Jay's Review: Train

A better-than-average Goreno reviewed for dvdsnapshot. This one's a pleasant surprise.

TRAIN
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS
Touring Eastern Europe with her college wrestling team, Alex (Thora Birch) attends a debauched late-night party that causes Alex and several teammates to miss their train to Odessa. Her coach is furious, but a mysterious woman offers the coach and wrestlers a ride on an alternate train. The coach agrees, and the athletes, exhausted and hung over, gratefully climb aboard. But the train harbors a deadly secret, and for Alex and her fellow passengers, a blood-soaked nightmare is just beginning.

OUR TAKE
The probable American target audience for Train probably isn't going to have much experience with traveling by them. It's a far more European and old-school method of travel. That sense of the alien comes in handily when watching this film, originally supposed to be a remake of Terror Train. It morphed into something significantly more akin to Hostel on wheels.

Near the beginning of the film the lead character stops and frowns at a train. One can assume it's part of setting up a sense of dread having more to do with Xenophobia than anything really ominous. Stupid American college students and their coach wind up missing their scheduled train and hook a ride on a second one that turns out to be a rolling abattoir. From the creepy woman who invites them to a pair of grimy, sleazy "conductors" and a burn victim passenger, Train is less than a love letter to the Eastern Europeans. Thankfully, they quickly show their true, creepy colors lest we think there may be anyone nice on the entire continent.

As the American students make their first impression on most of the passengers when one runs through the dining car in only a jock strap, it's really kind of hard to fault them for the gory organ harvesting that follows. The killing starts quickly and stays grotesque, so torture porn fans are going to be delighted with this one. Skin is sliced off and eyeballs plucked in graphic detail. In fact things move so quickly that at the halfway mark most of the protagonists are out for the count. Thora Birch is talented enough to keep the second half of the film grounded and the atmosphere is tense throughout. Train is well-photographed but in many places the cinematography is so dark you can barely make anything out. For some of the gore scenes, that's almost a blessing.

SPECIAL FEATURES
This disc features trailers for Frontier(s), Captivity, the third After Dark Horrorfest 8 Films To Die For III collection, a set of Ghost House Pictures titles, Fear.net, and break.com. Train is presented in Widescreen with English and Spanish Subtitles. Audio is offered in English 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby Digital. There's a behind-the-scenes featurette that clocks in at nearly 14 minutes.

CONCLUSION
"Torture Porn" isn't everyone's cup of tea, and the Xenophobia runs thick in Train to boot, but on the whole, it's a satisfying and very nasty story of, shall we say, "medical capitalism" in post-Soviet Russia. Not for the kids, the squeamish, or the optimistic, this is 94 surprisingly well-done minutes for the Gorehounds who don't mind a little hopelessness to their travelogues.

OVERALL PICTURE
MOVIE: B+
EXTRAS: B-

Jay's Review: Sand Serpents

Another fun Saturday night Drive-In style monster flick reviewed for dvdsnapshot.com, enjoy!

SAND SERPENTS
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS
On a final mission in Afghanistan, a small U.S. military unit confronts an astonishing, new enemy: a legion of prehistoric, six-story-tall sand serpents unearthed from the pit a thousand feet below ground. With the help of an Afghani refugee, Lieutenant Stanley (Jason Gedrick) leads his tiny band of soldiers on a terrifying invasion deep into the desert's vast underground tunnels for a war against terror they never imagined.

OUR TAKE
Sand Serpents is another of the "Creature Features" from the "Maneater" series, and was a SciFi/SyFy Channel Original. This one's taking it's inspiration from Tremors and Dune with it's desert-dwelling super-worms.

Even for a straight-to-DVD film of this caliber, this one gets rolling in a pretty paint-by-numbers fashion. A group of actors-barely-playing-soldiers, incredibly clean for being in the deserts of Afghanistan, claim to have "a bad feeling about this" within the first three minutes. At the six minute mark they're in a firefight (shoulda listened to those instincts, kids) that leads to the awakening of the titular sand serpents. You can't fault a movie for not wasting any time in getting the plot moving. From that point it's either attack by Earthworms or Taliban as they keep moving while their herd gets thinned. It's a good thing they keep it rolling, since it's the kind of flick with enough plot holes and military mistakes that if they slow-down, you may start paying attention.

Judged to the standards of the modern nature-amok creature feature, though, this one isn't bad. It rolls efficiently, if not always smoothly, and is actually pretty engaging even if it is a bit generic. Thankfully, when it slows it doesn't drag, and that's a big plus for this sort of film. The CGI works, and on the whole it's a smooth, low-budget entertainment. The biggest complaint I may have is that for a film of this type the gore is pretty minimal. There's a good body count, but it's almost dry as the desert.

SPECIAL FEATURES
The disc features trailers for other RHI Entertainment titles: Carny, Rise of the Gargoyles, Sea Beast, and Backwoods. Presented in a Widescreen format with English Dolby Digital 5.1.

CONCLUSION
Not sure how tactful it is to use the Taliban as a plot-point in a generic creature feature. Anyhow, for a rather generic "nature's revenge" creature feature, you'll find this an engaging enough way to spend a Saturday night. (They even say "I have a bad feeling about this" twice.) Grab the popcorn and a friend and "thrill" to giant equal-opportunity sandworms eating terrorists and soldiers alike.

However, it's possibly 88 minutes of sheer torture for anyone who's a stickler for military authenticity.

OVERALL PICTURE
MOVIE: B-/C+
EXTRAS: D

Jay's Review: Last Of The Living

a DVDsnapshot.com review, this time it's an end-of-the-world frolic from New Zealand! Check it out!

LAST OF THE LIVING

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS:
A deadly virus has turned humankind into flesh-eating zombies, slackers Morgan, Ash, and Johnny spend their days lounging in their skivvies, drifting from one vacant house to another. When the three stumble upon a hot girl who may have a cure for the outbreak, the three decide it's finally time to step up to the plate and save the world - and the girl. Zomedy fans will unite for this campy, "breakneck zombie film that injects a high dose of hilarity!" (Revenant Magazine)

OUR TAKE:
Zombie movies have been done to death (pardon the pun) by this point. Serious horror, mockumentary, and the "zomedy," they maintain to make some statement on society while simultaneously being an excellent excuse to exercise our desire to kick the crap out of one another. Last of the Living has shades of 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead as a trio of slackers play "band of survivors," bantering cute while making their way through the zombie hordes.

We've seen it all before. The red-eyes crazies, shuffling hordes, the abandoned cityscapes and shopping malls. Thankfully, Last of the Living starts out keeping it pretty light (even if, in the end, an apocalypse is never a bubbly affair). The low-budget and sense of "friends getting together to make a movie" actually works in the film's favor here (Watch for the child zombie who can't contain his grinning). There's a sense of humor in almost every New Zealand horror film I've seen, from Dead Alive to Body Melt, and it's present here, greasing the wheels for the character scenes, if not always informing the gore bits. As you can expect the boys argue amongst themselves more than they fight to survive, and adding a smart, no-nonsense-type girl to the mix only increases our heroes bumbling over one another. One thing you can note is that he transient, slacker lifestyle would seem to mesh nicely with that of the Zombie-fighters. I started out cynical and wound up engaged, which is alright by me.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
The disc offers the trailer for the film and a seven-minute-plus "Cast Interview" featurette where they discuss the making of the film. There's no audio or subtitle options.

CONCLUSION:
An amiable buddy-flick, Last of the Living is low-budget horror suitable for a night with friends. Not rated, but possibly too gory for the teens, though. Charming, but it's time for a zombie moratorium.

OVERALL PICTURE:
MOVIE: B-
EXTRAS: C-

Jay's Review: Night Watcher

dvdsnapshot.com sent me this lovely little number... better'n I expected...

NIGHT WATCHER

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS:
Following the unexpected suicide of her mother, Angela finds comfort in her new friendship with Brian. One day she receives a terrifying package containing a voyeuristic tape. The tape chronicles her mother's final days and reveals that someone had been following... watching... stalking her. As the death toll around town rises, it becomes clear that this is no mere coincidence. The deaths were thought to be suicides, but the truth is far worse.

OUR TAKE:
Night Watcher has a terrific aesthetic, full of blown-out lighting and stylized editing, and I‘d love to see what the production team could do with a bigger budget. It also has what looks to be an unusually soft and muddy transfer to DVD. However, when the reviewer opens with how the movie looks, you know what's coming next.

This one is something of a throwback to Scream and the rest of the 90's "Attractive Teens in Peril" movies. A pair of High School students meet in a support group for people losing family members to suicide. When they compare a set of mysterious videotapes of her mother and his father before their deaths, they quickly make some perilous leaps of logic and unwisely ignore involving the cops as they try and piece together the mystery of who's staging suicides.

Night Watcher would be a more engaging film if it wasn't the type of low-budget, small cast production where the instant characters appear you can label them "Killer," "Red Herring," or "Victim." Call it "I Know What You Did Last Summer Because There Only Seems To Be 7 or 8 People In This Whole Flick." The pace is a little leisurely, but the style of the film makes that quite tolerable. With limited blood, only one fairly graphic murder scene, and a little topless action, this one is a fairly light R.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
Trailers for Reborn, Summer's Moon, The Last Resort, and a cracking good one for Night Watcher itself. The disc has a set of 8 deleted/extended scenes collection with optional commentary by director Will Gordh. Presented in Widescreen in English 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio, the film also has optional English and Spanish subtitles.

CONCLUSION:
Nothing you haven't seen before, Night Watcher at least gets points for style. A fairly reserved slasher flick with a hint of flasher in it, it's a stylish throwback to the 90s spawns of Scream. A popcorn flick perfect for people who don't watch many murder mysteries, but not that memorable.

OVERALL PICTURE:
MOVIE: C+
EXTRAS: B

Jay's Review: The Six Degrees of Helter Skelter

I I got a foursome of reviews up at dvdsnapshot.com. Check 'em out, why don't you?

THE SIX DEGREES OF HELTER SKELTER

OFFICIAL SYNOPIS:
The Six Degrees of Helter Skelter is a hauntingly unique retelling of the notorious Manson Family Murders. With original Mason Family music recordings, rare vintage photos of the story's major players, and never-before-seen autopsy reports, viewers are taken on an insightful exploration of over 40 key locations associated with the spree that rocked Los Angeles - and shocked the world - in August 1969.

OUR TAKE:
The story of seven murdered people, one a glamorous movie star, and the cult who killed them is well known to most people whether you were to seek it out or not. For those who were alive in 1969 and everyone who came after, the Manson family “Helter Skelter” murders are a sad, fascinating cultural touchstone.

This documentary is a pile of scraps, skirting the periphery of the events that made up "Helter Skelter." The narrator and host, Scott Michaels, is the owner of findadeath.com and Dearly Departed Tours, and is a celebrity death aficionado. This should give you an idea of the caliber of this documentary. He calls living in LA being in the "Set" of where it all took place. That's not a healthy point of view. This documentary is practically a Dearly Departed Tour - be it the Ranch or stops by the homes of Patty Duke and Mama Cass. Morbid and bland. There's meanderings into Dennis Wilson's encounters with The Family, a visit to Jay Sebring’s house that’s apropos of nothing, and a trip to the Spahn ranch so we can be shown hubcaps laying on the ground. There's something sad about visiting a rock because it was the location of a Mason follower photograph. It’s the groupie behavior of morbid Fanboys.

The ghoulish pouring over of autopsy files and death scene photos make this is especially lurid and exploitive. Big, full-color blow-up photos of the naked, bloody Sharon Tate and Leno LaBianca's carved torso shown repeatedly aren't educational in this context. An aside about a gas station also being where James Dean last gassed up only makes you think "you're really reaching now." It’s also somewhat dull as it covers the events up to the arrests of The Family through field-trips and free-association.

This ground has been covered a million times before, and half of those were on television and narrated by Bill Kurtis. If you’ve seen those, you’ve pretty much seen this.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
None, beyond chapter selection. Presented in widescreen and Not Rated but obviously not for kids.

CONCLUSION:
Tacky, reprehensible in places, and not that engaging, Six Degrees of Helter Skelter is a collection of dross around the sidelines of the tragedies of 1969 and only informative to those who new to these events. But you have to wonder, must every little ephemeral connection be examined and belabored? I think not. If you want to learn about some trivia surrounding the crimes, feel free. But if you don't wind up alienated or bored, you'll want to wash the sleaze off afterwards.

OVERALL PICTURE:
MOVIE:D
EXTRAS: F

El Stinkero!

Jay's Review: Summer's Moon

Part of my recent four-pack of reviews over at dvdsnapshot.com, this one features a Twilight star and a lot of ick...

SUMMER'S MOON

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS:
Eager to find her estranged father, Summer sets out on a cross-country journey and is soon rescued from a slight run-in with the law by a local handyman. It's an unusual connection, but she is quickly charmed and accepts his invitation to spend the night. Knocked unconscious, she awakes the next morning to find herself trapped in the basement. Now taken prisoner, Summer's dream has come to a bitter end and her real-life nightmare has only just begun.

OUR TAKE:
Summer's Moon is probably most notable for how many "Summer's Eve" jokes it'll drive you towards. A jumbled mess of parts of The Collector, Motel Hell, Silence of the Lambs, and every back-woods crazy killer-family flick out over the last 10 years, I don't think I've ever been more bored by a jumbled story of incest, serial killing, and familial secrets.

When our unlikable heroine winds up falling afoul of a creepy mother-son murderin' duo, this glacial slab of a story slowly starts to move. Meandering from basement-captive "Garden Angels" to a "Stockholm Syndrome" go-along-to-get-along kidnap victim, Summer's Moon culminates in a final grand "family that slays together" third act. After the meandering A-story, there's a B-story of a father trying to find his kidnapped daughter (their previous captive) but it's more of an F as it barely registers.

Things also stay pretty predictable with this film. You know where they're heading about 20 minutes before they get there. You're a little nauseated by the idea, but no worries. By the time you get to the big reveal, you'll be too bored to barf. The lead actress is wooden and the actors playing the killers overact the "Calmly Crazy" shtick. The only thing really striking about this film is the cinematography and score. It looks and sounds much better than it has any right to.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
There is a nearly 9 minute long Behind the Scenes Featurette (where they describe themselves as "not a horror movie.") Trailers for Summer's Moon, Night Watcher, Reborn, The Last Resort, the Ghost House Underground series (Thaw, The Children, Offspring, and Seventh Moon) . The film is presented in Widescreen format with English Dolby 5.1 Digital Audio. Subtitles are available in English and Spanish.

CONCLUSION:
Slow-paced and overlong at 91 minutes, Summer's Moon is a bit of an over-baked Southern Gothic. You'll be two steps ahead of the plot, then nauseated. There's really little here to recommend beyond the cinematography.

OVERALL PICTURE:
MOVIE: C-
EXTRAS: B-

Jay's Review: Mirageman

A super-hero yarn of questionable heroism is the subject of my latest review on dvdsnapshot.com. Check it out, why don't you?

MIRAGEMAN
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS

Maco, a young man orphaned after his parents and surviving younger brother were brutally attacked, lives a solitary life as a nightclub security guard. One day, he intervenes in a violent robbery, rescuing a television reporter who later reports on her masked hero. Hearing of this new superhero, Maco's institutionalized brother's mental health improves. Encouraged by this improvement, Maco takes on the secret life of the superhero known as Mirageman.

OUR TAKE

Mirageman reminds one of nothing so much as an old 1970s TV show, particularly the live action Spider-man complete with montages of standing and striking poses in between beating bad-guys to "bow chicka wow" music. Cheesy and off-kilter, this is a Chilean superhero origin story filled with stagy martial arts and telegraphed plot points, it features the story of a crime victim who's withdrawn into learning martial arts in order to, one would assume, compensate for that event in his life.

Complete with a Lois Lane-like girl reporter he repeatedly saves from crime and a withdrawn little brother who needs inspiring, this is a pretty basic superhero “origin” arc. He saves her from criminals and sees that her report helps his brother start to emerge from his shell. There begins the birth of a hero. Fighting purse-snatchers and child-grabbers, Mirageman becomes a folk hero.

There’s an awkward tone that comes from this which really keeps the whole film off-kilter and stilted. There's some tongue-in-cheek moments involving costumes then reality to some of the physical repercussions of combat. The other problem is it's just not that engaging. The fights are either painfully choreographed or these are some polite and patient "wait yer turn"-type criminals. The lead is an amazingly fit fighter but humorless; nearly a cypher. His brooding blankness conflicts with humorous “Magazine cover” montages and the comic-relief “Pseudo-Robin” character. The visuals want to be inspired one moment but wind up dull the next. Also for a martial arts film, the pacing is glacial in places. Towards the end, this for the most part "light" film gets a little heavy on the gunplay and one VERY non-heroic bit of knife-play, which are always a point of contention for superheroes.

It’s a fun enough B-movie, but there’s not much “there” there. However, if made 20 years ago, it would have totally starred Dolph Lundgren...

SPECIAL FEATURES
The disc includes trailers for Ong Bak 2: The Beginning, Not Quite Hollywood, The Canyon, and the HDNET television network. There is also a three minute "Behind the Scenes of Mirageman" featurette, focusing on fight-scene choreography. Audio is available in both 5.1 and 2.0 Original Spanish or English Dubbed Dolby and Subtitles in both English and "English Narrative," which seems to only translate Spanish text shown in the film but not the dialogue . The film itself is 86 minutes and presented in a Widescreen format.

CONCLUSION

Mirageman is a predictable comic book movie that seems less dynamic than an actual comic book would. It’s fairly harmless for teens on up and does have humor ready-made for a night with the guys. You’ll just be wishing this superhero was more inspired by his “origin story” and more inspiring in his first film.

OVERALL PICTURE
MOVIE: C
EXTRAS: C

Jay's Review: Angel and the Badman (2009)

...one VERY overdue review that finally got turned into dvdsnapshot.com. Have you been there lately? The fact that they publish me is only one of the reasons they're such a great site. Check 'em out!

ANGEL AND THE BADMAN

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS:
This John Wayne remake tells the story of a notorious gunfighter, Quirt Evans (Lou Diamond Phillips), who is wounded and seeks shelter with a Quaker family. Attracted to the family's beautiful, loving, and widowed daughter Temperance (Deborah Kara Unger), the hard-bitten gunfighter is transformed from a man with a history of violence into a man of peace. Unfortunately, the leader of the outlaws, Laredo (Luke Perry), won't let his past die.

OUR TAKE:
I've never seen the original version of Angel and the Badman, so I was able to come to this film with fresh eyes. In fact, my experience with John Wayne films and Westerns in general is pretty minimal, so when I do watch them they're always pretty fresh to me.

Our wounded "Bad Man," Quirt, suffering from a gunshot wound, winds up at the house of a Quaker family and nursed by Temperance, begins to find inner peace. (The fact that they seem to have pretty good sexual chemistry doesn't hurt any, either.) While he fights it and his life of crime slowly catches up to him, it's pretty obvious how things will turn out in the end.

The casting here is decent. Lou Diamond Phillips and Deborah Kara Unger are two very talented actors who never seem to get the high profile work that often. They star in the roles of a gunslinger and the daughter of a Quaker played by Wayne and Jane Russell in the original movie. Unger is especially good here. She conveys tension and fear as a woman sure from the beginning this "Bad Man" is the right one for her. Known for her dangerous sex-bombs and damaged characters in films like Crash and Whispers in the Dark, her simple Quaker was something of a surprise. Phillips is mostly hard when he needs to be and convincing as he opens up, but some of his lines sure die on the vine though.

The bad guy (as opposed to the "Bad Man") is played by Luke Perry. While serviceable enough, he still seems less hard and grizzled than Dylan McKay playing dress-up. He fits in with the ridiculously tidy Western settings and well-pressed "Working girls." There's moments of humor in with the occasional shoot-out and slow-burn romantic plot. I've read it hews pretty closely to the original version of the film and I wouldn't be a bit surprised. On the whole, Angel and the Badman is as old-fashioned and patient as courting. That's not a bad thing.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
This was a screener copy. The disc should have English Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo with Spanish subtitles. It's presented in Widescreen format.

CONCLUSION:
Kind, clean, and classy - though not a classic - this remake of Angel and the Badman is just as family-friendly as one would expect from a Hallmark Channel production. It's not spicy, but it sticks to good-old fashioned western tropes. A throwback or one for the parents and grandparents, it's a very pleasant watch for a gray Fall afternoon.

OVERALL PICTURE:
MOVIE: B-
EXTRAS: n/a

Happy, Happy Halloween

Thanks again for joining me for "The Yucky Movies of October." It was a fun challenge for me - at one point I thought I'd never make it, but thanks to a few sick days I did catch up (heh). Next year I think I'll plan a little further ahead and pick 31 truly yucky movies. This was a total whim when it started and a lot of fun for me. You'll probably see many more reviews on this site, but there's going to be some brain-scrubbers and palate-cleansers come November, that's for sure.

One parting gift:


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The Yucky Movies of October: Patrick Still Lives

31) Patrick Still Lives

I'd heard of Patrick vive ancora (in the original Italian) before, but I wasn't really motivated to watch it until I saw the bit done about it in the terrific documentary Not Quite Hollywood.

A rip-off sequel, in the grand Italian cinema tradition, to the not-really-that-successful "psychic coma patient with Marty Feldman eyes" Australian film Patrick, this is a not-really-that-good sequel done in perfect "just redo the same damn story and add some breasts" manner.

In this version, Patrick winds up comatose after a passing driver throws a bottle out the window and it hits him in the head. His surgeon father is involved in the surgery that saves his life, but he's still "locked in."

We then go to a clinic set in the same mansion used in the film Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror, and meet two couples and a single guest, along with a skeleton staff and some grouchy guard dogs. These guests seem to have been blackmailed into attendance and are quickly given (ahem) "spa treatments" that turn out to be very deadly. This sparse clinic seems to be rather stylish - a minimal budget means it's sparsely furnished, but heavy on the green and purple lighting to make up for that. They also decorate with lead actresses constantly exposing their breasts. (Well, it's better than the wallpaper.) One plays an entire scene in a nipples-exposing bra while teasing her blackmailed husband that she'll screw them out of the situation. Such a classy flick.

The new assistant is seeing green visions of floating pale-blue eyes (seems the "Patrick" in this one was cast for having big, light eyes like the actor in the original.) The doctor is pushing his medical services hardcore, and in general, something is up that makes everyone nervous.

Well, next thing you know the secretary has been compelled to visit Patrick in the night and the politician is boiled in the swimming pool (there was a similar pool scene in the original Patrick). What's brilliant is that his boiling is attributed to his body having an unusual reaction to his alcoholism.

This is the type of movie where the spooky effects are typewriter keys that move on their own, as do skirts. (Amazingly this is not Zapped Again!) The actors rage, disrobe, and smack one another in perfect Italian passion. They try hard to make this flick seem less boring than it actually is, but don't succeed that well. People die off, but frankly not nearly quickly enough to spice up this bland potboiler. There's no spice in the pasta sauce. About the only thrill to be had is if you've seen Burial Ground, and care to compare the scenes in each film that happen in various rooms of the house.

There's a few "yuck" moments to be had in this one. The parboiling make up isn't bad. A beheading by car window goes the extra mile as it essentially "saws" the head off. There's a "violation" scene that's fairly grotesque and a precursor of the one more disturbingly executed in Mother of Tears. The actress here is the one who famously gets her nipple bitten off by young zombie son in Burial Ground, himself played by a creepy adult dwarf. This film has very little going for it beyond a few gross outs and a quartet of very naked Italian actresses. Proceed with caution as this one is probably only for Italian horror junkies, schlock connoisseurs, and people really hard up to see some naked breasts.

And with that I wrap up the 31 Yucky Movies of October. I did it all on a whim really and if I repeat myself next year I think I'll be a little more discerning in the titles I pick. Planning ahead will help us avoid those awkward 13 Frightened Girls and She-Wolf of London moments.
Thanks for playing along, boys and girls. I appreciate you joining me. Now, we're going to watch some palate cleansers. I'm thinking Indie Gay romances, Bollywood Musicals, and harmless comedies of old Hollywood.

The Yucky Movies of October: Masters of Horror: The Black Cat

30: Masters of Horror: The Black Cat

This Stuart Gordon episode of Masters of Horror starts out more like a character study. Edgar Allen Poe has a young wife who's dying, unsympathetic editors, and a drinking problem. Jeffrey Combs is excellent, though barely recognizable in makeup that makes him greatly resemble Poe. He's another case of "an actor who should be 'huge' and in just about everything."

Things really pick up about 15 minutes in, when Virginia (though he calls her "Sissy"), his wife, starts coughing up blood. It's really disturbing... especially when you develop a tickle in your throat about the same time. When he starts losing his grip because of these pressures, she implores him to start writing again. Unfortunately, there's a black cat named Pluto distracting him. Even from beyond the eventual grave, Pluto remains a problem. The film kinda posits that these were the influences on his greatest fiction. What happens with his wife would certainly drive anyone to madness... and the audience to nausea. Seriously, it ranks up there with the "Animal Trap scene" in Pelts.

Visually, this one works great. There's a muted color scheme where red blood, black ink, and a canary and goldfish get to "pop" - it lends a sense of surrealism to a film that looks "realistic." This isn't one of those "clean" movies set in the past. There's dust and dirt and texture everywhere. There's some surprising moments of animal cruelty in this one. Certainly helps escalate it from "Character Study" to "Horror." The storytelling here is subtle, well-paced, pretty excellent. When the "yucky" scenes show up, they do so in grand (guignol) style. This is one of the creams of the Masters of Horror crop and highly recommended.

The Yucky Movies of October: 13 Frightened Girls

29) 13 Frightened Girls

William Castle was the producer who always had a gimmick. He gave us the electrified seats for The Tingler and fright-breaks in his movies. You could vote on the fate of and ending to Mister Sardonicus, who was such a jerk that there was only one ending (and it didn't end well for him). 13 Ghosts required special glasses to see the ghosts presented in Illusion-O! His films are always simple pleasures. Mannered thrillers and horror films filled with hammy actors and good production values for low-budget pictures. I'm sure they're not the same now that you can watch them at home, but they still provide a lot of pleasure.

Miss Pittford's Academy is home to 13 daughters of men who make the world move, Ambassadors and the like. Each is from a different country and our lead is, of course, the American girl. Candace, the daughter of an American diplomat, decides to become "The Kitten," her spy identity as she tries to solve a murder that was clearly set up to frame her father. Mostly, her plan is to flirt her way to an answer though...

Painful.

I was really hoping for skeletons on strings and axe murderers with a title like 13 Frightened Girls but instead got a tarantula and a limp, family-friendly Cold-War-era murder mystery. The girls are bland and their behavior is beyond stereotypical, which lends it that quaint air of fun. We're really introduced to them through a sequence involving the girls and a series of phone calls. America and China are friends but not "officially" as their countries aren't supposed to recognize one another. Russia is frosty and won't see eye to eye. This is very much a time capsule of the times... the sexist, gender-roled times.

The biggest - or, rather, ONLY- "yuck" is that the 16 year old Candace is all crushed out for her father's assistant, a man who looks to be pushing 40. (I wanna turn you over and spank you til my hand falls off. -Shudder) That said, it's fun to watch children play grown-ups at the "Spy Game." I'd never heard of this one before the new Castle set came out. I can see why. It's a family-friendly programmer but without the creaking gimmickry that made him so cherished by moviegoers everywhere.

(The other feature on this particular disc is Castle's original 13 Ghosts. I've seen that one several times over the years and wanted to review something new for my month of "Yucky" movies. Seems I steered a bit wrong.)

Way Back Machine

Erik, Diane, and I -- circa 1992 or so. We were beautiful... and if we'd been a band this would be our album cover. Jim took this picture. He always takes the best pictures. I've alwasy loved this one and had to share.

The Yucky Movies of October, sidetracked: Friday the 13th: The Series, Season One

28) Friday The 13th: The Series

This show was a well-remembered Saturday afternoon TV creep-fest for me as a kid. Being that it premiered in 1987, I'm dating myself, but there was really nothing like it on TV during my formative years.

Especially well-remembered are a few of the antiques from shows in the first season. I remembered the Scarecrow as I think it was the first time I ever saw a beheading bit in a horror program, and a weird chair with needles that would tap and exchange spinal fluid between two people (I vividly remember watching this one on tape and then an episode of Just The Ten of Us. God, what a wasted childhood.)

I'm happy to say the show holds up pretty well. Sure the effects are dated and the quality of the actual episodes vary in storyline and look, but a good time is had by all. Every week, cousins Ryan and Micki would team with the older Jack, more experienced in the ways of the occult, and try to track down antiques their uncle had sold on behalf of the devil. Each one had a unique curse and what I consider to be a pretty impressive body count. They really blow Supernatural out of the water week after week in that department. Evil porcelain dolls, cursed comic books, cradles of filth (couldn't resist), and uncomforting quilts keep getting the trio of leads into situations that would lead to prison terms just based on the circumstantial evidence time and time again.

The shows isn't great, but each episode is a pretty decent time-capsule of 1980s Canadian syndicated television production. Robey's hair (ah, Robey, why do you forsake us?) alone is worth a view. Sprayed into ringlets, brushed out, pulled into something that's more construct than ponytail, her hairstyles vary as often as Mrs. Slocombe's do on Are You Being Served? (She also gets to be a lovely 29 year old actress who's beautiful and still has lines around her eyes. No one has expressions on TV anymore...)

The characters actually seem to grow a little over the course of the series, though most episodes could be watched in any order. Micki especially gets to be fearful and squeamish but still face that and get the work done. Most characters now are just cocky in the face of danger without conveying any real fear. She's not afraid to be afraid, and sure starts the series out as a helpless "Screaming Mimi." The characters remember that people are dying around them and show a sense of loss and stakes to what's going on. It's a surprisingly good content for what is, admittedly, a cheeseball show. That made it all the more entertaining to discover episodes directed by David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan in the series. If you like this sort of anthology program you can't go wrong by picking these up, they're sturdy and still make for a good watch... all these (aak- 22?!?!) years later.

Final thought: I just don't understand why anyone would live in that incredibly smokey, dusty store... much less who would shop there. Seriously, there's a constant miasma floating around. That can NOT be healthy...

The Yucky Movies of October: Roadgames

27) Roadgames

Yowza! I have memories of this 1981 creeper being on cable when I was younger and the scenes of hanging sides of meat (mostly pork) stuck with me permanently. I've seen it in plenty of other films from to, heck, even The Midnight Meat Train to, heck, even Coma, but this is the film that carved out that particular horror for me for life. The pale, cold, bloodless sides of beef here are most memorable.

A Hitchcock homage about 2 Americans in the Australian outback, a truck driver who is slowly putting together that he's encountered a murderer and a hitchhiker (conveniently nicknamed "Hitch," it's Jamie Lee Curtis playing the same character she did in The Fog) who helps him work out the clues even as she becomes a pawn in the cat and mouse game... which tends to end with people getting garroted.

It's well known that this is something of a mobile homage to Hitchcock's Rear Window, with our essentially stationary driver Stacy Keach slowly working through the clues. The neighbors this time aren't in the next apartment building, but in the cars he passes and those who pass him. (Robert Thompson, the googly-eyed, silent star of Patrick shows up as a red leather-clad biker.) Mostly thought it's about keeping an eye on the van. The one with the suspicious cooler in the front seat. Roadgames is an amazingly well-structured flick, not afraid to take it's time to develop the plot while never being "slow"when doing so. Keach is excellent as a character who spends more time delivering monologues than anything else. Be it into a phone or to his pet Dingo, he always sounds more like he's really talking to himself than delivering lines.

There's some pretty thrilling car chase scenes. My recent viewing of Not Quite Hollywood inspired me to put this at the top of my Netflix queue and, as pointed out in that doc with this and several other films, car chases seem to be a specialty in Australian cinema. They're also great on big vistas of Aussie outback which makes for some beautiful cinematography.

My one big complaint is that when Keach and Curtis first get together they immediately start in on his murder theory. Telling a hitchhiker this would have her thinking "gee, it's awfully nice of him to warn me through this flimsy third-person story that he's crazy as a fruitbat." Instead she's game to plot along with him. I just don't buy it.

There's a few incidences of levity to lighten the mood but things are mostly tense and stay that way. The meat is a yuck but the tension is high. This one's an under-seen classic and worth a viewing. It's good to the last shot.