October 2nd

Delirium (2007) directed by Mark Allen

These past few Halloweens, I've been missing my yearly dose of modern, horrible horror. I used to have eight Horrorfest films to wade through every Halloween, suffering through at least six truly terrible horror movies throughout the Six Weeks. The masochist in me needs more of that. My solution? For a mere $5 at K-Mart, I grabbed one of those awful Echo Bridge multi-movie packs. This one was called the Highway to Hell Collection. I thought it would fit in with my Texas Chain Saw Massacre marathon this year.  And, who knows, maybe there's a gem in there?

This morning, I popped in disc one and played the first selection on it without knowing a lick about what I was going to see. That's the way to do it, in my opinion. Go in blind and be surprised. Surprised I was. I think -- and I've see a lot, a lot of bad movies -- this is the worst movie I've ever seen on a professionally pressed DVD. Sure, you see a lot of this kind of stuff on DVD-Rs -- usually passed out for free at cons by budding filmmakers -- but for a real company to have purchased this film, and made a DVD master, and sent the thing to a for-real DVD replication plant in order to make thousands of copies of it... wow.

To be truthful, the style of the film painfully reminds me of me. It looks a lot like the crappy horror shorts I was making about a decade ago. Bad acting, ultra-cheap special F/X, dumb script, dull editing, a friend playing bass as the soundtrack... yep, amateur hour all the way. I've been there. What impresses me is that they got this thing out there. Mark Allen must be incredibly persistent to have sold the rights to this movie when it should be relegated to free showings at small horror conventions with the other terrible homemade horror films. Could I have gotten one of my things onto a DVD that any old person could buy at the K-Mart? I doubt it. Bravo, Mark Allen!

It does exist, I swear.

Tales from the Darkside 2.01: "The Impressionist" (1985) directed by Armand Mastroianni
The NSA recruits a comedian skilled in doing impressions to communicate with an alien they've captured. A harmless episode in the vein of E.T. -- or maybe Close Encounters -- but that alien was pretty freaky looking.


Tales from the Darkside 2.02: "Lifebomb" (1985) directed by Frank De Palma
A businessman signs up for a lifebomb device, which is surgically implanted in his back. When it detects life-threatening danger, it explodes and wraps the person in a cocoon of healing to ensure they avoid death. A sloppy episode that downplays its downer ending so much it's easy to not notice it.

September 25th

Happy Birthday to Me (1980) directed by J. Lee Thompson

My ongoing quest to catch up with all of the films spawned out of the early '80s slasher boom has lead me to the pleasant surprise that was Happy Birthday to Me. I didn't know anything about it going in and, boy, am I glad that was the case. The film is an expertly constructed whodunit with slasher-style killings.

Starring Little House on the Prairie's Melissa Sue Anderson as Virginia, the film follows a group of 10 friends at a private school. Virginia's the newbie, having returned to school after experimental brain surgery following an accident. Soon, one by one, a black glove-wearing psycho begins picking off her friends, while Virginia begins to remember more and more about the circumstances of her accident.

I was impressed at how well constructed to the story was. Nearly every character is made to look like a suspect at one point. I was delighted as my guesses on who the killer was kept changing every 10 minutes as I tried to puzzle out the new information the movie slowly feeds the audience. The climax probably has more twists per minute than any other movie I've seen. Yeah, it gets to be a little silly -- apparently, this was the fault of the producers wanting to spice things up -- but I bought it. And, the twists give the film an even darker ending that it was original intended to have.

While not a great slasher movie -- unlike its cousin film My Bloody Valentine, there's no iconic masked killer -- it is one of the better mystery-horror films I've seen.

Tales from the Darkside 1.18: "If the Shoes Fit..." (1985) directed by Armand Mastroianni
A mischievous hotel or its mischievous bellboy decide to drive a politician crazy for no good reason. We get a fun performance out of character actor Dick Shawn, but it feels mostly like a tantrum over the 1984 election than anything else.


Tales from the Darkside 1.19: "Levitation" (1985) directed by John Harrison
This is a little more like what I want from Darkside. Based on a short story by horror master Joseph Payne Brennan, it's a simple tale of two men who go to a carnival in order to see a magician perform his most famous trick. It's got a good build up and a satisfying twist ending.

September 28th

A masked invader in my home.

Fear Itself: "Something with Bite" (2008) directed by Ernest Dickerson
About as good as Dickerson's Masters of Horror episode, which was not really that great.  A giant animal is hit by a car and brought to a vet's office.  Naturally, this being a horror show, the giant animal is a werewolf and it bites the doc.  He starts forgetting what he does at night, has dirty feet in the morning, yadda-yadda-yadda.  It's absolutely no surprise that this was written by John Landis' son, as the episode plays out like a combination of An American Werewolf in London and Teen Wolf.  I did enjoy Wendell Pierce as the vet-wolf, though.  He handles his transformation from weak boss/father/husband to an animal-powered take-charge guy with the right level of humor.


Cat o' Nine Tails (1971) directed by Dario Argento
A step down from Crystal Plumage, I think.  It's hard to tell, though, since the presentations of the two movies were so different.  Crystal Plumage I watched on Blue Underground's excellent Blu-ray.  Netflix's DVD of Nine Tails appears to be some kind of bootleg.  It's pan-and-scanned, missing over twenty minutes of footage and the A/V quality is on par with a VHS tape.  I suspect this crappy DVD deadened the impact of the movie for me.  It also made it harder to follow, what with 20% of the movie gone.  Grrr.

I enjoyed stars James Franciscus and Karl Malden in this film.  I got a big kick out of Malden's Mr. Magoo shtick, though, at least in the cut I watched, he's almost not necessary to the story outside of the finale.  Storywise, the movie runs with the now-discredited idea that boys born with an extra Y chromosome are more prone to violence.  Guess which genetic abnormality the killer in the film has?  Poor guy just happened to be working for a lab researching this and just wants to keep his genetic test a secret.  Killing people to do so probably doesn't help his cause, but what are you gonna do?

Also: best "killed by a train" shot in movie history. (6/10)




Tales from the Darkside: "Pain Killer" (1984) directed by Armand Mastroianni
I know I'm not very far into season 1, but I'm still disappointed that there has yet not been been serious piece of horror that can match the awesome credit sequence.  This one's another deal with the devil story involving a strange doctor and a man with severe back pain.  Seems that the man's back pain is psychosomatic, caused by his nagging wife.  The doctor arranges for the wife's death, which cures the man's pain, but he wants something in return...  Due to Lou Jacobi's affable face and manner, it's a little hard to take the episode seriously.  He seems to be sort of OK with whatever happens to him.

The episode was enhanced a little bit by the strange noises coming from the garage behind my TV.  I got to do a classic horror movie-style investigation: I got out my flashlight and crept into the dark garage to investigate the strange sounds.  Rather than a maniac, though, I fortunately only discovered the masked bandit pictured above.  Damned thing pooped in my garage!