Horror Queen

Not for everyone.

PLOT

Charlie McGee is still alive and kicking, though with a different look and all grown up. After the events of the Firestarter movie, she’s changed her name and went on the lamb. She starts working in a library and learning more about her powers and what they mean. At the same time, a research firm is on the lookout for anyone connected to the original experiment, Charlie included. They tell people that they are part of a large settlement, but led by a man named Vincent, they’re actually killing anyone who knows about the experiment. When Vincent learns the truth, he decides to work with Charlie and bring down the company.

TRIVIA

Firestarter Rekindled was originally meant to air as a long pilot for a series with the same name. The poor reception and views of the movie stopped that from happening.

THOUGHTS

Firestarter Rekindled starts out pretty good and even interesting, but then it quickly goes downhill. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it probably has a lot to do with the length. It’s probably around 3-4 hours long total (not exactly sure) and that seems way too long for a television movie based on another movie. I also wasn’t crazy about how the first half seemed like one movie and the second half like another. It isn’t until the halfway point that you learn about John Rainbird and the kids just like Charlie that he’s now working with. I found myself interested at times, but distracted just as much.

PLOT

The year is 2210 and the world is overrun by vampires. Captain Churchill leads a ragtag group (aren’t they always?) of hunters, including a vampire, on various missions around the galaxy. They’re called upon to lead a special mission, to save a group of survivors on a distant planet. During the mission, the Captain is taken hostage by a group of vampires, with one human working with them. Though the rest of the crew aren’t fond of the Captain, they decide to work together and save him, but only after learning that one of their own helped create the trap to capture him.

TRIVIA

Also known as Bloodsuckers.

AJ Cook has a history in the horror/sci-fi world. She previously appeared in Ripper; Letter from Hell, Final Destination 2 and was on the first season of “Tru Calling”.

THOUGHTS

Vampire Wars is more of a bad sci-fi movie than anything else and I wouldn’t have watched it unless I found it cheap…and in a set with other movies. I was convinced that this movie was made years ago based on the sets and acting, so imagine my surprise when I discovered it was made in 2005. I like AJ Cook, but I’m shocked at how bad her acting is here, especially when compared to other movies that came out around the same time, or even earlier…

Huh.

PLOT

Matt Frewer stars as Sherlock Holmes, as he and Dr. Watson are called into Whitechapel when a series of strange murders begin happening, in the exact spot where Jack the Ripper once struck. The townspeople are certain that it’s a vampire attacking their town, but Holmes believes a human is at work. As he investigates, he wages war with Watson, who is equally certain that vampires might exist and convinced that Holmes needs to open his mind, if he hopes to catch the vampire.

TRIVIA

Frewer played Holmes in two other movies produced by and for the Hallmark Channel.

THOUGHTS

I giggled when I saw Matt Frewer as Sherlock Holmes because in my mind, he belongs firmly in a Stephen King movie and I remember him so clearly as Trashcan Man from The Stand. After a little bit though, I was able to forget about that and get caught up in the story, which is surprising because I’m not the biggest fan of Sherlock Holmes stories. The Case of the Whitechaple Vampire is a surprising little movie and I’m glad I picked it up, especially since I paid about $1.25 for it.

When I first started scanning the episode descriptions of “Fear Itself”, I almost instantly gravitated towards Community so imagine my surprise when it started airing and I realized that I’ve seen it before. Oh well, go figure.

The episode follows a young married couple played by Shiri Appleby and Brandon Routh. Appleby wants a child, but not in the big city where they live so they start looking at houses in the suburbs. They find one in a gated community that they love and decide right away to put in an offer. The community has its own schools, restaurants, stores, basically everything you need.

Routh starts feeling uncomfortable when he turns the television and finds his neighbors on television, just as the husband catches his wife cheating. The couple come before the community board and he refuses to pick a punishment for the wife, stating that the couple needed to find a solution on their own. The next day he finds the wife in town being pelted with fruit and wearing a pig mask, but she won’t let him help her.

Things get even worse when Appleby turns up pregnant and wants nothing more than to raise her kids there. A few days later they see the same wife running in fear from something, right before she’s hit by a car. Despite what they saw, the police claim that she was drunk and committed suicide. Appleby finally agrees to leave, but they learn that the contract they signed won’t let them leave.

Instead they bring in a friend to pose as Appleby and escape town with the real Appleby hiding with the friend’s husband. Routh and the friend are caught and he manages to escape, but when he runs out, he finds Appleby and his friend waiting for him. The episode ends with Appleby showing off a house to a new couple and waving to her husband upstairs. The camera pans back to reveal him sitting in the room alone, his legs now missing…

TRIVIA

Directed by Mary Harron, who also directed American Psycho.

Surprisingly enough, Community wasn’t too bad for the first episode of Fear, Itself I watched this time around. I went into it liking Appleby and disliking Routh and found that switched by the end. It was a little too “made for television” for me, but not that bad.

I just picked up the first season of “Fear, Itself” because I only managed to watch a few episodes when it was on last summer. Based on reviews and ratings, I think the show probably won’t be around for a second season, but I could be wrong. So far it seems like a network/broadcast version of Masters of Horror, but it’s not all bad. I plan on reviewing the episodes as I watch them, but I’m not watching them in order at all. I also won’t be posting them one right after the other, but spacing them out among horror movie reviews. Look for a whole bunch over the next month or two.

Eh.

PLOT

Walter is a down on his luck college student who needs a quiet place to study. He decides to rent a room at an hold house, even though the landlord isn’t crazy about renting to a student. He gets close to a woman in the building and her young son, even helping them when she finds a rat running loose. One of their neighbors tells him it’s just a warning sign of what’s coming and warns him about the rat with a human face. Walter laughs it off until he sees the rat and starts suffering horrible nightmares. Is there something more sinister afoot or is it all in his mind?

TRIVIA

Based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft.

Directed by Stuart Gordon.

THOUGHTS

I recently watched Dreams in the Witch House again and I literally didn’t remember a single thing about it, though I’ve seen it twice. Even now I’m starting to forget about it again and it’s only been a couple of days since I saw it. The problem with the episode is that it doesn’t have anything really memorable. It’s there, you watch it and then you forget about it. Everything is fine, but it doesn’t have any real oomph.

Mm, Henry Thomas…

PLOT

Jamie is struggling to handle his job and new life after going through a divorce. One night he starts experiencing the feelings of another woman. He tastes the elegant chocolate she eats, sees her having a fun orgasm in the bathtub, you know, all that usual stuff. He eventually meets a woman and after a night of sex, he flashes to the other woman and has a seizure on the bed as she has sex with a man. He gets obsessed with her and tracks down Catherine, but not before he sees her kill her lover. Eventually she tries to kill him and as the two of them struggle, he can’t figure out if he’s seeing through his own eyes or seeing through hers…

TRIVIA

Aired in the first season of Masters of Horror.

Directed by Mick Garris who also wrote the short story Chocolate.

Garris has done several collaborations with Stephen King. Frewer (actor in the episode) starred in the television adaptation of The Stand and Thomas starred in Desperation, also from King.

THOUGHTS

The twelve year old girl inside of me is about to come out for a minute because I love (love, love) Henry Thomas. E.T. remains one of my favorite movies of all time and even though he’s all grown up now, I still love him. That said, Chocolate isn’t the best Masters of Horror episode. Matt Frewer as Jamie’s friend Wally is without a doubt the best thing about the episode. I always think about him as the Trash Can man from The Stand, which firmly establishes the Stephen King connection here. The whole plot idea is interesting, but there’s something about it that doesn’t really work for me.

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.

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.

Creepy and not just because it shares my name!

PLOT

Frank Spivey sees a man with a knife chasing a woman as he sits in his car with his police officer partner. The man warns him, but Frank doesn’t listen and shoots him dead. She launches herself into his arms and he does the manly once over to notice she has a great body, but when she looks at him he realizes that her face is scarred horribly and she’s got huge eyes. His wife tries to console him with some good old fashioned sex. Things are going fine until he flashes back to the other girl and tries to have angry anal sex with his wife. He finds out the girl’s name is Jenifer and since he can’t stop thinking about her, he brings her back to his house. He dreams about screwing her, but of course she has a beautiful face in his fantasies and the next morning she shows up naked in his bedroom. His wife and his son both think she’s creepy, but he just can’t seem to get her out of his head or forget about her…

TRIVIA

Based on a comic book story by Bruce Jones and Berni Wrightson from 1974.

Directed by Dario Argento of the way too long to list here resume.

Aired fourth during the first season of “Masters of Horror”.

THOUGHTS

This episode from the “Masters of Horror” series is completely disgusting, but what else would you expect from good old Dario? In fact, I forgot just how gross it was! The only thing I really remembered about it was the blow job scene where Jenifer gives Frank one in his car. This time around I couldn’t believe how disgusting some of the stuff was. There’s a scene where she licks his hand like a dog, with her mangled teeth and bleeding lips and I even shuddered a little bit. Plus it has Stephen Webber and I’m discovering that my crush on him isn’t quite over yet. I also like the ending and how it shows the cycle of Jenifer and how she works. Jenifer is actually a fairly disgusting little 50 minutes.