Lots of Horror

The Wicker Man
Demons 1 and 2
Stagefright

Saturday night/Sunday

The White Bus
The Meaning of Life (with commentary)
Force Five

It's Fri-eee-day

This week I watched:
Ghostbusters
Joseph Campbell: Sukhavati
Suspiria
Profondo Rosso
The Black Cat

Weekend Wrapup

Joysticks - Unfunny sex comedy, in which the kids beat the big bad businessman and then one of them fucks the bad guy's wife at the end. Good shots of classic video games though, and Napoleon Dynamite's Uncle Rico as a punk named King Vidiot.



Fraternity Vacation - You can look at Tim Robbins and think, "that guy's going far." Not really. It's a much better movie than Joysticks, though.



Carnival of Souls - Before I started watching horror movies every day and posting in my horror blog, this was my favorite horror film. That's not to take anything away from Carnival, it's just that I've seen so many now that I can't pick a favorite. It's definitely my favorite 60s horror that's not 2000 Maniacs or The Whip and the Body.

Watched it in color, with the Mike Nelson commentary. Herk Harvey is scary when the movie is in color; he really looks other worldly and you can see how the makeup influenced so many other films. The ghouls contrast so much more creepily when they are the only ones in black and white (well, greenish white anyway). Not my favorite Mike commentary, but still good as at this point he's like an old friend.



The Social Network - Finally got around to watching this one; took me a couple of days as I started it Wednesday and finished it today (Monday). At first I felt sorry for Mark Zuckerberg (I have a soft spot for aspies, being the mother of one) and then I didn't when I saw how vengeful he was. Aspies can be taught to be responsible for their actions and to consider other people's feelings.

On the other hand, it was refreshing to watch someone screw someone over in business for personal reasons rather than greed. I can empathize with hurt feelings, but not with the mindset that there is no amount of money that is enough. The "nothing personal, just business" way of thinking puts flames on the sides of my face. What kind of world do we live in where a guy can rob one bank and get life in jail, but a bank exec can rob thousands of people and get a tax break? If Jesus is coming, he'd better come on.



Back to the movie, the best part was that I discovered that "California Love" was a cover of a kickass song called "West Coast Poplock" which played during the ziplining off the roof scene and which I can't stop listening to. Even my cat loves that song. He goes and lies down right in front of the speaker and grooves on the bass.

Eagle vs Silver Fox

Eagle vs Silver Fox (1980) is one of the best bad kung fu flicks I've seen. You are free to interpret that statement as you wish. There's a pretty good pre-credits fight between the titular Silver Fox and some guy who is hiding a piece of paper with a message which Fox wants. Right before he kills the messenger by kicking him in the chest three times, Silver Fox jumps up and grabs the guy around the neck with his bent leg and kicks him in the head with his other leg, which was pretty impressive.



The credits are hilarious, because the words fly to the front of the screen out of trees, a guy's shin, and, in the case of the executive producer's credit, out of a guy's ass.

Next we see another group of guys receiving a message to transport from some guys at a monastery. The message looks like two Chinese characters on a sheet of paper; I don't know why one of them doesn't just memorize it, but I guess then the movie would be over. Of course, Silver Fox (who is the villain here, by the way) sends another group of dudes to get this message too, and during the fight we see one of the bad guys doing some shifty eyes. When they get back to Silver Fox they don't have the message because they threw all the bodies in the river. But Fox doesn't punish them for this bit of genius. Somehow he knows that the shifty eyed guy was working against him and let one man escape with his life, so Fox crushes his throat.



Some old dude finds the guy who was let go with his life lying by the riverside and takes him to his house, then begins coughing. Next we see a bunch of assholes walking along, jumping around and being obnoxious on their way to one of those inn/teahouses you see in every one of these movies. My husband was pretty impressed when I said there was gonna be a fight in the teahouse and I turned out to be right; that's because I've seen a couple of kung fu movies. The owner of the place was cowardly and the gang leader talked like Snidely Whiplash.



The guy who fought them all before they could really do any damage, but after they ran off all the customers, was of course the man who escaped from Silver Fox's guys earlier. The fight was cool, because he fought two of them by throwing chicken at them and making them catch it in their mouths, and a third guy got thrown up the bannister and then slid back down and racked himself on the newel.

I should tell you now that in the teahouse there is a pickpocket character who starts off as a man with a female dubbing the voice, leaves, and comes back with the same female voice actor doing the dubbing but now the actor is female too. She robs the hero, he robs her back, and then she follows him off down the road. Then things get nonsensical. They meet an old man and the pickpocket lady asks him for some food. He kicks her ass, and then starts telling our hero a long story about his own training that ends up being a flashback back to the coughing guy who rescued the hero. Then we get a long boring training sequence including the trainee standing in a river while a Sousa type march plays. Then he accidentally kills the trainer, we go back to the present, and there is some more fighting with a different roving band of jerks. The lady man falls in the river, goes to change clothes, then is peeped on by some itchy guy who appears from behind a bush. Then we learn that the chick was supposed to have been disguising herself as a guy! This is the first time I've ever seen that plot device used when the character was played by a man in an earlier scene. Even Tommy Wiseau used actors of the same gender when a character was inexplicably played by two actors in The Room.



Oh boy. Now the leader of the first gang meets up with a member of the second gang at the teahouse, and they commiserate about having been beaten up by our hero and pickpocket. "Ha, ha, you got beat up by a girl." "You got beat up by a girl too! Wait, that was a girl?" Then it comes out that all the marauders are part of the original group who killed the second messenger. They probably were different actors in the beginning too, since I didn't recognize them.

Hero guy tries to teach pickpocket lady that fighting is wrong by, what else, fighting her. He even takes her hand and hits her in the face with it. Thankfully, he doesn't say "why are you hitting yourself?" while he does it.

Back at the teahouse, a bald thug from the beginning joins the other wounded thugs, only his voice actor has changed from the dumbass "which way did he go, George" guy to Bob Hoskins. There's another fight with these thugs. Pickpocket lady beats Bob Hoskins/Lenny with a spoon and Hero chokes the other two. The old guy from earlier appears on top of a rock.



The bodies get back to Silver Fox somehow and as they lie on the lawn Bob is taken to task for having survived. Fox opines that "everything you want done, you must do yourself." Fox surmises that the hero and the pickpocket are after him right before receiving a note to that effect. The henchmen beg him to let them kill the two, who are meanwhile hanging out with the old guy and have now admitted to each other that they know they are old acquaintances who have been betrothed since they were younger. Hero plans to fight Fox to the death tomorrow and I can't fucking wait. The girl tearfully begs to go to the fight too and the old man laughs maniacally.

Then in a lovely blue-colored day to night sequence (we know it's night because of the cricket sounds) the old man finds two new thugs outside and beats the shit out of them while trying to keep them quiet. I guess he doesn't want to wake the lovers? He actually takes one guy's hand, holds it over his head and spins him around like a dance partner.



At daylight our hero meets Bob and another bald dude in a field. He says he wants to fight Silver Fox, not two boiled eggs. He jumps up and stands with one foot on each of their heads. They put him in a coffin. He climbs out and fights them with gratuitous reverb sound effects, then sends them back on a wagon covered in burlap to where Fox is ill-advisedly hosting a premature victory party. He orders the burlap removed, then he and the music act like we're supposed to be surprised that dead henchmen are in fact revealed. I don't know how the Fox dude made it to this movie, which is a sequel, he is so dumb.

Hero arrives and Fox asks if it is his custom to come announced. Hero asks if he needs an invitation to come and kill him! (Oh, snap). The old man displays some more appearing powers, and uses some kind of tickle fu on some bad guys, then sits down and eats Fox's huge feast while watching pickpocket lady fight some guys with swords. Fox seems to have the upper hand, even dealing Hero a very dusty foot to the face and later standing on his thighs like they're doing a cheerleading stunt and smacking him in the face. Finally the old man helps out and they kill Fox just as the movie reveals that he is the reincarnation/ghost of the dead trainer. And you thought the bad guys were gonna win! Last line of the film, from the old man: "merciful Buddha, I thank you."



Like I said, this is a good bad movie. It's not even so bad it's good; it's in the odd condition of being good and bad at the same time. You can find it on DVD as a Black Belt Theater release. Unlike many such old kung fu DVDs, this one has trailers and deleted fight scenes. I recommend you do if you like fighting for the sake of seeing the choreography, but not if you enjoy a good plot.

Zombi 2 again

This is my second time watching my Shriek Show 25th anniversary Zombi 2 DVD. Who knows how many times I've seen the movie period, but I think this is the second time I've mentioned it here. Since I probably should say something different to you every time Zombi 2 shows up here in my moviegoer diary, I'll tell you that the scene in which Susan strips off to go scuba diving with the zombie and the shark tickles me every time.

The reason I'm amused is because to begin with Peter is absently staring at her, like you do when it's the first time you see a particular woman get nuuuuuuude. He's not really leering, though, because he knows her shriek show hair under that pink cap makes her kind of meh. Anyway, Anne looks a little bit eye roll-y at the exhibitionism, so Peter picks up on it and averts his eyes because he likes Anne. Then Fulci cuts to Brian shoveling some nasty unidentified food into his mouth with his bare hands and looking like he's completely oblivious not only to the silent drama the little strip show has brought on but to the stripping itself. So you know that she's showing off all the time to the point that the thrill is gone. "Oh, that's just my wife, nude again. *yawn* Pass the hot sauce, wouldya?"

Also, I can't look at Al Cliver without thinking about David Warbeck on the Beyond commentary talking about Cliver being a self-described dumbass. Gotta go; it's time for the eye splinter.

P.S. I also watched The Beyond with commentary tonight. Watching it reminded me that last night I dreamt I was in New Orleans at one of those bars that sells like 76 different kinds of mixed drinks in styrofoam cups. In my dream one of the drinks was called the "Kenny Rogers." I ordered a "Kenny Rogers" but had to change my order since the price, which hadn't been on the menu, was over $140!

True Stories

I have to highlight True Stories as one of those movies that inspires me. As it finishes washing over me I feel I could create music, fiction, and gorgeous sets. True Stories seems so densely packed I rediscover a scene every time and it becomes new to me.

My favorite scene takes place when Louis Fyne visits Pop Staples's character for the first time. Pop has a soothing voice even when speaking, and I can imagine trusting him with the voodoo of my love life. The best scene with a song in it is the fashion show. I love the way in which it and the lip sync scene has actors that look like regular people.

Which part do you like best? Do you think you would like the company of a person like David Byrne's character, who just walks through the movie observing and rarely verbally expressing an opinion?

I hereby resolve to live in the feeling I experience whenever I watch the movie.

Nerds!!!!!!

Revenge of the Nerds
True Stories

Still working my way through 2 Mill Creek 50 Packs O' Crap

Spare Parts aka Fleisch
Sisters of Death

and a real movie, Happy Accidents, the review of which you can find here: http://fantasticticket.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/happy-accidents/

Not too long ago, in this galaxy right here

I watched Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Terror, Family Plot, Broken Flowers, and My Bloody Valentine. And I liked them!

And when they pulled the driver's body from the twisted burning wreck

...I had watched Pee Wee's Big Adventure again, along with Cat O' Nine Tails, Haunts, and Star Wars.

Since the last entry

Bikini Drive In
Ghosthouse
Funeral Home
Harold and Maude

Labor Day Weekend crap

MST3K The Movie - Sorry to hear the guys hated making this one. It would be nice to have a movie every few years from them.

Black Samurai - Possibly the best blaxploitation kung fu movie there is. There were boring parts, but the fight scenes were totally worth the wait and Jim Kelly drove a purple sportscar. Also, he flew in a jetpack!

Rest in Pieces - I liked this one a lot, which is awesome since I went to a lot of trouble to track it down. You can read a detailed review here: http://initforthekills.com/2011/09/03/rest-in-pieces-1987/

Hauntedween - I could say the same thing for this one, and you can read the review of it here: http://90shorror.blogspot.com/2011/09/hauntedween-1991.html

Paganini Horror - I will watch any Italian horror movie. I actually enjoyed this one, especially the ending, even though it was really dumb.

The Jitters - I'll probably review it just to prove to my readers that I don't actually like every movie I watch. It was pretty awful, and an insult to the hopping vampire subgenre.

Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell

Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell is now one of my favorite MTS3K episodes. I love so many of the lines, especially "Steve's wearing his hood!" and "Potatoes are what we eat!" The only trouble is that my mind always tries to make sense of the movies I watch, and it's an effort to just give up and let the badness wash over me, focusing only on the MSTies. Guess I'll just have to practice some more.

Cam you believe they made four Deathstalker movies? God, I miss 80s video stores.

The House by the Cemetery and Victim of the Haunt

I think I watch The House by the Cemetery so often because I keep thinking that one day it is going to make sense. I read that when it first came to VHS it was presented with two reels out of order and nobody noticed. So my idea of it making sense someday may be a dream. I wonder what Americans thought when they showed up at the drive-in on Friday night and ta-da! It's Fulci! Welcome to Lucio Land!

I also watched 90s TV movie Victim of the Haunt, which you can read all about here: http://90shorror.blogspot.com/2011/09/victim-of-haunt.html

Demon Possessed

Demon Possessed is a movie which embodies exactly the kind of quality I have come to expect from its makers, Action International Pictures. ::sneer:: That is not to say that I was not entertained by it, and I suppose that is all I can ask.

Read more: http://90shorror.blogspot.com/2011/08/demon-possessed.html

The Yakuza and High Anxiety

Robert Mitchum is cool and Mel Brooks is nervous.



Mitchum is the star power but this is Ken Takakura's movie and he is the motherfucking man. Watch him stride through the room starting at :26 in the above video. It's frightening, even though you're rooting for him. This is arguably the climactic scene of the film and you're watching a man who's been holding back for over 25 years finally let go.

The Yakuza is an amazing film. It has an east meets west theme but never makes its Asian characters into magical Zen weirdos. The entire film is, I feel, a metaphor for the U.S. and Japan finally overcoming their differences after WWII. Mitchum goes to Japan to help an American friend whose daughter has been kidnapped and gets re-involved with the woman he left behind there twenty-five years before; his old conflict with her brother, Takakura, which is the reason he had to leave, is still fresh.



What can you say about Mel Brooks? He's not my go-to director; most of his comedy is just too broad for my liking, but High Anxiety charmed me against my will. Madeline Kahn is always fun to watch, and who knew Brooks was a crooner?

I Know What You Did Last Night

Last night I watched I Know What You Did Last Summer, which I picked up yesterday on VHS along with I Still Know and The Faculty as fodder for my 90s Horror Movies blog, but so far I've only used I Know to feed my oldest blogchild with a Who Would Win article. Check this out:

Tonight I’m debuting a new feature here on In It For The Kills. In the spirit of crappy movies like Freddy Vs Jason and Alien Vs Predator, we’re going to pit some horror villains who share similar characteristics against one another and see who would win in a fight. For our inaugural edition, it’s hook against hook. Who would win in a fight between Candyman and Ben Willis of I Know What You Did Last Summer? Let’s check the facts.

Read more: http://initforthekills.com/2011/08/27/who-would-win-candyman-versus-ben-willis/

Spoiler alert: Candyman wins.

Another Self-Indulgent Friday Night

Suspiria
Alice, Sweet Alice
Hour of the Wolf

Spellcaster and She Waits

Spellcaster was filmed in '87 but released in '92. This explains why a member of the cast who was supposed to be a super hot chick was wearing leggings with a long shirt, a big slanted belt, and boots instead of a baby doll dress, tights, and Doc Martens. The movie itself centers around a contest, run by an MTV-like channel, in which seven people go to an Italian castle for the weekend to look for a million dollar check. Unfortunately for them, the castle's owner is an evil guy with a crystal ball who keeps waving his hand and killing them in ways appropriate to their greed. It's basically Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for adults, if Willy Wonka was Satan.

Speaking of Satan, he is played by my childhood crush Adam Ant. I watched part of a movie called Rockula the other night which had Thomas Dolby in the cast, so I'm thinking of finishing that one so I can make a post about whether Dolby's character of Ant's character would win in a fight. Battle of the classic MTV pop stars!

She Waits is a terrific 70s TV movie starring Patty Duke as the lady whose new husband takes her to meet his mother, who lives in a huge house haunted by his old wife. Scary things happen. I'll explain it all later on Realm of the Uninvited. I know this is not a new statement, but wouldn't it be nice if TV movies went back to being fun to watch, instead of being horrible "based on a true story" movies about cancer?

Metamorphosis

As a huge fan of Italian horror both good and bad I got excited when I started this movie and saw that it was put out by Filmirage. Ditto for the fact that it's written and directed by George Eastman of Anthropophagus fame. This movie may be filmed in Virginia, USA, with actual English-speaking actors, but it's Italian crap from the first frame. You can tell because the soundtrack of the beginning scene is dominated by Foley footsteps. They're not the clickety-clack ones in most Italian films, although there are plenty of those later. Nope, these are the unmistakeable squeak of athletic shoes on a gym floor during a game of basketball.

Read on and on...

Uncle Sam (1996)

I remembered this one only for the VHS box, which had a hologram on it that made Uncle Sam turn from live and angry to dead and scary. It was worth a watch, though, as I found out tonight, if you like cheesy movies. I'm sure it was supposed to be funny.

The Laziest List

So far, since I last posted I have watched:

The Hidden
Stayin' Alive
Ju-On: The Grudge 2
Valley Girl
The Darjeeling Limited

I will be back later to edit this and add comments, when I did not just drink a pint of Crown Royal the night before. Thank you for your support.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2

Until this evening, I had not seen this movie since it came out on VHS in the 80s. I always remembered it as not having been a good movie, but I think the problem was simply that it wasn't as good as the first one and they abandoned the whole "being killed in your dreams" plot for a possession/shapeshifting plot. I will admit that the movie doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I'm used to that shit from watching Italian horror.

Here's the 64 dollar question: is it as gay as everyone says? Well, everyone is more concerned about Jesse (Mark Patton) getting with Lisa (Kim Myers) than he is. His mother is real happy a girl comes over to see him. He's not the most masculine guy, as evidenced by all the screaming and well, flaming. He also doesn't mind having a crappy car which doesn't fit in with high school machismo. Then there's a the tighty whities, the dancing (he's a pretty good dancer for the time), the part where he runs off from making out with Lisa to sleep at Grady's house.

Oh, Grady. Robert Rusler was super hot. And he turns down a party invite from Lisa's "bad girl" friend Kerry (Sydney Walsh) because "he's grounded for pushing his grandmother down the stairs." A likely story, especially considering he was just asking Jesse to go to a movie before the girls walked up to the lunchroom table. And how about that "fight" between Jesse and Grady which is just some rolling around on the ground (gay) but then Jesse gets up with a black eye although no punches were thrown.

I don't know what to say about the gym coach (Marshall Bell) except that he was gay and Freddy was a homophobe who tied him up, stripped him, whipped him with a towel, and killed him.

Then at the end, it is the love of Lisa who makes Jesse come out of Freddy's body? Well, I certainly have loved some gay guys, in a platonic way of course (I'm no hag) more than some of their guys of the moment who were no good for them. But I don't cockblock. Maybe Jesse is bisexual?

Verdict: less homoerotic than a David DeCoteau film, but still suspect. Not a great movie, but enjoyable. And I LOVED Lisa's friend's 80s deluxe wardrobe!

Wrapping up the week

I watched Zombi 2 this week then made a list of my favorite 20 zombie movies that aren't Fulci movies. Then I saw the new Fright Night and was extremely surprised at how awesome it is. Now I'm watching the crap classic The Dark Power.

I have never reviewed The Dark Power, because I won't do so until someone makes me a highlight reel of the fat, bitchy repairman. For some reason I'm obsessed with weird minor characters in old cheapies. The thing that provides the "good" part of "so bad it's good" is the audacious WTF sections between the kills, and minor characters are a big part of that equation.

What else will I watch tonight? Well, I'm drinking orange cream vodka and I have nothing to do until church on Sunday, so there's no telling.

Waiting For Guffman

If you haven't seen this movie yet, your life is seriously lacking. You have to find it and watch it before Monday. There is no reviewing that needs to be done for this movie other than to say that in the video store where I worked for three years I can't remember it ever staying on the shelf. If someone brought it back, it was rented again that same day. The only thing that rented as much as Waiting For Guffman was Breakin', I shit you not. And since Waiting For Guffman is an intentionally ironically funny movie, and Breakin' is an unintentionally ironically funny movie, that's appropriate.

And if that doesn't convince you, my mother, who doesn't think anything is funny, actually laughed out loud several times. Also, my son liked it, even though he didn't want to, but he just had to tell me, "um, Mommy, those songs aren't really very good." And I said, "baby, that's the joke."

Dorm

Synopsis: Ton (Charlie Trairat) is a lonely boy who has been abruptly shipped off to boarding school. When he finally makes a friend, Vichien (Sirachuch Chienthaworn), he is relieved at first; shockingly, however, Vichien turns out to be a g-g-g-ghost! Can Ton help Vichien stop reliving his death every evening? Why does the headmistress, Pranee (Chintara Sukapatana), feel so guilty about Vichien’s death? And just why did Ton’s dad (Suttipong Tudpitakkul) send him to boarding school in the middle of the year?

Read the rest here: http://realmoftheuninvited.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/dorm-aka-dek-hor-2006/

This movie is awesome for many reasons, but most of all because the characters go to see a Mr. Vampire-like movie, and the filmmaker actually made a short film in homage to Mr. Vampire and put it into Dorm!

The Hills Run Red

I just watched The Hills Run Red. I knew there was a reason the DVD had been sitting unwatched on my shelf for a year. I hope whoever made this film doesn't come and kill me for not liking it. I can't say that it's not original and well-made, but I can say that it's not the kind of thing I enjoy. It makes a nice entry into several sub-genres: the "don't go poking your nose where it doesn't belong" one, the "killer hicks" one, and possibly the "blackest of black comedies" one. It's a good movie, quality-wise. It's just that personally, I prefer something less bleak.

There are slashers that I like: Curtains, Prom Night, the original My Bloody Valentine, various giallos. There's just something I don't care for about the kind of slasher where the victims (spoiler alert)



end up in the middle of the woods dead among the killer's piles of bodies in various states of dismemberment and nobody will ever find out what happened to them. It's not the fact that the killers win in the end so much as that I can't stand the thought of someone's child, even an adult child, disappearing and never being found. I like the idea of closure and a proper burial. I also like the episodes of Unsolved Mysteries on which there is an update.

Also, the killer hick subgenre doesn't do it for me. I have lived in the South all my life, so I know that hicks are scary. I probably wouldn't like killer shark movies either if I lived on an island surrounded by shark-infested waters.

So, in summary, give me a haunted house movie any day over this crap. I am old-fashioned and stuck in the 80s. I know that won't make me popular among horror fans, but as long as they voice their displeasure from far away over the internet that's fine. Everyone is entitled to like what they like, until it encroaches on what someone else likes, like being alive.

Crazy, Stupid Love

Crazy, Stupid Love is the rare popcorn multiplex movie that I was able to watch in the theater without picking it apart the whole time. At the same time, I was not able to figure out every plot twist before it happened. It's just a very well-crafted story.

It's nice to see a comedy made of events that could actually happen to some people. They likely won't all happen to one interconnected group of people, but they possibly could. I guess that's a backhanded way of saying I'm sick of farces.

I don't want to say a whole lot because it's so new, but I will say this: Kevin Bacon once said in an interview that his career was never going to be such that people would say to themselves, "hey, let's go see the new Kevin Bacon movie." Well, I thought he was wrong them, and he is still wrong, because recently I have seen the new X-Men movie and Crazy, Stupid Love mostly because he is in them.

Also, as a longtime fan of The Daily Show (when Craig Kilborn was on and they did "news" reports about regular weirdos instead of talking about politics) I am very happy that Steve Carell is a movie star now. In fact, I am happy that all the people in this movie are movie stars because they all look like regular people, which is something we don't get enough of anymore. Even the female leads looked like people you might actually encounter on Earth and not as if they were grown in a lab.

This is not a spoiler, but there is a great bit about Dirty Dancing in the movie, which made me so happy.

Finally, did you know that Josh Groban is secretly a Jonas brother? It would appear so.

Death Spa, redux

Witch Bitch aka Death Spa follows Aerobicide by a year or two, but probably wasn’t technically a ripoff. Although, now that I think about it, both movies feature a dead woman stuffed into a locker. Other than that, and both movies being in gyms, there are few similarities. It just shows you how pervasive the aerobics culture was in the 80s. Also, back then, if you saw a woman out at the grocery store or something in her gym spandex, chances were excellent that she actually had the body for it.

I watched this damn movie again! I reviewed it for my brother site Midnight Showing; for this review and all kinds of other good stuff click here: http://midnightshowing.com/2011/08/death-spa/

The Black Belly of the Tarantula

Someone is killing (mostly) beautiful ladies by first paralyzing them with an acupuncture needle, then gutting them. The method ensures that they are aware of what is happening to them, and mirrors the way in which a certain type of wasp kills tarantulas. Police Inspector Tellini (Giancarlo Giannini) is trying to solve the murders while he struggles with feeling like he is unsuited for the job. The only thing the victims seems to have in common is that they all frequent the same day spa. What the fuck is going on?

Read more: http://initforthekills.com/2011/08/06/the-black-belly-of-the-tarantula/

Spookies (1986)

Nine people who don't seem to have much in common besides all having been kicked out of the same event earlier decide to party in an abandoned mansion, but they soon come to believe that playing with a Ouija board they find in the living room is the reason various monsters show up to stalk and kill them. Meanwhile, in another movie filmed in the same house, a possibly delusional old man believes he is controlling the party people's deaths with his chess board and his meowing, rotting, shapeshifting sidekick. Who is right?

The answer is E) all of them are right. Spookies is a Frankenmovie. The partiers and their monsters really were in one movie, which was unfinished. Later, a different director finished the film by adding the footage with the old man, the cat thing, an evil little kid, a stupid little kid, and the ghost of Laura Palmer.

But even knowing this, viewers are left with one huge unanswered question. How did all the victims from the party, who seem so at odds, know one another?

I think I can explain this. Duke, the Guido who got them all thrown out of the first party, was a D.J. at the club inside the Ramada Inn on Highway 49, Frenzy's. He met Linda on her first night waitressing there, and she wasn't very good at it, so he had her fired, then slipped a drug in her drink while consoling her (she didn't know he had her fired). He also knocked her up after she passed out, so to avoid paying child support he convinced her he loved her and they moved in together. Rich was the dishwasher who believed he was going to make it big as a ventriloquist comic, and Duke hung out with him because Rich had a steady supply of nitrous oxide thanks to playing D&D with the younger brother of Adrienne, a dental assistant. Adrienne, who spent two weeks on exchange in England in tenth grade (but retained the accent) met Megan at community college and convinced her to change her name to Meegan. Meegan introduced Adrienne to her former stepfather Dave and they immediately began an abusive relationship.

Because of the name change, when Meegan graduated and went to work as a transcriptionist for the law firm to whom Peter was the top salesman from his office supply company, Peter believed that she was sophisticated enough for him despite their thirty year age difference and he was making plans to leave both his first and second (secret) families for her at the time when they were killed. Carol won the Linda Blair lookalike contest at Steverino's Donuts on the college campus, and Lewis was the newspaper reporter who interviewed her. Lewis and Carol only thought they were thrown out of the first party and so got a ride with Peter and Meegan. Meegan and Linda thought they went to church camp together in sixth grade and reconnected over this mistake at the original party; when Duke got them all thrown out they decided to caravan to another party together but they would have made the awkward realization that they didn't know each other once they sobered up if they hadn't been killed.

You can learn so much if you just make up imaginary backstories for characters from bad movies. You're welcome.

Oh, and if anyone has a copy of the fan-made version of Twisted Souls, the original movie with only Duke, Peter, Linda, Meegan and the rest to share, please let me know.

Sweet Home aka Sûîto Homu (1989)

Synopsis: A camera crew goes into an abandoned cursed mansion to view a mural painted by the former owner, Ichirō Mamiya. The ghost of his wife, Lady Mamiya, does not take too kindly to the intrusion. TV producer Kazuo (Shingo Yamashiro), his assistant/love interest Akiko (Nobuko Miyamoto), and local kook Yamamura (Tsutomu Yamazaki) do battle with the ghost. Will anyone get out alive?

Continue reading: http://realmoftheuninvited.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/sweet-home-aka-suito-homu-1989/

Ghosts That Still Walk

Synopsis: Mark’s mother Ruth (Caroline Howe) went batshit insane a year ago while writing a book on Native Americans; before she had her breakdown she had disinterred an Indian mummy as part of her research. Now Mark (Matthew Boston) is having terrible headaches, which his doctor says are psychosomatic, and an unseen force tries to kill his grandparents, Alice (Ann Nelson) and Jerry (Henry Douglas). Is Mark possessed by the astral body of the Indian? Or is something even creepier and more dangerous happening?

Read the rest of my review here: http://realmoftheuninvited.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/ghosts-that-still-walk/

P.S. I watched Blue Velvet tonight for the umpty-umpth time, and my husband made as MS Paint drawing of fucking suave Ben which you can see here: http://msmasterpieces.tumblr.com/post/8412121059/bluevelvet

I saw something I never noticed before around the one hour mark of Blue Velvet: when Jeffrey pulls up to the brick factory building to begin his stakeout, there is a beautiful shadow projection of machines working and putting out smoke framed in a semicircle by Jeffrey's headlight. Lynch has never stopped captivating me in over 21 years of my being a fan.

The Legend of Cougar Canyon aka The Secret of Navajo Cave

My seven-year-old picked this out at the library today. When we got it home he said he had picked it out for me. He often does this with food and with Netflix instant watch. He does a lot of strangely sophisticated things and then goes back to picking his nose and playing video games. But you don't come here to read about my kid; suffice to say it is strange that he would pick at random a 70s nature documentary not even knowing of my love for such films.

At first I thought this was going to be a Frankenmovie, one of those movies cobbled together out of unfinished films and stock footage. But it turned out to be pretty decent for a cheap nature movie, even though the second part is more of a docudrama. The only problem I have with The Legend of Cougar Canyon is that a reviewer on IMDB claims the eagle eaten by the cougar at the beginning of the movie was held down by the filmmaker with a rope. I am not sure, and I can't find any documentation; I hope it's not true.

The first half of the the movie follows a hungry cougar trying to eat. He catches an eagle, then unsuccessfully chases a badger (I knew badgers were nasty but I didn't know they were BAAAD), fights over some food with a black bear, tries to catch and eat a boar, and finally has a rabbit for dinner. All the time the narration by Rex Allen is very fair to both the cougar and the other animals, stressing that the cougar is hungry and getting desperate, life is hard for predators, this is nature's way, etc.

Halfway through the film, we start seeing Navajo Indians going about their business and hearing a bit about their customs intercut with the cougar footage. Then we meet Steve (Steven Benally Jr.), a Navajo of about twelve, and his white friend Walter (Holger Kasper). They have a campout on the reservation and tell ghost stories. In the morning the boys aren't watching Steve's family's goats as well as they should and one gets away from them only to be stalked by the cougar. The rest of the film is spent on the race between the boys and the cougar to see who will get the goat.

Now, what elevates this above the usual crappy tearjerker animal story is that by the time we meet the boys we already feel sympathetic towards the cougar. Then, the boys' portion of the movie is narrated by Allen just like the cougar's, making man seem like a normal part of nature too. When the two sides are competing for the goat, you understand that Steve will get in trouble with his mother if the goat is eaten, but you also understand that the cougar has to eat. It's miles better than an entire movie about a Mary Sue of a little boy and a mean, evil cougar.

The Legend of Cougar Canyon was directed by indie filmmaker James T. Flocker, who only made six films. One of them turns out to be something I had seen a weird trailer for while watching 70s horror trailers on YouTube, called Ghosts Who Still Walk. So I've decided that tonight will be a Flocker double feature. Coming up next: Ghosts Who Still Walk. I understand there's a scene involving strangely moving rocks that was nightmare fodder for many folks in the 70s; we shall see.

Eyeball aka The Secret Killer aka Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro

I just love 70s Euro horror films. Seriously, no matter how crap they are, I'll watch 'em.

From Italy, filmed in Spain, comes the 1975 quasi-giallo Eyeball. Someone is stabbing women on a tour group to death, one by one. Even a young servant girl who comes in contact with the group is killed. Worst of all, the killer gouges out each woman's left eyeball before she is killed.

They did things a little differently in the 70s. If you couldn't sleep, anyone with whom you were acquainted could lend you a tranquilizer. Hotel desk clerks would let you go up to a guest's room, even if you didn't know quite what name they'd registered under, if you claimed to be married to the guest. And a tour by bus wouldn't be cancelled and a suspect detained until the second person in the group was murdered; the first murder just meant everyone had to have a drink and try to put it out of their minds.

Did Umberto Lenzi see Don't Look Now a couple of times? Who is the killer? The cop about to retire, or his successor? The priest who always seems to be near the crime scene? The abusive lesbian? The guy with the old head injury from the war? His wife, a mean lady who I keep hoping will be the next victim? The man who stands over his sleeping granddaughter with a razor? Or is it the obvious suspect, the crazy woman whose husband remembers seeing her passed out with a bloody knife near the scene of a similar murder last year? Or maybe his jealous secretary with whom he's having an affair? Most importantly, do I care? And how did I manage to choose, out of two hours worth of trailers, the one Italian movie I hadn't seen even as it was masquerading as an American movie?



P.S. I watched Autopsy again after Eyeball. The piece I wrote on it for one of my other blogs never gets many hits, but it got one while I was watching Grindhouse Trailer Classics and writing the accompanying post over here; the reason I know it got a hit was because someone found that blog by searching for "fat woman dead on morgue table." I figured it was a sign I should watch it again, and it's always good to have a giallo double feature. It's just as gross yet enjoyable in that special giallo way as I remembered it being.

Grindhouse Trailer Classics

Out of all these movies which make up two hours worth of trailers, I've only seen:
Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things
Blood Sucking Freaks
I Spit On Your Grave
Autopsy
The Street Fighter
Don't Open the Window (actually one of my favorite films of all time, which I own as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie)
Zombie
Coffy
And, just for the record, I would never watch I Spit On Your Grave again!

I only have an interest in adding to the list of those I've watched:
Torso
Eyeball
Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde
Master of the Flying Guillotine
They Came From Within
God Told Me To
Bury Me an Angel
Dr. Butcher, M.D.

While most of the trailers run together in one's mind as a lot of pathetic substitutes for porn from a time before home video, a few are notable. The double feature of I Dismember Mama/The Blood Spattered Bride is presented as a news report outside the theater where one man is brought out in a strait jacket and another seems to need one. The Executioner trailer features the oddly upbeat song "Tik a Tee Tik a Tay." Zombie ends with a notice that a barf bag will be provided upon request. Satan's Sadists advises squeamish viewers to head to the concession stand rather than watch the trailer; it also has an inappropriate song, a swingin' version of "Is It Better To Have Loved and Lost." Both Switchblade Sisters and The Big Doll House have scenes of someone getting their head stuck in a toilet. Caged Heat and It Came From Within both feature the lovely Barbara Steele.

The Single Girls describes the killer as "a boobie snatcher, a tit maniac" and promises that the girls will "tingle your dingle." Like Secrets of Sweet Sixteen, The Single Girls looks like a sex comedy but then they hit you at the end with a sort of "oh, and by the way, they're being stalked by a satanic cult/killer." Why bother? Were there really guys who were willing to go look at teen boobs but drew the line at a horror movie and so needed to be warned? Love Me Deadly has a little bit of fine print under the title card that reads "A film about necrophilia (sexual attraction for corpses)." I wish I lived in a time when necrophilia wasn't common knowledge, but instead had to be explained. But hey y'all, this is the internet. Nothing is obscure.

And now, thanks to the goddamn internet, on to my first viewing of Eyeball.

Aerobicide

Aerobicide, Lord!
Tight butts in spandex; burned boobs,
Death by safety pin.

Death Spa

As the title suggests, this is a movie about people dying at a spa, which is what they sometimes called a gym in the 80s. More specifically, the owner's dead wife's ghost (played by the fake Ashley who was on The Young and the Restless for a few years while Eileen Davidson wasn't) is killing them while possessing the body of her twin brother, who still works at the spa because he's the only one who can operate the Electric Dreams-like computer that runs the place. The computer which of course is helping the Wonder Twins kill people. People who work out entirely too little for a movie about a gym.

Spoiler alert: this is an AWFUL movie. That does not mean I don't like it. I enjoyed it quite a lot. I just wish the person who wrote the incredible line, "I'm beta and you're VHS," spoken by a gay man brushing off a predatory woman, had written the rest of the screenplay.

It totally stands to reason that I could only purchase this movie as a Japanese bootleg, because it seems like something they would go for, what with the scene in which a man is sucked into a freezer and then bitten to death by a zombiefied frozen fish.

At least there is lots of gore and plenty of naked women in a group shower. I was looking through the credits and noticed Tane McClure's name. I said to my husband, "I didn't see Tane McClure in this movie," and he said, "I'm sure she was in the shower."

This has all the great 80s horror conventions. You know who the killer is from the beginning, someone gets killed being seduced by a ghost, someone uses food as foreplay, somebody gets killed while sneaking off to meet someone they shouldn't be meeting, a tanning bed scene, a sauna scene, bodies that are never found after days of lying around in the health club, and the whole thing leads up to a party that can't be cancelled where you know everyone is gonna die. There's even a song at the end that describes what went on in the movie. Then there are the bonuses: a hand in a blender, an exploding hand, an exploding torso, and Merritt Butrick rolling around on the floor in drag.

But with all that, it still manages to be only fit for those who seek out bad movies on purpose. I would say this would be great for a remake, except that you couldn't make this today. Remember, the whole plot hinges on the spa being run by a computer that only one person can operate and he's evil. Nowadays you could just fire him and bring in your second grader to run the computer for a dollar a day.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and watch Aerobicide.

Fiend Without a Face

I must admit I went into Fiend Without a Face a bit reluctantly. I’m not a huge fan of 50s monster movies even under the best conditions, which would for me be such a movie presented as part of an MST3K episode. But I wanted to join the 50s Monster Mash Blogathon over at Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear because I had so much fun meeting all the classic film bloggers who participated in the Queer Film Blogathon in June. So, I chose the only 50s monster movie I could find which 1. hadn’t been chosen already and 2. was released as a part of the Criterion Collection. As it happens I chose wisely, and I’m ready to give some other monster classics a chance.

See the rest of this article at my oldest blogchild, In It For The Kills.

The Shining

Resetting the counter on this one. I wonder how many times I have seen this movie. Probably more than any movie other than Dirty Dancing, or would it be Poltergeist, maybe Every Which Way But Loose...anyway, resetting to one.

I am very excited because I saw an orb in the movie. During the scene where Wendy is talking to Danny in the apartment in the Overlook but Tony won't let Danny talk, you can see it move across her face from the top right of the screen down towards the bottom left, then across her chest from the top left to the bottom right. I don't know what it could be. I don't really believe it's a ghost. I don't know why Kubrick the perfectionist would have a little light moving around in the shot. It doesn't move in a drifty way like smoke or a dust mote; it moves purposely. What could it be? Did people know about orbs yet, and Kubrick put it in so the viewer would be like "ZOMG ghosteses eleventy11!1111?" I don't know, but I am excited.

I also noticed that the bathroom in the Overlook apartment figures very prominently in every scene in the apartment. That door is always open and sometimes the bathroom on the side takes up half the shot during a conversation. Is it foreshadowing to Jack chopping down the door, etc.?

Bathrooms in general are such a huge part of the film. I don't know what bathrooms represent in literature. Waste, wasted lives, cleansing? Sound echoes in bathrooms=echoes of events that took place? Bathrooms are cold and ghosts need cooler temps to manifest? Bathrooms are private and each of these three main characters are so alone and isolated in their own way? Some movies never show a toilet, for example (and neither did the entire Brady Bunch series) but this one has two toilets, a bidet, and a row of urinals. Not to mention the bathroom in the original apartment in Boulder in which we first see Danny talk to Tony while Jack is on his interview.

Anyway, here are some dream interpretations for dreaming about a bathroom: basic needs/desires, need to cleanse, need to release negative feelings. Doesn't really fit. Wish some English professor would tell me, or the ghost of Stanley Kubrick. But only in a dream with the Kubrick ghost thing.

People think that the scene in which Nicholson chops down the bathroom door is the scariest, but it's not. The scariest thing is the woman in room 237. I still have to check behind the shower curtain in strange bathrooms sometimes for that woman.

American Samurai (1992)

American Samurai wasn't even able to hold my attention long enough for me to take the piss out of it. I let the whole thing run, but I just couldn't focus on it. I was expecting a cheesy Best of the Best knock off and I got the cinematic equivalent of TGI Friday's appetizers from my grocer's freezer. And I say that with all due disrespect to the Iron Chef chairman who played the antagonist.

1992 is not a year I remember for good movies. Are there even ten movies I'd watch again that came out in 1992?

Okay. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Candyman, Monster in a Box, Shakes the Clown, Unforgiven, Once Upon a Time in China II, Wayne's World, Police Story 3, Ghostwatch, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Making that list took me at least thirty minutes and at least ten searches. What the hell was going on that year?

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Synopsis: Uncle Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) has come to the end of his life and will be dead soon of a kidney ailment. His former sister-in-law, Jen (Jenjira Pongpa), comes from the city to visit him on his farm, bringing her relative, Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee), to cook for them. The ghost of Uncle Boonmee’s long-dead wife Huay (Natthakarn Aphaiwonk) materializes to see him through his last days, and their lost son, Boonsong (Geerasak Kulhong), reappears at a family dinner, although it is not clear whether he has died or not; suffice to say he is now a sasquatch. Read the rest at one of my other blogs, Realm of the Uninvited.

Uncle Boonmee messed up my movie marathon because it was so hard to understand that I kept stopping it and reading stuff about it, but I'm convinced I'm smarter now for having made it through. I swear this sasquatch Boonsong guy has to be intentionally funny. The movie defies genre, but horror isn't part of it, even though there's a ghost and a hirsute brute.

A Wedding

Last night I had a terrible dream. I was asked at the last minute to be a bridesmaid in the wedding of someone I did not know well. They promised me a dress but I looked down to see that I was wearing a thin nightgown with no underwear except for tights, and two sweaters, one of which was torn. My hair, in the process of being "done," had shrunk until it was short. I tried to back out of the wedding but it was being filmed for a reality show which offered me lots of money and a proper dress if I would reconsider. Then I woke up.

Now, everyone who knows me knows I hate weddings. I've had two, the first of which was a shotgun wedding with the shotgun pointed at me, the bride. That may be an unusual circumstance. The second marriage I did want, but to expand upon my attitude towards weddings in general I will let you know that my father planned both of my weddings. And he is no flower-arranging ponce, but an enlightened redneck who collects guns. So you see, I don't like weddings.

Nevertheless, I do like Robert Altman films, and I have had his 1978 film A Wedding in my Netflix queue for weeks. So when I woke up this morning and decided it was a movie marathon day, based on my dream of last night and on the continuing trending search engine topic of royal weddings I decided to start the day with A Wedding.

It was the right decision in a lifetime of bad decisions, folks. This is the best movie I have seen in my entire life all year. It has heavy hitting actors like Carol Burnett, Lillian Gish, Mia Farrow, and Viveca Lindfors. It has character actors like that guy who played Molly Ringwald's dad in Sixteen Candles (here again playing the bride's father who favors the daughter who isn't getting married) and a stealth Tim Thomerson. Seriously, that man is an acting chameleon.


It has the intersection of nouveau riche Southerners, New England blue bloods, and Italian mafia, all of whom are known for trying to maintain a certain set of manners, yet we get to see almost all of those manners drowned in alcohol and set alight. I hate to reveal anything about the plot, but this is Altman at his best. This movie just kept getting better and better and better, like a string of mystery firecrackers. It was better than my divorce. It was more surprising and delightful than finding out the person next to you at the party has a cigarette case half full of joints and they're willing to share.


If you love satire, if you hate weddings, you must see this movie.

Mitchell with MST3K commentary

Oh, Joe Don Baker. It's not your fault or your character's fault that Mitchell didn't work. I find your "aw shucks" thing you've got going on endearing, especially in the scenes with Linda Evans. But the story built around you is too flimsy. The female characters' hair isn't 70s enough. You really did your best, though; I mean, Mitchell is way better than the cowboy movie, was it Final Sacrifice? Yeah, you tried too hard in that one to make "go ahead on" into your "make my day." It's too bad you don't see how Joel and the 'bots actually make Mitchell into the movie it was always meant to be. And even though I think there are too many fat jokes in the commentary, since you're not even that fat by today's standards, I have to share with you, since we're having this talk, that my favorite lines are when the MSTies sing their own version of the theme song:

Mitchell, Mitchell
Eeeeeeye on the sammich!
Mitchell (veins cloggin')
Mitchell (heart poundin')
Mitchell!

It's just unfortunate that I've put this movie on so many times to fall asleep to that I'm conditioned not to watch the last 30 minutes.

Joe Don, do you like Joel better or Mike? I like Mike. He just seems more open and sincere. Hey, remember that episode of Growing Pains when Mike Seaver (different Mike) runs for school office and has a bunch of campaign buttons made up that have the misprint "I Lick Mike?" No? Well, it wasn't that good of a show. I digress. Maybe you'd have liked this version of Mitchell better if Mike Nelson had been starring. Oh well. I hope we can still be friends. We'll always have Joysticks.

Jigoku AKA The Sinners of Hell (1960)

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Roadhouse with Kevin Smith commentary

Even though Patrick Swayze will forever be my number one celebrity crush because I fell in love with him when I was 10 watching North and South, I can't watch Roadhouse anymore all the way through without a commentary. The Kevin Smith one would be perfect except for the Dalton/Chuck Norris jokes, which really date the commentary as a 2006 thing, so next time I'm gonna watch it with the Mike Nelson riff.

I liked the inclusion of the story about Smith getting into a fight with Ernie O'Donnell in high school; guess I'm not the only one who never forgets ANYTHING.

I noticed tonight that Sam Elliott was actually a better looking dude in 1989 than Patrick Swayze. Are my tastes changing or is this obvious?




Imagine what he would have looked like if he hadn't been dirtied up. Do actors really skip showering for days to get this look or do they use makeup and hair products?

Night Train to Terror

Another one from the 50 Drive-In Classics box set, this is not the worst movie I've ever seen, but it was recommended to me by a guy who I "met" online after I put out a plea to the entire internet for a copy of Fear No Evil. So it's safe to say that I haven't found the worst movie ever yet and when I do I won't know it.

Now, I don't usually like anthologies, but Night Train to Terror is different. It's comprised of three movies with each one edited down to a lowlight reel so you get to see all the boobs, blood, and awful claymation, without any of the boring parts. Then there's a wraparound story about God and the Devil on a train that doesn't make any sense and a shitty band playing during all the wraparound segments.

I don't know why this format, the distillation and anthologizing of bad movies, didn't catch on. It's not too late! I'd watch the hell out of it.

The Legend Of Bigfoot

I love nature documentaries. I think it brings me back to the feeling of arriving to a classroom back in grade school and seeing a projector, and the exhilaration of knowing we weren't doing any work that day because, hey, movie time! I don't know why I like nature shows other than that, because I sure as hell don't like the outdoors. I am of the opinion that we evolved to the point that we invented houses and central heat and air for a good reason. Do you think sweaty people of yore would sleep outside given a choice?

I also want to believe. I'm the poster child for the "I Want To Believe" poster. Anything science, or more importantly the U.S. government, has pooh-poohed, I'm willing to buy into. So why is this movie fun only for purposes of ridicule?

For one thing, the narration kills me. The guy sounds like the narrator from A Christmas Story after huffing gold paint. Also, the guy makes a connection between Bigfoot and every damn thing he sees, reaching farther than a harried mom trying to smack kids in the backseat while driving. He makes analogies that work as well as those devised by a sophomore English major writing a paper the night before it's due. And the best part of the movie involves some major drama between a pair of squirrels after one is hit by a car. Ask anyone who has seen the movie.

We got this one as part of a 50 pack of drive-in classics. Tell me anyone actually watched this movie at the drive-in. They may have seen it, but I doubt they paid attention.

I can't really pay attention to it either, but I've still watched it twice. I like to feel like I'm eight again and watching a crap 70s documentary.

P.S. Whenever I think about Bigfoot I think of my favorite book about Bigfoot, Naked Came The Sasquatch by John Boston. It's the funniest comedic fantasy Bigfoot novel there is.

Ghostbusters with Commentary

Tonight I watched Ghostbusters. I watch Ghostbusters even more often than I watch Phantasm. I hope making this list does not inhibit the number of times I watch Ghostbusters.

We watched it with the commentary track on in celebration because the DVD just arrived in the mail. We have owned only VHS copies (we have at least two, just in case) since somehow un-acquiring the DVD in about 2006. I was sad to learn that William Atherton was harassed in bars because of playing Walter Peck, and that an entire busload of teenagers once yelled out "Hey Dickless!" to him while he was walking in New York.

Because of Atherton's parts in Ghostbusters and Real Genius, I, like the people harassing him, thought he actually was an asshole, and I said so to my husband. He said that he thought guys who played assholes usually were nice in real life, except for the guy who played Pickford in Dazed and Confused. I reminded him that the guy who played Niedermeyer in Animal House was supposed to have been an asshole in real life. Right then Harold Ramis brought up Animal House on the commentary! Ramis said that he thought Landis had the villains play too over-the-top. I'm sure that my mention of Animal House right before Ramis's mention is a deep and meaningful coincidence and not at all caused by the fact that I subconsciously remembered from hearing the commentary years ago that the connection would be made.

Phantasm

I watched Phantasm again tonight. I don't know how many times I have seen it. As I tried to estimate I wished I had listed every movie I had watched, ever, or since a certain important day. Then I thought that today might as well be that day. Starting with Phantasm.

When you see a movie as many times as I have seen Phantasm, you start to notice stuff you never noticed before. So here is my observation on Phantasm from the nth time overall and the first time listing it: if the Tall Man and the Lady in Lavender are the same being, does that make the human males' interactions with the Lady part of a gay subtext? The Lady in Lavender doesn't just lure these guys to their deaths, she makes out or has sex with them first. That would mean they're doing it with the Tall Man. Yes homo.