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.