Stupid Movie Review: The Boogeyman (1980)

Director: Uli Lommel


Stars: I don't even think these people were real actors. I think they were people the director met in a McDonald's somewhere.



Plot: In what has to be the single most ridiculous concept in horror movie history, this is what is called a supernatural slasher movie. What the fuck does that mean? I'll tell you. The movie starts in a farmhouse sometime in the past. We see two kids looking through a window at their mom getting plowed by some dude who I am going to guess and say isn't their dad. The mom stops her whoring session for a second to yell at her kids for watching, and then the guy gets up and ties the older son to a bed. Meanwhile mommy is yelling at the other kid, her daughter to go to bed or the same thing will happen to her. Mother of the year hands down. The girl disobeys and gets a huge knife from the kitchen. She cuts her bro loose, and he takes the knife. Meanwhile, mommy is bumping fuglies in the other room, not at all concerned about her children. Might I add also that it would appear that they are role playing a rape fantasy. I say this because the asshole boyfriend is wearing pantyhose on his head. Whatever. Anyway, the kids walk into the room, and the boy then brutally stabs mommy's dickhead boyfriend. Then we fast forward about 15 years later. The kids are grown up, live on a farm, and the girl has her own family. The boy is a mute who hasn't said a word since he stabbed the shit out of that guy all those years ago. Why the fuck isn't he in a mental ward or some kind of prison? Anyway, the memories of what happened continue to trouble the kids in their adult lives, and the girl decides on the advice of a shrink to go back to their childhood home where the shit hit the fan. She goes, and while there sees the guy her brother stabbed in a mirror. She goes nuts and smashes the mirror, to the surprise of the people who currently live there and her husband. Judging by the ominous music, this was a bad idea. After a series of camera shots showing pieces of the broken mirror (that her husband brought back home for some reason) people start getting killed brutally by an unseen force that causes scissors and knives to stab people. Ok whatever. A few more killings and an "Excorcist" ripoff later and our movie ends. Sure.


Gore: Yeah the red stuff flows pretty freely. We have multiple stabbings, some "Scanners" style mind flayings, and a machete through the mouth of a guy and then his face gets stuck in another girl's face, killing them both. I don't know how else to explain this but it was pretty original.



What the fuck moment: When the mute kid suddenly chokes a lady, which has nothing to do with the plot, makes no sense, and isn't even explained at all afterwards. I don't get it.



Stupid concept alert: The killer is trapped in the mirror, right? So one scene, the child of our original girl gets a shard of the mirror stuck to the bottom of his shoe. The shard reflects in the sun, and the reflection then kills a bunch of people unrelated to our story. Why?


Stupid concept alert, part 2: This same shard of evil mirror gets stuck in our sister protagonist's eye, and then she turns evil or something. A priest's forehead gets melted because of this. What?



Why the fuck: did you keep the evil broken mirror?


What did we learn?: Apparently when you fillet your whore mother's shithead boyfriend their spirits get stuck in mirrors. Wait no that never happens.



In conclusion: This was a dumb fucking movie. Entertaining, but dumb. Nothing ever gets explained. For example, why the killer is stuck in a mirror or how that even happened. There are nonsensical occurrences throughout the movie. The concept is fucking dumb to say the least, but like I said earlier, it's kind of entertaining. The death scenes are pretty good, nice and gory and disgusting. I gotta give the director props for trying to do something slightly original. But he kinda sucks at it, not gonna lie. I think in a more competent director with a better script there might be a pretty decent movie in there somewhere. Nah probably not.


Grade: 67%

Mommy's a whore.

Stupid Movie Review: The Toolbox Murders

Director: Dennis Donnelly



Stars: Again, no one you know or recognize.



Plot: The movie opens with a horrible car accident. The camera pans around the crash, and we see that a young girl is hanging out of the mangled car, very very dead. We then fast forward to some time later (I forget how long) and we find ourselves in the apartment of some drunk floozy. This isn't usually a place you'd want to be anyway trust me. The doorbell rings or someone knocks I don't remember, and in walks some guy carrying a toolbox. The aforementioned harlot seems to recognize the guy and sort of acts bitchy towards him. A minute or so later, the guy is putting an electric drill through her arm. And then other places. Someone in a nearby apartment hears this, but stays in her room. Then she goes to change or shower and makes the cardinal mistake of walking outside of her apartment. Bickety bam more death courtesy of Sears tool department. This was just in the first five minutes I should add. A few more killings occur (one right after a pretty girl was having "girl time" in the bathtub), and then for some reason, the killer smacks a young girl and kidnaps her when all she wanted was to study American History and drink a Diet Pepsi. The movie then takes a weird sort of "Murder, She Wrote" kind of turn where we are now guessing who the killer is, and where and why he took the girl. Looking for her are a couple of semi-retarded cops and the girl's brother who wouldn't look out of place in a Bill and Ted movie. The brother searches everywhere, and meets up with the nephew of the guy who owns the apartment complex where the murders and kidnapping took place. Then the director fucks up and tells us who the killer is, and why he's doing it. Weirdness and creepy inappropriate behavior ensues, all having to do with the killer's motives which as you have probably guessed, have something to do with the car issue mentioned earlier.


Gore: We have hammer crushing a head, nail gun death, screwdriver stabbing, death by drill, human torchings, and scissor death. This sounds like a lot, but it all happens at the two ends of the movie. Not much goes on in the middle.


Nudity: Yes. Did I not mention the "girl time" incident?



Why: did the director decide to tell us who the killer is less than halfway through the movie? I mean I guess for his plot it worked, but we didn't need extended creepy adult on teenage girl behavior (it's not what you think. Stop watching Dateline). More death would've been better.



Creepy: The motive of the killer. Not gonna get into it but shit it was fucking out there.


Excellent plot twist(Spoiler city): The twist ending with the guy who had even worse motives than the killer. What he does is even creepier than just pretending the kidnapped girl was a dead loved one. Like I needed a shower after watching this.



There should have been: less talk more death.



Lesson I learned from watching this movie: Never ever tell anyone but the cops when you realize who kidnapped your sister and killed all of those sluts. Unless you want to end up on fire.


In conclusion: This is a solid movie. My issue with it is that it takes a very strange turn in the last half that I think is going to turn off a lot of people raised on slasher movie rules. What I mean is, all of the gore and death happens at the very beginning of the movie. This might cause one to think the whole movie is going to be like this. Nope. Instead the movie takes this weird turn where nothing much happens for about 40 minutes.Then shit gets weird. It's nothing particularly graphic, but the idea that anything can happen at any time, involving a young girl tied to a bed, might be a bit much for people. Not excluding the kill scenes of course, which are decent if not awesome. The nail gun scene alone is pretty fucking legit. The movie has some good twists, decent acting (decent not good), and 1970's scuzzy atmosphere. I recommend it.


Grade: 87%

      "Girl Time"

"Girl Time" interrupted...

Stupid Movie Review: Maniac

Director: William Lustig


Actors: The mob guy from Rocky. You know the guy who told Rocky to break some dude's fingers and then he didn't do it? Yeah that guy.



Plot: If you really wanna break up with your lady friend, watch this and Don't Go In the House together. In this one, yet another serial killer with severe mommy issues stalks and brutally kills just about anyone he encounters. Mostly pretty 1980 style ladies. He stalks them, toys with them, kills them brutally, and then collects their scalps to keep. Fucked up much? There really isn't much else to say about it.


Gore: Are you fucking kidding? The most graphically violent "slasher" movie in history. Head explosion, multiple stabbings, scalping's, dismemberment's, decapitations, it goes on. Tom Savini's finest hour.



Super Spoiler Alert: Don't read on if you don't want me to ruin all the cool parts.


Holy Shit! moment: when the grubby slimy fat killer stalks this couple doin it in a Caddy. He then approaches the couple with a shotgun, and jumps on the hood of the car and fires into the windshield. The dude's head literally explodes into tiny pieces causing me to jump out of my couch and hit the backward button on my dvd remote to see it again.


Leap of Logic moment: How is it that when our completely unhinged killer meets a girl he likes and doesn't wanna kill yet, he's a pimp. Like serious game spitting pimp.

Leap of Logic, part 2: How is this attractive girl into this fat, acne scarred, greasy 70's comb-over guy with a rape jacket?


Holy Shit! Part 2: The ending. When pissed off scalp less dead women attack and completely tear our killer a new asshole. Pretty awesome.


Conclusion: This is the most disturbing movie of the early 80's "slasher" cycle. I hesitate to even call it that because it doesn't really follow normal slasher movie rules. Like at all. For one thing, we know who the killer is the whole time. Two, there is no final girl, or anyone besides the killer you see onscreen for more than ten minutes. This is also not a fun movie. Slasher movies, if nothing else, are a lot of fun to watch. While I had a good time with it, this is not something to show your friends. Unless your friends with me. I love how, just like "...House" you see the killer lose his mind little by little until he goes completely bat shit crazy at the end. The movie is more of a character study, a dirty filthy gross character study. Basically everything about this movie is awesome. See it.



Grade: 96%

                 Before...

           AFTER!

Stupid Movie Review: Don't Go in the House

Director: Joseph Ellison

Starring?: No one you know or care about. Apparently the main character was on The Sopranos but so was everybody in New Jersey.


Plot: This one is pretty intense. The movie opens in an industrial incinerator factory where our main character works. Here we see a co-worker be a dumbass and accidentally light himself on fire, prompting our main character to flash back to his mom burning his arms over the stove. That's how this thing STARTS. We soon learn that mommy dearest is a pretty sick lady, literally as well as figuratively. When the guy gets home, mommy isn't waking up. Since she was kind of a bitch, he's sort of happy about this...but then he starts hearing voices in his head. He then feels compelled to kill pretty girls. So now I know what you're saying. "This another slasher serial killer movie. I've seen this shit like three billion times". No. Shut up. The guy finds his first victim, lures her somehow (trust me it wasn't charm) to his house, and then knocks her out. Next time we see her she's hanging by her hands in a fireproof room our main character built in the house. He walks in wearing a firesafe suit and carrying a flame thrower. I'm not going to ruin the rest because you can probably imagine what transpires. However, it is done so well that it is more gut wrenching than any Jason Voorhees death scene ever. The rest of the movie follows our killer as he stalks and lures other girls to the same fate, and then has a total and complete mental and nervous breakdown. Obviously more goes on but I want you to actually seek this movie out and watch the damn thing.


Gore: None really. But we have one serious burning scene that's just as good.


Silly moment that dates the movie: Definitely when our killer gets ready for, and then attends, a disco. It's bad. The music is worse. At least he lights some slut's aquanet hair on fire with a candle.


Why: do a lot of late 70's serial killer movies have an overdose of Oedipal rage and other creepy mommy issues?


Thank god or whomever you believe in: they aren't remaking this...yet.



Why: did I just see this three days ago?



In conclusion:  This is a solid movie from the late 70's. You know, when directors weren't afraid to disturb the shit out of you. Watch this together with "Maniac" and you got a fucked up movie double feature. These movies are specifically designed to make girls hate you, so dudes don't think you're getting any if you watch this with your significant other. It is a creepy, atmospheric, and brutal movie that I think doesn't get the props it deserves. In fact, outside of horror movie people I don't think anyone has even heard of it. It's a fucking shame because this actually a really decent experience. Fuck I liked it. Highly recommended.




Grade: 90%

                 Not to be fucked with.

                 This is why.

On why this year's horror movies aren't doing well and why it's really no big deal.

 So I'm sitting here and it's Sunday before Columbus Day and I don't have work tomorrow. I'm sitting here watching the Herschell Gordon Lewis classic "Blood Feast" and I'm realizing that I haven't made a peep on this here blog in months. I was going to do another silly little review of a terrible movie but I feel like I should sort of comment on the recent glut of horror movies at the theaters this month. On October 1, four new theater horror movies were released. Since then, one of these has been already pulled, none of them have made shit for money, and two more have been released just this Friday. So of course I looked at all the internet horror magazines and they all are wondering why their readers and horror fans in general aren't coming out to the theaters. They say it like it is absolutely imperative that every person who calls themselves a horror fan must go out and see every one of these movies or the world will end. Most people if they are going to see a movie are watching that Facebook movie crap (I will not comment on how asinine I think a movie about Facebook is but just know I think it's dumb). I don't think it's hard to get why no one's coming out to see them. One is a remake of a movie from Sweden no one heard of, another has Renee Zellwegger and might be good but probably isn't, the other two no one knows about because there has been no advertising outside of horror circles. Of the two that came out on Friday, one is a guaranteed suck fest in 3D and the other is a remake of a graphic exploitation movie most people haven't heard of. Is this really that hard to figure out? Movies are fucking expensive. People are not going to see a movie for $12 that looks like shit. Period. I will see just about anything, but not for $12. Especially if that $12 is for a Wes Craven movie. In 3D no less. Hopefully that trend will die soon. It didn't work in the 50's either. Or the 80's. Leave it alone.

   As for what this means for horror movies...how bout we take it down a notch. It isn't that serious. I like that there are some actual choices this year, but that doesn't mean I'm going to just drop $100 at the movie theater. I don't intend to see Saw 89 (I haven't seen one of those since part 2 and I hated it so much I vowed never again), nor will I see Paranormal Activity 2. The first time was a good idea, once was enough. I'm glad there are choices, but they all look iffy at best. Hatchet 2 was the only surefire, and that got pulled from the three theaters it was playing. All signs point to money being the issue, but there is speculation that releasing it unrated might have been the real reason. Whatever, I'll catch it on DVD. Which brings me to my next point. The fact that people aren't shelling out their hard earned, and in most cases hard to come by dollars on the crap at the theater doesn't mean the death of the horror movie. Not in the slightest. I for one would much rather pick up a movie on DVD anyway. I watch it whenever I want in the comfort of my own home, on my couch, without gum under the seat or shithead loud people. That's where the real money in horror is anyway. I check the DVD listings every month to see if anything new and obscure (sometimes both) is getting released. If I have a choice between buying the Slumber Party Massacre re-issued trilogy on DVD or seeing a 3D crapfest a' la Wes Craven, I don't even have to say it. Will I see one of the theater movies? Maybe. Maybe not. Who gives a shit? Horror movies will be made regardless. No matter who watches them.