Horror Queen

The South’s gonna rise again.

PLOT

Three guys are heading south for spring break when they encounter two girls and a guy also heading the same way. One guy Anderson has the hots for one of the gals and passes along his number. The next day they take a short cut through the town of Pleasant Valley and arrive just in time for their big Guts ‘n Glory Jamboree, led by the mayor played by Robert Englund. The other group arrives right behind them, followed by another couple on a motorcycle. They’re all invited to stick around for the jamboree, not knowing that they’re on the menu.

TRIVIA

Eli Roth turns up at the very beginning, playing the same character he played in his own movie Cabin Fever.

Kane Hodder has a very, very brief cameo towards the end of the movie.

A sequel is set for release in 2009.

THOUGHTS

Despite the fact that I’m an Ohio girl born and raised, I like to think that deep down I’m a good old southern girl. This movie made me rethink that idea. There is so much racism in this movie and even when they try to play it for laughs, it falls short. There’s also one character that looks so much like my ex-boyfriend that I winced every time he came on screen. I’ve never seen the original so I have no idea how the two movies compare, but I get the feeling that the original was a lot better. It would really have to be better. A lot of the kill scenes felt like something I’ve seen before, but one scene involving metal teeth was pretty good. I don’t think I’ll be lining up to see the sequel to 2001 Maniacs.

The first few minutes are the best.

PLOT

The most awesome family in the world sit down for Christmas dinner. There’s daddy James Caan, sexy step-mom Fran Drescher, horny step-son Chris Kattan, Rebecca Gayheart and two other daughters. Suddenly Santa Claus bursts into the room and kills them all. He then goes to Hell Townships, kills a bunch of strippers and basically sets off on a killing spree. Nicholas is a teenage boy who lives with his grandpa who everyone thinks is nuts. His grandpa later shows his The Book of Claus, which shows that Santa was the virgin birth son of Satan. An angel beat Santa in a game and sentenced him to 1,000 years of gift giving. Nicholas and his friend Mary cross paths with Santa and the fat man ain’t happy. Nicholas has to figure out his family’s connection to good old Saint Nick and survive until the end of Christmas.

TRIVIA

Former wrestler Bill Goldberg plays Santa and uses some of his signature wrestling movies when doing his killings.

THOUGHTS

If this whole movie had been like the first 10 minutes or so, I would have been a lot happier. That opening scene is pretty great, if only for Jimmy Caan going up against Goldberg. On that note, I didn’t realize it was Goldberg until the last 20 minutes or so, which made me feel a little stupid. The movies does have a few nice kills scenes like the death of the Jewish butcher, but there was something about it that I didn’t like. I wasn’t reaching for the remote or anything, but there were definitely a few slow spots that I could do without. Then again, I have an intense dislike for Emile DeRaven and having her turn up as a major character (Mary) probably had something to do with it.

Playboy gone wild.

PLOT

The movie opens with a young girl learning that she didn’t make it into an exclusive sorority and deciding to kill herself at their party. The next year the leader of the sorority Stephanie brings in three new recruits and demands that they each tell the group a scary story. Tonya tells the story about an antique doll with a killer mind and the girls all yawn. The next girls tells the story about a gorgeous blonde actress who gets a job that she’ll never forget. The last girl Haley tells the story of three young girls sharing a house that accidentally overhear a murder and the night the killer comes to find them. After they finish their stories, it turns out that one of the girls has a secret of her own.

TRIVIA

Filmed almost entirely at the Playboy Mansion and other related locations. Also documented on the E! show The Girls Next Door.

THOUGHTS

I went into this movie not knowing a damn thing because I just kind of stumbled on it. Then The Telling starts and I start thinking gee that place looks like the Playboy Mansion and then gee that sounds like the Playboy chick from Dancing with the Stars. That’s why you should always know something before you see a movie. I actually read a review that said the movie was just about tits and that’s not true, at all. In fact there’s a whole lot less naked breasts than you’d expect considering the Playboy connection. The Telling isn’t a great movie, but it was easy to sit through. I like the whole anthology movie since I have the attention span of a gnat and the stories weren’t the same old tired ones you usually see in these movies. I’m sure that most people hated it, but I didn’t think it was that bad.

Horror or porn?

PLOT

Five friends are partying it up in a local bar in some unnamed Asian country when they act rude to a local mob boss. He tosses them from the bar and they decide to head off to an all night porn theater. It turns out that the same mob boss has a live feed running from the theater where he can watch a masked man inflict pain and torture on local tourists. He also has a special place in his heart for tourists that piss him off. Naturally he sicks his little guy on those irritating American tourists.

TRIVIA

Actually shot at a real porn theater.

THOUGHTS

Have you ever seen a movie where you spent more time rolling your eyes than you did actually paying attention to the movie? That was Live Feed for me. I thought this movie was absolutely terrible. One minute they’d be showing a naked stripper and then it would cut to something else, then we’d see a naked couple going at it and then get back to ther story. It was like the director thought it was “cool” to show scenes of sex and nudity for no good reason, except to make the movie longer. Take out those scenes and the whole movie would have been less than an hour. I checked some reviews of Live Feed online and a lot of people really like it. They claimed it was a gore movie for gore fans, but I didn’t see it like that. This was a movie without a plot or acting, just a lot of nudity and gore. Maybe that works for some, but it wasn’t my idea of a horror movie.

Surprising…

PLOT

Robbie and Elaine head to their friends’ house for the weekend, with their kids in tow. There’s a highly annoying little boy, an equally annoying little girl and Elaine’s older daughter Casey who would rather be anywhere but that house. The friends Jonah and Chloe are fairly normal, telling them about how they’ll now home school their own two kids after selling their business. One of the boys gets sick and everyone pretty much ignores it until the next day when Jonah dies while sledding with the kids. Suddenly the kids are the ones with the power and the adults must find a way to survive.

TRIVIA

Written and directed by Tom Shankland.

THOUGHTS

I thought The Children was pretty damn good, though I do wish they’d given us some kind of explanation about why the kids turned into murderous creatures. There was a whole subplot about abortion, which gives the movie a deeper meaning, especially if you watch it more than once. I thought Robbie was one of the worst characters. He hates his step-daughter and seems way too involved in his own daughter’s life. He calls her his “princess” and basically kicks his wife to the curb in favor of the little girl. I really liked Chloe though and found myself wishing she’d just call up her friends and get the hell out of there as soon as she had the chance. The Children is kind of a thinking person’s horror movie because there are a lot of different layers. It was probably the best horror movie I’ve seen in awhile.

Poor Petty.

PLOT

Tara is your ordinary high school student who’s picked on by the popular kids. One day she’s on her bike after school when a van hits her and the man inside throws her in the van. She wakes up in a hospital where a nurse tries to calm her after reveling that they’re in Vermont and not Connecticut where she was taken. She calls her mom, who basically ignores her because she’s in a drugged out state. She then learns that she’s actually in an old mansion and the kidnapper grabs her before she can escape. They toss her in the basement where she finds a boy named Johnny who’s near death. They become friends, but she finds warnings about a fair-haired child and urgings to run away. They also discover proof that other kids have been taken there in the past. When Johnny starts acting strange, Tara realizes that her new friend might not be as innocent as he looks.

TRIVIA

Directed by William Malone of Fear Dot Com and written by Matt Greenberg of The Prophecy 2 and Halloween H20.

THOUGHTS

It’s impossible to watch The Fair Haired Child without noticing just how bad Lori Petty looks now. It doesn’t seem like that long ago that she was acting regularly, but apparently it has been because here she looks at least 15-20 years older than she did the last time I saw her. She looks even worse than other actresses her same age. When I watched this one recently, I didn’t remember a whole lot about it, except that the girl was kidnapped. It’s kind of a lame story in all fairness and it’s easy to see where the movie’s going and what’s going to happen next. A friend really liked it, but I don’t like movies where I know the ending long before the movie actually ends.

I want to play the game!

PLOT

Loomis is a typical gamer trying out a new video game. He invites his best friend Hutch over to play, but he blows him off, promising to come over the next weekend. That night Loomis talks to his roommates who previously played the game with him and then heads to bed. He wakes up later and discovers his roomies dead in the same way they died in the game, only to die himself the way he did in the game. Hutch inherits the game after Loomis dies and decides to play it with a group of his friends as an homage to his friend. There’s Abby (a girl who kind of knew Loomis), his boss Miller, October (the tough girl who secretly loves him), her brother Phineus and the young gamer Swink. Miller dies in the game and the next day is found dead in the same position. When Phineus dies in the game and real life, they realize that there’s something weird going on. They don’t know what to do, except that they know they have to stop anyone from playing the game. Ah yes and there’s also a connection to the infamous Elizabeth Bathory.

TRIVIA

This was the last movie to film in Louisiana before Hurricane Katrina.

There were never any plans to actually release a Stay Alive video game, regardless of what the fans on IMDB say.

THOUGHTS

I remember when this movie came out. I looked at my then boyfriend and said, “great Malcolm in the Middle, the chick from The OC, the chick from One Tree Hill and it’s based on a video game. I’m sure that movie will be awesome”. Note my sarcasm. Sadly enough though, I really like this movie. I know that just proves how lame I am and I’m fine with that. I really despise the Abby character, to the point where I was hoping she’d die at any minute. In fact, I actually like the background characters more than I do the leads. Hutch and Abby can do whatever, just give me a little more October and Miller. A lot of purists hated it because they changed the legend of Elizabeth Bathory so much, but there are so many stories about her floating around anyway that it didn’t really bother me. So yes, I liked a PG-13 movie that was marketed to barely teens. Sue me!

Ah, such sorrow.

PLOT

Bill is super excited about his new wife Claire and step-son Jimmy. He moves them into a new house along with his young daughter Jessica and teenage son Todd. He discovers a dollhouse in the garage that just so happens to look exactly like the house from Amityville. After the car “accidentally” runs over the bike they bought for Jessica’s birthday, they decide to give her the dollhouse instead. His sister Marla and husband Tobias show up and immediately decide that there’s something wrong with it. Jessica loves it, but she starts feeling sick that same day. Strange things start happening too, like Jimmy’s mouse turning into a huge animal that Todd accidentally kills and the step mom going after her stepson. Yet no one wants to blame the dollhouse…

TRIVIA

The last straight to DVD/video chapter in the Amityville series.

THOUGHTS

This one was really scrapping the barrel in terms of the Amityville connection. We don’t even get a backstory about how the dollhouse was taken from the house or owned by a former resident, nothing. It just happens to look like the original house so it’s naturally evil. This was also about the time when straight to video horror movies had to have some type of soft core sex, so here we get two of them. The sad thing is that I not only own this on DVD, but I also owned it on video. It’s got some good scenes in it and it’s actually not a terrible movie. Fortunately it was the last time they tried to milk the Amityville name.

Oh man.

PLOT

Alison dreams that she’s cheering in the middle of the football field and everyone thinks that she sucks. The next day she heads off to cheerleading camp with the rest of her friends. There’s her boyfriend Brent, the token fat buy, the virginal girl, the mascot and all those other stereotypical cheerleader clichés. Of course they get to camp and someone starts murdering people, mainly the competition. Alison keeps dreaming that she’s the one doing all the murders, but no one really believes that she could be the killer.

TRIVIA

Sometimes referred to as Bloody Pom-Poms.

There were plans for a sequel to the movie called (appropriately enough) Cheerleader Camp 2. According to IMDB the movie was released in 1990, which had led fans to search for the movie for years. Unfortunately the movie was never shot since the company lost their funding.

George Flower has a part as yet another horny, old, drunk guy.

THOUGHTS

Here’s a sad fact of life. I actually own this movie and forgot about it. I’m sure I bought it because of Leif Garrett, who I had an unhealthy fascination with a few years back. I know I watched it, but I couldn’t tell you a single thing about it. It’s like Cheerleader Camp disappeared into a void somewhere in my brain. Usually I can tell you something about a movie, even if it’s just one little death scene, but this one…nada. Even now that I’ve watched it again (in fact I finished it about an hour ago), it’s kind of vanished again. The creepy guy is good as always, playing the familiar red herring. The music and death scenes are pure 80s schlock and the acting is exactly what you’d expect from a 1980s horror movie. Other than that, pretty much a waste of time.

Another one that I really liked.

PLOT

David Murch goes on television to talk up the current President, who’s running for reelection in the middle of a fairly bad war. Jane Cleaver, a writer and outspoken woman jumps all over him. A guest calls in and tells him about losing her son in the current war. Murch tells the woman about how he lost his own brother in Vietnam and tells her that he wishes her son and all the fallen sons could come back. Murch and Cleaver embark on a sexual relationship, but that all falls apart when the dead soldiers coming back start coming to life. Imagine their surprise when one of those men make it to the voting booth, only to vote for the President’s opposing candidate. Murch and the others must now find a way to put a spin on things, but he also has to deal with the secret his mother’s keeping regarding his own brother.

TRIVIA

Directed by Joe Dante of The Howling and Piranha.

Headstones in the cemetery bare the name of prominent zombie movie directors.

Episode 6 during the first season of Masters of Horror.

THOUGHTS

I only have a few more Masters of Horror episodes to get through and then the rest are currently MIA, though I do have the entire series. Homecoming is quite possibly the best episode from that first season, especially for those of us who weren’t the greatest fans of our former President. I actually found myself getting teared up at a scene where a café owner invites in one of the zombies and thanks him for his sacrifice. It reminded me of my uncle breaking down when a high school boy did the same thing, thanking him for what he did in Vietnam. It all goes back to the idea that you might hate the war, but you shouldn’t hate the soldiers. Anyway, Homecoming is a good little zombie movie, but it’s also highly political.