The best horror movies you don't know shit about.

Everybody knows the classics of horror. You talk to any teenage kid on the street and you ask them to list their favorite horror movies they will probably name you all 20 Halloweens and Saws and all that shit. My point is we all know the big names. Some of those big names are bonafide classics. You’ll get no argument from me there. However there are literally thousands of movies that to me are classics in their own right, and you probably never heard of them. That sucks. I am here to change that. Here is a quick list of serious classics that you, my dear readers, should buy or steal or Netflix right fucking now. Here they are:

Re-Animator-  This one’s one of my top ten favorite horror movies. Ever. It’s about an up and coming medical student who takes in a classmate who may or may not be able to bring dead people back to life. He does this with a mysterious green potion that he injects into dead brains. We never know what the green shit is. The showstopper here is the scene where we have our re-animated antagonist place his severed head in between the legs of a female he has kidnapped. I’m going to let you read that again and let it swirl around your head for a minute. Got the mental picture? Good. Let’s move on then. If that didn’t already tell you, this movie has a lot of everything you want in a horror flick. It doesn’t hold back for any reason and actually has some very intentionally funny moments to break up the gruesomeness. Watch this. Right now.

The Beyond- This movie is bat-shit crazy. Simple as I can put it. It’s labeled as a zombie movie, but it’s really way more complicated than that. It’s about a woman who inherits an old hotel in New Orleans only to discover it was the sight of a horrible ritual that may or may not have opened the gates of Hell. That’s the last part that makes sense. You have a blind woman who has no purpose other than to declare that we’re all doomed. You have crazy death scenes that make no sense but are fun as fuck to watch (tarantulas eating a guy’s face very slowly for one example). You have a plot that deteriorates within the 4^th minute of the movie. But that’s what makes this great. No plot? No fucking problem. I have watched this movie at least 200 times and it never gets old. See it. Now.

Hardware- I just had the pleasure of viewing this for the first time a few weeks ago. This takes place in a very plausibly shitty future world where overpopulation has caused severe shortages in just about everything, and people get by scavenging goods in trash heaps that dot the landscape. It’s in this setting where some guy finds a giant robot head that he thinks he can sell for food. Nobody wants it so he takes it home to his girl because she’s an artist and loves shit like that. Well the robot head turns out to be a self-rebuilding murder robot developed by the government to “control the population.” Homegirl is fucked. Literally because the robot actually tries to stick it to her with a drill piece. The robot brutally murders people and chases our lady friend for the entire 90 minute running time and every minute is great. Highly recommended.

City of the Living Dead- I am going to type one sentence and you will read it. I will say no more about this movie after that because I believe strongly that you will need no more praise from me. Here it is. In one scene, a woman literally vomits the entire contents of her body including all major internal organs for ten minutes. There. I am done.

Near Dark-  Fuck Twilight. This movie invented the teen vampire thing. Before The Lost Boys made a billion dollars and that bored housewife wrote those terrible books, there was Near Dark. This movie is fucking dark as fuck. It’s about a farm boy who meets a cute little lady out on the town one night. She takes him back to her place, he thinks for a bone sesh, and the bitch turns him into a being that can’t be in sunlight and needs blood to live. They never say vampire. So he is then forced to hang out with her “family.” This family kills people and drinks their blood. They love that shit. He isn’t into it. Hilarity ensues. This is a brutal movie that doesn’t puss out even if it is pretty much a teen vampire flick. You can even watch this one with the lady and she might still have sex with you after. I’d do it.

Pumpkinhead- I love me some creature movies. I am a monster movie fan. Therefore it is no surprise at all that I love this movie. This one’s about a rural farmer who encounters some idiot teenagers who patronize his country store for some food and beer. These kids accidentally kill our rural farmer country store owner’s young son in a horrendous dirt bike accident. Overcome with anger, our country dad enlists the help of a witch who lives in the woods to summon a revenge demon straight from hell. This demon is called upon to wreak vengeance on everyone who has wronged the person summoning it. The problem is that once you summon the demon your own soul is fucked. Fun times from here on, with an absolutely amazing demon that is pretty much a giant fuck you to the CGI shitfests we get today. See this.

Tombs of the Blind Dead- This is not your typical zombie movie. Straight outta Spain in the 1970s, this one’s about a vacationing couple who runs afoul of vicious undead Templar knights who will murder everyone and anyone they fucking feel like. Apparently this movie bases itself on an alternate history where the famous Knights Templar reject Christianity for Satan, and are therefore doomed to walk the Earth in an undead state forever. Plot doesn’t matter here. What matters is a creepy as fuck atmosphere and some of the most evil zombies to ever grace my DVD rack.  As I write this I am anxiously awaiting the three sequels that it took me like 8 years to find and purchase. More on this later.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this wonderful segment. Fuckers.

Surprise Slasher Goodness Review: Slaughter High

Director: Seriously and I’m not kidding…There are three of them. No it is not worth naming them.

Stars: It is even less important to name these people. All I know is that this is a movie about high school, and post high school people. The actors look like they’re all pushing 40.

Plot: It’s a slasher movie. There is no plot. But I will attempt a synopsis so you have something to read while you’re taking a shit or bored on your Match.Com date.  This one starts out in a typical suburban high school. We begin as a nerdy looking guy (who kind of looks like Rivers Cuomo from Weezer ) is nervously talking to an exceptionally top heavy female classmate.  She looks about 45 years old. Her boobs look 18 and ready to attack Tokyo.  I exaggerate of course, but the bitch looks old. She is telling our dweeby friend that she wants to bump uglies in the bathroom. Our nerdy hero, stupid and thinking with his lower regions, agrees and follows her into the ladies room. It is my experience that kids in slasher movies are shitheads, and the nerdy dude should never believe the hot popular girl. Even if she does look 40. Clearly this guy has never seen Terror Train or Prom Night. He would have been better off I assure you. Well she takes him into the bathroom promising sexual activity, and of course it’s a prank. Her asshole friends barge in and take pictures of our nerdy hero naked, and then give him a swirly. Swirly- n, when a bully or group of bullies dunks a poor victim’s head into a toilet bowl and flushes.  Anyway, the jocks and their whores get caught by a gym teacher who punishes them all and lets nerdy guy go. Nerdy guy is already late to his chemistry lab, and while in there, the jocks  pull one final prank that goes horribly wrong. The lab blows up and the nerdy guy is now horribly scarred for life and probably clinically insane. You know where it goes from here. The jocks all get summoned a few years later to what they think is their high school reunion. It isn’t. Instead they get locked in the school (although not really). Pretty standard slasher stuff ensues. Turns out nerdy guy is pissed and wants everybody dead. Huge spoiler I know. 

Gore: This is what I meant by pleasant surprise. This is a slasher late bloomer so I wasn’t expecting much out of it but it brought the nasty when it counted. We have stabbings, tractor death, acid bath, syringe in eyeball death, hanging death, glass shard death, javelin death, melting stomach death, I could go on.

Wonderfully stupid logic: At one point in the movie, one of our victims manages to escape out of a window of the school and into his car. Granted, he gets skewered while in the car, but wouldn’t the rest of the crew inside use the one open window to also attempt escape? No they scream and then inexplicably have sex with each other and separate themselves from the group.

How the fuck:   

  a) Can the killer set up an acid bath death while simultaneously stabbing a dude outside in his car? Did the killer also control space-time?

  b) Did the kids not realize that a dark deserted, run-down high school probably wouldn’t be the proper venue for a reunion? I mean was the fact that no one else you graduated with showing up not tip you off that something may be wrong? No right had that happened I wouldn’t have seen a guy get mauled by tractor blades.

Idiocy award: The writers for having the killer wear a mask through the whole movie. We know who the fucking killer is. This negates the point of a mask. Stupid shits.

In conclusion: This was a surprisingly entertaining late 80’s slasher. You have decent kills, some sexy stuff, and enough shitty potential victims to make it all worthwhile. Now in NO way is this a quality movie. If you’re looking for Oscar winners go watch another Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice remake. I’ll say it, this isn’t even a really good slasher. It’s not even a kind of good slasher. It’s passable, but it’s fun. You can easily watch this with a few beers and some chips and some people around. It’s that kind of movie. It isn’t meant to do anything but cash in on a trend.  You can get this one super cheap too if you wanna check it out. I think I picked it up for like $4. 

Grade: 77%

 Don't fuck with Rivers Cuomo's clone.

This is why.

                                            

Triumphant Return of the Rag. And The Unholy.

It’s October. I was going to leave this blog for dead. To be found by archeologists as a representation of the high watermark of 21^st Century culture. However I was told by a big fan of the page to bring it back. That the people now more than ever (October 1-31) need to hear the gospel. I decided to give the people what they want.  I want to take this opportunity now to thank this person (who I will not name in an effort to maintain anonymity) for pushing me to write on this page again. I have other blogs, but I always liked this one the best as it was the most fun to write.

So where the fuck have I been you might ask (all 4 of you)? I’ve been a bit busy for the last year and a half. Job, life, neither of these things are conducive to writing a bullshit blog no one pays me for anyway. Along with friends telling me to reboot this one, I have been looking around the internet lately (it is horror movie season after all) and I’ll tell ya, the corporate websites just aren’t cutting it anymore. Therefore, time to bring it all back. So here it is, the opening reboot post. Best enjoyed on the crapper or long train ride. 

The Unholy

Director: Some Italian guy I never heard of.

Stars: Ben Cross (Spock’s dad in the new Star Trek movie), Ned Beatty (fat guy who’s in Superman with Christopher Reeve),  Hal Holbrooke (who’s in everything) and a bunch of midget hell demons and a red-haired superwhore.

Plot: I want to begin this by saying that this movie and I have a long history together.  Until last night, the first and only time I saw this movie was when I was home sick when I was 12 years old. I was lying in bed with the TV on when I turned on USA and saw a clip of the movie. It was a priest fighting a monstrous rubbery creature that was drooling everywhere. That’s the only scene I remember. I may have seen more of the movie but that’s what sticks out. For the next decade and beyond I vowed to see the rest of the movie. I remember looking at the preview channel for the title, which for the next decade I would remember wrongly as “The Un-Nameable” which is a completely different movie altogether. When I finally got it right, I found to my dismay that it was out of print on DVD. For years I checked the horror section for it to no avail. Then I found it two days ago in Best Buy in a Horror Movie 8-pack. $4. I win. 

So now what the fuck is this about? The movie begins in a church with a very haggard looking priest praying at the altar. We then see a mist, and out of it comes a red-headed super slut from hell. I only use such derogatory language because she was only wearing a see through black cape thing and her boobs were all in the priest’s face. Well soon after the booby face scene, the priest gets his throat ripped out. Sucks for him. We then meet our hero priest played by Ben Cross. He’s a very serious dude. When responding to an attempted suicide by some dude on a building ledge, he gets thrown out of the building 17 flights. He wakes up and has no injuries. This miracle prompts the arch-bishop (should that be capitalized?) played by Hal Holbrooke, and his blind old man priest companion to think Ben Cross is “the chosen one.” In my experience it is NEVER a good thing to be the chosen one. Never ever. So our priest bosses send Ben Cross to a church. The same one where the priest from the beginning got his throat ripped out. The movie becomes a mystery story, with some supernatural shit thrown in for fun. Finally Ben Cross learns what he was chosen for, and has to face Demon Bitch Barbie on his own. Apparently the demon was sent to Earth by Satan specifically to fuck with priests. And literally fuck them as well. The moment the priest breaks his vow, the demon kills them and drags their ass to hell. So this is what our hero priest has to deal with. With no help from his bosses save for a tiny little prayer. A prayer.  On a piece of paper. No that will not work assholes give the man a weapon of some sort. Shit.

Gore: Yeah we have a decent amount of gooey stuff. Throat rips, upside-down cross disembowelment, blood vomit and stomach explosion, exploding demon midgets, booby stabbing, and more exploding midgets.

Boobs: Yes but since they are from hell the surgeon general has asked me to warn everybody that they are not safe for human consumption.

Things learned while viewing: Never trust old priests. When they say you’ve been chosen for something, say fuck you and go somewhere else immediately. 

A note to Demon Bitch Barbie: Dear Demon Bitch Barbie,

We could’ve been something. Then you went and turned into a four-legged rubbery demon hellhound. While I love the new look, do you always have to be such a bitch? And what’s with the midget creatures you hang out with? Seriously get new friends and stay human. Then we can talk.

Overall: Was this worth the wait? Yeah I think it was. It’s a typical post-Exorcist 80’s Satan movie, but just a little better. I personally like it better than a lot of other demon movies out there. It’s entertaining, it’s disgusting. I like it. 

Grade: 88%

  Demon Bitch Barbie. Happy mode.

 This must be when her monthly "friend" comes.

"Hobo with a Shotgun" Running commentary:

Well as the previews are rolling, I'll take the time now to introduce my Hobo with a Shotgun running commentary. It's been a while since this was done here on these fine pages, and I decided that since the last one was Human Centipede, this one would have to be equally ridiculous in concept. Enjoy:


8:22- Popped in movie.
8:23- Rutger Hauer. Still awesome. Especially when shown playing harmonica on a train all Depression style.
8:24- This city looks shitty. Like Newburgh shitty.
8:25- A bum fight? Yeah. A bum fight.
8:28- Barb wire noose, man stuck in a manhole with his head sticking out. Everyone sounds Canadian.
8:30- Well...That seemed gratuitous.
8:32- Rutger shows us the world of the homeless guy. I now know how the guy by Gully's makes his living.
8:34- Just yelled "Oh shit" because a bunch of assholes just crushed a man's head with bumper cars. It appears these people don't like the homeless.
8:36- "The only thing I'm gonna let slide...is my dick in your pussy" Wow. I smell an Oscar.
8:38- Man who said above statement actually picks up the little slut he was talking to. And she says "Are we gonna fuck or what?"
8:39- Rutger is now pissed. "Shut your filthy mouth, Mother Theresa is a saint". Rutger dialogue. I'm not sure of the context here.
8:41- Rutger doesn't have a shotgun yet.
8:42- Cops work with the bad guys. Rutger just got stabbed brutally. Apparently not enough to kill him however.
8:44- So the lady from before is a hooker. Weird.
8:46- Hooker with a heart of fucking gold I'd say. Rutger's chest now says "Scum" on it.
8:48- "Well, I fuck for a living" Hahahahaha!
8:50- Our lady of the night has taken Rutger in. What a nice whore she is.
8:52- Still no shotgun.
8:53- Was that Santa Claus kidnapping a child?
8:54- Rutger is now chewing glass. For twenty bucks. What the hell is happening in this movie?
8:55- Bunch of robbers are threatening to kill a baby. Rutger is there. And now we have a shotgun.
8:56- "I'm going to sleep in your bloody carcasses tonight!" Also Rutger just Charles Bronson'd the shit out of the robbers.
8:57- Bum fights guy. Dead.
8:58- I now love this movie.
9:01- Rutger just killed pedophile Santa. And everyone else in the town. The Punisher ain't shit.
9:04- I'm not sure what happened there but some dude lost his organs and the bad guys just sorta laughed about it. This movie has no plot.
9:05- I think the bad guys are now torching a school bus full of kids. While "Disco Inferno" plays in the background. The crime boss in this movie is a fucked up dude. So is the director.
9:06- The cops are now going to kill homeless people. In creative and disgusting ways. Canadians are fucked up people.
9:07- Our whore with a heart of gold is running away from a cop with really bad sexually explicit dialogue.
9:08- Rutger is fucking Superman. The whore is Lois Lane.
9:10- Rutger really wants to buy a lawnmower.
9:12- One of the bad guys is kicking Rutger with hockey skates on. Brutal.
9:14- One of these fuckers looks a lot like Shia Labeouf or however you spell that turd's name.
9:15- Shia is sawing off the hooker's head. Rutger just burned a guy with a toaster. This director is just full of good ideas.
9:17- Rutger just ruined Shia's weekend. I don't think you can fix that. I now hurt in strange places.
9:18- So...a bunch of dudes are now wearing armor and gearing up for war, presumably with Rutger. They look like Mad Max characters.
9:20- Rutger saved the hooker's life somehow. Freebie?
9:23- The Mad Max killers are kind of brutal. They're like Nazi samurai. They are also killing the whole hospital.
9:26- I can't really describe what's happening but...I'm impressed.
9:28- Nazi Samurai Mad Max Death Squad just kidnapped Rutger. That won't end well.
9:30- Normal well-adjusted people don't make movies like this. Normal well-adjusted people don't give people money to make movies like this.
9:30, part 2: Our superhero hooker is now preparing to bust Rutger outta the pokey.
9:32- Ok. The Mad Max death guys are called The Plague.
9:34- This really reminds me of like an unrated version of "Escape from New York" if John Carpenter was completely bat shit crazy. Also, I think this movie would've been great with Gary Busey in it.
9:36- The hooker is rescuing Rutger with a lawnmower. Dead Alive style.
9:37- That was brutal.
9:38- This lady is having a shitty day.
9:39- I don't understand.
9:41- .....
9:44: Ok. Every one's dead. Spoiler alert.



In conclusion: I sit here now wondering if I liked it, loved it, or had no idea what the fuck just happened. I mean I knew what I was getting walking in, but I didn't think they would take it where they did. Now I should warn you, this is in no way a "good" movie by any normal definition of the term. Just like Machete, or Black Dynamite this is kind of a spoof of bad movies, not to be taken seriously. I mean...it is called Hobo with a Shotgun. Shakespeare this is not. Still, I had fun.

Grade: 88% (The sheer stupidity and the concept bump this movie up like 20 points)

Tribute: The Phantasm series

 

 I know I've been going super hard on the posts here lately. I got a lot of time on my hands what can I say. Anyway, I wanted to take the time (and waste all of yours) on paying tribute to, in my mind, one of the most underrated series, if not the MOST underrated series of horror movies to ever be made. Everyone knows about Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th. Everyone also knows Child's Play (Chucky series assholes) and obviously Scream and Saw. But how many people have ever heard of, much less seen the Phantasm series? I can probably count that number of people I know at least on one hand. That's a fucking crying shame. This series has more ideas in 20 minutes of film then any of the series I mentioned above through 8 or 9 whole movies.

  Yeah, some people (assholes) won't get these movies. Some people will also say if they watch them the inevitable, "whoever made these movies was on a lot of drugs". Like no one can be fucking creative without copious amounts of mind altering substances. Yet, there is one thing you can not deny about all four of these movies. They are fucking completely original. I dare anyone to watch these movies and then tell me you've seen anything like them before. I will try not to mock you like the little liar you are.

So what makes them so great? Several things. In the interest of time and space restrictions I will briefly break these all down right now.

1. One of the BEST villains in horror movie history: The good guys in the Phantasm series are being terrorized by The Tall Man, played by Angus Scrimm. The Tall Man starts out in the original movie as what appears to be a creepy undertaker that the good guys suspect is up to some sinister shit at the funeral home. Turns out it's a shit load of a lot worse than that. My interpretation is that he is the ruler of another dimension and his mission is to kill the entire human race and enslave them to build his army of feral dwarves, and to trap their souls in his death orbs. More on that later. The Tall Man, like Pinhead from Hellraiser, is a completely developed, evil as fuck character. He's not some mindless brute like Jason or Michael Myers, nor is he some wise cracking jokester like Freddy Kruger. He's evil and he doesn't fuck around with catch phrases. He is just out to straight up murder the world. Not to be fucked with.

2. The premise itself: I sort of alluded to this above, but I will explain the basic idea behind the movies. Basically, these friends from a small town stumble upon the activities of the Tall Man whose mission is to kill every fucking human on Earth. When a person dies, The Tall Man steals their bodies, shrinks and disfigures them, steals their brains, and sets them loose on the next victim. He does this to build his army of the undead to rule time and space. How fucking awesome is that shit?!


3. The Death Orbs: When the Tall Man steals your brain, he traps it into these flying death balls (which kind of look like big Chinese Stress Balls). When these things come after you, they have all manner of sharp objects that slice and dice you. Their primary way to kill you, however, is a three pronged blade thingy (see picture below). When they stab you in the head, a tiny drill comes out of the orb and drills into your skull causing your brains and blood to shoot out. In the interest of better explaining this to the uninitiated, I have provided many pretty pictures.

4. The fact that you can't kill ANY of the Tall Man's zombie people: When the Tall Man takes a human slave, either to dig up graves or whatever, they are like super powerful and you can't fucking kill them no matter how hard you try. I mean they die eventually, but you pretty much have to light them on fire or blow their heads off.


5. The quad-barreled shotgun: Reggie, one of the good guys, builds himself a super shotgun with four barrels of death. He uses this throughout the whole series, and as a result murders dwarf and zombie fuckers on the regular.

6. The endings to each movie: I have written before on these fine pages in regards to the "Carrie" scare, which you may recall was the last scare of a horror movie, usually cheap and ineffective. Phantasm takes this idea, turns it around, and tells it to go fuck itself. For the entire duration of the series, just when there's 2 minutes of downtime, the Tall Man fucks shit up again. It never seems to stop. At the end, just when the good guys think they finally beat him, he comes back for one last attack, usually killing one of their new companions. In fact, every time our good guys meet someone new who isn't a servant of the Tall Man, it's almost like the guy on an old Star Trek episode wearing the red shirt. You just know the guy (or child, or woman) is going to die miserably.

In conclusion: There will be people out there who are going to say I'm retarded for writing this post. They will disagree and tell me I have taste up my ass. These people suck at life. Phantasm as a series is probably the most creative and original series in horror history. The entire series is like a low brow Dali painting. You're not sure what's going on, and it's pretty messy, but you know that it's fucking interesting. I wish that just once I will see another movie or series in my lifetime with this much originality. But no. I have already resigned myself to the fact that all I will see in the next 20 years is rehashed bullshit and remakes. So if Saw is your thing, don't bother with Phantasm. You want something a little different, Netflix has them all. It's a good use of your time.

Fuck that's gotta hurt.