Sunday, November 25, 2018

Fear of a Black Goo



What up People! It’s time for another edition of Will Twerk for Horror Movies!

Or more appropriately, Thriller Double Feature!



For those of you who don’t know, in my humble little town of Detroit, MI, there used to be a Saturday morning television show called Thriller Double Feature on one of the local channels. On this television show, I got my first education in horror. Every week, I would be treated to B-movies of all levels of horror – the gory, the dramatic, even some of the super old school horror from the 60s and 70s. About 80 percent of them were either super gory, super campy, or had a seriously high what-the-hell-did-I-just-watch factor to them.

Why am I taking you along with me on this trip down memory lane? We-hell, I’m so glad you asked!



This week’s movie! Fear Clinic starring Brad’s kid Fiona Dourif, Freddy M-fin’ Krueger Robert Englund, and Slipknot’s Corey Taylor.

Yes. You read that right. Chuckie’s daughter, Freddy Krueger and the guy from Slipknot is in this movie. Sounds like it’s gonna be a pretty sweet movie, right?

Heh. You’d think so!

(And Cleopatra Coleman, Felisha Terrell, Brandon Beemer, Bonnie Morgan, Angelina Armani, and Thomas Dekker were also in this movie, by the way.)



So, okay, Dr. Andover (Englund) is a doctor in “The Fear Clinic”, a clinic that deals exclusively in eradicating phobias by putting the patients in Andover’s special machine that somehow stimulates the amygdala and…I guess it stops fears?



Okay, so enter Sara (Dourif) who’s dealing with PTSD from a shooting attack she and several others survived. See, all of the people who went to the Fear Clinic originally were involved in the attack as well and everyone had their phobias amplified. Sara and the others were cured, except they weren’t. All of a sudden, they start hallucinating images related to the shooting.



So, Dr. Andover has closed the clinic since one of the victims, Paige (Morgan), died during the procedure, which is fine until Sara shows up on his doorstep and tells him to fire up the machine again because she’s seeing masked men in closets. Andover is like no, Sara’s like, whatever, dude. We’re doing this.

Just then, another of Andover’s former shooting survivor, Caylee(Armani) and her boyfriend show up on the doorstep and demand to be treated. Caylee’s fear has something to do with anorexia and she hasn’t been eating. Sara goes to help her and Caylee vomits black goo all over her.



We’re gonna pause this synopsis for a second because I need to make you aware of something. Sometimes Thriller Double Feature movies would more often than not feature gross-out, Fangoria type movies. Movies that usually involved funny colored vomit or things covered in slime and goo and twisted monsters dripping in something. This is one of those times. So, be prepared.

Okay, so the black fluid apparently makes people hallucinate when they touch it. Sara accidentally gets some on her mouth when she takes her shirt off in the bathroom and sees scary shit, Dr. Andover is transported into a netherworld where his dead patient, Paige is waiting for him.



So, to round everything out, another victim shows up sometime later by the name of Blake (Dekker). Blake is in a wheelchair and can’t talk because he, apparently, was shot in the head during the attack. Andover puts him in the device and immediately discovers something isn’t quite right with Blake’s recollection of the events. He starts to think there’s something weird going on.



Yeah. Here, he starts to think something weird is going on.

Okay, so Sara discovers that after Blake’s turn in the chamber, he has regained the ability to speak. Sara goes to Andover like “Isn’t this great?” Andover’s all like “…No.”

Sara’s bestie Megan (Coleman) shows up at the clinic after having a few freak outs herself. She also has a weird festering sore on her back. Andover’s assistant takes her in the back and does a little surgery on it. As soon as she cuts into it, Yay! More black goo.



And spiders! Lots of Spiders! The spiders find their way down into the basement and become a part of a vibrating cocoon.

Meanwhile, Andover is in a therapy session with Blake and he’s giving him the third degree about what he actually remembers. Where was he sitting?! What did he see?! Who is he really?!

Blake has no idea what Andover is ranting about. Their session is interrupted when one of his assistants come in to tell him that Megan has gone into the fear machine. Andover goes to get her out, only to get sucked into the machine himself and into the big cocoon in the basement.



So, while Andover is in the cocoon, Sara pulls her bestie out of the fear machine and she’s catatonic. The handyman, Bauer(Taylor) comes in and tells them that there’s no getting out of the house because that black stuff is everywhere and it’s sealed up the doors and windows.




Meanwhile, Blake finds a mask that just happens to be the exact same one the shooter that shot everyone had. Then he starts to remember, “Hey! Plot Twist! I’m the shooter!”



That’s right, folks. Blake was the one who shot them all in that diner before shooting himself in the head, pretty much rendering him a vegetable up until about thirty-five minutes into this movie.

So, he puts on the mask and becomes the shooter again, seeking out his victims once again.

Now. In the meanwhile - meanwhile, Sara locates Dr. Andover’s paperwork and discovers that he had a theory that there is a fear creature and said fear creature is a manifestation of fear and the fear chamber was starving the creature of the one thing is thrives on – fear.



Yeah. So, Andover’s in the cocoon and Paige – the first girl to die in the chamber – shows up, only she’s a demon version of herself. Or rather a Fear Monster version. So, she takes over Andover’s body and comes out of the cocoon to start killing people.



I know! I know! But wait, it gets worst.

So, the next few minutes become a murder/catatonic spree with Blake the shooter and Andover the fear monster. In the end, Sara figures out that if the fear creature’s victims close their eyes, then the fear creature would go away. So…she does. Blake, Caylee, Megan, she gets all their eyes closed which, subsequently destroys the Andover/Fear Monster.

Andover is freed from the Fear Monster, but he tells Sara that the monster would be back so long as there is a door to come through…you know…the fear chamber. Sara tells him that they have to change the locks and Andover gets into the machine as she supervised.

*sigh*
So, you thought that if any of this sounded like I was making it up as I was going along, you’re not alone. Pretty sure that’s how the screenplay was written.

I don’t have the heart to Raspberry this one. I mean, it was decidedly terrible, but I’ve seen far worse and it made me a little nostalgic for my childhood. And, you know, Fiona Dourif, Freddy and Corey Taylor and such.

So, yeah. It’s getting a jewel for the culture.



Next week’s movie? “The Fearless Vampire Killers Or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck”. I do enjoy silly horror movies! Here’s hoping for a good one!

O~
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Sunday, November 11, 2018

How to Screw Up Your Kid 101




Welcome class to the “How to Screw up Your Kid” edition of Will Twerk for Horror Movies.

Now, I’ve watched a lot of horror in my life and one of the things that I’ve come to learn is that the horror genre is a strictly 18 and up sport. If you find yourself in a horror movie and you are anywhere under the age of 18, you will probably be:



A) Screwed up somewhere between the beginning and end of your ideal or



B) Already pretty hardcore screwed up before the story even begins. This is all operating under the assumption that you live through it at all anyway.

And yes, before you ask, children do occasionally get hacked up in a horror movie. In the vastness of the genre, child murder is pretty rare even today, but certainly not unheard of.

And so, we begin with this week’s movie:



The Eyes of My Mother starring Kika Magalhes, Diana Agostini, Olivia Bond, Will Brill, Joey Curtis-Green, Paul Nazak, and Clara Wong.


So, Francesca(Bond) and her mom and dad (Agostini and Nazak) all live on a farm somewhere in the middle of nowhere. While Francesca’s father goes out to work every day, her mother teaches her about life…and the dissecting of body parts.



Yeah, that’s a cow’s head and yes, they are dissecting it. Specifically, the eyes….which is weird.

So, life is good on the farm with Francesca and her mother and father until one day while her father is at work, a strange man named Charlie(Brill) comes to the farm.



He convinces her mother to allow him to come into the house and use the bathroom, which goes very bad very quickly. He pulls a gun on her and takes her into the bathroom, leaving Francesca in the kitchen.


Sometime later, Francesca’s father comes home to find Charlie beating his wife to death. So he does what any husband would do in such a situation. He knocks him unconscious and chains him up in the barn.



After Charlie’s been in the barn for a while, screaming his head off, Francesca decides to go visit Charlie in his makeshift prison and after proclaiming to him that he was her only friend, she does what any of us would do when in a room with the man who murdered our mother might do; She removes his vocal chords and sews his eyes shut.




Okay, so years go by and adult Francesca(Magalhes) is still taking care of Charlie in the barn. Her father also dies, but that’s okay because she decides to preserve his body.



Yup.

Now that both her parents are dead, Francesca’s feeling lonely. So, she heads down to the local bar and picks up a woman and brings her back to her house.



So, Francesca and her date, Kimiko(Wong) are having a chat with one another that goes something like:

K: “So, this is a nice place.”

F: “It was my parents.”

K: “That’s cool. Where are they now?”

F: “Mom was murdered and I killed my dad.”

K: “Haha, that’s funny.”

F: …


As you can imagine, Kimiko picks up pretty quick that she just walked right into a murderer’s house. She tries to leave, but, sadly, Francesca murders her and chops her up.

Sometime after, Francesca buries her father’s remains and mourns his death and, more importantly, her loneliness. She then decides to bring Charlie in from the barn. She bathes him and brings him up to her room to sleep for the night.

Well, as you can imagine, Charlie uses that opportunity to try to escape. He only gets a few yards from the house before Francesca realizes that he’s gone and goes after him. Upon finding him, she stabs him to death and -- here’s the shocking part -- finds she really likes stabbing him to death.



OOooh-kay, class. You with me so far? Good.

All right, Francesca is distraught because she’s really alone now. She wanders through the woods and onto the highway until a truck comes by and sees her and offers her a lift back home. She takes it.

The driver is a nice woman with her infant son. She drops her off and Francesca asks to hold her baby, just for a minute.

You see where this is going, right?

First chance she gets, Francesca runs back to the house with the baby. The mother chases her and gets lured into a room where Francesca comes up behind her and stabs her. Then she does what anyone would do if their parents were dead and they were feeling kind of lonely. She drags the woman to the barn, chains her up, removes her vocal cords and sews her eyes shut AND raises the baby as her own.



Fast forward a few more years. Little Antonio(Curtis-Green) is now around school age. He doesn’t know that his birth mother is chained up in the barn. In fact, he thinks that Francesca is his mother. Francesca is as happy as a clam raising Antonio while keeping his birth mother chained up in the barn like The Gimp in Pulp Fiction.

Everything is great until little Antonio sneaks out of the house to take a peek at what’s in the barn. Horrified, he asks his mother who the woman is and why she’s there. Francesca scolds him for disobeying her instead of explaining…see, she told him never to go in the barn.



Okay, so, a little more time goes on and Antonio gets up in the middle of the night and unlocks the barn door. His mother finds her way out and escapes.

When Francesca finds her gone the next morning, she panics, but chills herself out, convinced that no one is going to find her anyway. She digs up her mom and starts telling her how much she misses and such. When she comes back, she sees police cars.

See, Antonio’s mom got as far as the road where she was found by a trucker. Yeah. And they called the cops because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you find a woman with no vocal cords and her eyes sewed shut in the middle of a highway.



With the cops closing in, Francesca runs back to the house and wakes up Antonio. She tells him how much she loves him and to not believe any of the things that people might tell him about her. Just as she gets him out of bed, the cops break in and we hear a gunshot.



And they all live happily ever after.

Okay, class, so what did we learn? I would say that when raising children one should always foster a healthy imagination and take an active role in educating your offspring about the world. That education, however, probably shouldn’t include anything involving dissecting a cow’s head and imprisoning and mutilating someone for several years.

As far as what rating I give this one: Jewel, all the way. All things considered, it was very rough around the edges, but the story was pretty solid. I also liked it that much of the gore was implied, yet I kept getting the feeling that there was a lot more than what I was seeing. 



So, next week’s movie? Fear Clinic starring Robert Englund and Fiona Dourif. I have a feeling I’m gonna like this one no matter what.



O~
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Sunday, November 4, 2018

Exorci Triple Feature




Hidey-ho, everyone. I’ll bet you’ve been wondering where I’ve been. Well, I’ve been stuck doing this:



Oh, what’s that, you ask? That is about four straight days of pure unadulterated hell. It’s my database class, my supposed easy A class. Boy, was I wrong.

But that’s just four days, you say? Yeah, I’ve been caught up doing other more pleasant things. May I take this moment to announce that I will be turning this blog into a YouTube Channel!



That’s right. At some point(hopefully, soon) you will see a link to my new channel in place of my blog entries, aptly titled “Will Twerk for Horror Movies”. I do hope you enjoy it.

Now, for the task at hand. As promised, this week, I’ll be reviewing the Exorcist series. Now, before I said that I have only seen the last two Exorcists, but as it turns out, I hadn’t actually seen part three. So that means that this SHOULD be a triple feature. It’s not though. It’s only a double. I’ll explain as we go.



First up, The Exorcist III starring George C. Scott, Brad Dourif, Ed Flanders (no relation to Ned) and Jason Miller, Nicol Williamson.



The third installment takes place some fifteen years after the first one and begins with Detective Kinderman(Scott) a grisly, curmudgeonly cop who clearly excelled at philosophy at the academy. He spends much of the movie switching between proverbs and grouchy old manspeak while investigating the murder of a 12-year-old boy.


Kinderman has a bestie, Father Dyer(Flanders) who is just as grouchy, but also religious. The two of them go to see their favorite movie together, which happens to be It’s A Wonderful Life. Soon thereafter, a priest is decapitated, and Father Dyer is called to investigate.

The murder bears a striking resemblance to the work of a serial killer who went by the name of “Gemini” killer. Unfortunately, that guy was executed. Leaving Kinderman to believe that this may be the work of a copycat.



Shortly after that, Father Dyer is hospitalized and then murdered. Kinderman again suspects it’s the work of the Gemini killer or at least someone who’s out to get him, because this time, the killer leaves him a little love note.



At this point, Kinderman starts to put some pieces together, like the victims being marked with the Gemini symbol and certain fingers being chopped off, etc and so forth. During all that, he gets wind a mysterious psychiatric patient who claims to be the Gemini Killer. Kinderman is doubtful, but he goes to the psych hospital anyway to check it out.

Oh, wait, wait. I almost forgot. There's a weird dream sequence where Kinderman sees his bestie in heaven. Which is more like a train station...of sorts?


Anyway, that's not what's weird. What's weird is...well...






I don't know why Fabio and Patrick Ewing were tapped for cameos in this movie, but...yeah, moving on.



The patient (Dourif, then Miller, then later Dourif again) tells him that yes, he is the killer AND he killed Father Dyer AND yes, he does kind of look like his old friend Father Karras (From the first movie. The young priest that bought it on the stairs at the end), not that he knows who that is.



We need to take a minute to comment on Dourif’s acting in these scenes. He comes off as positively chilling in his delivery. It was captivating.

So, Father Kinderman is not getting with the program that something supernatural is going on here. He’s convinced that the patient is just crazy and is somehow getting out of his padded cell to kill people. While he’s trying to figure that out, the doctor overseeing his care and a nurse are killed.



Kinderman goes back to Gemini who tells him that way back in the day there was this kid that was possessed and Father Karras managed to get the spirit out of her, but then, he put the spirit of the Gemini Killer in him when he died and now, NOW, he’s pulling the whole Denzel Washington in Fallen routine and inhabiting the bodies of the elderly and senile to commit his heinous crimes. Oh, and hey, hey, don’t you have a family?

Kinderman realizes that Gemini is planning to hurt his family by sending a kindly little old lady to his house. Fortunately, he reaches the house just in time to save his daughter and wife.



Meanwhile, Father Morning – a priest from the Vatican, tracks down the Gemini guy and tries the whole “The Power of Christ Compels You” routine. Unfortunately, he gets his butt handed to him. Gemini would still by kicking Father Morning’s butt if not for Kinderman, who rushes in just in time to save the day.



Kinderman gets thrown around the room himself for a while before Father Morning tells Father Karras to “Fight him”. That works, just long enough for the real Father Karras to look up at Kinderman and beg him to set him free. Kinderman does what any of us would do for our besties in such situations. He shoots him in the head.

And they all live happily ever after.



Okay, so next in the series is The Exorcist: The Beginning starring Bill and Alexander’s dad Stellan Skarsgard, Izabella Scorupco, James D’Arcy, Ben Cross (fangirl scream), Julian Wadham and Alan Ford.

So, this one takes place during the forties. Specifically, right after World War II. Father Lankester Merrin (Skarsgard) is called to Africa after a strange underground church has been unearthed.

And yes, that’s the same Father Merrin from the very first movie. See, this story follows the first time he finds Pazuzu – the evil demon that possessed Regan in the first movie.


So, Father Merrin begins this story as a disillusioned priest. When he was in Germany, you see, Nazi’s forced him to murder ten villagers in order to save the entire village. Needless to say, it shook his faith a little bit. So, he leaves the church to study archeology in East Africa. There, he runs into a mysterious antique dealer (Cross) who gives him a small idol and tells him about this archeological dig that he needs to check out. Father Merrin says okay, and the dealer tells him where to go.



Pause for a moment to acknowledge one of my childhood crushes. Here’s something that only the nerds of a certain age know. Ben Cross played a pretty sweet Barnabas Collins in the short-lived Dark Shadows remake back in the nineties.



*swoon*

So, anyway, Father Merrin goes to the dig, but not before being joined by Father Francis(D’Arcy), a priest sent by the Vatican because of the rumors of what might lie at the dig. He’s also waaay too attractive to be in this movie, but, I digress.



When he gets there, we get a whole Mousketeer Roll Call of characters. There’s Major Granville(Wadham), the chief excavator, Jeffries(Ford) who is in desperate need of a bath and some ProActiv, and the love interest doctor, Sarah Novak(Scorupco) – who spent some time in a concentration camp and, like Merrin, has issues because of what happened to her.

Oh, and there’s the translator, Chuma who’s there to…translate.



So, Chuma tells Merrin that men have been disappearing by the truckloads. Some have legit disappeared, but others have left because the locals have been telling people the site is cursed. Shortly after finding that out, a digger has a seizure. A demon seizure.

Merrin gets to the actual site to find that a large dome of an ancient church has been uncovered. He climbs in through the top with Father Hotpants and finds that the church is beautifully preserved…except for a couple of weird things. For one, the angel statues have swords and are pointed downwards. Father Merrin points out that normally if angel statues are armed, the swords point towards heaven. He suggests that it means that the angels are trying to restrain something.



The second and most important detail that they notice is that the large crucifix in the sanctuary has been ripped out of its base and hung upside down. Father SweetThang suggests vandals, but Merrin is doubtful – for obvious reasons.

This piques Merrin’s interest so he seeks out the lead archeologist of the dig. Sarah tells him that he went nuts and was carted off to an asylum. Merrin, who still wants to get to know the guy even after seeing the crazy stuff in the tent he left behind, goes to said asylum to get answers.



So, he meets up with the lead archeologist who he quickly discovers is really not okay. He’s got a swastika carved on his chest and, AND, he’s talking in the voice of the Nazi commander that tormented Merrin all those years ago. Then, he talks about how he’s free and slits his throat…you know, as the possessed tend to do.

When Merrin asks the head doctor about him, the doctor tells him that he wasn’t possessed at all. He was just “touched” by a demon and that’s what drove him crazy. Merrin’s like…huh. That’s interesting. The head doctor gives him the standard “How to exorcise a demon” handbook, just in case.



Merrin returns to the site and finds weird stuff happening. For one thing, Hyenas seem to be circling the site…which is odd in any circumstance, but things get ramped up when hyenas attack and murder a boy in front of his younger brother. The younger brother gets sick soon after and then, possessed, because that’s when happens in Exorcist movies.
But then, THEN, the chief of the village’s wife goes into labor and gives birth to a maggot infested stillborn baby. Ew.

Merrin also discovers a passageway that leads to a pagan ritual site where people were sacrificed. He also finds…



That’s right! A statue of Pazuzu!

When he returns and learns that the stillborn baby was cremated, he starts to think back to when he first got to the site…and the fact that there were lots of gravestones…that were supposedly the villagers…the villagers that don’t bury their dead. You see where I’m going with this.

So, he goes to the grave site and starts digging up one of the graves under the watchful eye of demon hyenas. Lo and Behold, no bodies.



He confronts Father Sexyman about this new development and is told that the real reason the father was sent there was because about 1,500 years ago there was a great army who arrived at a site that was considered the origin of evil. The evil of the site caused everyone to kill each other except for one priest. The priest made it back to Rome and told the Emperor what happened. The emperor had a church built there and immediately had it buried to seal in the evil. The story was never recorded in the Vatican reference except vaguely in a few sealed records. That reference was found in the 1800s and four priests came out to investigate with some tribesmen. Needless to say, everybody disappeared. The Vatican ordered the fake graveyard to be built and told everyone that it was a plague that wiped them all out.



Uh-huh. So.

When the British stumbled on the site, the Vatican sent Father Yummythighs to see if there was any truth to the legend. You see, the Vatican believed that the site was the place where Lucifer fell from heaven.



So, while all this is going on, the devil has been messing with Dr. Sarah in a bunch of messed up ways. When Merrin goes to look for her, she’s gone. He finds her in the church where he finds she’s been possessed. In an epic showdown that ends up in the pagan temple in the passageway under the church, Merrin defeats the demon and escapes as the church is buried once again under the earth.



He returns to the antique dealer who asks him if he found anything interesting. Father Merrin, who now wears his collar, tells him Nope and walks away, renewed his faith.

And they all live happily ever after.

So, the fifth Exorcist movie isn’t even worth mentioning, really, but here we go. I promise I’ll make this quick.



The Exorcist: Dominion Prequel to the Exorcist starring Bill and Alexander’s dad Stellan Skarsgard, Gabriel Mann, Clara Bellar, Billy Crawford, and Julian Wadham.

I could sit here and go over the summary with you, but I’m just gonna save us all some time and tell you that this movie was the same. Damn. Movie.



Same Plot. Same lead actor. Just not good. Kind of like what I imagine purgatory to be. Like real life, just a little worse and a lot more racist.

So, a few points. Father Cutie-pie is now played by Gabriel Mann, who, to his credit, is not ugly, but…well…he's all right.



Dr. Sarah Novak is now Dr. Rachel Lesno(Bellar). There’s no Ben Cross (Fangirl boo) and instead of the local boy becoming possessed, the local leper(Crawford) gets possessed. The leper who’s not African? Not sure why he’s of lighter skin than the locals and they don’t explain it. Is he British? If he’s British, why aren’t the British taking care of him? Is he albino?



I’m not screaming racism here, folks and I’m not normally a stickler for historical accuracy, but here’s the thing. It’s 1940s Africa among the tribal nations. Why is a random white guy among them? Was he dropped off by the British because he’s a leper? More importantly, why did they trade him in for the little boy in the last movie? Is he somehow more sympathetic than an innocent little boy? Such casting decisions deserve some explanation. Particularly since the locals don’t mess with him. Is it because he’s white or a leper? 

But wait! It gets worse! The hyenas. Oh, my dear lord, the hyenas.



I mean, come on! They were part bad photoshop and part 1970s Jaws shark. I mean, jeez, SOME effort would have been nice.

So, it’s the same story except…well, bad. Just bad. Just really, really not good. Bad like sour milk bad. They unintentionally made a parody of the previous movie.

So, all that being said, what’s the verdict?

Well, Exorcist III and IV both get jewels. They were just very well done with traces of the original all through them. Fine acting, decently thought-out plot, and overall, way better than expected for sequels.



The last one? Oh, you already know.



So, next week we’re back in the groove with “The Eyes of My Mother”. As usual, I have no expectations, but the cover looks promising.


O~
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