October 15th

Monster Cereal Week 4: Frute Brute.
I wonder if Tarantino will still throw his vintage box in films now that it's back?
Or, is he a cereal hipster?  Time will tell.

Eaten Alive! (1980) directed by Umberto Lenzi

Lenzi jumps back into the cannibal subgenre he inadvertently started with Man from Deep River eight years prior.  This time, a woman hires a man -- played by Robert Kerman from Cannibal Holocaust -- to help find her sister in the jungles of Papua New Guinea.  Turns out the sister has joined a Jim Jones-ish cult lead by the similarly named Jonas.  Turns out that cult is surrounded by cannibals in the jungle, making escape difficult.  There's nothing surprising in in this one: some people get eaten and our heroes end up escaping back to civilization.

The movie's biggest problem is that it steals far too much from Man from Deep River.  It re-uses a lot of footage from that earlier movie -- including a lot of the real animal cruelty -- in badly editing sequences in which this movie's characters pretend to look at scenes from that other film.  It also rips off ideas from Man, including having a widow being raped over the ashes of her husband.  Combined with Kerman from Holocaust and Me Me Lai from just about every cannibal movie ever made, the whole thing feels like a crappy remix of a song you like.

Watched: DVD from Shriek Show.

The Real Ghostbusters 2.01: "Knock, Knock" (1987) directed by Marek Buchwald & Masakazu Higuchi
Ah, this is why I liked the show as a kid.  The deceptively dark nature of the show combined with the excitement of the Ghostbusters saving the day really captured my imagination in the '80s.  This episode has NYC subway workers accidentally opening a demonic door underground (even after the door itself warns them: "Do not open 'til doomsday").  Even though it's never explicitly stated in the show, this is a door to Hell, which is leaking "ghosts" / demons and slowly taking over the world.  It's up to the Ghostbusters to descend into Hell itself to save the day at the last moment.  Exciting!