Horror Movie a Day: October 2011

[SJP]

Neon Maniacs (1985)

Hoo, boy.  This was a blind watch...I've had it for a while, but never saw it or heard anything about it.  It is stupid.  Phenomenally stupid.  Some of it is intentionally so, but there are some real leaps in logic that make it just laughable for all the wrong reasons.

High school girl Natalie and her friends are out partying in the park when they are attacked and subsequently slaughtered by mutant freaks, whose key strategy to victory is slowly moving up to everyone in plain sight and allowing their victims to blunder towards their weaponry.  Somehow, the lone survivor can't seem to convince anyone that her friends were murdered, and the police think it's all some elaborate prank (somehow at the crime scene, the police find puddles of nasty goo all over the place, but the bodies have all vanished and the rain washed away every last trace of blood.  How convenient).  Needless to say, Natalie, her new boyfriend Stephen, and budding horror moviemaker Paula are the only ones to know the truth, and are being stalked by the killers.  I guess the heroes all have GPS chips implanted in them, because no matter where they go in the city, the maniacs know exactly where they are and apparently have no interest in murdering many of the other nameless, less capable rabble that walk the streets.

While it fails as a horror flick (and succeeds as a laugh-fest of facepalming proportions), the Maniacs are actually very well designed, with them ranging from deranged Hills Have Eyes rejects to a cycloptic alligator (?), but the big problem is that they are never explained.  There's never even an attempt.  And, of course, this might be a bit of a spoiler, but since this movie doesn't deserve surprise twists, the Maniacs are all weak against water.  Like Signs, when your biggest weakness is the most abundant product on the face of the planet, and your first move upon get a bucket of water in the face is to fall backwards into a tub, you're not doing something right.

That aside, the one thing that makes the movie worth seeing is not the horror, but that the movie is a blatant time capsule for the '80s.  I kid you not, it's almost as if this was written for the sole purpose of letting people watch it decades later and realize what the culture was like at the time.  It's ALL here: the friends who are douchebags for no particular reason, kids obsessed with making videotaped movies, movie posters of the time hanging up everywhere, a Battle of the Bands between the Frankie Goes to Hollywood knockoff and the Poison knockoff, a Michael Jackson mural painted on the school cafeteria wall, people wearing Star Wars, Mr. Bill, and Alien merchandise (I had no idea you could buy Nostromo ballcaps), and, of course, C-3PO's cereal.  Hot Tub Time Machine doesn't have as many '80s cliches as this actual '80s movie does, and that alone is funny enough.

Oh, and the hero of this is Paul from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.  And the writer of this is the same guy who did Pumpkinhead.  So, if that isn't a dead giveaway on the quality of this movie...

[Compound]

Okay, some quick writeups here:

Virus X (2010)
When renting this, I was under the impression that it was a zombie film. It's actually about the H1N1 virus. Folks get really sick and then... well, they die.  Whoops.

Anyway, there's a group of scientists looking for a cure for H1N1 (Y'all remember that?). But they work for an evil ... did you guess corporation? Well, wrong. It's just an evil industrialist this time. Anyway, she wants to make H1N1 more virulent so that she can weaponize it. So he has a person who looks like a cross between Emo Phillips and Sepiroth kidnapping random folks and subjecting them to new strains of the disease. Well, a random hooker they kidnapped breaks free, bites a guard and then escapes into the "cure" scientists' part of the complex. Because that was certainly the best place to put a secret facility.  Anyway, she runs into the cure folks' break room, gets shot by Emopiroth and infects the scientists. Then the DVD skips. Whoops. I lose about 5 minutes of an already short film. The scientists run around trying to cure the disease, knowing that they'll die in three days. Some rant, some plead, some get freaky, some get mad, and one starts clog dancing. Well, not really. Anyway, they start dying, evil industrialist tells Emo to kill them and she'll hire more scientists. Then their supervisor appears (he's been watching from a safe part of the lab all through the film) and reveals that he has had a cure for H1N1 all along. But evil industrialist thought that with a global pandemic, she'd make a lot more money with the cure. Emo shoots the supervisor and one of the other scientists before getting dispatched himself. The survivors then kidnap evil industrialist, infect her and lock her in the same room where the infected were stored. Then they watch her on the same cameras that the staff used to watch the other victims.  All while dancing to "Do the Hustle." Oh, wait. this isn't a Dreamworks film. Nevermind.

Anyway, it's quite dull and even at 80 minutes it seems to drag on and on. Skip it.

The Covenant
A group of 4 warlock clans whose eldest sons gain great power on their 18th birthday discover that a long lost 5th warlock clan  is still around and is making trouble for the other clans.

Yeah, this is essentially a dream for all those Harry/Draco slashfic types. Lots of hot boys standing around looking grim and moody and occasionally casting magic spells involving CGI or a gajillion spiders. Teen girls would be watching this all the time if Taylor Lautner hadn't arrived and taken off his shirt. Anyway, it's pretty by the numbers and pretty forgettable. The Craft is a better film if you're looking for emo teen spell casters, go with Harry Potter otherwise. And ladies?

Spoiler

You're welcome.


Neowolf
There's a werewolf rock band! You know, one of these days, I'd love to see an evil jazz quartet or an evil barbershop quartet. But I digress. There's also a songwriter who sings like John Mayer, his girlfriend and their gay mutual friend. Guy is trying to reunite with his girlfriend. Werewolf band has some members leave the band, who are then killed, so they need new blood. Gay friend tricks girl into going to an open mike night where guy is performing a love song for her. Werewolf band, who are slumming there, sees the performance and hires him. But of course, they need to make him a werewolf. Girlfriend sees boy acting strangely ad immediately jumps to the conclusion that he's become a werewolf.

Yeah. That's my first guess when someone acts odd too. One of the other characters in the movie even calls this out in the film. There's a bit of forestory for this in the film, but it's still a headscratcher. Anyway, she freaks out and tries to catch band in the act of being werewolves, gay friend tells the band about this, they make her look foolish and she leaves. And the lead singer then has the gay friend as a snack and tries to convince BF to eat someone so that he can become a full member of the band.  The girl goes and grabs an ally and then returns to the werewolves, kills most of them except for the lead singer, who traps her. BF then snacks on an already dead victim, kills the singer and then begs girl friend to kill him. She does and then heads off with her ally to go cross country werewolf hunting.

Overall? Not very good. The F/X and makeup are quite bad. Bad SyFy movie levels of bad, but since there are topless scenes too so it can't be a SyFy product. The acting's okay. The BF's song is actually fairly catchy. But it's basically a blander, less well done Fight Night, but with a werewolf band in it.

A Vampire in Brooklyn
A  vampire (Eddie Murphy) arrives in NYC looking for a lost descendant of his clan, who is played by Angela Basset. Wes Craven directs.

Okay, see Eddie Murphy's name there? This isn't a comedy.  This is a straight horror film. Granted, there are comedic bits, mostly provided by the otherwise wasted in the role Kadeem Hardison and occasionally Murphy doing his "dress up in a different costume" schtick. Both otherwise, this is a Wes Craven horror film.  There's a relatively low bodycount but it's still pretty well done with a decent plot, some good acting and only the occasional grind to a halt provided by Kadeem playing comic relief. It's not bad, if a bit hard to find. 

Happy Birthday to Me
After returning to her prep school after being committed to a mental institution, a girl's friends begin to vanish and people expect foul play.

Okay, first of all, who the hell eats a shish kabob directly from the skewer? Who? Take the meat off the sharp pointy thing! Oh, spoilers! It's on the movie poster/DVD Cover for Pete's sake! You don't need to be a genius to see what happens next.

Anyway, our main character Ginny is having some mental issues. She's repressed some memories and she keeps having flashbacks to scientists experimenting on her. And she has these flashbacks all the time. "I'll  have a diet soda!" Cue the three minute flashback to doctors sodaboarding her.  Repeat every few minutes. It's not exactly the smoothest narrative flow. Her friends keep dying, Ginny keeps freaking out, the audience keeps wondering what is going on. Is she the killer ? Is it one of the other folks in the circle? As the film goes on, it starts to point towards one killer, but it then swerves into complete incomprehensibility in the last few minutes.  Real spoilers here.


The signs point to Ginny, and then it appears to be her never otherwise mentioned twin sister. And then it's revealed to be another character who was dressing like Ginny to fool the other characters into thinking it was her. Er, why? Both characters are known to all the victims. When they say "Oh, it's you" it wouldn't matter which of the pair they saw, they'd react the same way. There's only two scenes in the film that require that we see Ginny, and those are both there to fool the audience.

And the killer's motives literally come out of nowhere. There's no real foreshadowing for it in the film. A Rifftrax example? The girl in Laser Mission
being a spy has much, much more foreshadowing in that film than there is in this one. It's pure "Man in the Hat killed the other man in the hat" stuff there.


Anyway, the victims are rather unsympathetic, the narrative is confusing, the plot as a whole is just goofy. I'd give it a skip. There's a memorable kill or two, but that doesn't make up for the rest of the movie.

[Compound]

Okay, it's getting late and I figure that I have time for one more movie. Looking over my rapidly decreasing stack of stuff, the first one the I see  is Eight Legged Freaks. I decline that one, figuring I don't really want spiders to be the last thing I see before I sleep. So I watch sometime else instead and there's a subplot in there involving... spiders. A gajillion normal sized spiders crawling around a school. Thanks Easter Bunny. (Bwak-bwak)

[shodan]

ended up watching blood diner early so had to pick another movie. i found a horror movie with chuck norris. the tagline is "science created him. Now Chuck Norris must destroy him" should be interesting.

it wasn't. karate scenes were good but the rest of the movie was flat

[D.B. Barnes]

<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084516/">Poltergeist</a> <a href="http://www.rifftrax.com/iriffs/hor-riff-ic-productions/hor-riff-ic-poltergeist">(with Hor-RIFF-ic iRiff)</a>

As  I wrote in my review of the Hor-RIFF-ic iRiff, this movie is much goofier now than it was when I was a kid. I remember being completely terrified by this movie, but now it just seems silly. The walking steak and the guy pulling his face off is absolutely hilarious. The movie is pretty damn slow at times, too. This movie really reminds me how much I hate the sound of prolonged whispering. That scene where Dr. Lesh whispers for about two minutes straight drives me up the wall! And what's with Craig T. Nelson? Was he huffing paint on the set? He's just so completely out of it.

The iRiff is great. Hor-RIFF-ic did a really nice job taking this movie to task.

MOVIE GRADE: B-

IRIFF GRADE: A-

[Artie]

I'm prepping for a Christmas meeting for next week so Silent Night, Deadly Night seemed like a perfect choice.  This was a real fun (and funny movie) - especially the sledder who gets decapitated and only the headless body makes down the hill.   

I still have more work to do so I'm going to continue with Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 (aka the "Garbage Day" movie)

[SJP]

White Zombie (1932)

Another one I've been meaning to see for a long time, but never got around to it.  I actually really enjoyed it, which is good, because I'm sick and tired of losing interest halfway through Bela Lugosi movies.  He's great fun to watch, but the movies around him tend to drag.  This one didn't.

Story: Charles Beaumont falls in love with young fiancée Madeline on a boat trip, and invites her and her husband-to-be Neil to his house on Haiti.  There Neil and Madeline are married, only for her to die on her wedding day.  Thing is, she really isn't dead; Beaumont has made a deal with voodoo practitioner Legendre (Bela Lugosi) to turn her into a zombie so she can belong to Beaumont forever.  Beaumont soon finds the deal going sour when he realizes zombie Madeline isn't quite the dreamboat he'd thought she'd be and Legendre has other ideas.

Like Dracula, it's pretty short, only 66 minutes.  Unlike Dracula, it doesn't feel like a three hour long production, and Lugosi is all the more fun to watch because of it.  He really is sinister and memorable for a role he apparently didn't think much of until later, as he regretted only being paid $800 for it.  There's also some really great moments that make plain this was made before the invention of the Hayes Code...

While not gory, the zombie falling into the grinding machine and Bela Lugosi's final fall onto the rocks are scenes that, remembering the times, would've been considered quite shocking.  Hell, I certainly didn't expect them.

Plus, Lugosi has the best line of the whole movie: "I have other plans for Mademoiselle.  I'm afraid...you might not AGREE!  I have taken...a fancy to YOU, Monsieur!"

[Compound]

Okay, I took a break for some cartoons and college football, and now back to horror films. I'll be watching horror and the Avs game at the same time later, which may be appropriate depending on how the game goes.

[JimJ]

Movie #8: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Best movie I've watched this month, easily and one of the best horror films in years (though it's much more of a comedy than horror). Really enjoyed it, Tyler Labine was awesome. 4.5/5

[D.B. Barnes]

<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452637/">Lady in the Water</a> <a href="http://www.rifftrax.com/iriffs/quiptracks/quiptracks-lady-water">(with QuipTracks iRiff)</a>

Words cannot express how unbelievably stupid this movie is. (5.7 stars on IMDB?!? Should be 2.7!) I'm surprised the actors could keep a straight face long enough to get through a scene. The back-and-forth cell phone/story explanation scene is one of the funniest, most ridiculous things ever put on film. Appropriately enough, Team QuipTracks just start to lose it as the scene goes on. All the goofball characters and their goofball plan is really something to behold. Shamalama really took the pipe on this one. And Giamatti, what are you doing in this movie; what the fuck are you doing?!?

The QuipTracks iRiff is probably my favorite iRiff of all time. It's absolutely hilarious from start to finish with a truckload of laugh-out-loud lines. The writing is top-notch and the performance is worthy of the writing. There's no way in hell I could make it through this movie without the riff, but thanks to QuipTracks, I've been able to watch this movie no less than four times! The folks at RiffTrax seriously need to consider giving these guys a shot at a RiffTrax Presents. QuipTracks is more than up to the task. If you haven't gotten into iRiffs at all, this is a great place to start. I guarantee you won't be disappointed, that is unless you've had your sense of humor surgically removed.

MOVIE GRADE: D-

IRIFF GRADE: A+++++

[Darth Geek]

<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452637/">Lady in the Water</a> <a href="http://www.rifftrax.com/iriffs/quiptracks/quiptracks-lady-water">(with QuipTracks iRiff)</a>

Words cannot express how unbelievably stupid this movie is. (5.7 stars on IMDB?!? Should be 2.7!) I'm surprised the actors could keep a straight face long enough to get through a scene. The back-and-forth cell phone/story explanation scene is one of the funniest, most ridiculous things ever put on film. Appropriately enough, Team QuipTracks just start to lose it as the scene goes on. All the goofball characters and their goofball plan is really something to behold. Shamalama really took the pipe on this one. And Giamatti, what are you doing in this movie; what the fuck are you doing?!?

The QuipTracks iRiff is probably my favorite iRiff of all time. It's absolutely hilarious from start to finish with a truckload of laugh-out-loud lines. The writing is top-notch and the performance is worthy of the writing. There's no way in hell I could make it through this movie without the riff, but thanks to QuipTracks, I've been able to watch this movie no less than four times! The folks at RiffTrax seriously need to consider giving these guys a shot at a RiffTrax Presents. QuipTracks is more than up to the task. If you haven't gotten into iRiffs at all, this is a great place to start. I guarantee you won't be disappointed, that is unless you've had your sense of humor surgically removed.

MOVIE GRADE: D-

IRIFF GRADE: A+++++

Seconded! Quiptracks is awesome. And I too would love to see them get to do a Rifftrax Presents.

[dignan]

Catching up on my posting:

Day 7: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

and

Day 8: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

Okay.  So, after Part VI's fun installment, which breaks with the traditional Jason plot somewhat in that a character actually KNOWS that Jason is not dead and may be on his way to Camp Crystal Lake to kill people, part VII brings it back to the theme of "nobody knows Jason is around, people disappear and nobody notices until only two or three people are still alive."  This time, however, it's different because Jason has met his match in...a blonde girl!  A...wait.  Oh, right, she also has psychic powers.  So, she can fight back!  Just like...all the other blonde girls who manage to beat Jason.  Except in this case, she can fight back without actually any real physical effort.  Meh.  This one's so dumb it's kind of awesome.

Part VIII is even dumber, and the victims do realize Jason is stalking them a lot earlier than in most Friday movies.  But still, it manages only to maintain the mediocrity of VII, rather than breaking any real new ground.  The simple fact is that these movies just aren't scary.  They're boring movies punctuated by random killings with copious amounts of blood, and after a while even those get boring.  Part V might be the worst offender:  there are at least 7 people in that movie that are introduced solely to be killed off.  None of them have any real bearing on the plot.  Anyway, on to bed.  Tomorrow begins the New Line Jason movies. 

[shodan]

day 9 movie was Midnight meat train. great movie, really gory with an interesting story. i recommend it.

[JimJ]

Movie #9: Santa's Slay

This one was Incredibly stupid but I can't say it didn't entertain me. Loved the first scene and most of the first half was great, stupid fun. Kind of slows down toward the end. 3/5

[SJP]

Project Metalbeast: DNA Overload (1994)

Soldier goes to Romania in the 1970s to find werewolf DNA in order to make ultimate supersoldiers.  Soldier easily kills werewolf to get DNA, which shows slight flaw in plan right off the bat.  Soldier injects himself with DNA without permission, goes on killing spree.  Head of Top Secret Project Barry Bostwick puts guy on ice for 20 years, thaws him for use for other Top Secret military project: grafting metallic, impenetrable skin onto dangerous, psychotic soldier.

Barry Bostwick's character lacks what we call common sense.

Movie is played mostly straight, and has some decent gore, but the normal werewolves look a little goofy.  Still, Kane Hodder as the Metalbeast (aka the Porcupine from Hell) is decent.  The ending is amusing, but the movie does drag in the middle when the script sort of wonders what exactly to do next.

Also, it never got a Region 1 DVD release; it's really only available on VHS and possibly other places...places that if you look hard enough, YOU TU might BE able to find it.