October 8th

The Ridge (2005) directed by Brett Haley

The first two rules of making a slasher movie, as I see them, are:

1. Create a visually interesting villain.
2. Make that villain's kills either gory or creative (or both).

The Ridge drops the ball on both these. The villain -- the "Ridge Runner" -- is dressed in a black hoody and, possibly, sweat pants. He couldn't be more of a non-entity. The film would've come across just the same if a floating ax were chasing the kids without anyone holding it. When he does kill with that ax, it's off-screen and always a simple chop-chop. There is absolutely nothing about this character that stands out, or is interesting, or is remotely memorable. Jason Voorhees, he his not.

Worse, it takes the movie half of its entire length before anything with the Ridge Runner starts to happen. The first 42 minutes of the movie are painful, consisting of endless banter between five college-age kids. I haven't been this bored with a movie in quite some time. To be fair, the very first horrific scene in the movie is fairly good. One of the characters is swimming in the house's pool with the lights off. Underwater, she discovers a corpse tangled up in some hoses. Disgusting! Unfortunately, that is the sole interesting bit in the entire film, and it's semi-ruined when the characters -- instead of fleeing the corpse-infused water immediately -- splash around and freak-out for several minutes in the filth.

Another complete bomb from my $5 Highway to Hell Collection. Not that I'm surprised. There's still four more chances for a hidden gem in there.

The Real Ghostbusters 1.06: "The Boogieman Cometh" (1986) directed by Richard Raynis

Clearly a metaphor for child abuse. The parents in the episode refuse to believe their kids about the monster entering their room at right, so the kids seek out a uniformed adult -- the Ghostbusters in this case -- and tell them. The Ghostbusters take them seriously and end up capturing a pantsless man hiding in their closet. Heavy stuff for a Saturday morning cartoon.