. The wealthy don’t stay wealthy by wasting money. You understand that much about time, right?”
“What, we’ve got a wealth of time if we don’t waste it?”
He finally smiled. “Son, we’ve got forever if we don’t waste it. Do you got any Beefaroni?”

Of course I did. I gave him a can; he said he’d be right back, walked behind a tree and disappeared. I waited until nightfall but he never returned. Disappointed yet relieved, I made my way back to the cabin I’d rented and told my wife the whole story. She checked my head for bumps, checked my pockets for drugs that were not on the camping checklist, found nothing, told me I was crazy and that was that. I certainly never forgot about it, but you know, life goes on.

Nine weeks later to the day. It was time to change the air filter on the furnace, so I went down to the basement and into the furnace room (it’s not like a real furnace room, just a little 8X8 room with a furnace in it. I live in a townhouse, not a high school, you know?). I’ve got a single 60 watt bulb hanging from the ceiling, old school, with the string hanging down. I walked in and pulled the string. And my head was filled to the brim of my skull with that voice again.

“TURN OFF THE LIGHT, USE A CANDLE!”

Needless to say, he’d scared the shit right out of me. I’m not kidding, I pooped a little. When I did that he said, “I smell knowledge. You just learned something alright, didn’t you?”

I couldn’t help but think to myself that I’d just learned two things. I didn’t know that shit smelled like knowledge. He cackled, “Ha ha, I suppose you’re right, you did learn two things. I didn’t think of that myself. I guess you just shit on me! There’s hope for you yet. Do you got any Beefaroni?”

This guy fucking loves the stuff. Opened the can with his daggernail in one smooth motion, scooped it out and ate it with his hands. Didn’t spill a drop either, and when he was finished his hands were completely clean of pasta and sauce. They still looked dirty, but with no trace of food. Quite the spectacle, watching this old man eat.

Every day since then has been a different mystery with that guy. He’s connected to the universe in ways I don’t understand. In ways I can’t even explain how I don’t understand. Some of these ways I do understand; he has taught me a lot, but I’m not at the point where I can just start spreading this shit around. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

So for now, let’s just say that I’m an apprentice of sorts. The old man has taken up permanent residency in my furnace room, sitting down there all day and all night, muttering to himself and playing with his runes and crystals and shit. And all the other things you’d expect to see; pendulums, star charts and so on. Other things that I’ve not been taught about yet and have been told not to ask about.

That’s where your horoscopes are coming from. That guy. Now, you go back to last Sunday’s horoscope and tell me how far off he was. As a matter of fact, tell my wife. She still doesn’t believe that we have what seems to be a millennia-old occultist with some kind of telepathic abilities and a craving for Beefaroni living in our furnace room. I’ve been trying to get a photo, if for no other reason than to prove his existence to my wife, but it hasn’t been easy. He doesn’t mind cameras but he hates bright lights of any kind. He hangs in the furnace room and won’t let me turn on the light. Nothing comes out right, but I’ll keep trying.

He won’t tell me his name so I started calling him Cyril. Cyril said he’s cool with that. I honestly don’t know if he’s making astrological readings or manifesting reality down there. I’ve got my vague suspicions about the latter.


One has to wonder what this might cost Dan in the long run.


Don't Go In There Archives

Posted by Dan Greene at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

So as you’ve come to understand, I’m a bit of an idiot and I was in my element. Getting high and fucking around. This party supply company had made a lot of money over the years; they weren’t just getting by or anything. They could have had a really cool children’s party thing going, but they ripped people off every time.

I mean, fuck, a clown with facial hair. Jesus. Speaking of which…

There was one time when my girlfriend couldn’t make it as my sidekick. Now, the real Barney on TV has an actual sidekick, this annoying fucker by the name of Baby Bop, but you had to pay extra if you wanted that shit at your party. The Barney-and-a-sidekick package came with Barney and either a clown or a chipmunk. Not a famous chipmunk or anything, just a fucking chipmunk. So whoever came along with me had to be versatile, don’t you know. They might have to switch personas two or three times an afternoon, depending on how busy we were.

Anyway, one day my girlfriend couldn’t make it and I had to find someone else. Time was running short so I figured I’d ask my brother, who is a couple of years older than me. The party was at 1:30 in the afternoon, and I asked him at about 12:45. He was still in bed, hung over from the night before. But he was a tough old fucker, even back then, so he hauled ass and we got to the gig on time. He was hung over in the worst way, leaking the stink of old dark rum out of his pores. You know that smell, don’t you? Last night’s booze coming out your skin?

Yeah, he didn’t have time for a shower. Or a shave. And we were running late so he just kind of got out of bed, pissed, grabbed the clown costume and makeup and climbed in the van. I was driving out the highway with the orange lights going, blasting The Descendents and singing along, just to be a prick. NO! ALL!... “Let’s listen to that again…” NO! ALL!.... “That’s a great song…” NO! ALL!.... until he put down his makeup and started punching me. “Fine fine fine, Jesus, calm down dude….. I GOT ALL THE FISH I NEED ON THE DECK OF MY BOAT!”

So he’d never put on clown makeup before, and his first chance was in a moving van while hung over. And he was about to go live into a party, and he was the walking dead. And he looked like shit and neither of us really gave a shit. I played the stupid 20 minute cassette of Barney songs and did my bit, while my brother stood in the corner, stinking, with a two day beard poking through his white clown makeup. Eyes like death, breath that could be improved by chewing on a nice log of shit, and that unavoidable stench of Captain Morgan dark mixed with sweat. The shittiest clown I’ve ever seen in my life. And I’m stoned out of my head, hiding under a Barney head and laughing, laughing the whole time. Listening to the parents’ comments… such as…

“What’s wrong with him?”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“How much did you pay for this?”
“The clown fucking smells like rum. He smells like fucking rum.”

I think we were actually pretty lucky to get out of that one. That was close. But we got out with the check and I bought some hash and he bought some Morgan dark and all was right in the world.

There were a few close calls, for that matter. Lots of stairs that I almost broke my neck on. Fucking huge ass Barney feet, almost two feet long, tripping me up everywhere I went. And they just kind of slipped on, you know. I can't move around like I’m really Barney; they just kind of go on over your shoes and that’s it. They’re not made for running.

So, right towards the end of my career in this bullshit, we hit the Christmas season. Barney’s Christmas season starts in late October and early November, as soon as offices and corporate organizations start having Christmas parties. Christmas season was a pretty good time, overall. Lots and lots of parties meant lots and lots of gigs for me, a gas allowance in the party van, and paid in cash as often as not. Yeah, it could definitely be a pain in the ass from time to time. That costume was hot as hell and stunk worse. Having to deal with angry parents who’d rather try and settle the bill with Barney than the actual person they’d made the deal with. I mean, complaining to the cashier in the department store is one thing – well, not really, but holy shit, grown men trying to talk seriously to fucking Barney about previous financial agreements that may or may not have been honoured. Jesus.

But again, I’d rather be getting high and acting like an idiot than flipping burgers, and the money was better. And I wouldn’t have cared anyway. You understand though, right? I’m just repeating myself now, sorry…

One Sunday, my girlfriend and I had a sweet gig coming up. A big company was having a massive party at the biggest hotel in town. Hundreds of employees with hundreds of kids. This was a good deal because we could just mingle around and not do our shitty routine; novody wanted to see that, it was about as good as you’d expect a couple of potheads to bother with. That’s all they ever paid for, stupid potheads in costumes. Just the thought makes me laugh as I’m typing it, even now. Fucking rubes. It’s not like we’d have been any better had we not smoked up anyway.

So like I said, it was Christmas season, so there was good dope everywhere. We’d scored this really good hash and were pretty useless by the time we got there. My girlfriend had Chipmunk duties…man, she was a good clown, but she rocked that fucking Chipmunk costume. Oh yeah, capital C Chipmink, my girlfriend was The Chipmunk (I married that girl, obviously). We hit the party and it was crazy, it was huge. It was honestly the most high class, glorious affair I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe it… the hotel conference room was decorated to look like some kind of Christmas palace, all for the kids. And the kids were having the time of their lives.

And you know, I don’t mind saying that there were some pretty cool moments with that job. Kids who are hardly old enough to walk, doing that funny little kid walk as fast as they can just so they can hug you around the knees. You see kids at their best and you’re not responsible for them so it’s pretty cool. They might cry when you leave but fuck that noise, you’re out of there.

We finished our shift and left the conference room. Just outside, there was a group of kids, about twelve or fifteen of them, and all between nine and twelve. I was going to walk over to them but said fuck it, they’re too old to be interested in Barney, and I kept going. Then I heard a voice behind me:

“Hey, wow, look it’s Barney!”
And I turned around and this kid, about nine, comes running up to me. I thought I smelled trouble, but...
“Wow, I didn’t know you were going to be here today! Wow, it’s Barney!”

So like a sucker I leaned I to give the kid a pat on the head or some such bullshit. And the kid hauled off and belted Barney right in the stomach.

Barney’s stomach is not where my fucking stomach is. He’s a seven foot chubby dinosaur and I was a six foot two skinny pothead. If you’re the height of a nine year old and you punch Barney in the stomach, you’re punching me right in the nutsack. Yeah, like you didn’t see that coming. I fucking didn’t. And he got me good and it hurt like only a punch in the nutsack can. And I doubled over, and by then another kid had come over, and he started punching Barney in the head. Barney’s head is not my head. That actually wasn’t so bad because my head was protected pretty well, but the Barney head reverberated with this nasty tone. It was like having a washtub banged over your head. It didn’t hurt but it was fucking annoying.

And now the kids are starting to see the fun and we’re both fucking swarmed. And they are young and they don’t realize what they’re doing and my Chipmunk lady takes one in the crotch too. My Chipmunk girl got punched in the vagina. But I don’t see that because I’m the prime target, man, I’m Barney and there are about eight kids crawling on me and I’m going down and don’t try to save me honey, just run!

But she didn’t run. She’s my Chipmunk lady. She pulled me out of certain doom – seriously, I couldn’t see or do shit, and there were all these little fists raining down on me. I was on my back and the Barney head had twisted sideways and I was in the dark and it stank like sweat and all I could do is curl up in a ball and protect my garbage, and she pulled me out.

And we ran. And they ran after us. She had to guide me until I got my head on straight, and even then one of my feet was half off. Running like a crippled animal from the hunter. And we ran down the hall, through the lobby and made it to the elevator, and most of the kids stopped there because, you know, their parents teach them not to do things like get on elevators unsupervised. Kick Barney’s ass, sure thing, but don’t get on the fucking elevator. One kid did try to get on the elevator though. I told him to fuck off and shoved him back out into the lobby. And he looked surprised… That’s what I really didn’t get. What the fuck did you expect?

I realized before I started writing this three weeks ago that the idea of some cuddly mascot or other falling down or getting beaten up is funny and a bit of a cliche. We've all seen the kangaroo kick the shit out of that mascot dude. And it's all funny as hell to me, but I've been on the other side. I've lived the cliche. How many of us can say that?

Most of us, I guess.


Dan is no longer taking party orders from you people. You're too weird.


Don't Go In There Archives

Posted by Dan Greene at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

So to recap, last week I described my idiotic, fried chicken driven behaviour; how I would dress in stupid costumes in the hope of scoring a free snack pack or some such bullshit. You'd think I'd grow out of that, but apparently not.

One day when I was about, oh, 21 I suppose, I was smoking hash with my girlfriend. We got all high and shit. It was great. I think we watched The Price Is Right. Bob kicks ass. Anyway.

Later that morning I dropped her off at her house and made my way home. As I was driving along, I noticed a sign in the window of a party supply store: Clown position available, apply within. I applied the fuck within immediately. I mean, c'mon.

I walked up to the counter and said hi to the lady. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes dear, I understand you are looking for a clown.”
“Uh…. Oh, yes, we are. Are you interested in the position?”
“Very much so, yes. You see dear, I don’t really need a job. But I do want a clown job. It’s probably minimum wage, I don’t even care about that. I've been a professional idiot all my life and it's about time I got paid for it. I want to be a clown. How bout it? I get to wear makeup and dance around, right?”

I got the job, man, just like that. Seven bucks a gig (just over minimum wage at the time), with access to a clown costume anytime I wanted. Anytime I wanted. Jackpot! They also had a minivan that I could drive, with a rack of orange lights on top and a siren sounding doohickey, and a fucking megaphone with the microphone inside so that I could say whatever the hell I wanted from a moving vehicle, and people would just kinda think that the clown in the minivan wasn’t very funny.

So I had to wear makeup and shit, funny hat, red nose, all that stuff. I had a goatee or something on my face, but they didn’t make me shave it. Have you ever seen a clown with any kind of facial hair at all? I know some kids that have and I’m not so sure they liked it. In fact I know they didn’t. Neither did their parents. They didn’t like my brother showing up at their house smelling like yesterday's rum either, but that's another stupid story.

For a while I traveled with Barney, as his sidekick. Barney and his friend the clown with the goatee and the red eyes. Barney was a 14 year old girl who had been forced into the job by her aunt (that’s why she got the Barney position, her connections) and resented every damn minute of it. I hated working with her because she was a whiny little skanky rich kid who spilled chips and diet soda in the van, but she hated her job so much more. Eventually the pressure of it all got to her and she just quit the whole business one day, just told her aunt to fuck off and went home. I thought I smelled opportunity, but it came looking for me before I could even formulate a plan.

The boss called a couple of days after her niece disappeared and asked if I could do Barney, and maybe I knew someone who could do the sidekick thing? I told her that I could usually get a second person to help out as long as I had a few day’s notice, and they bit the hook. They said sure thing. Take our business vehicle, act like an idiot in your costume with your friends and do what you feel is best. I could have wrecked that minivan altogether, but all I did with it was act like a goof and hot-box it every night with my friends. My girlfriend did the sidekick thing most of the time, and she was the best sidekick imaginable. I can’t even begin to explain her versatility as a goof in a costume. She’s my everything.

The whole Barney setup was pretty cheap, but they didn’t even get the Barney suit washed before they put me into it. They finally did clean it about a month later, but I still dealt with the last kid’s sweat until then. Fucking gross, man. I found out, eventually, that they would also rent the same suit to people when I wasn’t using it. That was pretty much the last straw before I quit, but I was already pissed off because I’d been beaten up the previous weekend. By a bunch of kids who hated Barney.

There are a lot of Barney haters out there, but none can match the vitriolic rage of an older brother who’s had to put up with a younger sibling’s screaming demands for repeated viewing of a Barney videotape. They have to be nice about sharing the TV so they go somewhere else, but you know that being driven away from the television is just about the worst thing you can do to any kid who has been born within the last 50 years. Kids who don’t like Barney, well, apparently they fucking hate Barney. They want his head for what he’s done. And part of me can identify. I mean, if anything had forced me to give up that cartoon about Rubik, The Amazing Cube when I was a kid, I would have stirred up some shit you wouldn’t believe until I got my way and got to see that fucking cube. It’s like any pop phenomenon, you either love him or hate him. Nobody thinks Britney Spears (bad example these days, but you know what I mean) is just okay.

So I lied. This is the second of three parts, not the second of two. Yeah, like you're going to lose sleep over it.

Next week, obviously, I get my ass kicked by a bunch of kids.


Dan still has overwhelming urges to humiliate himself for minimum wage. Count your spare change and give him a call.


Don't Go In There Archives

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Okay, I know I've promised you a lot of things. I've promised to write about Japanese horror movies, more Cronenberg, the Leprechaun movies.. a lot of shit. And I will keep up with my faithful readers, God love ya. But today I'm going to talk about a different kind of horror.

There's a song I keep thinking of, and the lyrics go something like

The things I do for money
I'll never understand
I used to be quite practical
But now I find I'm tactical...... the world
Is just a marble in the palm of my hand

We've all talked about the things we do for money. Are we whores or are we masters of our destiny? The following is the first of two parts...

I got the idea to write this when I read the LNT section on mascots a while back….. I’ve paid my mascot/costume dues, my friends. I've done my time, and far from being ashamed of my past, this story will show what a strong person I am. I think. It at least shows that I’m a whore who will do just about anything for chicken or seven bucks and access to a minivan with a spinning light on top.

There was this one day when I was about 12 years old; I made an uninformed decision and I joined air cadets. Real punk as fuck, I know. Yeah whatever, screw you, it got me laid. Among other things I met lots of girls and got to fly planes, I learned that politics is a shitty thing but only when people are involved, and I learned that I would get free food if I volunteered to walk in the Santa Claus Parade.

Free food. Now, I quickly learned that when the city was paying for your food in response to your volunteer work, it was most likely going to be Mary Brown’s Fried Chicken. Colonel Assface could always and can always go fuck himself. Mary’s was the shit. I would do some very questionable things for Mary, time and again.

So I volunteered to walk in the Santa Claus Parade, figuring that I would be marching with the rest of the geeks in my air cadet uniform. Not true. They had special plans for me. They had a Goofy costume. Shitfuck Goddammit. I knew the chicken was coming and I knew I wouldn’t get shit if I didn’t put on that Goofy costume. So I did.

Some old skank from some Ladies’ Auxiliary club had made the headpiece at some arts and crafts class, and although it did look really good, it was made of paper mache. It weighed about five or seven pounds, it was uncomfortable as hell, didn’t fit at all, and kept sliding down the front of my face while I was trying to walk. The only thing I could do to keep it in place and not faceplant was to stick my lower jaw out as far as fucking possible and let the top of Goofy’s muzzle rest on my bottom teeth. The parade lasted about 5 kilometres (3 miles). I was – seriously - a mouth breathing, drooling Disney dog with a painful case of voluntary underbite and a mouthful of paper mache paste. It was brutal, man. After the parade I walked in to claim the chicken that was so fucking rightfully mine, and you know what I saw?

That fucking Colonel. Shitfuck Goddammit.

By the time I got forced into another costume I’d become rather disillusioned with being told what to do (I’d also seen the other costumes that the Ladie’s Auxiliary club had put together and they all sucked, except for this one paper mache cow head that I eventually stole and used all the time, but only while on acid). This time though, Mary Brown’s was specifically mentioned as a reward so I was cool with it, and was maybe even a touch enthusiastic. And the costume was cool alright…… The Maple Leaf Big Stick Bologna. Now, when I say cool I mean so fucking lame that I couldn’t resist putting that shit on and acting like an idiot in front of people who couldn’t recognize me. I’m very pissed off that I can’t find a picture of it anywhere, but trust me. It was stupid.

The costume was a two piece. The outer piece was a six foot long piece of fake bologna, made mainly of plastic resin and some polyethylbullshit. The inner piece was a one piece bologna-coloured spandex jumpsuit thing. It was so fucking lame, stupid and abstractly homoerotic that I simply could not resist smoking lots of hash, climbing right into that fucker, and walking around and hugging dudes in public at the manufacturer’s home improvement show or whatever. Think about it. If you were a regular guy at some event or other and you got accosted by some huge phallic piece of processed meat in a processed meat coloured bodysuit, then you just might become really, really uncomfortable – and if anyone asked you why you were upset about it, you’d only get more uncomfortable. If I saw a lumberjack shirt or untied pair of work boots on anyone that day, I’d hug that dude. That was such a great day. Everyone felt awkward but me, and I got a three piece combo with taters at the end of it all.

But you see, it was all training for the big league.


Dan will wear anything you want if you promise him chicken. You don't even have to actually give it to him.


Don't Go In There Archives

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Shit….. I’ve started to write this piece about twenty times, only to delete the whole thing partway through. I’d stop at two sentences, 1000 words, whatever. I can’t seem to get those words just right when I’m talking about David Cronenberg, but today I’ll try again.

We’re walking on holy ground here. Well, maybe that’s a stretch.

And it’s okay if you don’t know who he is. We’re not cinematic snobs around here; we’re here to share the fun. But I’ll tell you right fucking now that every one of this guy’s movies is singular to say the least; even the ones you don’t like leave an impression. He takes horror movies to a level that is unparalleled as far as I’m concerned. I can’t come up with any useful list of horror movies that make me think the way his do. They’re always smart and the topics always address something larger than themselves. At the same time, they’re very graphic, visceral and… man, they’re just fuckin gory. You can think about the artistic, literary and cinematic elements of his work, or you can just crack a beer and watch the heads explode. Someone that can appeal to an audience as diverse as that is going to give us a lot to talk about. He’s done movies like Scanners, The Dead Zone, Naked Lunch (he’s the only person brave enough to attempt taking on anything by William S. Burroughs. I mean, holy shit. You ever read that book? Cronenberg and Burroughs as a topic deserves its own piece anyway, so I’ll leave it at that for now), The Fly, Crash (the one from 1996, based on the book by J.G. Ballard and starring James Spader & Deborah Unger), A History Of Violence and eXistenZ. Not a bad list, hey? Not at all, and that’s not everything he’s done either.

And he’s Canadian too, never shot a damn thing in the States and only a couple of things outside of Canada. That’s rare.

I'm going to have to cover his movies over a few weeks, so what do you want to hit first? Well, The Fly is a classic, isn’t it? A well done remake of the 1958 classic, with a lot more special effects and gross disgusting fluids. Seth Brundle was a scientist who was working on a teleportation…. Um…
You don’t need me to explain the plot, do you? If you do then there’s Simpsons episode you didn’t quite get.

One element that Cronenberg returns to again and again is the relationship between humans and machines. And illness and viral infections and society and the like. Often they overlap, and The Fly is a great example. The Fly puts a love story together with a disease (yeah, like that’s never happened before) and technology. This works out perfectly for Cronenberg, it must have been almost too easy for him. He also likes to make the viewer think about the disease as another character, and tries to get you to look at things from the disease’s point of view. The Fly is a great example of that too. Cronenberg looks at diseases as living creatures that deserve at least the same respect as psycho killers and aliens. Disease wants to survive as much as we do, and it’s just another form of survival of the fittest. And as far as he’s concerned you’d be silly to think any other way. Think of those scenes where Seth is describing what’s happening to him. It’s almost like he’s trying to explain for the process, almost like he’s speaking from its point of view, or speaking to it and relaying what he’s told.

“I know what the disease wants…. It wants to turn me into something else. That’s not too terrible, is it?”

“I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it.”

And like I said at the beginning of all this, if you have no time for that pretentious bullshit, then don’t worry because The Fly is pretty gross and everything is going to be just fine for you. Shitty for Seth Brundle, but good for you. Jeff Goldblum’s character slowly changes from a human into a fly, a Brundlefly, and it’s not pretty. First a little extra energy, then some weird looking hairs, then shit goes haywire. Slime and bad skin and poor eating habits and blood…. and the worst part, the very worst part of all, is the love that was lost.


Dan didn't really mean that last part about the love.


Don't Go In There Archives

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Well here we go. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Paddy’s Day is just around the corner. Get to the liquor store and stock up on beer and whiskey. Because green beer at the bar is for LOSERS.

Fucking green beer. A blasphemy combining disrespect for the Irish culture with disrespect for pints of all colours. Just say no to green beer… and go shoot some Jamesons.

Many would say that Paddy’s Day is another version of Valentine’s Day, just another day for a group of people to spend money. And a lot of the Irish would tell you the same. Nevertheless, it’s celebrated.

Oh, it’s celebrated alright, and then some. Particularly among strict Irish Catholics, who view it as the only legitimate break from Lent (Lent being an annual period of forty days when some Catholics punish themselves for being Catholic, as well as for the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert with himself in a way that most of us wouldn’t bother with), which means an excuse to party while commemorating Jesus’ self-imposed starvation.

So I bought myself a gift for the occasion. Leprechaun 1 through 6 on DVD. What a waste of fucking money. Because you know what these movies are like, right? The first one is more silly than scary, and they get progressively worse. That shit is right up my alley, I can’t wait to get into it.

It got me thinking how leprechauns aren’t really that scary to begin with. Kind of strange that they’d bother making a horror movie about a leprechaun, not to mention six. And that got me thinking about other shit in horror movies that are supposed to be scary, but don’t make it for one reason or another.

Creepshow 2
When I think of unscary shit in horror movies, the first phrase to come to mind is “wooden feet”. Creepshow 2 is made up of several short stories; the first one involves a wooden cigar store Indian that comes to life to get revenge on the young thug that killed its store owner. Yeah, great premise. Even better special effects. When that wooden Indian started to move I almost, I almost woke up. The best part of all is when the wood man is creeping along in the dark, stalking his target. Suspenseful music is playing and the camera focuses on his wooden feet, moving ever so slowly and gently across the floor. You know how Indians walk when they hunt, right? It’s legendary. That’s what they’re trying to tell you and it doesn’t work.
Actually running into the guy and getting my ass kicked by those wooden feet is not a nice idea at all, but it’s really unlikely. That shit just doesn’t happen. Zombies and vampires are things you should actually worry about, but nobody has nightmares about wooden Indians, before or after watching Creepshow 2.

Child’s Play

These are decent movies. I haven’t seen the third one in a long time and I’ve been meaning to check it out for a couple of months now. I haven’t seen the most recent one either, but Bride Of Chucky gave me exactly what I expected. But anyway, the first one.

Now, my hatred for Andy Barclay, the main kid character in the movie, is well documented. That kid sucks. He’s a little wank of a kid. But it always makes me feel good to say it again. Moving on. Chucky. Yeah, I know he’s a doll that’s been possessed by the spirit of a Satanic serial killer, but you know what? You just lost me at doll. He’s a fucking doll. He’s like, what, 18 inches high? Even if he’s armed with a knife, he’s an 18 inch high doll that weighs all of five pounds. Just kick the fucking thing, Jaysus.

Chopping Mall
One of the worst 80’s horror movies ever, and I don’t mean that in a good way at all. It’s pretty boring… that’s documented around here somewhere too. A group of teens party in a mall after it closes, and the robot security guards try to kill them. Fuck’s sake.

Okay, if I was chased by a robot security guard, a killbot, in real life then I’d probably shit myself. Just as if I was being chased by a cigar store Indian or a doll. But again, this stuff is unbelievable. It’s not like it’s werewolves or demons or anything.

Enough of this, I need to go see how scary a leprechaun can actually be. Not very scary at all, if I’m lucky.


Dan is lying when he says he is not afraid of short things.


Don't Go In There Archives

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Classic rock week, baby, good times….

So, this guy Satan….. what do you think of that guy? Is he a pain in the ass, is he pure evil? Is he an alright guy who’s just having some fun, is he maybe a guy who makes your life worth living? Where would you be without Satan? Would you mind? Would you care?

Yeah, I’m asking the religious people as much as the others.

The devil takes up a lot of space in our culture. I mean, religion takes up a huge amount of our culture; even if we don’t go to church or believe, we’re surrounded by those who do. And the devil takes up a lot of space in most of the religions we deal with. Not all of them, but, you know. A few of them.

His story is pretty interesting too, you know. Depending on what version you read, what religious book you read, his story might vary a little. But it’s largely the same, he’s here for the same reasons anyway. And he’s been here a long time. Hanging around.

We all live our own lives for our own reasons, and I’m not saying that we’re all afraid of the devil, but a lot of us were raised as Christians – or whatever, God fearing whatever – and that shit got pounded into us. That fear of good and evil. And that’s what, at least partly, formed the morality that we use today. Most of us, religious or not, try to use common sense in acting well, because hey, we all have to live together. But some of us behave well because we’re afraid of Satan, in the same way that some of us behave well because we’re afraid of the cops.

He’s been in our culture for thousands of years now and he’s largely been reduced to a special effect in a horror movie, or the basis for a really weird house of horror somewhere in the bible belt. Those house of horror things… you ever see those? Kids getting scared into going to church when they see examples of sinful living that would damn them to hell? They’re forced to sign pledges and shit? Now that’s scary.

So who pays attention to Satan anymore? People who like horror movies for sure, because demonic stuff is cool. Some religious people do for religious reasons. Hell, some people worship him, but let’s come back to that. Do goth kids like Satan? I know they like death and black stuff but I don’t know about that. He’s still around in heavy metal, but only the weirdos take metal Satan seriously. Like dragon slaying.

I’m wondering if, you know, we spend all this time being good and some of us thank God for it. And we go out and party or fornicate or whatever, and we get hungover or get the clap and we’re sorry. But you had fun partying and fornicating, didn’t you?

I’m not saying that Satan is a great guy, or a cool guy, but he works hard and we appreciate the fruits of his labour and I think it’s only fair that every once in a while we say, thank you Satan. Thank you for making life more enjoyable by taking part in my ability to live with free will. Because without a choice between good and evil, life wouldn’t be very enjoyable at all. And it’s great when I get my dick sucked on a Tuesday afternoon too.

Think about the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Okay, some of them are kind of counterproductive, but at the same time they can be a lot of fun and are a great way to spend the afternoon. Eating and fucking and hanging out. Being proud about how much you ate and fucked, and how little else you did. Just ate and fucked.

So this week, say thanks to Satan, the man, the fallen angel, the legend, the cartoon. Go do something evil; it’s the right thing to do.


Dan prays to God, Satan, and anyone else he can think of.


Archives

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I got this thing. I got this…. hangup, this phobia, and I can’t let go of it. The older I get, the worse it seems to get. It sure as hell isn’t getting better.

It’s wasps, man. Fuckin wasps. I hate them so very much. When I was a kid I used to look forward to summer and getting out of school. Nowadays, well, I still like summer but I always look forward to the fall of the year. That’s when those fuckers start to get all logey and slow moving and dull witted, and eventually they die the fuck off and leave me alone so I can at least shovel the driveway in peace.

It usually is, but it doesn’t even have to be a wasp. If it’s flying and unidentifiable then part of me figures it’s a wasp, or worse. Something evil that will sting me. So I run. And my behaviour is more than a little reminiscent of a little girl, about four or five years old, running away from something that might actually be harmful. I am shamed every time I leave my house and meet a wasp. Have you ever lived in shame with yourself? Have you ever lost your shit, entirely, over a fucking bug?

I mean, don’t get me wrong but I’m not crazy macho like, say, George Bush or Hulk Hogan. At the same time I do enjoy inflicting pain on friends as well as enduring pain for my friends’ enjoyment. Like any other guy. It’s what we all do from time to time, you know; the Jackass crew just filmed that shit and got rich. Anyway, a little pain never hurt anyone, right? So why the hell do I lose my shit over a fucking bug?

It’s like this: I’ll be getting ready to leave my house, on some beautiful afternoon in July. It’s a great day, I have the day off and I have my Nerf football. I have a few friends to meet and I have a few in the cooler. And a few rolled. All is right in the world. I tell myself that everything is going to be fine. I tell myself that I’ll just be calm and rational if I run into a wasp. I leave the house feeling great.

And I notice them everywhere I go. If there’s a wasp within twenty feet of me, I’ll notice it because that fucker is obviously out to get me. If it flies away, then he must be off to tell his friends. I’ll cross the street if I see a wasp on the sidewalk, twenty feet ahead of me. And I’ll feel lucky to have escaped it.

So, you know. I’ve been working hard to work through this. Trying to reduce my fear and increase my tolerance. And things were going okay, until my wife ate her lunch outside last summer. Fuck’s sake… she went and bought one of those submarine sandwiches from one of those submarine sandwich stores, and decided to eat it in the park, all peaceful and harmonious with nature and shit. But nature wasn’t harmonious with her and wanted her sub. And she brushed nature away and nature retaliated with its poisonous ass.

I don’t have any pictures but I wish you could look at that shit. It was swollen for a couple of weeks. That doesn’t fucking help me at all.

I grew up next to the ocean, and although I have a healthy respect for it, I don’t fear water. Not at all. My brother is a pilot and I’ve flown in several types of planes, big and small. I love that stuff. My other brother is a fireman, and I’ve worked with explosives myself (legitimately) quite a bit over the years. That shit doesn’t scare me a bit. Water, heights, flying, all of these are pretty cool to me. I’m not scared of the dark or walking alone. Needles don't scare me and the dentist is my friend. I'm not even afraid of commitment. But I’m scared shitless of a little bug with a pointy ass.

My wife gets sick to her stomach if you talk about eyeballs in detail. You know that scene in A Clockwork Orange, with the guy watching the movies? She can’t just close her eyes when that comes on, she has to leave the room. She can’t even be close to the idea of having metal prongs holding here eyelids open.

My brother in law is scared to death of spiders. 240 pounds, used to be a bouncer at a nightclub, shits himself at the sight of a spider. He lived with me for a couple of years and it worked out pretty well. I killed the spiders and he killed the wasps.

So what about you? What are you afraid of? Speak up, don't be afraid.

Dan wears a skirt in the summertime, just in case.


Archives

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So why do you watch horror movies? Why do you like them? Why are they even popular?

And do you even want to talk about this? I don't think I do. I mean, we could go on and on about the sociological ins and outs of the placement of horror movies in North American culture in the twentieth and twenty first centuries – and by all, means, let me know if you ever want me to go that way – but for now let’s just talk about it on a personal level. Some people say that they like being scared and that it’s like riding a roller coaster. Adrenaline rush. Other people like stories that explore the darker side of human nature. Some people appreciate the special effects. Some people, a lot of people like the blood…. Some people are affected by things they’ve seen.

We all have a few stories. Some stories are too serious and morbid for right now though; I’m not about to talk about dead friends or anything. Just those stories that highlight the stupidity of us all, the ones you tell over a beer. Here are a few of mine, pulled from different times and places.

When I was six years old, I really had a thing for carrots. Raw carrots. One day I took a paring knife and tried to peel one myself. Unsuccessfully. I sliced through my left thumb, right to the thumbnail. The thumbnail was the only thing holding the top of my thumb onto my hand, for that matter. It bled a lot. All over the knife, my clothes, Mom’s clothes, the floor and sink. Even a little spray on the walls as I initially twisted in shock and surprise, more than pain. It didn’t really hurt but I was six years old and watching the top of my thumb flop around like the top of Guy Smiley’s Canadian looking head. We raced to the hospital, got it all fixed up and life was good.

Until I was eleven and tried to peel a potato. Unsuccessfully. Same thumb, further down this time. Halfway between the tip and the first knuckle, just below where the bone starts. I saw that bone; first time I ever saw bone like that. I cut right into the thumb, and when I pulled back I inadvertently peeled back the top of my thumb and exposed about a quarter inch of bone. I’d sliced and ripped. Holy fuck did that ever bleed. I almost passed out by the time we got to the hospital. I didn’t peel a fucking vegetable for a long time after that. That thumb still feels fucked up when it gets cold.

When I was about five years old, my oldest brother was about eight or nine. He was fucking around in the backyard, playing with a football or something. He wasn’t looking where he was going and ran into a tree. One of the twigs from a branch went directly into his eye socket. Not his eyeball, mind you, his eye socket. He didn’t lose vision or anything, but he did have to wear an eye patch all summer. When he pulled back from the tree, he had a steady line of blood streaming down his eye and a piece of a fucking tree sticking out of his head. Off he went to the hospital, and I thought for sure that he was coming back with a cane and a dog.

When I was seventeen I saw a guy, drunk as fuck, stumbling around in a pond. Just at the shoreline, not too deep. Just deep enough to get his pants wet up to his knees, and stir up a lot of mud from the bottom. Down he went, right onto an old beer bottle left behind by someone as smart as himself. He put a nine inch gash into his arm… the dirty brown water went kind of purple when it mixed with the ample amount of alcohol-diluted blood, and the guy almost stood up completely before he passed out face first into the water. He wasn’t breathing when he was pulled up. Mouth to mouth resuscitation from his drunk girlfriend, and he finally comes to. Pukes up dirty water, beer and lunch all over himself and his still bleeding arm. He puked in his wound. Holy shit. He got vomit in his blood. He ended up in the hospital for five days with his injuries.

When I was about thirteen I was at some outdoor festival being held at a waterfront park. It was nighttime and they were getting ready with the fireworks display. The place was pretty crowded with families and couples…. Kids were running around with sparklers and shit. One kid, about nine or ten I guess, was zipping around with one of those big sparklers, like two feet long. Sparks flying everywhere, he’s swinging that fucker around and not looking where he’s going. Neither was the other kid. Kid one ran into kid two with the sparkler. Drove the hot end of the sparkler right into the top his arm. Stabbed him with fire. Kid one also managed to gash his own hand and arm with the other end of the sparkler, pretty seriously. He looks at his hand and immediately passes out, while the other kid is screaming for his Mom (hell, I would too), running in circles and leaving the smell of burnt kid all over the playground. Kinda put me off my pretzel.

So some on, what do you have? We’ve all got a few good disturbing stories. Who remembers the kid who ripped his nutsack on the chain link fence? Who’s seen and heard fingers broken in a car door? Who’s played lawn darts for real?


Dan spent most of his childhood recoiling and hiding.

Archives

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I still don’t like to make lists very much. This article still isn’t a list. This is just a shitty little piece describing the movies that my wife, Carol and I tend to watch a lot when it’s late on a Saturday night and we’re kind of high and we’re looking to watch a horror movie but we can’t decide what to watch. We might fall asleep in front of the TV and we might not. We might end up watching movies until five in the morning or we might fall asleep in twenty minutes. The following conversation is probably the same as the one you have at your place from time to time:

“What do you want to watch?”

“I don’t know, nothing’s jumping out at me. What about you, anything?”

“Um…. Uh, I don’t know, there’s the Friday movies (the 13th, not Ice Cube), um, Zombie, Demons… Cabin Fever. I downloaded The Dead Zone the other day, do you want to watch that? It’s been a while.”

“No, I might fall asleep. I want to see all of that one. I’d rather watch something kinda shitty.”

“Yeah, me too….. How about ________?”

“Yeah, fuckit, that sounds about right.”

And we watch that. Well, we pack a bowl, take a leak and let the dogs out, then we let the dogs in, and then we watch that.

Demons

This is a great movie from 1985, directed by Dario Argento. I’d be surprised if I hadn’t mentioned this one before now. The movie has a lot of holes in it, stretching logic to its limit time and again for our entertainment.

Or maybe the holes are there to trip us up. Why is that guy wearing that thing on his face? Why won’t he answer the girl when she asks about it? Who would go through the trouble of locking down the movie theatre anyway, besides a demon? Why did that helicopter crash through the roof towards the end? And what the hell does Nostradamus have to do with any of that shit?

A lot of the demons here tend to drool and ooze green slime. Green slime, any slime always makes me curious and a little let down at the same time….. it’s too easy. You know? Blood and foaming at the mouth are expected in movies like this, so maybe you think I’d like to see something different. But no. Unless it’s bilious or it portrays the contents of organs n’ entrails, then I humbly submit that you stick to what works.

That pus filled zit, though. That was kinda nasty. Grade nine all over again.

And I love it anytime somebody transforms in a movie and you get to see the fingernails. Anytime you see demon nails growing out through the human ones, you have your answer. Yes it hurts.

Also, please note that there are tips for picking up girls, hot European girls, in this fine film….. demonstrations of going all Fonzie on a vending machine for the benefit of da leddies. The whole movie theatre come-on thing reminds me of the drive-in come-on scene in The Outsiders. So easy to tell who Cherry Valance is. I completely expected that other chick to throw her drink in Eurodude’s face too.

Best quote from the movie?

“That’ll teach you to touch things!”

Halloween

This movie is a favourite of mine, but you’d never tell from the amount of respect I give it when I fall asleep halfway through. I’m not even going to talk about it much today, I’ve done it before and I’ll be back.

If I like it so much then why do I not bother throwing it into the tray until 2:30 in the morning?

You know what I like about Michael Myers?
He’s resourceful and smart. I mean, the guy was tossed in the mental while he was still young enough to think that dressing as a friggin clown for Halloween is cool. Spent most of his formative years and a few of his adult ones locked up in that place. When he broke out that fateful night, I mean shit, he was stealing cars and stalking people in broad daylight. He just don’t give a fuck. And who taught him how to drive?

That’s the thought I take with me to sleep… then I wake up about an hour later and ask myself why anyone would try and hide in a closet with those slatted, um, with those slats.

Return Of The Living Dead

I’ve seen this one so many times it doesn’t matter if – or when – I fall asleep – or wake up. It’s A Way Of Life.

Slumber Party Massacre

Man, I love this movie. It’s not great, by the way, not at all. Formulaic and predictable. A fairly decent story…. almost no nudity, almost no blood, but it does have a few things going for it. It’s strange you know; this movie was a ripoff of a few other movies (and please… putting “slumber party” and “massacre” together in order to pull in horny teens is as obvious as calling the movie Sex Party Violence. Hell, I’d watch that movie too, now that I think about it.) but it still has a few original elements. A few things to call its own.

There you go, four more movies that somehow have taken up hundreds of hours of my life. Well, dozens anyway, if you subtract the hours I slept. And I don’t mean it in a bad way. These movies to me are like the music you probably listen to when you drift off. It might not be completely mellow, but it’s comfortable and familiar. Like the driller killer. Sleep well, little one.

Dan has a slumber party he wants to invite you to...

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Okay, so this week we’re talking about the 80’s…. For some reason I am expected to keep this piece under twenty thousand words or so; that doesn’t leave me much room to maneuver between that decade’s highs and lows. So many unforgettable movies, for better or worse. So many works of art; so many car crashes.

Burial Ground (Nights Of Terror) – 80

I talked about that one here. A group of rich folks travel to a tropical island to party. They don’t realize that they’ll be partying with a group of rather smart, and smartly dressed, zombies. The zombies actually strike me as smarter than the living people. They work well together anyway. Smoke enough dope and you’ll swear that this movie is about the evils of capitalism and the unstoppable force of communism. But the communists are already dead, and the capitalists are dropping like flies, so….. okay, maybe this movie is really about anarchy. And dressing well, no matter your political persuasion. I would love to know where I can get an ascot, just so I could say that I have one.

The Changeling – 80

I know I talked about this somewhere before. I was eight years old, I saw it in the theatre and I was scared out of my wits for months. Couldn’t go upstairs to take a leak without having someone wait outside the bathroom. I only started pissing alone when I learned that I could go down the steps three at a time without breaking my neck. Upstairs is an important place in The Changeling. The further up you go, the worse it gets. Everything comes down from upstairs. Watching it as an adult, it’s still creepy. But nothing on film has ever scared me the way The Changeling did when I was eight. If anything’s ever scared me more I must have repressed it. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Uncle Gerry.

Friday The 13th – 80

Just letting you know that yes, we are in the 80’s now. This one turned into a franchise and kept going and going. Still going today, in fact. For all the bad press these movies get, they can be a lot of fun to watch. The first of them is a good movie on its own merits anyway. I bet you haven’t seen it in a while either….

Other movies from 1980 that let you know what time it is: The Fog, The Howling, Nightmare City, Mother’s Day, The Shining.

Hell, I’ve hardly started here.

An American Werewolf In London – 81

Now here’s a good movie. Outstanding special effects, great story with very few holes; it’s got good jokes and good deaths. And Jenny Agutter. Nurse Alex. Jessica 6 for you sci fi fans. If that turns you off, well that’s okay because Jenny was also in Child’s Play 2.

Scanners – 81

It’s a David Cronenberg movie and that should be enough. If that’s not enough, then please be advised that a dude’s head explodes in one of the more famous horror scenes in history. Cronenberg is not your usual horror guy; you don’t need drugs to find cool societal statements. And if you’re not into that kind of thing then you can just watch the carnage.

Evil Dead – 82

I’m just sayin.

Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch – 82

This movie has nothing to do with anything related to the rest of the Halloween movies. A complete scam. In this movie, an evil company manufactures Halloween masks that…. well, they’re evil masks, I won’t ruin your fun. Mike Myers? Nowhere. Carpenter? Nope. Jamie Lee? She’s got a voiceover but that’s it. Still, some people love it. I thought it was good for a made for TV movie, but unfortunately it was not made for TV.

1982 also gave us Poltergeist, Slumber Party Massacre and The Thing.

Christine/Cujo/The Dead Zone – 83

Stevie King got busy in 83, no? I have never seen Christine, I liked Cujo okay (cuz, you know, anything with Danny Pintauro is okay), but The Dead Zone was the best of this group. Martin Sheen, Christopher Walken, babies being used as shields…. The missiles are flying, hallelujah!

1983 also gave us Sleepaway Camp and Videodrome. Videodrome is another Cronenberg movie and it has Debbie Harry burning herself with cigarettes. James Woods is in it too, and he’s always cool.

C.H.U.D. – 84

Soup kitchens and sludge, poverty and poison. Urban degeneration leading to dehumanization of the masses. Go ahead, connect those dots. Pure 80’s.

Children Of The Corn - 84

When I first saw this movie, my sci fi geek of a brother (who is now a firefighter and has since been renamed Knuckles by his coworkers. Maybe I shouldn’t call him a geek) said it was good, but that he liked it better the first time, when it was a Star Trek Episode. I told him that the Star Trek episode was better the first time, when it was called Lord Of The Flies (I was no more right than he was). He then tied me to a chair, put my last Easter egg down the back of my pants to melt in my asscrack, went upstairs and played guitar for an hour or so. True story.

Return Of The Living Dead – 85

This is one of my favourite 80’s horror movies. Memorable characters, great imagination in the writing, some outstanding scenes and quotes, skinny ties and nekkid leddies. The sequel wasn’t quite as good but had a lot going for it as well, as I’ve blathered on about before. Return Of The Living Dead is played in my house, oh, once a month or so.

1985 also gave us Day Of The Dead, Fright Night and Demons.

Witchboard - 86

I thought this was released in 85 but I’ll go with what IMDB says. This time. Remember this one? It had Tawny Kitaen in it? And Stephen Nichols? Yeah, like you don’t know who Stephen Nichols is. He played Patch on Days Of Our Lives. Don’t look at me like that, Patch is a completely relevant 80’s soap icon. Besides, I had to look up his name. You knew exactly who I was talking about.

In 86 we also had The Fly (Cronenberg again!), The Hitcher (apparently such a good bad movie that they had to remake it as a bad bad movie), April Fool’s Day (a great little ripoff movie, kind of like the Scary Movie series, but actually serious about the horror. Worth a look) and the shiniest nugget of crap in the bunch, Chopping Mall (robot security guards shoot lasers at high school kids after hours at the mall).

Angel Heart – 87

Alan Parker directed this (as well as The Commitments, The Wall and Fame) and adapted the screenplay from the book. It’s movies like this that really make me like horror movies. Good blood, a story that you really have to pay attention to, bloody nekkid Lisa Bonet covered in Mickey Rourke. Robert De Niro with eggs to spare. I know who I am….. I know who I am. And the last thing they show in the entire movie is the gears and shadows of an elevator. Yeah.

The Lost Boys – 87

Considered by many to be THE vampire movie of the 80’s, it has two Coreys. Near Dark came out the same year, but it didn’t have two Coreys. Weird Science’s Chet could not save Near Dark from The Lost Boys. I’m always reminded that saxophone was way too popular in the 80’s, and they were usually played by really muscular guys with greasy mullets. Go watch an old Tina Turner video and tell me I’m wrong.

87 also gave us Prince Of Darkness, a great movie that might have been a bit ahead of its time. It’s got Alice Cooper as a homeless guy who kills one of the characters with the front fork of a bike. Kinda cool there, buddy. Seeing as how Alice had long since stopped making albums like Killer and had started making albums like Hey Stoopid, homeless murderer probably seemed like a good career move – and probably helped when he applied for the part of Alice Cooper in Wayne’s World.

We also got Evil Dead 2 (nice one), Creepshow 2 (campy and not scary at all, unless wooden feet scare you), the Believers (Martin Sheen and voodoo) and oh yeah, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. I wish Barker would do something with David Cronenberg. That would scar me good and proper.

Child’s Play – 88

I hate that Andy Barclay kid. This one took a cue from the early 80’s and tried to beat an idea to death with multiple sequels. Then they let it rest for ten years or so, and resurrected it. At least I laughed watching Bride Of Chucky.

Dead Ringers – 88

Hey, looky here, another David Cronenberg movie. It’s been discussed a couple of times in the last month or so. Suffice it to say that I’m really happy not to be the only one on this site who loves this movie. Absolute genius.

The Serpent And the Rainbow – 88

Another movie I’ve learned is quite popular around here. Voodoo, live burials, Bill Pullman and some interracial lovin to show that alive or dead, we all want the same thing; A little lovin and not being buried alive.

We’ve got The Church (also known as Demons 3, a bit of a topical stretch but a fine movie), Return Of The Living Dead 2, and Sleepaway Camp 2 and 3. Yeah, they made two sequels in one year, but the third wasn’t released until 89.

Pet Sematary – 89

89 seemed like kind of a slow year for horror movies. At least we got Mr. King cranking them out for us, hey? I talked about Pet Sematary way back here. I love that scene with the foot and the scalpel.

The Fly 2 – 89

This is not Cronenberg and it shows. Some great gory scenes here but it’s just a B side, it’s leftovers, it’s filler, it’s Eric Stoltz. Still worth looking at but don’t get your hopes too high.

Puppet Master – 89

I saw this movie once and I hated it. I thought it was garbage, not scary, not entertaining. Camp at its worst. Seems I’m the only one. This movie has had sequels and even merged with Demonic Toys in 92 to provide us with twice the crap in one box. But you know what, it’s been about 15 years and there’s nothing on tonight, so maybe I’ll waste some money on the way home. I understand that people wasted money in the 80’s too.

Dan spent most of the 80s just looking for a good scare.

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So it’s all about the 70’s this week then, back when was a kid, cutting my teeth on ghost stories and vampire comics. What’s weird is that I remember a lot of stuff from when I was a little kid, especially stuff on TV. Like ads for movies I figured I’d never get to see because they were about grown up stuff. Movies about Satan and walking corpses and mass murderers and high school. Every now and then, I’d overhear a conversation about a movie that I was too young for, so I’d file that movie title away for years. And that memory served me fairly well when I got a little older and managed to watch those movies. The Seventies weren’t as bad as the Eighties when it came to horror. The 70’s had its share of shitty movies to be sure, but come on. We all know that the 80’s is the peak of shitty horror production.

A Clockwork Orange – 71

Is this even a horror movie? Depends on your constitution, I guess. I’ve seen this in all kinds of sections at different video stores – horror, drama, even comedy. For that matter, I’d call it a comedy before a drama. As sickening as it is, there’s some funny shit going on there.

If you haven’t seen this then you should check it out. It makes your life better. You understand more jokes on The Simpsons.

This movie’s set in the near future (as Stanley Kubrick or Anthony Burgess saw it) and follows Alex, a fucking depraved psychopath of a teenager. Which is, honestly, to say that he’s much like the rest of us except for the fact that he put more of his thoughts into action. He stole, he raped, he killed, but not before he got good and fucked up on milk with knives in it. Alex eventually gets caught having his fun (after he kills a woman with a huge ceramic dick) and gets thrown into prison, where he makes a concerted effort to pretend to reform. He doesn’t give a shit about reforming though, he just wants out…. One of the funniest and sickest scenes shows Alex reading the Bible and describing how inspirational and uplifting he found it, how he could almost picture himself back in biblical times; then you see Alex imagining himself dressed as a Roman soldier, smiling and whipping a thorn-crowned and bloody Jesus, dragging his cross to his own crucifixion. That’s sick but it’s also funny, and that’s why people like Kubrick.

Anyway, Alex undergoes the Ludovico Technique, a violent form of classical conditioning where he’s shot full of dru…. holy shit, this is boring like a book report. So the doctors fixed him too good and he got completely passive. Then his crimes and past victims came back to bite his ass when he was in no condition to protect said ass. He eventually ends up no better off than he was at the beginning, but with a lot more experience. At the end of the movie he knows who the fuck he is.

And that thing with the eyelids is legendary. My wife watches as many horror movies as I do, but she just can’t watch Alex’s eyelids peeled back like that. Me, I just don’t want to be killed by a dick. And I don’t want to live in a wheelchair and be tended to by some macho gay dude in revealing gym attire.

But I would like one of them little cars that go really fast down country roads. And a bowler hat.

And a cane with a knife in the handle.

And drugs that come from boobs.

The Exorcist – 73

Now this, unlike the last one, is without question a horror movie. Talk to someone who was young when this came out and they’ll tell you. By today’s standards it’s still a pretty creepy movie, and if you’re traditionally religious, like pious, then this will scare the shit out of you. You shouldn’t watch it. I first saw it when I was about twelve, and yeah, it was fucking creepy. The scariest thing for me at the time was the thought that my parents might find out that I’d seen it. Statements like Let Jesus Fuck You and Your Mother Sucks Cocks In Hell, they didn’t go over too good at my house. I’m glad for that guidance though, because it makes the bad things seem worse and that is more fun. And this movie is fun. Pissing in public and priests kissing concrete. Get the poor girl a jackhammer Jesus…. No, take the crucifix away, she’s not even old enough to be doing that.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – 74

I’ve been over this one in detail. One of my favourites. Fucked up from beginning to end and with hardly a second’s break in the increasing violence and insanity. This is another one that freaked people out at the time, but it doesn’t deserve the slasher reputation it has because there’s hardly any blood in it. It’s all atmosphere, baby.

Bloodsucking Freaks – 76

I haven’t mentioned this one before and I’m not going into a lot of detail now. It needs a lot of space, and I’ve been meaning to watch it again for a while….. but watching this movie isn’t quite as enjoyable as watching a lot of others so I keep putting it off.

It’s a Troma movie. Aside from low budgets and bad acting, Troma is known for making movies that other people wouldn’t do – usually because they wouldn’t bother. But with Bloodsucking Freaks, I don’t think anyone else would touch it. It’s about a guy who likes to torture and kill girls in front of other people. In order to have his fun he starts to operate a performance art show, so that he can act like he’s pretending to hurt and kill people – when in fact he’s actually doing it – and he gets the applause of the audience in return. Sounds interesting, hey? It is, but not to state the obvious, there’s a lot of torture in it. Degradation with nudity. Kind of like softcore porn for the really fucking maladjusted. Not for everyone. But maybe, just maybe, it’s the thing for you.

I Spit On Your Grave – 78

Like the last one, I’ve been meaning to watch it again but I just haven’t gotten around to it. Some people hated this movie because they thought it was misogynistic, and others hated this movie because they thought it was full of that newfangled women’s lib garbage. I Spit On Your Grave couldn’t win with a lot of people. It’s what you call a revenge movie. It gets grouped with a lot of exploitation movies but it’s much better than that. Which makes it more disturbing.

It’s about a girl who wants to get away from the city, so she rents a cottage in the countryside. A few local hicks spot her and notice she’s alone, and they eventually assault and rape her. Repeatedly.

I seem to recall that at one point, they had their way and let her go. So she ran and ran through the woods, naked, bloody, crying, terrified. And in her panic she ran right into the guys again. So they grabbed her and raped her again, over a dead log in the woods.

In any case, the poor kid gets away long enough to devise her own plan…. And she gets those guys back in understandable, graphic and disturbing ways. You won’t forget watching it.

Dan is maladjusted and likes softcore porn, but that doesn't mean he thinks Bloodsucking Freaks is high art. Or does it?

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So FTTW is using this week’s TAFC to figure out the best horror movies, as determined by you fine people/dirty bastards. So……. something tells me that I should write this weeks’ horror article about music and cars. That makes sense, doesn’t it? This might even be fun. I’ll do my best to avoid G.G.

Dee Snider’s Strangeland

Anyone seen this? It’s one of those movies that could have been great, but lost something along the way….. but is still great. I don’t know how many will agree with me on that, so I’ll add that it sucks. Good intentions that got screwed. One thing I know, if they had edited just three more minutes out of this movie, it wouldn’t make any sense at all. Character development is really fucking minimal. The plot is tight enough for a horror movie, but we all know how loose those standards are. The story is about a psycho who hangs out in online chat rooms (be careful out there) and lures teenage girls to his house. Where he tortures and kills them. A cop’s daughter gets taken by Captain Howdy (yeah, that’s what he calls himself, like Satan in The Exorcist), so the cop saves his daughter and gets the psycho thrown in the mental for four years.

That’s the first part.

They put the guy through some Clockwork Orange routine and he comes out of the mental wearing cardigans and shit. His story is hyped in the media and a mob goes after the guy and hangs him. And he doesn’t die, but turns all evil and shit, again. At least as bad as before.

So he goes on a rampage… kills Robert Englund’s character and his wife in a rather amusing scene. Eventually he gets caught, there’s a climactic scene, he dies, roll credits. Pretty predictable overall, some fair acting mixed with a lot of shitty acting. You can tell that Dee Snider of all people knows better than to take himself too seriously – yeah, he plays Captain Howdy.

I heard they’re planning a sequel – I can’t wait. Hey, look at House Of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects.

House Of 1000 Corpses

Well. What did you think of this one? I liked it a lot. I loved this shit. This movie was fucked.

It was written and directed by Rob Zombie, and if you’ve ever seen any of his videos then you’ll recognize it in a second. It’s like an R rated 90 minute video. Good times…. Put this one on late at night when you’re still wide awake. Maybe a little high.

A group of kids are on a road trip, documenting weird roadside shit for some college course or something – it doesn’t matter. They hit a gas station/curiosity shop/theme park type place, run by a fucked up clown named Captain Spaulding (yeah, another captain. Weird). The captain has a fucked up family, kind of reminiscent of the Texas Chainsaw family, that the kids eventually have to deal with. There’s a definite TCM influence in this movie. Hell yeah.

Fuck, some people hated this movie because there was so little in it that was original. But that’s what was so cool about it. It wasn’t a ripoff, it was respect. Almost everything in this movie was a tribute to a previous great horror movie.

Halloween

There’s not much to say here, but one of my favourite scenes is where Dr. Loomis and the nurse are heading back to the mental to check on Michael Myers, and all the crazies are wandering around the grounds. Mikey jumps on the roof and steals the car from the nurse while the doctor is fucking around with the gate or the intercom or something. That scene had a car, so there it is.

Christine

I’ve never seen this movie. I have never seen Christine. Seen most of Stephen King’s movies, read most of his books, have neither read nor seen Christine. John Carpenter directed it, I haven’t seen it. Not sure how I even managed to avoid it after all this time.

Feast

I talked about this a few weeks ago. This movie is a great time. It’s got Henry Rollins in it and he wears pink pants. Henry has worked in music from time to time.

Buttcrack

This is a Troma movie. If you’ve seen an average Troma movie then you have a pretty good idea what you’re in for. This one has Mojo Nixon in it. Jumping for Jesus.

The Car

This movie is about an evil car that does evil things. That’s about it. You know it, that one from the 70s. Considered by many to be a cult classic…. Meh, I don’t know. Good enough to get through a Sunday afternoon I suppose.

Dan sometimes gets Captain Howdy confused with Boy Howdy

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Dan is on vacation this week, so we're re-running one of our favorites of his. - ed

I’m writing this early Friday night and I don’t know what movie to watch yet, but it’s gotta have zombies though, old school. Friday night is time to kick back and watch a few people die. Fridays are good.

The laws of horror stupidity apply really well to a zombie movie. You see, if you’re smart you can stay alive for a long time, but no matter what you do, you’re most likely going to be eaten anyway. Zombies can’t run because their bodies are all rotted and shit, but that’s okay. They’re able to take their time because they have eternity to catch you. Zombie movies usually have that sense of inevitable doom. You will run out of places to go and they’ll probably get you. It’s going to spread, everyone may be turned and the world as we know it might end. But every minute, there’s an idiot born who will die before you.

Stupidity isn’t always completely necessary in a horror movie, but it helps explain a lot of situations and it definitely helps the body count. I don’t only love the idiots that die in the movie, it’s the idiots who die before the movie even starts. They’re usually necessary. Those legions of undead have to come from somewhere. The legions of undead are full of idiots who didn’t have the sense to get away. Shit should never have turned out like this… those stupid fucking people…. Jesus, just walk away, just walk. That’s why it’s so satisfying when they get ripped apart or shot in the head. If they’re dumb then it just feels better.

Take that Hare Krishna guy in the original Dawn Of The Dead. They don’t show his history but you know how he bought it. He walked up to someone and said “Love Will Overcome All” or “A Small Donation Will Set You Free.” The point is that he probably walked up to someone. Rama Mageesh promised him eternity but now he gets to crave human flesh until his own flesh rots away. Everyone knows this guy.

And of the four main characters in Dawn Of The Dead, who bought it? The stupid ones. The flyboy, Steven, jumped at every opportunity to act like an idiot, and I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did. Fucking dolt. That other guy, the cop, well he lost it at a crucial moment and he paid for it. It’s truly unfortunate when cops die in horror movies. Truly. Send more cops.

Here’s another good example, Burial Ground. Now there’s a piece of work. Holy shit this crew is stupid. They should have arrived at that tropical island (you know, the one from which they’d never escape) on a short yellow bus. They’re not half as smart as the zombies that kill them and they prove their worthlessness again and again.
These zombies got it together, man. They’re well dressed and they haven’t wasted their time while they were in the ground. They were working on their knife throwing and wall climbing skills. These are the type of zombies the Nazis always wanted. Anyway, every living human in this movie is an idiot and they all end up getting what they deserve. The best one of all concerns this kid who wants to make it with his Mom.

Weirdest looking kid I’ve ever seen in my life. Look at that kid. That’s supposed to be a kid? I’ll believe in zombies first. This kid gets all upset because of the walking dead or something, and goes to his Mom for comfort. Get this, he tells her how he needs to touch her, and how she used to hold him to her breasts when he was little. Then he goes for her tits. Mom smacks him down and he cries. The whole scene is pretty damn weird, and more unsettling than the blood and death around them.

Later the kid gets killed, becomes a zombie and finds his Mom. The lady figures that maybe it’s a good idea to let the kid have a go at her after all - now that he’s a fucking zombie - and she ends up getting a tittie bitten off. She must have been out of her mind because nobody is that stupid. Besides the obvious result of being dead, she’s got a gaping hole where her right tit used to be. When she starts to rot, that hole is going to be one of the first places the maggots settle into. That’s just going to be unattractive. Stupid corpse.

Stupidity is rampant everywhere, but especially in the underafternetherworld, so what’s the scene you think of? What’s your favorite display of horror stupidity? Who didn’t listen when you told them not to go in there?

Dan is a certified Surviving in a Cemetery expert and is available for lectures.

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I like horror sequels. Okay, I rarely know what I’m talking about and I’ll easily admit to that. But come on, they don’t all suck. Anyone that says so is the worst kind of purist. The number of shitty sequels is obviously higher than the number of good ones, but the good ones are out there. Let’s go look for some…… but keep in mind that I like a lot of crap.

I guess I’m not a purist.

Return Of The Living Dead 2

Make no mistake, this one isn’t as good as Return Of The Living Dead. Some of the humour isn’t as funny as the first, and it’s even more juvenile and silly. It’s just not as original as the original; of course, as a sequel it’s almost self explanatory so why complain, you know? Some parts are hilarious, so it all evens out. And it’s got some decent carnage as well. That’s all we need here.

It’s faithful to the first one. Really fucking faithful. It has some actors from the first movie, playing different characters in similar roles, even saying some of the same lines. That part in particular really appeals to me. Like Frank and Freddie, or Ed and Joey: “Watch your tongue boy, if you like this job.” “Like this job??” Now that’s good times.

This movie doesn’t take itself seriously at all, and it’s cool to see a movie that does that while still trying to make something worth watching. Too many movies weren’t taken seriously by the makers – at least I don’t think they were serious – and the result is a shitload of movies that nobody is interested in. Good sounding titles that waste our time and money.

Saw 2

What, were you expected to be as surprised by the second as you were by the first? Hang on, have I berated you for that already? Sorry.... but you’re only going to get the atmosphere and the same kind of storyline; you’re never going to get to see the first one again any more than you can unwatch it.

But number 2 wasn’t bad, was it? I’ve only seen it once but I’ve been meaning to give it another look. Yes, I did think it was weird that a victim from the first one would be in the second one. As soon as I saw that chick I figured something wasn’t right. Easy enough to assume she might be in on it, but you’d like to think the movie had something a little more twisted and original in store. The biggest surprise was Donnie Wahlberg, who’s always going to be a dancing fool to me. He can act and that’s great, but he was a fucking New Kid On The Block. I don’t want to get past that. I can’t wait until he’s 60 or 70 and I can mock him for being an old man who used to be a New Kid. Who cares if I’m poor and feeble and have a bag full of urine and/or feces attached to my hip while he’s rich and tanned and eating more than cat food AND more than once a day; I’ll still have my integrity, baby, and that tastes great.

I still haven’t seen the third one. Soon enough. It’s not going anywhere.

Zombie

Ha ha, suckers. Zombie is the American release name for the Italian movie Zombi 2, which was made as kind of a sequel to Dawn Of The Dead. Gotcha.

Zombie possesses one of the most charming and senseless attributes of horror sequels: it’s got fuck-all to do with the first one. Well, there are zombies in it, and a group of people trying to escape them, but if that makes a sequel then I’d have to deduce that EVERY ZOMBIE MOVIE IS A SEQUEL TO THE FIRST ONE EVER MADE. And that can’t be right. In any case this movie is better than a stick in the eye. I’ve got a friend who knows this guy who uses the internet, and he told my friend that the movie is easily available for download online in torrent form, but that he only recommends it if my friend couldn’t find the movie in a video store (he said hey, we all work for a living, you know?). Then he started talking about the MPwhatever Association being a bunch of good guys like the rest of us who could hardly afford a decent lunch, and my friend walked away without making any sudden movements.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

A lot of people dislike this one but I say fuck em, I like it; I wouldn’t bother drawing comparisons to the first one myself because I find that to be a useless and frustrating practice. Every horror movie has to be held on its own merits….. Holy shit, I can hardly imagine avoiding Zombi 2 because it was a sequel. The dude in TCM2 who picks the skin off his head and eats it is just beautiful, man. That’s really good stuff. And it’s got Dennis Hopper too.

Dennis Hopper. I don’t know what the hell to make of that guy. He can be a great actor – he is a great actor - but he’s picked an awful lot of crappy roles over the years, hasn’t he? A lot of….. um, has anyone seen Riders Of The Storm? That was a fucking weird movie. I did watch it on acid, but I watched it on acid because I heard it was weird and trip-conducive, so I know it wasn’t just me. Wait, what am I talking about? Right, Dennis. Anyone seen that documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now, when He was all coked up and being interviewed? Holy shit dude, he was senseless. Wait, what am I talking about? Right, Dennis.

Dennis Hopper is fucked up. His character in TCM2 gives us the stupidest murder-suicide ever put on film. What does he do, you ask? Well, he finds out where Leatherface et al are hanging out, drives over there, makes his way into the basement and starts chopping at the support beams and rafters while screaming that he’s going to take the whole place down. Dennis, Dennis….. don’t scream while you’re killing people (with a chainsaw) in a manner that’s hardly quick and effective. Also, and far more importantly, don’t fucking kill yourself if you don’t have to? Ever hear of C-4? Ever hear of ammonium nitrate? That Cookbook written by someone who had no interest in food? Jesus, Dennis, your character (who was named Lefty, by the way, a flag for idiocy if there ever was one) is a douchbag. But his character just doesn’t care anymore. The movie wouldn’t be the same without him. Every time you tell someone on your screen not to go in there, you really want them to go in there. Dennis went in there.

Shit, I’ve hardly started on this topic. I covered TCM2 but not Halloween 2. I only talked about the twos, nothing further. So okay, maybe the new title is Sequels Part One (A) – The Decent Ones. Maybe it isn’t. Gimme some good horror sequels or else I’ll give you more good sequels later, and don’t think I’m bluffing. My threats are real. And if you don’t want to give a good sequel then give me a good Hopper movie.

Dan realizes the power of The Hopper and is in awe of it.

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I feel like talking about those guys that play annoying supporting roles in movies. Sometimes the guy is an asshole at every turn, antagonistic and angry, or they’re nice guys who just piss me off for one reason or another. They usually die but not always, and there’s nothing more satisfying than watching one of the good guys bite it. Those fuckers.

Some of them are cool, but they are there to support the main character and make him look good. Therefore, they are often stupid and deserve what they get.

Scotty - The Evil Dead

That guy was a bit of a dick, don’t you think? You could tell he had personality issues, blowing up at those poor guys on the side of the road like that. Fucking around and scaring Ash in the basement. Making everyone listen to the tape for longer than anyone really wanted to. Just being a dick.

Ed – Fright Night

He doesn’t believe his friend at first, then he becomes a vampire himself and stirs up shit. Fucking jerk. He’s annoying through the whole movie too. Just watch it and tell me you’re not waiting for Evil Ed to just fucking die and get off your screen.

Stephen – Dawn Of The Dead

Worst waster of bullets ever. He seemed to think highly of himself but he seemed to have nothing going for him besides the flying thing. I guess that was enough. But shit, how bad of a shot was he? Idiot.

Jack – An American Werewolf In London

This sidekick doesn’t really bother me at all, so he doesn’t fit perfectly with this topic. Having said that though….. Man, if I was David I’ve have done my best to ignore Jack too. Jack wouldn’t let up on the guy. He’s all, “Oooh, you gotta kill yourself and get us all out of limbo, ooh, please help me rest in peace, oooh, you are a werewolf and I am dead”. I’d probably have acted the same though, I mean, he did give his reasons. “Have you tried talking to a corpse? It’s boring!”

Malachai – Children Of The Corn

Malachai was kind of second in command of the corn rows, with Isaac being the leader. It’s kind of hard to say who was worse because they were both evil kids, but Malachai was mutinous as well. Evil or not, man, you gotta have loyalty or you got nothing but corn.

L.G. McPeters – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
This guy should have been more aware, working the late shift in that isolated radio station and wearing that nifty hat. Did he not realize that someone would be coming for that hat eventually? At least he died well, sans hat.

Beverly/Elliot – Dead Ringers

This isn’t the first or last time I’ll say that David Cronenberg’s a genius. This movie is about identical twin gynecologists who essentially act as if they’re one person, then try to “separate” with nasty results. Sound weird? It sure is. This isn’t a particularly gory Cronenberg movie but the horror is in the psychology – check out the medical tools they want to use at work. Anyway, Beverly is the more introverted of the two twins, but when he finds some of his individuality he also finds that his brother suffers. Elliot’s used to being in charge but eventually learns that he’s actually used to just feeling in charge. If you haven’t seen the movie, go watch it. Then come back and tell me if you’d trust either of those guys as your sidekick.

Drew – Pet Sematary 2

That kid was fat and weak, never stood up to Gus (his dad) his whole life. He was good for grunt work and that’s about it. ‘Nuf said.

Richard – From Dusk Till Dawn

Dude was crazy. I don’t care how loyal you are…. Well, that’s a lie, I do care. But that goes out the window when you’re crazy. How the hell am I supposed to know what your idea of loyalty is? Lucky you’re my brother or I’d have killed you myself by now.

Mick and Pnub – Idle Hands

Man, these guys call themselves friends of Anton? Pnub wouldn’t even share his weed with the guy, like, ten minutes into the movie. Serves him right for getting killed the way he did.

So what you got? Any sidekicks that bother you?

Dan hates all sidekicks. Don't let him fool you.

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There’s no way in hell that all horror nudity could be summed up in a few paragraphs. This should be part one of tits and ass and breasts and buttocks. But I have a feeling that subsequent parts would be even more useless than this one, so fuck it. I’ll spare us all the indignity.

Don’t get me wrong. In no way am I a chauvinist, misogynist, woman hater, whatever word you want to use. Women can do whatever the hell they want. But nekkidness is essential to a lot of horror movies. It is. I’m determined to – usually – stay away from analyzing any of these movies in too much depth, so let’s not even argue about it, okay? Tits are taboo like murder and asses are exciting like stalking prey. Sex is associated with everything because it’s sex, and I know you have been thinking about sex sometime within the past seven to twenty six minutes and they know they got you if they show you the sex. Because you will look at the sex. If you can’t look at the screen when somebody dies, you can still look at it when someone gets laid. Or showered or changed.

Slumber Party Massacre

This is a great movie in that bad 80s way that I love so much. You’d think a movie with a name like that would have all kinds of nudity, but it doesn’t. You’d probably think that you’ll get to see some good deaths but that’s not the case either. Well, there are good deaths but you don’t get to see them happen. You know that weak thing they sometimes do? They build up the suspense and you’re sure you’re going to see someone get a big fucking fishhook in the head or something, but you only see the bad guy take a swing at the off camera victim, and then you see the dead victim. They do that in this movie, pretty much every time. I still love this one though, the way some people love that velvet art stuff or professional wrestling. Anyway, the nudity. There isn’t much, but what’s there is interesting and a little different. It’s a kind of long scene of the girls’ shower room after gym class. There are bums and tits and soap and rubbing and stuff. What’s interesting about it all is that the movie’s writer, Rita Mae Brown, is a lesbian. That whole gym class thing, you know? Watching your classmates jump around and get sweaty, then get naked and wet before going to math.

Zombie

I haven’t mentioned it in weeks. Lucio Fulci’s Zombie. The one with the shark fighting the zombie. This isn’t like the last one at all. This movie kicks ass and rips it apart and eats it and shows you the dying process.

In the scene leading up to the shark fight we have a boat on the ocean. A woman on the boat decides to go scuba diving. But she does it topless, dude. Although she does wear one of those stretchy rubber swimming caps that chicks wear when they go swimming….. I bet some guys like that. I bet there’s a small group of people who saw Zombie when they were, like, ten years old. And those tits were the first set they ever saw in their lives. And they grew up with that image of tits as their prototype, their idea of the perfect rack. And now they can’t properly function sexually when their lady friends wear rubber hats and scuba gear in the sack.

Maybe just one of two guys…… Neither one of them are me.

(ed note: I couldn't find a pic of Susan topless scuba diving, so here's the zombie/shark fight -m)

The Shining

Remember that babe in the bathtub? HOT.

Return Of The Living Dead

This is a quality movie is many, many respects. We need more movies like this one. I wish I knew why originality is so lacking in horror movies. For the same reason it lacks in other types of movies I guess, and music. We’re told what we like. But what gets me is that horror fans know what they like, we don’t need to be told. We’re loyal to the genre and a good movie is going to do well while a bad movie won’t. The thing is, package a crap movie right and you’ll make money anyway. Man, how tired is this topic anyway…..

Anyway, nudity. Trash. She was a nasty punk rawker who took her clothes off for fun, wanted to die by being eaten by a gang of dirty old men, and actually got that wish. So yeah, she takes her clothes off and dances around for a while. It’s great. Then the corpses come back to life and she gets killed, and then she’s a naked zombie. That’s greater. Naked zombies. The girl playing that role is Linnea Quigley, who has been in a bunch of stuff. Mainly horror movies, and lots of them, but she’s done Cheech and Chong movies too, a couple of them. That’s pretty cool. Apparently she was in a movie called Robot Ninja, so I have to try and find that. Who cares how bad it sucks, I just need to see what the hell a movie about a robot ninja would be like. This question needs an answer.

Sleepaway Camp

Forget it.


Dan is a nasty punk rocker who takes his clothes off for fun

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A week or two ago I mentioned a movie called Fear No Evil, an early 80’s movie about Satan in high school and I caught myself thinking about the first time I saw it. I was about 11 or 12 years old, I guess, and my Dad was in the next room. I’d only rented the movie because it was about Satan and it had a good soundtrack, but somehow my very religious Dad overheard Johnny Rotten say that he was an Antichrist. He came into the living room to see what I was watching, just in time for the scene where a guy pulls his pants down and runs after his girlfriend in the high school boiler room. Dad made me turn it off. No smut in his house, no sir.

The first time I saw My Bloody Valentine, I was only about ten. I fell asleep from boredom. Thinking I’d missed out, I watched it again a few years ago. Nope, it still sucked.

The first time I saw The Exorcist, I was at my friend’s Halloween party (Dad said it would never be shown in his house, so I was stoked that I was getting a chance to finally watch it). The host’s mom had prizes for the best costume and I thought I had it made, dressed like a Hare Krishna. But I lost to a kid dressed up as Adolf fucking Hitler. That was weird because…. well, we weren’t as politically correct back then but it was a really detailed costume. The kid deserved to win the prize, it was definitely the best costume, but it was fuckin Hitler. Shit dude. Why would you work so hard on a Hitler costume? It really looked like he spent a lot of time and money on that thing. Looked like he enjoyed wearing it too. Yeesh.

The first time I saw The Shining, I was snowed in at a cabin in the middle of nowhere too. That was just a little weird.

The first time I saw Nightmare On Elm Street 4, I was at my friend’s newly built house. His parents had won a pretty decent amount in the lottery so they’d recently moved. All night long the guy was bragging about how nice the house was and how his family was rich now and who wants to see the Jacuzzi in the main bathroom? He really pissed me off that night, acting like a frigging douche. Then a few years later I heard that his parents divorced. Guess they had to sell that house. Fuck ‘em anyway, he wouldn’t shut up and I missed half the movie. I don’t care about your fuckin hot tub, and yes you’re better than me, now just shut up will ya?

The first time I saw Prom Night 2, it was at the theatre with my first serious girlfriend. We’d been going out for about four months, man, it was crazy. Never thought I’d get tied down like that. Anyway, we hardly saw any of the movie because we were busy making out and doing the stuff that horny kids sometimes do in the movie theatre (playing with each other’s genitals). And she’d started her period that evening without realizing it, and we both got blood on our clothes. The situation reminded me of a kid in my class who once got caught picking his nose and eating it when his pen leaked ink and left the evidence. It was obvious what we’d been up to. I had a couple of big red smears on my jeans from wiping my hand off, and a few more on my shirt from when I wiped the popcorn butter off – I tried not to think about that too much. She had bloodstains too, mostly on and about the crotch of her pants. Maybe a little on her shirt. I was just happy that everyone had to walk in the same direction to get out of the theatre and didn’t look at the front of us. Of course, we then had to decide between getting the bus home or calling one of our parents for a ride. We walked.

The first time I saw Hellraiser 2, I was tripping on acid. The acid was good. The movie was good. Both of them together resulted in one of those trips that really walks a tightrope over the abyss. One of the guys there wasn’t on acid, he was just smoking dope, so he ordered a pizza. Great, now I’m tripping and watching people get ripped the fuck apart and I’m trying not to get completely lost in the metaphysical complexities and possibilities of a goddamn box and somebody’s going to put a smelly pizza in front of me? Now I gotta deal with that? Do you realize how the contents of that pizza box is reminding me of the contents of the victims in the movie? Funny enough though, I tasted the pizza and it was fine. Didn’t taste like people at all. Just tasted like pizza on acid. Which was useless.

Dan is, to this day, still confused about what a vagina is.

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Last Saturday I was out in front of my house, drinking beer and putting up Christmas decorations. I had one of those reindeer that light up and pretend to eat stuff, and I was putting it right between two bushes when a thorn broke off in one of my fingers. A nasty splinter, but I didn’t notice right away, not until I felt an itch and scratched it. Fuck’s sake! Isn’t it weird how little things seem to hurt more than big things? Fucking splinters. Hell, my Dad caught a metal splinter in his eyeball a few weeks ago, and he’s already blind in the other eye. Dealing with metal in your eye is one thing, but adding blindness to the unaffected eye would make the ordeal that much worse, that much more psychological. “Holy fucking shit, what if I fuck up this eye too?? Am I gonna be totally fucking blind for the rest of my life? Jesusjesusjesus, oh shit my fucking eye.” Closing one eye in pain and not seeing anything.

I tried to think about that as I was up in the bathroom with safety pin, tweezers and rubbing alcohol, slowly rooting a hole deeper and deeper into my finger.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Not the best movie but it had its moments and I like it. That dude with the metal plate in his head, scraping his scalp with the coat hanger and eating the dead skin. Dennis Hopper acting like a typical horror idiot. That guy in the beginning with the stupid glasses. Dying.

So the lead female trespasses on the land that the family owns and falls through a fucking hole into the basement or something. But she’d been polite to Leatherface earlier in the movie, so when he catches her down there he decides not to kill her. For the second time. Stupid, I know, but when he decides to help her out, he gets her to hide in a pile of rotten corpses and body parts, with the skin from a corpse’s face covering own to disguise the fact that she’s alive. The face looks kind of fresh too, all wet and bloody and sticky. Stuck to her face. While she sits in a pile of corpses. I would not want to do that, but I guess I would if I had to.

Friday The 13th Part 2

Not the best movie but it had its moments and I like it. Wait…. Hell, I like a lot of shitty movies.

In this one the lead female is running from Jason and stumbles across his shack in the woods. Before he catches up with her, she finds this little back room in the shack, containing a shrine to his dead mother. Her head is there, that’s kinda cool. Anyway, the girl tries to trick Jason by putting on his mom’s sweater and pretending to be her. Man, that sweater got pulled off a corpse, all bloody around the neck hole. Probably with bits of mom on it. Sat in that stinky shack forever while seasons changed and spiders laid eggs in it. And she put in on. That’s pretty gross. I wouldn’t want to do that either, but I would if I had to. I know it’s not scary but I got a thing about really dirty clothes.

Saw

Yeah, just about any scene from any of them. I wouldn’t want to do it but, you know. I would if I had to. Maybe. That one with the eyeball, I don’t know. That’s got to be worse than pulling out a splinter. Not as bad as chewing your leg out of a steel trap though. Did they do that yet?

Cabin Fever

Dude had sex with a diseased chick and then washed his dick very very thoroughly. Weird scene, man. That movie is just uncomfortable. There are a lot of examples here. Sick people puking and bleeding all over the place. You’re probably going to have to touch it sometime if it’s everywhere. If you want to drive that car, then you’re going to have to wash it off first.

The Exorcist

Right at the end, you know, where the Devil leaves the girl and goes into the priest because he asked it to, and then the priest jumped out the window? I know I wouldn’t want to do that. Don’t think I’d do it if I had to either. Fuck that. I’d probably throw the girl out the window first.

Wrong Turn

Checking out the freaks’ cabin in the woods, but the freaks come home. No way out so the kids have to hide under the smelly bed and watch while the freaks drag the kids’ friends across the floor. Not really much of a choice there, now that I think of it.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas

You know that part where he’s stealing all the shit and stuffing it up the chimney and little Cindy Lou Who, who is no more than two, comes out and asks him what he’s up to, and The Grinch acts all nice and polite and shit as he explains that he’s fixing the tree? Then he gets her a glass of water and sends her to bed, as if he gives a shit about what happens to her? I bet he hated having to act like a nice guy. He liked a good scam but that had to feel kind of demeaning to him.

Dan seems to like all movies. Shitty or not, he likes them.

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Saturday was a pretty good day. A little Christmas shopping before the mall got too crowded, home for some decorating - complete with music, mulled cider and booze, then homemade pizza for dinner and three movies. And I somehow managed to hit a triple. Not that I watched three great movies. I watched three movies, but two of them sucked. Each of them gave me something the other two didn’t though. Here’s what I mean:

Fear No Evil – 1981

Take a little of The Omen, a little Carrie, a little money and you might get something like this. See, poor Andrew has some issues. No friends, good grades, doesn’t do drugs, hates gym; I think he’s a homo, but I’m not quite sure. In any case, the kids at his high school treat him like garbage. Maybe he’ll get them all back though. Maybe, just maybe he’s the Antichrist. Satan reincarnated. He’s a bit of a pantywaist to be Satan in my opinion, but hey, I just take his orders, it’s not for me to say. There does seem to be a hint here and there that Andrew might be gay…. Maybe South Park was right.

You know those movies where you think to yourself, “Geez, that would have been a lot cooler if they’d just included this or expanded on that”? Well, this isn’t one of them. This is a movie with a good idea that needed some help, but didn’t get any. Lucky for the producers, it’s from the 80’s so nobody cares.

The story is kind of loose… I don’t think Andrew has any idea that he’s Satan right away. It takes him a while to figure it out. He knows he has powers, but things start to get more and more clear as it gets closer to Easter. He starts nailing the students at his school that have been giving him a hard time, but by doing this he reveals who he is to a couple of archangels that are out to do him in and save the Earth.

This one definitely has its memorable moments, for better or worse. There are some good scenes and acceptable deaths, but it’s the silly stuff that stands out the most. Like when he’s being picked on after gym class. The school bully catches him in the shower and, um, forces a big ol’ kiss on him.

When Andrew reaches his full potential and starts to unleash all his power, he doesn’t look very frightening at all. He’s running around with a face full of makeup and wearing some kind of frilly nightdress. The fact that he can raise the dead and get them to do his bidding would be kind of frightening, but they don’t explain why he does that so it’s more of a fear of the unknown. The raised dead apparently only rot in the face too. Their hands aren’t even dirty after climbing out of the ground.

The soundtrack is good though. To be honest, I would like to watch this movie again, but mainly so that I can make more specific fun of it. If the right person took the script and reworked it, we might end up with a remake better than the original.

Feast – 2005

Oh yeah, now this….. this was the high point of the night. A bunch of people are trapped in a roadside bar and have to fight a gang of monsters. It has kind of a From Dusk Till Dawn feel to it and it kicks ass for all the right reasons. It’s fast paced, it’s funny, it’s gruesome, it’s fairly unpredictable. I won’t even tell you how many heroes there are here. It’s got Jason Mewes playing himself and dying – very well – within ten minutes or so. It’s got Henry Rollins playing a motivational speaker. It’s got monster sex, monster sperm, monsters eating their babies, people getting covered in blood right after they got themselves cleaned up, feet getting shot off, people getting de-faced….. I could keep going and ruin the whole thing for you, and a part of me really wants to do it so that I can give away the entire movie, but no. You’re good people, I’ll let you go find out for yourselves. I will tell you that the monsters steal Henry Rollins’ pants at one point. Good times.

Stay Alive – 2006

Yeah. This is the one that made it to the theatres. This is the one with well known teen actor names like Frankie Muniz on the front. This is the one that sucked ass in the same way that I Still Know What You Did Last Summer did. This is another example of bad movies that are made only to get a few bucks out of the hands of teenagers on dates. The rest of us are collateral damage.

So for the plot, there’s this video game, right? And if you die in the game….. YOU DIE FOR REAL. Yeah whatever. I was so bored. This is one of the most formulaic pieces of crap I’ve seen in years. Hell, Boogeyman was better than this. I stayed awake to the useless conclusion of Boogeyman, but I could not make it through this one. More often than not, you’re in trouble if you expect to see anything good come from a horror movie rated PG-13. The last good PG-13 movie I saw that I can think of was The Others, and I’m still waiting for the next one. I’m so glad I didn’t pay for this.

So there are the three bases I hit. One good one, one so bad it’s good one, and one that was just bad. I’m sorry to have mentioned Stay Alive to you, but Feast makes up for it. Now go get Feast.

Dan has nightmares about a pantsless Henry Rollins

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You have your movies with good scenes, or good deaths, but nothing beats a good atmosphere. A good atmosphere has to be backed up with quality or else you’ll feel ripped off for investing your time in something that promises hell but goes nowhere. If you look however, you’ll find that most of the classics had a great atmosphere. I guess Nosferatu was probably the first movie to pull it off really well, although I could be wrong. The setting is what’s most important overall here, but the atmosphere comes through in how you use the setting, how you utilize what you have. So what movies have good atmosphere and why?

The Descent

Holy shit, man. This is one of the best movies to come out in years, in terms of today’s topic. I was completely blindsided. A group of women go on their annual cave-exploring expedition, get lost, meet CHUDs, fight and die. Nothing to it, right?

Wrong! When these ladies are in the cave, pretty much the only lighting used is the lights on their hardhats, and that makes all the difference. Everything you see is largely from their perspective, almost as if you’re in there with them. The whole movie feels claustrophobic. A lot of people get freaked out by ideas of getting buried alive or being put into some enclosed area that’s too small to move around in. If you’re one of those people then they got your number. You will have a hard time watching this…. Enjoy!

There are lots of scenes to mention here, but the one that stands out the most happens before the CHUDs arrive. The girls are trying to find their way, and they have to get through a rather narrow tunnel. One of the girls gets stuck in it. They’re, like, half a mile underground, lost, and this chick can’t even scratch her face because the fucking planet won’t let her. The Earth is pinning her arms to her sides. A stronger sense of helplessness you’ll be hard pressed to find on the surface in the human world. The scene is shot really well but it’s the overall atmosphere that makes the scene, and the movie, stick with you long after it’s over.

Saw

Some loved it, some hated it. I fucking loved it. Trapped in an unknown place, some sterile yet dirty room full of white tiles and scum, two guys are chained to the walls/pipes/whatever and challenged to free themselves at the cost of the other’s life. Everything in this movie contributes to the atmosphere: the room, the lighting, the dialogue, the sense of complete confusion, panic, frenetic scheming. Within the first ten minutes of this movie you’ve been figuratively cut off at the knees and have nothing to stand on anymore. If you guessed the end of this movie before it happened then congratulations genius, but you need to realize that you think way too much when you should be watching and feeling. You guessed the end, we’re all very proud of you, but you missed the fucking movie in the meantime.

Jaws

Think about that one for a second. This one doesn’t grab you by the balls (or vulva), it takes its time. It wants you to take your time too. Relax, get to know the people, understand what summer in Amity is all about. Feel the uncertainty of the city council. Feel the camaraderie of the crew on the boat, having a few drinks and singing a few songs. Feel the barely restrained panic as you realize that Quint has read way too much Hemingway and is not going back to that fucking shore without that shark. And if he can’t do it, he’s taking you with him. Your heart’s in your throat as you watch Brody sitting on a sinking stick with the shark heading right for him. Two hours later, you can finally breathe. Now that’s atmosphere.

Chopping Mall

Sorry, I had to throw this in as an example of how to fuck up a movie. Yes, I own the DVD. Screw you, okay?

Pure 80s crap. A group of teenagers are in a mall after closing hours. I bet some of them plan on fornicating, or at least showing their boobies. What they don’t know is that the security system is largely comprised of killer robots. Don’t you dare laugh. No, I’m just kidding, go ahead and laugh your ass off. This movie is fucking asinine.

They probably thought they were making some grand sociological statement about the human condition in the latter part of the twentieth century, but it seems they were also trying to make a shitty hybrid of Robocop, Fast Times At Ridgemont High and the second half of Dawn Of The Dead. They really should be showing this one on TBS every second Saturday. It’s not scary at all. AT ALL. I highly recommend buying it if you find it for a low low price in the bargain bin. Make sure to grab some good weed on the way home too. Trust me, it’s the only way you’ll get your money’s worth.

On the other hand, I’ll let you borrow my copy if you share some of that doobage……

Dan prefers to rate all of his movies while as high as jesus. It seems to work.

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I kept putting it off because it’s one of the best. I wanted to hold out; I felt like I was supposed to. But what am I saving it for? It’s not like I’m going to make it through the night with all these demons possessing my friends in this abandoned cabin in the woods. I know I’m next unless I manage to dismember them all before dawn. I think that I just might be safe then, and I can find my way back on that trail that Scott found in the woods..

Or maybe it will all end with my own scream. Or maybe it will ultimately end two movies later at S-Mart.

I’m talking about Ash and you know it. That’s Bruce Campbell to you. Although, when you’re talking about Evil Dead movies, it’s okay to call him Ash. It’s who he is.

This is at the top of a lot of people’s lists. It’s easy to see why. This movie has got a lot going for it. Creepy woodland setting, good writing, tremendous atmosphere, gore scenes that still make me say eww after more than twenty years, demons inhabiting humans, and even a little claymation, kids. Decomposing demon claymation.

So what is it you like most about this movie, you sick bastard? Is it:

The Tree Rape

Man, when this movie first came out, I was only a kid. I knew that rape was a terrible thing and that the forest was a nice place. Then I heard about this movie where this chick gets raped by a tree. I hadn’t even seen the movie but just hearing about it was fucked up enough that, well, I remember first hearing about it when I was a kid. And for anyone who has any fear of the woods at night – at all – this is some scary shit. Demons in the forest, making the trees come alive and fuck you. Why the hell she went out there, I’ll never know. Cheryl was the one that I initially figured might last a little longer, just because she seemed more aware, more anxious than anyone else. You’d think she would have picked up on the whole deal sooner, but I guess there’d be no movie if she didn’t get things started, so fuck it. That loophole, her behaviour, is about the only real problem I have with the movie as a whole, and considering horror plot issues in general, I think that’s pretty damn good. It wasn’t a big enough problem that I would wish that fate on her though.

The Pencil In The Leg

It kinda looks a little rubbery, but it doesn’t matter. That fucking pencil right into the soft space behind the ankle. Jabbed right in there and twisted and worked around until the hole is just puking blood.

The Lovely Ladies Of The Evil Dead

These demons are essential to your collection of movies. Or demons. First of all you got yourself Cheryl. She was the first to go down, the first to notice anything wrong, the first to get nailed by a tree. She spends an awful lot of the movie just looking up through the crack in the trap door she’s locked under. I love her shots from down there. Just patiently being a demon, trying the door and taunting the mortals in the dark, only one crack of light on here face. But that’s enough to show you that she’s not giving up. “Soon you will all be like me, and then who will lock you in the cellar?” Yeah, she got all night dude. Grab an axe and put your fucking back in a corner.

Then there’s Shelly. Scott’s girlfriend. Man, that Scott was such a dick, he didn’t deserve a girl like that. Scott was a looking out for Scott kinda guy. When Shelly went all demonic on him, it only took him a few minutes to take the axe to her. You’d almost swear he’d been thinking about it anyway. She was feisty though; even when dismembered she had this kind of nervous energy about her.

Then you got my favourite, Linda. “We’re going to get you, we’re going to get you”. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, dressed in white and completely fucked up in the face. I find her to be the creepiest of them all, and it’s definitely got something to do with that smile, that fucking grin of hers. She didn’t even really seem to care when she got decapitated.

So what do you like about this movie? I know, there’s very little to dislike, but I’m stupid. Spell it out for me. I’ll leave you with a few things that you might or might not know about the movie…… You know, now that I think about it, the DVD I have is a pretty new one but there’s hardly any extras. I guess they don’t have much.

I’d always heard that the demon guts was oatmeal, but apparently it’s creamed corn. I’d have used applesauce.

When they’re listening to the tape of the professor, some of the words are Latin or Arabic, and translate to “Sam and Rob are the men on the side of the road”. Remember those two hitchhikers? One of them was Sam Raimi. Aw, go to hell, I wasn’t blowing at you.

You know right at the very end when the demonic force is coming through the woods and it all ends with Ash screaming? Seems that the scream is real. Sam Raimi put a camera on a bicycle and rode it through the woods for that shot. When he got to Bruce Campbell he just kept going, and crashed right into the poor bastard. Good times!

Dan dreams of Ash everynight, which is kinda cool actually.

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I generally don’t make lists and I usually don’t have favourites. I like to take everything on its own merits. Comparing Pink Floyd before and after Roger Waters is like comparing apples and testicles, so I don’t compare. They are two separate things. Iron Maiden with Paul Di’Anno compared to Bruce Dickinson. The Clash during the period with Mick Jones versus the period after he left….. Well, okay, I’ll give you that one. I should never have mentioned that.

I like or dislike based on what’s offered. People who talk about horror sequels in a negative way often annoy me because of this tendency of mine. Keeping the spirit is one thing, but if you thought you’d be as surprised at the end of Saw 2 as you were at the end of Saw, then I’m sorry my friend, you are a simpleton and we can’t help you at FTTW. If you were upset that I Still Know What You Did Last Summer was shittier than I Know What You Did Last Summer, then you get too upset over shitty movies and we still can’t help you.

What’s fucked up is that I’m not talking about either of those things today. I’m talking about the movies that I tend to watch the most. Not necessarily the ones I like the most, but the ones I watch the most. Sometimes I’ll put on a movie because it’s late, I’m tired and I feel like sleeping on the couch. I might want a good one to hold my attention until I fall asleep, or I might want a good shitty one that’s relatively good to watch while not too upsetting to miss. Sometimes I’ll put on a movie because there’s nothing on TV and, no matter how many times I see it, that movie gets me. For whatever reason, here are some movies that I have seen a million times.

Zombie (aka Zombi 2)

If you know me then you saw this coming a mile away. The opening shot in this movie is a gun firing and a corpse dying for the second time. Two minutes later, a zombie kills a cop. Later on, there’s a fucking underwater fight between a zombie and a shark in this one, and that one alone should really explain everything. Come ON, man, a shark and a zombie. Neither one of them gives a shit at all. Someone’s getting fucked up, you know? Fucked up bad. The zombie loses an arm and he’s all, like, “Fuck that, motherfucker, how you like this? HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW???” and messes that shark up good and proper. That’s one heavy macho zombie. I know I talk about Zombie all the time, but again, did you not hear what happens? That’s the coolest thing ever. Ever. Some day very soon I’ll talk about the whole movie in more detail. And I promise I won’t talk about it for at least a month after that.

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

Dude, this is one of the coolest zombie movies I’ve ever seen, and not for the usual reasons. It’s a great movie but it’s a little more than that….. they’re just a touch more obvious in their social commentary (which is in just about every zombie movie you’ve seen or are likely to see). Made by dirty hippies for sure. It has this big, in you face subplot about the evils of progress and its effect on society. In the opening scene there are multiple shots of exhaust pipes and people wearing face masks to protect themselves from the air pollution caused by their all too rapid progress that threatens their very existence, blah fuckidy blah. It’s lame but it’s great too. It’s just a cool little snapshot of the culture of the time, and the ideas that the filmmakers had.

This one isn’t very bloody but it has a lot of suspense. There are some really good scenes in this one, and it’s fairly underrated in my opinion.

In the opening scenes, where the two main characters meet and become traveling companions, you will find yourself laughing. I don’t think they meant for us to do that. The guy’s such an asshole to the girl though, I love it.


Vamp

Okay, this movie isn’t the best, it’s horribly 80’s with the bad hair and the dated clothes and the college setting and the guys looking for strippers and the Asian nerd and oh my, it must be fun. Grace Jones plays the head vampire(ss), and if you think that’s scary then wait until you meet the lead character, a dude by the name of Chris Makepiece. Maybe you know him; I think the height of his career was Meatballs. Or maybe My Bodyguard….. No! Mazes & Monsters! That’s my choice, the height of his career was Mazes and Monsters (and it sucked). Oh shit, I forgot about The Falcon & The Snowman. Meh, with crap like that behind you, nobody’s going to remember the one time you acted with Sean Penn except you.

This is another one of those horror comedies, and you know, it’s not that bad. You know what you’re getting into. And hey, It’s got Sandy Baron in it. Ya know who that is? That’s Jack Klompus from Seinfeld. You know, with the space pen and the box of raincoats. Yeah, you wanted horror, you get Klompus. Well, maybe Klompus dies well in the movie. Maybe he fucking doesn’t either, guess you’ll have to track it down, won’t ya?

So what do you have for me? Like I said, this is part one so I’ll be back with more later, but I want to know the horror movies you’ve seen a million times. Nobody cares if they’re good or not, who are we to judge, you know? I might find another one for the short list.

Dan is definitely obsessed with a shark vs. zombie fight and has contacted Don King about a possible pay per view event.

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So I’ve been out of town for almost a week now, in the middle of nowhere, running from bears and other critters that could most likely cause me to tap out of the octagon. Not the spiders though, those little bastards didn’t throw in on the cabin rental so they didn’t get to stay anywhere except under my boot.

Man oh man, Northern Ontario has some wild stuff hanging out in the forest. I saw lots of deer and foxes, a bobcat I think, two bears, a spider that was about an inch and a half long in the body, and that guy moved like a motherfucker too. Although I would move like that myself if the whole sky suddenly turned into the sole of a size twelve doc. Still, I think he scared me more than I did him, and I killed him. Shows you what a baby I am when it comes to big and unusual spiders. Regular spiders are fine but you know what? If I don’t know you and you look like a mean bug, then I’ll assume as much and stomp you. I’m not so tough that I wouldn’t care about the baseball sized, rock textured lump your cousin gave my friend a few years ago when you bit him, and I ain’t taking the chance on you giving me the same gift.

Spiders are one of the most feared things around and you’d think that there were more movies about them. Only problem is, insect movies tend to suck in a bad way, especially when you get to choose between William Shatner and John Goodman to fight them.

The woods used to be the safe place. Back in the day, the city was where all the horror took place, you know, in those concrete dens of iniquity far removed from the goodness of the homestead. After a while though, the city became too familiar to everyone, while the countryside started to become a little more unknown. We’ve since come to the realization that evil is fucking everywhere and so there’s no place safe from movie villains – seen Jason X yet, by the way?

But it’s the woods, the forest, the country that seems to get to us the most. Probably because it’s just not our element anymore. We’ve given it up for something more comfortable, and now half of us are scared to walk comfortably in the woods at night.

Ask someone why they don’t like to walk alone in the city at night and you’ll hear answers like, “It’s just not safe anymore, not in this city”, or “I’m not comfortable after I read what happened to that lady last week; you know that happened just up the street, right?” Things that may or may not make sense, but at least they’re more or less factual and verifiable.

Ask someone why they don’t like walking in the woods at night and you’d be lucky to hear anyone mention wildlife or anything tangible. You’ll be much more likely to hear, “There might be crazy hicks looking to rape me and make me squeal like a pig”, “But what about Leatherface”, “it’s so far from civilization”, or my favourite, “GHOOOOOOOSSSTTSSSS!!!” If you want to make my wife scream for mercy in a dark forest, Just say, “What was that sound? It sounded like oooooooohhhhh”.

And I have to ask what that’s all about. Is our fear of the unknown so strong? People spend their lives getting out of scary situations and learning to deal with the unexpected, taking kung fu lessons and hitting the gym to feel empowered, but they turn to mush in the woods. Not everyone, mind you, but I find it’s a lot easier to get someone to walk down a dark city alley alone then a dark path in the forest.

One of the best movies to portray that feeling is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but only towards the end, when the surviving cast members are realizing that something is definitely very wrong and that they have to look for their friends. The entire movie is set in the Texas countryside and I think that the movie (and ones that followed it) had a lot to do with bringing these fears out in people. The feeling of being in the middle of nowhere and royally fucked sums it all up. It just isn’t home and home is safe and I want to go home now.

The Friday The 13th movies did add a lot to the selection of horror movies set in the woods, but didn’t really do much to make you face the fear. Everyone knew Camp Crystal Lake had a bad history, and that does account for something I suppose, like a ghost story, but at the end of the day they were just running from some retarded mutant with a psycho Mom.

A great example to come out in recent years is Cabin Fever. That group of kids went to their cabin for some partying, but what they ran into was a different type of unknown. They all got sick…. then they ran into the crazies. That whole fucking town was crazy. Cabin Fever was great in that it gave us a fear that is usually reserved for the city – biohazards. Ha, never thought about that before while you were sitting around the campfire, did ya?

So whatcha got? What’s your favourite horror movie set in the woods? As usual I left out a bunch for you.

Do you hate the woods at night? Do you scare easily at the cabin? What exactly gets your brain to overload with fear when you are walking in largely uninhabited areas? Play shrink with yourself and tell us.

Dan likes camping, lumberjacks and long walks on the beach.

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Well I hope you all had a good Halloween with lots of candy and maybe some sexy nurse costumes. No more time for fun and games though, because it’s time for Satan. If it’s a horror movie then Satan had something to do with it. If his character isn’t onscreen you can still see the effects of his influence on the characters. So let’s talk about the devil. For the record, he did not make me do it. I did it as a favour to him, completely of my own volition.

The Exorcist (1973)

This is one of the most obvious so let’s get it out of the way first. Made in 1973 and still scaring the hell out of viewers, it’s on everyone’s list of classics. There must be a reason for it.

The reason is that it’s about as scary as a movie can be, especially to those of us with a Christian, or specifically Catholic, upbringing. It’s shot very matter-of-factly, almost like a documentary. There’s character development but only to serve the larger story. There’s a sense of detachment for the viewer, but that same viewer can recognize that the characters in the movie are, in fact, fighting for their souls (yes, all of them). It’s kind of like driving past a car accident on the road. There’s an intense and fairly intelligent story here but it doesn’t detract from the pure horror.

And that’s something else, you know. Horror is a genre, but how many of them actually horrify you? Not that many, but The Exorcist is one of them.

And although this movie is fairly straightforward, it does give you a couple of things to think about. For example, how would the devil speak to you if he were right here, right now? Would he tempt or anger you? Would he try to keep what he has or does he embrace the deadly sin of greed and go for more souls? I personally think that he has much more of a sense of humour than that. He’s just having the time of his life scaring the shit out of us.

The Antichrist (aka The Tempter) (1974)

Another Italian horror, this came out a year later and was obviously a crappy ripoff of the ideas presented in The Exorcist, although it did have more of a background story for the characters. This movie is hardly regarded as a great one, and I’m inclined to agree with that, but there are scenes in this movie that are definitely worth watching if you can stay awake long enough. There is a shock value to this one that makes it a contender. For example, there is one scene that was cut to avoid a complete banning of the movie – don’t worry, they put it back in later.

If you get your hands on this movie, just have a look at the scenes where Ippolita, the main character, is foaming at the mouth due to her demonic possession. No, you’re not perverted. That foam does indeed look like a mouthful of manjuice. She’s jizzing from the mouth and throwing the stuff all over the place. I can’t tell if it turns me on or not, but you know that a possessed chick is going to do it all. It might cost your soul but you’re so getting laid, boy.

Unless she decides to go for the goat after all. Did she lick a goat’s ass in this movie? You’ll have to ask her yourself.

The Omen (1976)

I haven’t seen the remake yet so I ain’t going there. Suffice it to say that although this movie has been slagged over the years, it was one of the greatest movies to present the devil incarnate to the people of this earth. Not exceptionally gross or disgusting, it has held its place because of good direction and a good story. We all know it.

Sequels were made but nothing held you like the first. The second one was interesting in that we got to see how the kid was doing in adolescence, and the third one kind of rounded out the whole thing, but the first was the best. I always like open ended movies anyway. Although some people in Hollywood would say different, an open ended movie doesn’t mean there has to be a shitty sequel. You can just leave it at that.

What I’m getting at is that you should watch the trilogy, but be warned that the first is the best.

Mr. Frost (1990)

This movie hardly ranks as a horror movie at all. At all. It’s more like a mystery, like an X-Files or Millenium episode. Having said that, I know you’ll like it if you want more from a horror movie than bloodnguts – yes, that is a word.

Mr. Frost has Jeff Goldblum so you know it’s good. Jeff was in The Fly and therefore worked with David Cronenberg, horror genius. If either of those guys are mentioned in a movie then you may as well throw your money down right away.

Jeff Golblum plays a guy who has been committed to a mental hospital for observation. It seems that he murdered quite a few people and claimed that he is the devil himself. Is he the devil or not? Watch the movie to find out…. Or be left guessing.

Angel Heart (1987)

This one was directed by Alan Parker, whose credits include Pink Floyd: The Wall, Angela’s Ashes and Mississippi Burning. All good movies and all different genres, so you know this guy has his head screwed on right. He makes his mark with this one and I don’t understand why it’s not a lot more popular. Angel Heart stars Mickey Rourke (who does a fanfuckingtastic job, I don’t care what you think of him as a person), Robert DeNiro (as Louis Cyphre, also doing an excellent job) and Lisa Bonet (from The Cosby Show, but only for a while after this movie was made. Seems Bill Cosby wasn’t exactly enamoured with Lisa doing a nude sex scene with a white dude while blood rained on them from the ceiling - yeah, that’s a different world alright.

Again, not quite a horror so much as a supernatural thriller, it still delivers the goods. The camera work is sometimes a bit artsy but it’s still a very dark movie. Deals with the devil, New Orleans, voodoo, and did I mention that Lisa Bonet gets nekkid?

So there’s five more movies for you. As usual, I left out a few good movies so that you guys can bring them up and feel all smert and shit. What’s your favourite devil movie?

Dan and Satan have long had a mutually beneficial relationship.

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This week I’m going to make it short and leave the rest up to you. Last post before Halloween and we’re running low on time, so let’s help each other out and talk about the movies that are worth going back to every Halloween. A quick rundown of examples of required viewing.

Halloween

Like you didn’t see that coming. John Carpenter, Riff Randall, escaped mental patients and William Shatner turned inside out? How can you go wrong? You can’t!

This one was made in 78 and became one of the most recognized horror titles in history. Classified as a slasher film and often lumped in with the likes of Friday the 13th and Nightmare On Elm Street, this one had more going for it. Like atmosphere and story, for example. John Carpenter takes his time and builds up the suspense and tension so that you’re biting your fingernails down to the second knuckle by the end. There’s not really anything disgusting in this one, but again, they hold you by the throat until the end of this movie and that’s what it’s all about. As a matter of fact, they hold you by the throat after the movie ends, because you don’t know where the hell Michael Myers went! He should have died from his injuries, but he got up after that fall and walked away. Where did he go? Well, you’ll have to watch the sequel to get the answer to that one.

Halloween 2

If you’re going to watch Halloween, then you may as well pick this up too. John Carpenter didn’t direct but he did help write it so we’re still in good company. Jamie Lee Curtis is still on the run and Donald Pleasance is still on the hunt. This movie picks up almost exactly where it left off in the first. Halloween 2 is the set on the same night as Halloween, just later that night. This installment fits the “slasher” model a little better, as there actually is some blood in this one. Most of the movie is set in a hospital and the atmosphere of the first carries over really well into the new setting. This is one of the best horror sequels of all – it ads a lot to the first and doesn’t come off too bad at all.

The Fog

It’s the 1980 version from John Carpenter I’m talking about here, I haven’t even seen the remake yet. This is another one full of atmosphere, great for Halloween night. Turn off the lights and wait for the ghosts of the diseased to come for you. Don’t know this story? It’s about ghosts and the sea and leprosy, it’s got Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis and her Mom, Janet Leigh (who’s Janet Leigh? She died in the shower in Psycho. You’re welcome). Any movie with hooks is alright in my book.

An American Werewolf In London

This was directed by John Landis and it has a shower scene with a really hot nurse who lets strangers stay at her flat. Yes, it’s got a werewolf as well, I suppose, and a walking meat loaf. If that’s what you’re into. When I was a kid I’d have married Jenny Agutter though, just for biting him in the shower like that.

This is a great movie. Gross, funny, with really good special effects for the time too. They still look good today. The transformation scene is still one of the most recognized special effects accomplishments out there. The story is put together really well, which makes sense because John Landis not only directed, he wrote the screenplay.

The Amityville Horror

Talking ‘bout the original here, not the remake. If I’m ever talking about the remake I’ll let you know. This is another movie without a lot of blood, but with lots of atmosphere to make up for it. Some people say it’s based on a true story and others say it isn’t. I don’t waste my time trying to figure it out. Haunted house stories are the best for that creepy feeling anyway. Outside of mass murder type movies, haunted houses are about as close as we can get to “true” stories. They tend to explore the things that scare us when we’re at our most alone and vulnerable. Not only is this house haunted, but it’s apparently haunted by the forces of hell.

The Serpent And The Rainbow

Here’s a nice little movie from Wes Craven that a lot of people tend to forget about. It’s got a little blood and gore, it’s got zombies, a good atmosphere, and best of all it’s got a good story. It’s mostly set in Haiti and deals with voodoo rituals and zombification. The movie is definitely a horror movie but it also has elements of a murder mystery or a suspense film. As a result you get creeped out and can’t look away until the movie is over and your questions are answered. Highly recommended.

Fright Night

Ah, here’s an 80’s classic for you. It falls under the horror/comedy category so you know it’s going to be fun. Even if the balance isn’t nailed between horror and comedy, you still get to laugh. Who cares if you’re laughing at the right things. It’s got Roddy McDowall and Amanda Bearse (that’s Marcy Darcy from Married With Children) involved in a hunt to prove that one of the neighbours is a vampire. The story is actually pretty good – it’s a date movie with blood – and the special effects aren’t too shabby either. It was good enough to make a sequel…..

So that’s what I have for you. What do you have for me? What movies have you picked out already for watching this week? Did I miss your favourite Halloween tradition?

Dan has never performed a voodoo ritual in Haiti. He only practices voodoo in Hoboken.

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Well it’s been a few weeks since we talked about zombies here, hasn’t it? No it hasn’t. Hell, it probably hasn’t been 48 hours since somebody mentioned them around here. A lot of people at FTTW like some sweet zombie action, and I know you’re itching for it as much as I am. So let’s go.

Need a good zombie movie to watch this month? I’d feel bad if you had nothing, I really would…. Let’s see…. What do we have?

You seen the Italian Zombie (Zombi) series?

I mentioned the first and second of these movies a while back. Some people call Zombie (Zombi 2) a Dawn Of The Dead ripoff, and there is eveidnce to support that, but there’s definitely enough original action to call its own. And like I said, the action here is original. If it seems tired – and it doesn’t to me - it’s only because it’s been imitated so many times. I loved this movie, and all five of them did have their moments. Like any series I guess, they tend to decline the longer they go on, but that’s kind of like a zombie anyway, isn’t it? <

It can get a little confusing due to the different titles given to these movies in Europe and North America, so bear with me for a second. The first one, Zombi, is actually Dario Argento’s version of Dawn Of The Dead (I mentioned that last week, not sure if you were here for that). The second one, Zombi 2, was released in North America as Zombie. That’s the one with the underwater fight between a zombie and a shark – It’s worth renting it just for that, not to mention the nice little Italian titties they show just before the fight scene. Now that I think about it, the zombie warms up his underwater fighting skills by having a go at the topless scuba diver. Good times!

Zombi/Dawn Of The Dead

This movie is on my short list. My really fucking short list. Either version. It seems that George Romero had made quite a hit with Night Of The Living Dead, or rather, he made a hit for others. In another version of the same old story, he learned some hard lessons when he was young. He wanted a sequel but didn’t have the money. Then he got talking to Dario Argento, who had boatloads of cash from movies like Suspiria (yes, I’ll hit that later). They got together and made history with this one.

The Argento version has quite a few differences from the Romero version, some for the better and some for the worse. There’s a different feel to it altogether, and I’ve only seen it twice so far so I can’t really commit to liking one more than the other. It is shorter though, and that’s a negative. I don’t find that Romero’s movie to be very slow moving although others would claim just that; I find it’s pretty well paced overall. Argento’s movie just has a faster pace – and that’s a positive, depending on your mood. They both work well. All your favourites are there – the Hare Krishna, the ghetto fro bro who gets the first good kill, the priest in the basement with one of the best horror lines in history: “You are stronger than us. But soon… I think they be stronger than you”. If you like Dawn Of The Dead at all, then you really owe it to yourself to check this one out. If you’ve liked Dawn for a long time and have never seen the other version, kick yourself now, really fucking hard, and save yourself the trouble later. Then do what you know you must.

Zombi 2/Zombie

This is a movie that you don’t hear much about, and I’m not really sure why. It made a fair amount of money and was pretty successful internationally, it’s gory as hell, it’s got just about anything you’d look for in a zombie movie, but it’s not in every horror section of every video store and it should be. Fucking classic zombie action here. This gets played in my house at least once a month and I never get tired of it.
A guy named Lucio Fulci made this one (I’ve talked about him before and will again, the guy was a genius). He was inspired by Dawn and came up with a semi-sequel. Some people hated it but some people love it. It’s on my top ten list for unnecessary nudity, extreme gore and a dead cop. It’s almost too good. It’s so good that I want to save the details for another day. This is about you finding something good to watch this month, and I gave you that right here.

Zombie 3, 4, 5

Okay, by this time Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci had both pulled out of this beast. You can tell. All three of them have their moments, but they’re obviously hurting. Zombie 5 is mainly about evil zombie birds. Enough said. Even if it was good, come on, it’s a movie about dead birds. Zombie 4 has the coolest theme song ever created, however. The coolest. 4 is definitely my favourite of this group (3-5). Just watch the opening scene with witch doctors and dancing savages and teeth and blood. One guy groans really well as his life is taken… I swear, no matter how squeamish you are, you’ll laugh your ass off. It also has the tropical island setting, a very underrated zombie setting.

Don’t get me wrong, all five of these movies are worth watching if you are into zombies. Good for watching in the middle of the night. They’re just not all great. Perfect for staying up all night on Halloween with a stack of movies though. Besides, if you watch the first one and like it, you gotta watch the rest as a matter of principle. You’ve seen Jason Takes Manhattan, haven’t you? You’ve seen Leprechaun In The Hood, right? Right.

What else we got?

Well we got Return Of The Living Dead, parts one and two. Part one is the more popular and with good reason, it’s a classic, but number two is pretty funny too, not to mention icky.

The first one has a bunch of real 80’s punks. Just watch this movie and you’ll see yourself hanging out in the graveyard. Seriously. I know your nickname was Suicide back in the day. You know it’s not a costume, it’s a way of life. My favourite line in the movie: “What are ya gonna do… aaaaaaaahhhhhh!”

It’s a classic horror/comedy, and I really wish the list of horror/comedies was longer. There aren’t enough of them out there. There are lots that try but few can find the right balance between the two elements. And the worst part of it is that zombies make the best horror/comedy character of all. Nothing’s as funny as a zombie. Not vampires or werewolves or mummies or body snatchers or Blobs or nothing. Zombies are, for the most part, absolutely retarded. Their brains are rotten. So when they act like idiots it’s great. When they ask for more paramedics it’s out of character, so that’s great too.

Number two is based around a kid who is trying to avoid some bullies who become infected. One really cool thing about this movie is the reappearance of a lot of the actors from the first one. Not the same characters obviously, but the same actors. Even a line or two from the first one gets repeated in the second. If you have any respect for the first and you haven’t seen the second, then you know what you have to do. Watch for the carload of zombies cruising town and looking for brains.

One movie that gets mentioned a lot around here is Brain Dead, or DeadAlive. That was directed by Peter Jackson, the guy who’s done the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. He didn’t have as big of a special effect budget for this one, but. Trust. Me. If you haven’t seen this yet then you need to rent it and watch on an empty stomach. So fucking gross. You think that the dead lady eating her own ear is disgusting, but then you get to the lawnmower scene and you forget everything before that.

Here’s a weird zombie movie for you: Nightmare City. It was directed by Umberto Lenzi, who is most famous for movies like Eaten Alive and Cannibal Ferox (I’ll hit those later). The zombies in this movie are a bit different from what you’re used to. They run. They shoot automatic weapons at you. They hijack planes, apparently. This movie breaks a lot of rules; no regard for the standards is what makes this one so fun. Lots of unintentional laughs and a few good scenes, if you know what I mean.

And here’s a zombie movie to avoid unless you are the most dedicated fan of the genre, in which case you’ve already seen it: Hell Of The Living Dead, a.k.a. Virus. I don’t even know if there are any good scenes in this or not and I own the damn thing. I’m told that it’s an acceptable film if you can get past the long shots of aerial stock footage of the jungle, followed by aerial shots of the jungle, followed by stock footage of the jungle. I just haven’t been able to get past it yet.

So there it is, a few more movies to check out this month. There are a lot more zombie movies that I haven’t mentioned, so let us know what you like.

Contrary to popular belief, Dan is not among the undead. Though he secretly wishes he was.

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How fucking lucky are we? Friday the 13th in October. It doesn’t get any better than this. Take your Christmas and Labour Day and whatever the hell else is important to you and forget about it. Jesus has left the building and there’s no time to relax and watch the sunset. The sun has set on you, my friend; it’s almost the end and you are out of luck. How cool is that? Well, it’s so cool that I didn’t see the obvious. The perfect topic completely escaped me until someone a little less retarded figured it out for me. You know where this is going, right?

This is going to Crystal Lake, baby! Who’s up for camping, carnality and carnage? How the hell many of these are there by now anyway?

Friday the 13th

The First One - 1980

Man oh man, it’s not even two minutes into this movie when you hear the music that follows you forever, that ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha sound. That’s up there with Jaws and Halloween in terms of memorable scores. A hell of a lot better than the stupid ass song they’re singing around the campfire in the opening scene. Summer camp movies are the best, aren’t they? Anything set in the woods has potential.

A guy and a girl, both camp counselors, take off from the group for a little action. Maybe even fornication. You know horror karma though, anything fun will cost you your life – and Friday The 13th is full of that stuff. Yeah, they die. Takes about five minutes. Those five minutes set the tone and the standard for any part of the series worth talking about. Dark forest, the buildup, the kill. It’s all about the atmosphere.

Sean S. Cunningham was behind this one, produced and directed it. He produced a couple of other good ones too, like The Last House On The Left and House (the one with the Greatest American Hero and Bull from Night Court). He came back to the series to produce a few more, but not until Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday. Yeah, right buddy. That’s number nine and we all knew it was not going to be the last. There have been more and there will be more. Fuck’s sake, number four was called The Final Chapter. Think we’re stupid? Fool me twice and I’ll stab you in the neck

Tom Savini worked special effects on this one as well. That guy’s resume is a mile long. That final scene with Jason coming up out of the water (another trail blazer of sorts, that whole just-when-you-think-it’s-over thing) was his idea. Thanks for that one, Tom.

This movie doesn’t even have Jason in it. Well it kind of does but not in the way you might think, or might think you remember. Jason’s Mom was the killer in this one. Vengeance on her mind for the death of her son Jason, years ago, due to the negligence of the camp counselors who were too busy getting it on to worry about a weird kid who hadn’t come up for air in a while. “The counselors weren’t paying any attention. THEY were making love while that young boy drowned.”

Don’t forget that this movie is from 1980, so there isn’t as much gore as you might figure there would be, considering the reputation of the series. What’s more fun about the series is the imagination used in the style and method of dying. The whole idea of good deaths, know what I mean? A good scene is where somebody dies well. If you haven’t seen this in a while, or haven’t seen it at all, then you’re missing out on a sweet piece of murderous history.

The Second One – 1981

Oh yeah, with the response from the original it took them one year to get the sequel out. Now if the sequel had sucked then it probably would have been the end of the series. The sequel wasn’t too bad though, not at all. The story tied in quite well with the first one, bringing in Jason in a form that’s still not quite what you recognize today. He didn’t have his hockey mask in the second movie, he just kind of had a sack on his head. He gets unmasked at the end (in his shack in the woods, where he has a little shrine to his Mom, complete with her decapitated head) and it ain’t pretty.

So, okay. Jason was picked on as a kid because he was a deformed little reject who couldn’t swim very well. That explains the mask. Cool. We know that his Mom went nuts because she lost her special little boy. It’s easy enough to figure out that, well, the kid probably wasn’t that well adjusted to begin with. Losing his Mom and growing up in the woods on your own has got to make things worse, especially with your genes predisposed to murder like that.

Now I generally don’t make fun of people who can’t help it – except for Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Franklin, the guy in the wheel chair – but there’s another guy in a wheelchair in Friday 2 that dies really well. Again, a lot of the gore in this movie is offscreen, but this guy goes backwards down a flight of stairs. Trust me. Don’t worry so much about the lack of gore though, as it is made up for in the currency of boobies.

The Third One – 1982

Well they were on a roll and they had to keep it rolling. The third one was originally released in 3D, and although I’ve heard that it’s available on DVD somewhere in the world, Japan I think, I’ve never seen it myself. It transferred pretty well to regular film though. Of the entire series, this one is the best. There’s more humour in this one than usual and the murders start to get a bit more graphic. Steve Miner directed this one, as he did the second (he’s also responsible for such gems as tv episodes of Smallville and Felicity, and don’t forget Soul Man with C. Thomas Howell!)

I already talked about this one so I won’t get into it again today. Jason gets his hockey mask here though. You want to see that, don’t you?

The Fourth One/The First Last One – 1984

They took a year off, that’s nice. They come back and give us Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman. Now that’s good times.

Although it’s pretty solid, you can tell that the series is juuuust starting to lose its edge here. The deaths get better but there’s only so far you can go with the story. Good nudity too.

Much the same story here. Jason escapes from the morgue, heads back home and gets back to business. This whole thing is stereotypically 80’s to an even bigger extent than the third one. Dope and booze and promiscuous teenagers partying as if Kelly Lebrock just appeared in their bedroom. Then most of them die, then Jason gets offed, but he doesn’t get offed. The climactic scene goes to Corey Feldman (playing the character of Tommy Jarvis) so you know that the decline is imminent.

The Fifth One – 1985

More 80’s hilarity, this time in a halfway house. They’re running out of ideas and it shows. This is where the series starts to get the reputation it now has. You know what, I’ll just let you know now that if you’ve made it his far, you’ve seen the best of them. There’s nothing special after this one. Matter of fact, I’m only going to go one further.

The Sixth Fucking One – 1986

1986 was a bad year for a lot of reasons and I think this movie has something to do with it. It’s not that good. I’ll just tell you how it starts. Tommy Jarvis is fresh out of the mental hospital and wants to make sure that Jason is dead. So he goes to the graveyard and digs him up to look at the body for himself. He sees the dead body but figures it’s not dead enough, so he impales the corpse with a metal shaft. But Tommy, it’s raining out. Don’t you know that impaling an old corpse will reanimate it if the weather is right? Jesus H. Christ. I’ll watch the movie but that’s just fucking stupid. See why I don’t want to go further?

To be honest I’ve only been unable to sit through number eight, Jason Takes Manhattan. I keep falling asleep. I’m sure there’s something good in there somewhere.

So what do you guys think? What was the best? What was the worst? I’ve left out a few here…. Don’t forget Freddy vs. Jason. That was actually better than I thought it would be. Now are you guys all going to be okay tonight? Stay off the dope and keep your hands out of each other’s pants, okay?

Dan usually appears here on Wednesday's with Don't Go In There. He enjoys making that ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha in darkened movie theaters.

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Movies From 1982, I’m Not Sure Why

I got this idea a week or two ago, while watching one of the movies I’m going to talk about today. It’s only when I typed the title that I realized…. 1982 is 24 years ago. Ah, fuck it and who cares, we’re all getting old one day at a time. I’m not about to watch an old movie and become upset at the fact that I was a kid when I first saw it. Besides, I haven’t aged at all since I stopped wearing a watch a few years ago. Try it if you don’t believe me.

1982 was a great year for horror. The only thing missing was David Cronenberg, but that’s okay because he’d just given us Scanners and was working on Videodrome. Remember Scanners, when the dude’s head blew the fuck up? That’s not 1982 so I’ll have to save it for later. But still, good times.

Anyway, 1982. Understand that horror movies (the good ones anyway) are known to sometimes push the cultural envelope, so anything that seems cheesy or dated now may well have been considered aberrant and depraved back in the day. I remember people freaking out at Friday the 13th. Yeah, the first of that tired series was pretty groundbreaking, man. Are we jaded now or were we naïve then? Doesn’t matter if the movie’s good.

TENEBRE

This is a great little suspense/thriller type movie. To be specific, it’s what you call a giallo, which is a suspense/thriller, but with certain elements of horror thrown in – mainly the slasher type elements. You’ll find lots of blood, nifty murder scenes and more than a few boobies in the average giallo. If there had been more tits in it, Seven would be a great example of an American version of giallo style.

Tenebre was directed by Dario Argento. I haven’t mentioned him before but believe me, it’s not the last time you’ll hear his name in this column. I mean shit, he worked with George A. Romero on Dawn Of The Dead and released the European version (incidentally, if you love Romero’s Dawn, you need to see Argento’s. It’s different from George’s and it’s worth finding). That’s only one of many good credentials. This guy has made his mark.

It’s the story of an American murder mystery author who travels to Italy to promote his new novel. Someone, a bigger than average fan, is mimicking the murders in the author’s books. The most recent murders parallel those in the as-yet-unpublished work.
There’s a good story that holds your attention here, and the payoff is worth it. I won’t get into it too much because I sincerely care about you and your viewing experience, but there is this one dream sequence showing a female driving her high heel into a dudes mouth and down his throat. I never thought about choking or getting stabbed on the inside of the neck while someone was walking on my face at the same time before. Thanks Dario.

You might figure out the end before you get there, but that just means you are a smart and astute viewer. Pat yourself, genius.

THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE

Holy shit what a ripoff. Elements stolen from a bunch of other movies, not much in the way of originality, and not a whole lot of gore. Sophomoric. Why the hell do I love this movie so much?

Well the shower scene with all the high school girls doesn’t hurt. This movie was originally shopped as a parody, but the producers shot it as a serious horror. You know that’s got to lead to good results.

CREEPSHOW

Saw this one in the theatre when I was 11 years old. A belated thank you to Mrs. McGrath for being the adult to accompany a group of children into an R rated horror movie. That was the sweetest overnight birthday party ever. Sorry to have stolen so much of your hash and weed over the years, by the way. If it makes you feel any better, we pinched off your ex husband too.

I think most of you know this one. Stephen King and George A. Romero (there he is again, he’s had a good run) put this together – now how good of a pairing is that? Five stories here, all tied together with the interludes that appeal to any kid. Got problems with the folks? Fuck ‘em, get a voodoo doll and stick it to the man. Come on, list off the stories with me … in no particular order…

The Crate – Adrienne Barbeau was mean to Hal Holbrook and got eaten. If a quarter rolls away from you, leave it. If the old box starts to move, get the janitor to open it.
Father’s Day – Smoking is bad for you, ashtrays are worse. “Bedelia, I want my Father’s Day cake!”

Something To Tide You Over – Ted Danson scares me anyway. Then he dies and you think it’s a happy ending, but it’s not because he’s not dead. Undead Ted. Shit.

They’re Creeping Up On You – Bugs in your mouth. Lots of them. They know what you think of them and this is what they think of you. This piece is all symbolic and shit, making a statement don’t ya know.

The Lonesome Death Of Jordy Verrill – Stephen King finds a meteorite that lands on his farm. He touches it and gets moldy and dies by his own fuzzy hand.

FRIDAY THE 13TH – PART 3

This series has had its ups and downs over the years, but it was never meant to appeal to anyone who wanted anything other than a good look at a bad time, so give it a break. They’re pretty damn good when the timing is right… I get sick of people slagging them just because a few of them sucked (really hard. I’m not forgiving the transgressions but I accept them). A lot of people who piss on these movies think that Jason always had the hockey mask. Nope. They think he was the killer in all the movies including the first. Nope. They don’t even know his last name, and that’s pretty offensive.

Number three is most likely my favourite. If you didn’t believe what I said earlier about these movies and their impact, check out Wikipedia’s article for number three. There’s a list of scenes that were cut to avoid an X rating. They sound pretty good too!
This one is pure 80’s and hits a lot of the horror stereotypes. Fuck that, it’s more of a prototype. These are the movies that spawn the imitations.

Some of the best parts in this movie include more than killings; some scenes are funny or stupid or stereotypical or classic 80’s. My favourite part in the whole damn movie, the part I never miss, is when the biker chick is wandering around in the barn. She stumbles across an old canteen hanging on the side of a stable; she picks it up and looks at it for a second, shakes her head with a “well I’ll be damned” look on her face and slaps the canteen to confirm its existence. Yeah, believe it baby, a real live canteen. She dies soon after that.

POLTERGEIST

Yeah yeah yeah, everyone says, “Oh right, Poltergeist, that Steven Spielberg movie”, but you know who directed that shit? Tobe Fucking Hooper. Tobe Texas Chainsaw Massacre Hooper. One of the things I love most about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the atmosphere. Well, Tobe pulls it off again in Poltergeist, giving us some good laughs and a lot of frights. Pothead parents, evil clowns and dead Indians make for a good ride. If you haven’t seen it, I’ll ruin it for you and tell you that the house was built on an Indian burial ground. I won’t ask where the fuck you’ve been, because apparently you have a movie to watch and don’t need to waste any time on me.

So, five movies from one year for no reason. Well, one reason is to remind you of some movies you haven’t seen in a while, or maybe to let you know about a couple that you haven’t seen at all. Everyone needs an idea this month before they hit the video store. There are lots more good ones from 82 as well, and yes, I’m very aware that I didn’t touch on Evil Dead. No way is that one getting grouped in with any other movies besides Evil Dead 2 and Army Of Darkness.

Thanks for reading and let’s see what I can dig up for you next week.

Dan is a horry buff who appears weekly and likes blood. We don't know why, but we like him on FTTW

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Posted by Dan Greene at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

DON'T GO IN THERE- All things horror movies. The blood, the guts, the gore, the chills, the things that crawl under your bed at night. Tuesdays, by Dan

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The original from 1974, not the remake. The remake wasn’t too bad considering the amount of them being made these days, and the quality of said remakes, but the new one did lack in a few areas. I’ll blather on mindlessly about those areas at a later date, but today is the day that we all get to talk about one of the best horror movies ever made, baby, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. One of the most important too. Yes, horror movies are important, of course they are. Let’s not even start that. There might be movie spoilers here, but TCM is over 30 years old. How long do you want me to wait for you, I mean shit….

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Think about it as if you’d never heard of the movie before. A little bit more memorable than, say, The Grudge or I Know What You Did Last Summer. No man, this movie is about a massacre in Texas that involves the use of a chainsaw. There’s this one guy who is way more bad news than any horror villain who has ever appeared onscreen, including some prepubescent chick who pisses on the carpet at parties and stabs herself in the crotch with crap from the parish gift shop. That act was, like, so 1973.

That’s bullshit. The Exorcist is one kickass movie and I’ll be hitting it soon enough.

I was about 12 or 13 when I first saw this movie. The original, crappy, dark as night version. The sound wasn’t too bad but the picture sucked. I couldn’t watch it, as much as I wanted to. I could tell that something cool was going on, but I just couldn’t tell what the hell it was.

Then they remastered it and released it into the general population. Nice move. Well into adulthood, well seasoned in horror and desensitized to any kind of video violence, I was blown away. No wonder people freaked out when it was first released. Even though there’s hardly any blood in this movie, it’s gruesome and graphic and gory in a very unique way – it’s smart as hell without acting like it. The whole thing is well done and pretty disturbing.

You see, what’s missing from this movie – which is one of the things that makes it so great, by the way – is reason. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end, but if you’re not watching the clock it’s pretty hard to tell exactly where you are. Once the confusion starts, it rapidly escalates to terror and doesn’t let up until Leatherface is shaking his fist at the clouds. And there’s not a whole lot of sense to be made of the movie; it relates to the unknown. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is easy to understand; what I mean is that they were very successful in portraying that whole sense of, “What the fuck is going on?”, that sense of mental chaos, running for your life for reasons that, in reality, would almost be beyond your comprehension entirely. Most of us have run from something or other, maybe even run from getting killed by someone, but who among us has run from being chopped up with a chainsaw and made into sausages for other people to eat? And realizing that that’s what will happen to us if we get nailed?

Usually in a movie like this, you’re told why the villains are so damn villainous; you’re given a motive. A horror movie will either make no sense at all due to budgets and bad script editing, or else it’s a ninety minute box of logic with every last thing spelled out for you phonetically like you’re retarded. We’re treated as if we’re either too stupid to figure out any details or too stupid to care. For the price of a movie ticket you’ve come to expect the ability to see inside the mind of a killer. Not so in this one. This one is less explanatory and a hell of a lot better. The best motive you can possibly come up with for the villains in this movie is:

“I guess they like to kill people and eat them….”

Horror Karma (which states: commit an evil deed and die within 120 minutes) doesn’t even really come into play here, not to the extent we’re all used to. We’re used to someone smoking a joint or a dick before they themselves get smoked. Only one of the crew survives this ordeal and it’s not that easy to say why she lives and the others die. People start dropping, or getting hung on meathooks, before they show you why they should die. And that’s sweet.

They grab you right at the start. Right at the very beginning, with the credits. Just darkness, and then a flash of light revealing something you can’t quite make out, although it looks kind of gross. A weird sound effect too, every time the light flashes…. What is that? I think it’s a camera. Yeah, it is. Someone’s taking pictures. Then you can hear the words. A news report on the radio, describing illegal exhumations and thefts of body parts from assorted graveyards. The camera pans and you see this weird piece of, um, art. A bunch of bones arranged, just so, in a graveyard. Those effects don’t make any sense the first time you watch it, but they do in retrospect. The whole thing is unsettling right away…. You know why? Because there’s no rhyme or reason to it; it’s the unknown, just like the rest of the movie. Before the fucking credits are gone, they’ve ripped the carpet out from under you. You’re looking for something to cling to, so they give you….

A vanload of kids. A vanload of latter day hippies, really, so there’s little in the way of empathizing with the victims. All the same, they’re more or less human so we can categorize them as the “normals”, “good guys”, or “those guys that’ll probably die” if you will. Should we laugh when Franklin takes a spill on the side of the road? Sure thing! Should we laugh when the poor crippled guy in the wheelchair goes ass over tits down a hill and spills a jar of piss all over himself? Of course not. Wait, that’s the same scene. Mom always told me not to laugh at people with physical handicaps but Franklin was fucking asking for it, okay? Who the hell starts poking at a van’s interior with a knife for the hell of it? Who the hell thinks that the best way to find a lost person is to wait for them to find you? Who the hell thinks that a wheelchair will work as well in the woods as it will on pavement? Who exactly had a few things in common with the hitchhiker, such as knives and an interest in slaughterhouses? FRANKLIN! I’m not laughing at Franklin because he was handicapped, I’m laughing at Franklin because he was a fucking dolt. That chainsaw in the chest was long overdue and a welcome relief from the hell they call The Life Of Franklin Hardesty.

Speaking of which, just check out the way Kirk bites it. Which one is Kirk? He died first. Now, he kept his horror karma intact – he made the mistake of trespassing, going into a strange house uninvited don’t ya know – so he hardly made it past the front porch. Response was swift and brutal in the form of one Leatherface coming from behind a sliding metal door (some kind of heavy duty garage type door that opens sideways) and slamming Kirk in the forehead with a mallet. And down he goes! A couple of seconds to show his body’s nerves freaking out (anyone who’s ever killed anything from a fish to a deer to a human will know what I’m talking about) in that spasmodic dance o’ death. Pretty realistic. Leatherface leans down, grabs the fresh carcass and drags it to his side of the door, then slams the door shut in a way that lets you know the meaning of the word final. The kid just ain’t coming back and that slam is more conclusive than a coffin lid.

The one survivor, Sally Hardesty, is involved in what is one of the best scenes in the movie. Terrorized, she finds help in the form of an Old Man. His idea of helping is to throw the girl in a sack and bring her home. So they’re driving along, he in the driver’s seat and she on the floor of the passenger side, and of course she’s scared. She’s whimpering in fear, tied up in a smelly old bag on her way to God knows where. The Old Man tells her to calm down, that things are going to be just fine, just stop making noise and you’ll be fine, li’l girl. So she tries to calm down and stifle herself. So he starts laughing and poking the sack with a stick. Which makes her freak out, which makes him console her, which calms her down, which makes him start poking her with a stick again. Kinda hard. It’s one of the most twisted and realistic scenes of sadism I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s not particularly brutal or savage in its detail, but if you think about the experience, and the movie does make you do that, you’ll feel sick.

You’d expect her to be happy to get out of the sack, but you know what? When someone puts you in a sack against your will, you may be well advised to stay there. Once she got out of the sack she got to see that she’d been invited to dinner…. One she’d already been invited to and turned down, coincidentally enough.

“And I thought YOU was in a hurry!”

I fucking love October. So come on, tell me you’ve seen this movie. Or tell me that you haven’t and then curse me for ruining it. But watch it.

Dan is a horror movie buff who does not like to kill people and eat them. So far as we know....

Posted by Dan Greene at 6:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

I grew up in a really old city and went to a pretty old school. It was over 150 years old and run by the Catholic Church, so most of the teachers were Christian Brothers. It wasn’t exactly like you’d see in a horror movie but there were definite similarities. The principal was an evil, decrepit old despot who used the strap on a regular basis – now those were good times. The school itself was just like you’d expect an old Catholic school to look like: all hardwood from floor to ceiling, huge pillars, massive arches with windows, some of those windows with stained glass frames depicting assorted scenes of biblical cruelty. The whole place was darkly beautiful – I know, but what else would you call it? It was beautiful like the face of God beaming through stained glass, but it was dark as Hell. It’s hard to describe the Old School Catholic experience and now isn’t the time, but growing up in that environment made me the person I am, for better and worse. Maybe I believe in God and maybe I don’t, it’s not the time for that either, but what I will tell you is that I believe in good and evil. A youthful fear of God made those movies with demons and vampires seem that much more unholy, and therefore cooler.

Continue reading "Blame My School" »

Posted by Dan Greene at 6:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

Today I’m thinking about those things that make you squirm with discomfort in yours eat. Every now and then you’ll come across a good scene that you can almost feel just from watching – empathetic and sadistic at once, your mind tells you not to look but you find yourself looking closer. We’re all desensitized from years of watching violence, but every now and then we’ll catch a gem that makes the most jaded of us think, “That’s fucked up”. Or maybe even, “That’s fucked up. That must really hurt. That must be so fucking agonizing…….”

So here are a few notable scenes of unbearable pain I’ve enjoyed watching over the years.

Continue reading "That Must Hurt" »

Posted by Dan Greene at 6:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (19) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

I’m writing this early Friday night and I don’t know what movie to watch yet, but it’s gotta have zombies though, old school. Friday night is time to kick back and watch a few people die. Fridays are good.

Continue reading "The Cemeteries Are Full Of Dimwits" »

Posted by Dan Greene at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (19) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

We love our zombies here at FTTW... Doesn't matter if they're in black and white, living bloody color or Italian... Italian ? Yeah, Italian... And not just any Italian zombies, either... Shark fighting Italian zombies.... Here's DK with all the gory details....
-finn

Okay folks, I’m not one of them hifalutin’ foreign movie afficianados. I don’t know much but I know what I like. And I like them foreign horror movies…Zombie movies in particular. They seem to have made a bit of a comeback in the last few years – Dawn Of The Dead remake, Land Of The Dead, Shaun Of, that crappy one based on a video game that I won’t even mention by name and so on.

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by: DK" »

Posted by Dan Greene at 7:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It