Thanksgiving Scene: Night Of The Demons (1988)

Like last year, I intended to watch a good deal of horror movies on my inlaws' FearNet, but without my wingman, I wasn't able to keep myself up long enough to get through anything other than Night Of The Demons on Thanksgiving night. NOTD focuses on a bunch of kids who decide to have a Halloween party in an old mausoleum. As you would expect, there's a demon in the house who starts inhabiting the teens. It's not a great movie and probably one better watched with a group of people as it has plenty of hilarious lines and tons of bad acting. I will say that the directing and special effects are pretty solid though. So, maybe with a better cast, this would be a better movies. Oh well, hit the jump for the live blog.

*Pretty sure I haven't seen this one before. Checking it out on the inlaws' FearNet, I didn't even know it was still around. Too bad they don't have wireless here.

*This is ANOTHER movie with a kid hiding in his sister's closet while she changes only to scare her. THAT'S NOT OKAY!!!

*The meathead boyfriend is pretty hilarious. As is his interaction with Judy's brother.

*Woah, that is definitely a nice ass bending over in the convenience store while her friends steals shit. Like, TONS of shit. I think there's also a girl showing her boyfriend exactly which kinds of pads she likes to buy. Hilarious.

*Damn, that ass's face isn't too hot.

*It's fun watching a horror movie actually set on Halloween. I can think of the Halloween flicks and Trick r Treat. Maybe I just haven't seen a lot.

*"Are you dating her for her personality? Because she has big cha-chas." - Judy's little brother. Are all little brothers obsessed with their sister's boobs? Damn, this kid is annoying. I'm hoping for a graphic evisceration.

*I'm also hoping for some pretty terrible stuff to happen to the ass in the pig nose.

*This feels a lot like The Funhouse actually. I think that's the movie with the kid hiding in his sister's closet. You've also got the set-up with two couples meeting up to go somewhere. I know that's not a lot in common, but it's still there.

*Haha, I know it's lame, but the car with what I assume our heroes in it pulling up to the stranded pig-man car (his name is apparently Stooge, ugh) and asking "Need a hand?" and then clapping had me chuckling.

*Wow, this is one of the worst bits of exposition explaining the crematorium they're using "Biggest one in four counties." What a weird bit of information to know. Are there stats? Also "I can't believe we're partying here."

*"A brick wall on top of an underground stream? That's a feat of engineering genius." "Ghosts can't move over running water." They're really mainlining you information.

*Though I like that it's set on Halloween night, it doesn't really feel like Halloween. Though, to be fair, the Halloween presented in ET seemed completely foreign to me too. I had no clue people trick or treated in the day. We only ever went at night.

*Wow, these guys are NOT good actors.

*Oh man, I should see if Rob wants a "best/worst parties in horror movies" list for TR. In this one, they party to a song about computer dating.

*I just noticed that, like TrT, most of the girls in this are dressed like fairy tale characters: Alice in Wonder Land, Peter Pan (?), the Wicked Witch (?) and whatever the girl in the pink is supposed to be.

*LISTEN TO THE BLONDE GIRL WHO DOESN'T WANT TO MESS WITH GHOSTS IN A PLACE WHERE THEIR BODIES WERE KEPT.

*I actually kicked around the idea of having a similar party in run down building near where we went to college, but after walking through it on a highway cleanup and realizing there weren't any floors, decided it would be a bad idea. Also, we would have been caught in a second as, like I mentioned, it was on the highway.

*Something weird happened when Stooge chased the black guy into the other room. I'm guessing bad touching.

*GAH, why does FearNet run commercials? Especially for Ninja Assassin? That hardly makes sense, but I do want to see this movie. That was a pretty long commercial.

*Now they're doing something called a "past life seance."

*Woah, the demon thing in the mirror was pretty creepy. Why are they angry at the chick who noticed the mirror was falling. That was the slowest mirror fall I've ever seen.

*Shooting the scene through the broken pieces of mirror on the floor with the cast all lined up in just the right spots was pretty rad.

*Uh oh, there's a giant vault in the basement. I'm guessing they'll foolishly open that and then die. Nope, the demon opened it himself.

*Oh, cool. The demon's invisible, but they can hear something and spell something. Now it's in pinkie.

*Stooge just called his mom his old lady, but that's supposed to be your chick. Old man is your dad. took me a while to get that straight in my head.

*Goth girl is trying SO HARD to deliver her lines about the house being possessed and what the difference between possessed and haunted is, but it's just not working.

*Hey kids, here's a tip, when someone at your party in a possessed house has a sudden change in voice, it's probably a good idea to bounce.

*Sorry Canadian Tuxedo dude, but demon possessed pink chick would rather do Stooge. It's probably for the better. Oh wait, she seemingly possessed Goth Girl, so you should be good while the two couples go off and explore.

*Haha, now one of the kids is talking about how this place has been haunted since the early settlers were around.

*I kind of want to punch the obvious Final Girl (Judy) in the face. She's awful.

*Uh oh, the black guy and the Goddess chick are trapped in. She thinks they've all died and are in hell. He's looking for the gate. Ah, her name is Helen and now she's disappeared.

*Aw, Jay left Judy in a room after she shot him down.

*Yeesh, Pinkie (Suzanne) looks pretty terrible all possessed and what not. Sorry Stooge, you might be getting fucked, but it's not in the good way.

*Anyone that ever says something like "I've never had sex in a casket before" and doesn't finish it with "and I never ever want to" can't be friends with me. Sorry.

*Suzanne pushing the lipstick into her nipple is pretty crazy.

*The Suzanne demon's voice sounds like Dr. Claw. The effect of her squeezing Don Johnson kid's eyes out was pretty cool.

*Feels like the shit is finally hitting the fan. Pretty much everyone is either dead, a demon or knows there are demons. Cool.

*I like this concept of the demons not having a full run of the house. Since they have physical bodies, they can't just float through walls. Though, that doesn't really explain how the gate disappeared or how seriously locked the door is (though, really, it could just be locked from the outside).

*Judy's mini freak out after getting attacked by the severed arm in the room with the dead versions of the people boning in the coffin is hilarious because she's a terrible actress and so are the people popping out of the coffin and awkwardly moaning and sorta kinda grabbing after her.

*This movies seems pretty well directed and written, but the acting is just craptastic.

*Canadian Tuxedo went out like a champ man. Gah, just let Judy fall black guy and save yourself.

*Hey, Sal's last name is Romero, creative. Since the grave popped up they seemingly can alter reality. I'm surprised his last name wasn't Raimi with all the steady cam shots and pancake makeup ghosts. If we're going to reference our references, lets at least be honest about it.

*Uh oh, Judy wants to open the big giant vault door that the demon phased through. This could be really good or really effing bad. Oh God, it's the crematorium.

*Why do the demons have vampire teeth? Wait, why can't the demons just ghost through the door and possess them?

*Haha, how come Halloween ends at dawn and not midnight? Also, this feels very much like April Fool's Day with the whole "AFD ends at noon on April 2nd thing or whatever.

*Haha, I love how instead of warning Judy, Roger just bolts anytime bad stuff happens around them.

*Looks like everyone's a zombie demon thing now.

*Haha, this time Roger just leaps through a window. Gotta love this guy.

*Yeesh, thy've got to climb up barbed wire to get up the wall.

*Roger, maybe it's time to cut your losses and make a break for it. Aw, good for him, he came back for her even though she's being pawed at.

*How the hell do you explain this to your friends' parents who are now missing children?

*Also, hey, the black guy made it through a movie!

*Haha, what?! What a weird ending. We go back to the old guy who said the kids were going to hell earlier (I think it was to Judy who was actually trying to help him with something). Anyway, his wife cooks an apple pie that he had put razor blades in, then, as his throat rips open she says "Happy Halloween." Hun wha???? It was a great effect though.
Oh, DO go on.

NYC & LA Movie Marathon: 7 Movies From Both Cities

I watch a LOT of movies. More so than usual since I'm unemployed/work from home. Netflix really has become my closest friend which is both sad and technologically impressive. Anyway, I like to watch movies or shows while I work on freelance, which means I'm not always giving them 100% of my attention, but enough to do a series of mini-reviews. I've been trying to figure out some thematic similarities between the movies I've been watching (like the otherwise unrelated Dr. Horrible and Angel of Death from the other day). It wasn't until I was watching Last Action Hero today which takes place in both New York City and Los Angeles that I realized that a big chunk of the movies I've watched recently are set in one or the other. So, what the hell? Even though they're mostly unrelated, here's a look at seven movies I've watched in the last few weeks set in these places. Hit the jump for the incredibly entertaining reviews.

First up, New York, both because it's a place I'm semi-familiar with and it contains the movie I watched first.

F/X (1986)
As long time United Monkees know, I watched F/X 2 a little over a year ago and had a great time with it. It was a fun little action movie that didn't seem to take itself too seriously and had fun with the concept. The original is a bit more straightforward and intense that I was expecting, with Cocktail's Bryan Brown taking on an assignment from the government to make it look like a mobster (Jerry Orbach) gets killed so he can testify. Turns out he gets double crossed and things go downhill from there. Brian Dennehy still stars as the one guy trying to help Brown's character and the two team-up to take out the bad guys and win the day, using plenty of Brown's special effects tricks. It's a cool movie, but definitely not as fun as the sequel.

RIGHTEOUS KILL (2008)
Not only do Righteous Kill and F/X share a common setting in the form of NYC, but they also share something in the form of awesome actor Brian Dennehy. In this case he plays lieutenant to Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. This review absolutely contains SPOILERS, so if you don't want the movie ruined, skip to The Muppets Take Manhattan. Anyway, the whole plot of this movie revolves around De Niro's seeming confession to being this killer of guys who fall through the cracks of the criminal justice system. We even have video footage of him confessing. But, it turns out that the video is Pacino making him read his (Pacino's) diary. See, throughout the movie, they're only referred to by their nicknames, so when De Niro reads a real name, we don't actually know who it is. I found the twist to be a fairly interesting one that would probably make sense on further viewings (less High Tension and more Usual Suspects). Personally I liked watching these two veterans working together in a fairly tight script that brings in the talents of 50 Cent, Dennehy, John Leguizamo, Donnie Wahlberg and Carla Gugino. Definitely worth the NetBox watch in my opinion.

THE MUPPETS TAKES MANHATTAN (1984)
I must admit, I'm not a huge Muppets fan. That's not to say I don't like them, I just don't have the history with them that a lot of people my age seem to. My only childhood memory of them is from Muppet Babies. After that? The video they did with Weezer. So, it was kind of on a whim that I watched The Muppets Take Manhattan on NetBox and I had a great time with it. The story follows Kermit and the Muppet gang who are fresh out of college (seems like that would make a great movie premise itself) and taking their show to New York to get it on Broadway. After several failed attempts to get the show made, Kermit kind of blows up at his friends who all decide he would be better off if they told him they got other jobs and moved away. This leaves Kermit in NYC, working in a diner and still trying to get the show made. He, of course, succeeds eventually, only to get in an accident that leaves him with amnesia and taking a job as an ad exec, Mad Men-style. I had a ridiculous amount of fun watching this flick and trying to figure out if I'd ever been to the parts of the city Kermit was walking around (I'm guessing so, though the place has changed quite a bit in 25 years). I also really enjoyed the flashback that spawned Muppet Babies. It made a lot of things make sense. Now, I've got to check out the rest of the movies.

KRUSH GROOVE (1985)
Holy crap, I loved this movie. I just watched it today (well, yesterday at this point in the early morning) and had so much fun with it. See, it's a fictionalized history of Def Jam records back in the 80s, but starring a ton of their artists like Run-DMC, the Fat Boys, LL Cool J, Kurtis Blow, Rick Rubin, Sheila E., the Beastie Boys and New Edition among others. I only really started exploring hip hop within the last five or six years, but that exploration has heavily included Run-DMC and the Beasties. I also had a couple Fat Boys tapes back when I was a kid (I'm guessing around the time they got huge, musically speaking, because I vaguely recognized a track or two in the movie from those tapes). That combined with my fairly recent viewing of VH1's 2009 Hip Hop Honors which focused on Def Jam really made this movie interesting for me. There's a lot going on in a fairly limited amount of time, but I feel like the director did a good job of balancing the main storyline of Run-DMC thinking of jumping form the Krush Groove label and the B-story of the Fat Boys trying to make it big. If you're interested in early hip hop at all, this is a must-watch flick. I was also surprised to find out that director Michael Shultz also directed past UM reviewed movie Car Wash and a few movies I didn't get around to reviewing like the epic Last Dragon (SO awesome) and Cooley High (surprisingly depressing).

New York To LA and Back

LAST ACTION HERO (1993)
The movie that inspired this entire entry starts off with a kid in NYC who loves Arnold Schwarzenegger movies getting sucked into movie-LA and eventually bringing the fictional Jack Slater back into the real world. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I really loved this movie. I remember watching it with my grandparents back around the time it came out on video and thinking it was kind of dumb. But, see, now I've seen most of the movies it tries to spoof and had a much better time with it (I'm guessing my grandparents also thought it was dumb, but I bet they never said anything). The kid calls out all kinds of late-80s, early-90s action movie cliches, trying to convince Slater that he's living in a movie. What I like is that all aspects of the story are interesting and I guess the credit for that goes to world renowned scriptwriter William Goldman (whose book of scripts including Butch & Sundance, Misery, Marathon Man & The Princess Bride is sitting mostly unread on my shelf) who came in and did a rewrite after Arnold insisted on it. Credit should also be given to Die Hard and Predator director John McTiernan who did a great job of mixing the comic and action elements. Sure, the kid's acting can be a bit thin at times and maybe over-the-top, but I think it works, especially (maybe only) if you're a fan of these kinds of movies. Oh, it also features a cartoon cat voiced by Danny Devito, how can you go wrong?!

Now On To LA

SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (1991)
After watching several movies about cops getting new partners (Dragnet, The Rookie, Lethal Weapon (the latter two soon to be reviewed on their own), it's funny how similar they end up. This one has dandy Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee teaming up to take down crime in LA's Little Tokyo. Soon enough, something minor leads them to something huge and our heroes have to put a stop to it. I'll be honest, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to this one, but I still enjoyed the weird aesthetic of it. See, Lundgren loves Asian culture, while Lee only knows martial arts because his mom made him take lessons and otherwise doesn't care. When I was a kid I always got this one confused with Big Trouble In Little China. That doesn't really mean anything, I guess. On another note, Wayne's World's Tia Carrere also stars in this movie. On another nother note, the director Mark L. Lester also directed the more-fun Class of 1999 and Commando.

ALIEN NATION (1988)
Hey, guess what? I've had a surprising amount of luck watching movies lately. Case in point? Alien Nation. I added a few sci-fi movies including this one a while ago and decided to give this one a shot. I remember seeing the TV series randomly syndicated when I was a kid watching late-night TV but had never seen the movie, which stars James Caan and Chicago Hope's Mandy Patinkin. Kind of like V, Alien Nation is based around an alien race that is welcomed to earth and begins to be integrated into society, though basic stereotypes still exist. These aliens were bread to be slaves though. Like with Showdown, this movies focuses on cop Caan being saddled with Newcomer (that's what they call the aliens) Patinkin. As the two learn about each other, they find out about a much bigger plot to addict the Newcomers to drugs and have to put a stop to it. I really liked James Caan in this flick. I guess I haven't seen him in too many things, but I liked his every man approach. I haven't seen a ton of his movies, but this made me want to do so. It also made me add the TV series to my Netflix queue, though I was it was on instant watch. I don't have incredibly high hopes because it got canceled after one season, but it did spawn a number of TV movies. Anyone familiar with them?

So, that ends my cinematic tour of NYC and LA, though I'm sure I'll see another movie or two set in one of those places before the end of the week. I've enjoyed my brief stay and wish I would have taken more pictures, but what are you gonna do?
Oh, DO go on.

I Kind Of, Sort Of Liked The G.I. Joe Movie

In an interesting twist of fate, I had just found out I was getting the DVD for G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra (2009) from Netflix the very same day we recorded the podcast for War Rocket Ajax. Those of you who have listening to it might remember the long conversation that some of the guys, including my buddy and Topless Robot honcho Rob went back and forth about the ridiculousness of the movie. And yeah, it was ridiculous. Like Rob said, this is the world's greatest fighting force and they send only a handful of guys to defend Paris. But, like I said, I kind of liked it.

Now, please understand, this isn't a great movie. I'm not even sure it's good, but I had a good enough time watching it. When I was a kid I loved G.I. Joe. I remember watching the cartoon, but that's not where my memories come from. Those would be from the toys. I had a pretty good number of action figures, vehicles and playsets all of which I would spread across my living room floor and play with for hours. We also had a fireplace made up of individual rocks, so that was the perfect place for some epic battles as well. Anyway, seeing as how all the toys (or guys as I used to call them) were tossed into a shoe box, I didn't really know what their names were and I played with them long past when the cartoon was done, so they were just "the Cobra Viper who's painted orange and blue" and "the guy with the beret." I would also play with my older cousin's Joes when I would visit my Grandma in Cleveland (as well as his Transformers), so there were even more characters I played with but didn't really know.

All of this is a roundabout way to say that I don't really have a connection to the Joes as characters. In fact, the three most recent incarnations I've encountered were the animated movie (SO weird), the Devil's Due comic World War III (fantastic) and the first trade of the Marvel comics (boring). So, even now, my experience with the characters is pretty much "Cobra Commander is an ass," "Destro makes weapons," and "Snake-Eyes doesn't talk, also likes guns and swords." That's a way of saying that I didn't care that the characters probably didn't line up with their animated and comic counterparts. That doesn't mean that I liked the idea of all the characters being inexplicably linked to each other in complicated ways. Duke used to date Baroness. The eventual Cobra Commander is Baroness' brother. Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes knew each other as kids (that's in the comics though, right?). I remember there also being talk of there being a romantic relationship between Scarlet and Snake-Eyes, but I didn't really notice it in the movie. Oh and of course Ripcord had a thing for Scarlett (though who wouldn't?).

The action scenes were fun and over the top. That's the kind of craziness I like. Heck, I even dug the accelerator suit chase scenes. Maybe it's because I went into this movie expecting absolutely nothing and knew I wasn't going to get insulted like some nerds do, but for the most part I liked it. Having watched it about a week or two back, I can honestly say that it has mellowed better than Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. I liked Transformers 2 while watching it, I've had a lot more questions and concerns after watching it, but G.I. Joe still feels about the same.

Oh, one thing that did bug me about the story was the whole turn of character with the Baroness. It's too bad they wouldn't let her just be an awesome villain. Take out the nonsense linking her to Duke and Cobra Commander and you're fine, because you don't have to explain anything away (why she turned bad). She should have just been bad the whole time. So, not only did we get robbed of the potential awesomeness of Cobra Commander as a villain throughout the whole film, but we also get the Baroness taken away from us as a rad villainess. It's really too bad. Hopefully, screenwriters will start treating these propoerties like the rich source material they really are and make big action movies that are both fun and good. We shall see.

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Web-Based Shows On DVD: Dr. Horrible & Angel of Death

In an odd twist of fate, I watched two DVDs made up of material that was originally intended for the internet. First up, Em and I watched Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I remember when it was coming out online, but I wasn't really high on Whedon at that point because I didn't love Astonishing X-Men and I hadn't yet watched Firefly, so I didn't mind skipping it. But, after watching through Buffy all the way through again and really enjoying the Firefly/Serenity world, I put the DVD on our queue. Of course, after the slew of horror movies I watched in October, it got pushed back. Anyway, we finally watched it and both really liked it.

But really, this thing was designed for us to like it. It's written by Whedon and stars two guys from shows we both love: Neil Patrick Harris from How I Met Your Mother and Nathan Fillion from Castle and Firefly. Plus, there's singing, which Em loves. And superheroes which we're both fans of. So, yeah, you couldn't get much more inside our wheelhouse. I'm sure everyone's already seen it and I'm the last person on the planet to check it out, but I will say that the ending really surprised me. Here you think you're watching this fun, light goofy movie and then kablammo. I guess I should have expected it from Whedon (this is the guy who now has me looking at every horror scene and trying to figure out what the twist will be - the GIRL is the vampire, not the guy!). But still, wow. I didn't see that ending coming.

The other web-based movie I watched was Angel of Death and this one was completely random. I added the movie to my queue solely because Zoe Bell is in it and I find her incredibly attractive and she's an ass-kicker, so I figured it would be a good action movie, even though I wasn't familiar with it. And yeah, even though I didn't like Death Proof and I'm still not sure if I like her acting (I can't tell if her delivery is off just a tad or if it's just her accent), I was still excited. Then I popped the DVD in and it said "Ed Brubaker's Angel of Death" and I freaked out a little bit. I can't believe I haven't written more about Brubaker on this site, but his Captain America is one of the greatest long-term comic book series' of all time. You're doing yourself a disservice by not reading that comic.

So, I did a little searching online and remembered when this thing was coming out. I guess it was webisodes or whatever. But, watching it all together on the DVD, it really did feel like a movie instead of a serial. Plot-wise, you've got Bell playing a hitwoman who gets stabbed in the head and starts feeling bad about accidentally killing a little girl, so now she goes on a revenge kick killing the bad guys. I can't say I was paying 100% attention, but I didn't really have to. Aside from Bell, Doug Jones and Lucy Lawless were in it. Ted Raimi's also in it, but I honestly didn't see him. I really should pay more attention.

Anyway, I'm torn about the movie. It's nothing spectacular, though it LOOKS fantastic. Like I said, it doesn't feel like a web-based series (though neither does the Totally Rad Show podcast, so take that for what it's worth), but it also doesn't feel like the high caliber of story I'm used to from Brubaker. Maybe that's because his comics deal in genres that aren't as popular in comics as they are in movies. The noir thing is pretty common in films, but not comics. So, Bru writing a noir/70s-ish movie doesn't seem as groundbreaking as his comics. To be fair, though, I probably should give the disc another watch (I'm not going to now though).

I also watched a few of the special features on the DVD (there are a good number) which were kind of interesting. There's a whole feature about Bru which is cool, though listening to Bell call him a geek is both funny and a little cringeworthy. I also had a much more curmudgeonly view of Bru from my days at Wizard, though he was incredibly nice the time I talked to him for a big Captain American retrospective Wizard did about three years back. I guess you just assume he's grim and gritty because he does that so well, but in the doc he comes off as a dude whose dream is coming true by being able to jump from comics to movies and I certainly can't blame him. As a hopeful comic writer myself (I've finally getting some outlines together for submissions) he's absolutely one of my heroes and I can only hope for a career (if it happens) even remotely similar to his. Well done Ed!

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Thunderballin'

Have I mentioned how gigantic of a James Bond fan I am? Probably somewhere. For Christmas last year I bought myself and my dad the at-the-time full set of James Bond DVDs (Quantum of Solace wasn't out yet). Being a gigantic nerd, I took the individual box sets, which have a DVD from each era, and organized them chronologically. I've been watching them in order, though I skipped over Goldfinger because I've seen it the most. Last week, while working on a ton of freelance (which is the reason I haven't been posting as much these past couple days), I popped Thunderball (1965) in and enjoyed the hell out of it.

Here's what I like in my Bond movies: Bond being awesome (check), bodacious babes (check) and crazy gadgets (check). So, as you can probably tell, Thunderball fit the bill perfectly. There's a frickin' jet pack and a car that sprays oncomers like a firehose. The plot follows SPECTRE's attempts to steal a jet with two nukes on it (which they succeed at). From there, they try to bribe the governments of the world and it's up to Bond and his cohorts to put a stop to them.

I can't say for sure whether I've seen Thunderball before, though I do think I tried to watch it recently and turned if off for some reason because the first 20 minutes were really familiar. Anyway, you can tell that Thunderball was a huge influence on the Austin Powers movies. You get the big, huge evil organization meeting with the white-suited leader at the head of the table (kind of, he's really on a raised platform with a divider covering most of his body), the bad guys going by numbers (Number 2 is the main bad guy of the movie who tussles with Bond) and of course, the numbered guy who pisses Blofeld off gets electrocuted and lowered into some mysterious under-chamber. I love that stuff. I understand that the Daniel Craig movies are more steeped in reality, like the Bourne movies, but I'm a sucker for the big, evil organizations and all the crazy gadgets. To me that's what a Bond movie should be.

Oh man, and the ladies are super hot in this one. There's a red headed villain whose name I didn't catch, but wowzers. Plus, you've got Claudine Auger as Domino, a sexy nurse giving Bond the business early on and, well, every other woman in the movie really. It's really kind of amazing what those casting directors did back in the mid 60s. True masters of their craft.

The radness doesn't stop there, of course. There's an underwater scene where all the good guys are fighting all the bad guys UNDERWATER! I can't think of another movie with a scene like that, but it's got to rank up with one of the best end-of-movie Bond brawls. There's also a cool scene earlier on in the movie where Bond goes to a meeting at MI-6 headquarters with all of the other Double O agents. We don't really get a look at them, but I thought it was cool that they would all meet up. The rest of the Double O agents seems like such an obvious mountain of story potential that the keeper's of the Bond flame have only mined a little bit. Maybe in the next one (which will also hopefully have a few more gadgets and old school spy fun).

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Up, Up and Well...Up

To say the missus was excited to finally watch Up is what we refer to as an understatement. Two weeks ago she asked me to put the DVD to the top of our Netflix Queue and I did. Then she repeatedly asked me about for the next two weeks, not knowing that the movie wasn't coming out til this week. I actually got an email sent to me on Monday saying it had been sent out so we could watch it on Tuesday, which we did.

And it was great. I know I'm not rocking anyone's world by saying that a Pixar movie that everyone in the world loved is good, but I think it might be my favorite Pixar movie. That being said, I don't know if I'll ever watch it again. This movie gets seriously sad you guys. The opening montage with Carl and Ellie was both beautiful and heartbreaking. Seriously, it hit me in the gut. Of course, this is a huge testament to how amazing the Pixar crew is at making these films. I can't remember feeling this way about anyone in a movie in a long time, whether starring people real or animated. Maybe ever. You'll want to give your lady or fella a hug

From there the movie made me laugh, feel tense and almost cry again later. Jerks. But seriously, this is a fantastic movie, but I'd probably watch Wall*E again before this because I don't like feeling super sad, which is the same reason I don't watch Finding Nemo on my own. Though those lobsters with the Boston accents are hilarious ("It was dahk, like WICKED dahk.") Hehe.

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Dragnet (1987)/Fletch Lives (1989) Double Feature

Today was a pretty busy day. I was thankfully so busy with freelance work that I still haven't had a chance to listen to the podcast I was on, nor was I able to go outside and enjoy the nearly 70-degree weather, but I was able to watch a few movies while I worked. I also got a chance to check out my brand new column on Maxim.com called We Like To Watch, which covers various TV shows you should check out. Anyway, the two movies I watched were Dragnet and Fletch Lives. I had never seen Dragnet before, but a few months ago I picked up a Tom Hanks 2-disc, 3-movie pack featuring Money Pit, The 'burbs and it. After seeing the video at the end of the review on Maxim.com I figured I'd finally give it a watch.

And man, this is a really weird movie (I should have guessed from the video), but I really enjoyed it. In addition to being a really funny movie (you've got prime Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd here), it also plays to my love of continuity. See, I'm not a fan of the original Dragnet, but I do appreciate that Aykroyd plays a relative of the original Joe Friday and that Harry Morgan reprises his role from the original series as now-Captain Gannon. By doing this they're not dumping on or forgetting the original and it fits in with the rest. Not every adaptation can work like this, but I like when it does (they did something similar with the Sam Jackson Shaft movie). This one turned out to be pretty long, so hit the jump for the whole thing.

Anyway, like I said this is a weird movie. Aykroyd and Hanks are on the trail of this group called P.A.G.A.N. (People Against Goodness And Normalcy) who...well, they're trying to do a bunch of bad stuff. I'll be honest, some of the finer details of the movie might have been lost on me while I was working, but I do know that a lot of dudes were dressed up in goat legs while the P.A.G.A.N. leader threw a woman in a big pool with a giant snake. From there, Aykroyd, who plays the super-uptight and by-the-book officer in LA, comes a bit undone as Hanks' loosened-up-ness rubs off and the case gets crazier and crazier.

One interesting thing about this movie is that it was co-written and directed by Tom Mankiewicz who mostly wrote more serious flicks like Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun along with uncredited runs on the scripts for both Superman and Superman II. Meanwhile, he directed one of my favorite comedies of all time Delirious. I think he's a big reason the movie has such a fun feel since he;s clearly comfortable in both the action and the funny. And now for the video, which hopefully won't make you want to NOT watch the movie. I give you Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd rapping:

I come by my love of the Fletch flicks and Chevy Chase honestly thanks to my dad. I distinctly remember renting both Fletches a number of times and watching with him. As I got older I bought both movies on DVD (and I think I might have had them on VHS too, but can't quite remember). The DVDs are pretty paltry and I can't believe they went with that weird cover for Fletch Lives with the snapshots instead of this hilarious and awesome poster painting here which I remember from the VHS cover.

Anyway, something about Dragnet made me think of Fletch Lives, I'm guessing it was the bigness of it and something about the P.A.G.A.N. "ritual" reminded me of R. Lee Ermey's Jimmy Lee Farnsworth shenanigans. Whatever the reason, I had a great time watching Fletch Lives as usual. I'm not sure if someone who's not a fan of Chase will like the movie, but I'm a huge fan of his characterization of Fletch, a man who uses words to get out of whatever crazy situation he finds himself in and comes out on top (eventually). Plus, he's a writer so I of course love that. He even makes grammar joke in this one!

The plot finds Fletch heading down south to take over the plantation house his recently deceased aunt left him. As you might expect, things aren't quite what they appear as Fletch runs into a Bible-themed theme park, someone who wants to buy his land, a dead girl he had sex with (before she died of course, this isn't Weekend At Bernie's) and the Ku Klux Klan. There's a lot going on with the story and I probably would have missed a lot of the details had I not seen the movie a bunch of times.

Seriously, if you haven't seen Fletch or Fletch Lives, just go do it. Right now. If I know, you can even borrow them. I like the movies so much I've gone on to read two of the Gregory McDonald books the movies were based on and have two more in my to read pile. On a completely different note, I found out that Fletch Lives director Michael Ritchie also produced and co-directed the weak slasher movie Student Bodies, which is pretty interesting.

You might notice that this post has a Saturday Night Live label on it. In addition to the fact the SNL alumns star in both of these movies, I also wanted to bring up one of the first things I ever noticed about the relationships between movies, actors and directors. That is that any movie starring a current or former SNL cast member usually has another one in at least a bit part. At first, from looking at the Dragnet credits, I thought my theory might have been busted, but it turns out that Dan's brother Peter not only had bit parts on SNL, he was also a writer. In Fletch Lives, Phil Hartman has a bit part as the man running a lab. So, as far as I'm considered, the theory still stands (but I haven't watched all of Chevy Chase's or Bill Murray's movies, which will surely kill my theory).
Oh, DO go on.

Tony Jaa Cameo Double Feature

Huh, I just realized that I took notes for an intended live blogging post about Tony Jaa's martial arts masterpiece The Protector (or Tom yum goong). I was going to link to it in this post about two movies I watched today with the intent of having a Jaa double feature. Instead, the two movies, Spirited Killer (or Plook mun kuen ma kah 4) (1994) and The Bodyguard (2004), but as it turns out, Jaa has very little screen time in either movie. I guess I should have put some of my world famous research skills to use. Interestingly enough, both movies were directed by Jaa's mentor Panna Rittikrai.

Anyway, even though Spirited Killer wasn't anything like what I was expecting it to be, it was still an entertaining movie. This is actually Jaa's first film and he plays a villager in the beginning of the film who, along with a few friends, tries to take out the local voodoo practitioner. He and his friends eventually succeed, but then the story jumps into an undesignated time in the future and Jaa's out of the picture. Now we're following a group of Japanese visitors to the Thai village who keep getting acosted by the Spirited Killer a seemingly invulnerable fighter in the woods outside the village. From there...there's lots of fighting.

When I say the movie wasn't what I was expecting, I don't just mean that Jaa wasn't in it for very long, I also mean that it's a fairly low budget movie. Unlike Ong-Bak or The Protector, we're not treated to tons of glossy locations and filming techniques, but instead get very raw footage, much of which doesn't match from cut to cut. It'll look like Texas Chainsaw Massacre footage at one point, then change to something with a strange orange wash to it. But all in all, I'd say the movie is worth checking out. The fight scenes aren't fantastic, but they are fun and you can see where Jaa and Rittikrai were coming from. Plus, the version I watched (a Netflix DVD) had a pretty funny dub and not funny in a bad way, but just really funny. Definitely worth watching with some friends and some beers.

The Bodyguard was also one hell of a funny movie. It's more of a "let's shoot the hell out of everything" movie instead of a "let's kick and punch the hell out of everything" one, which is okay, but I prefer the latter. In this one, Jaa's co-star and comic relief from Protector and Ong-Bak, Petchtai Wongkamlao gets the spotlight as a bodyguard whose charge gets killed, but only after he keeps him alive through a gigantic and highly complex assassination attempt (the entire orchestra at the event were in on it, I bet it was hard to find classically trained musicians who were also killers). The charge's son takes over and fires Wongkamlao, but the son's uncle puts a hit out on the son, so the uncle can be in charge. Now, both the son and Wongkamlao are on the run from the uncle's assassins, with the son holing up with a poor family.

What The Bodyguard lacks in punches and kicks, though, it more than makes up in laughs. Sure, some of them are cheap, but I don't care. The uncle has one guy in his entourage who continually wears crazy outfits (from a luchador-like get up to a Sumo wrestler's thong). He's the butt of the group and everyone makes fun of him, including the guy who appears to have Down's syndrome (Down's guy calls costume guy a retard at one point and threatens to kill him and I about lost my shit). There's also a scene where the mom of the family the son is staying with goes and plays cars with a circle of foul-mouthed ladies that had me as close to blushing as I've been in a while. Oh, and the negotiating scene is the funniest I've seen ever (note the doves when the specialists show up).

Which brings us to Jaa's cameo. The bad guys have caught up to the son in a super market and the cops are called. Wongkamlao also shows up to save the kid and it turns out that Jaa is shopping in market. When the two men see each other for the first time, there's a great non verbal exchange between them that is only matched by their exchange at the end of the scene where Jaa calls Wongkamlao "black dick" and Wongkamlao responds "Wrong movie, dumb ass." I don't remember the specific reference, but I laughed. And thus exits Mr. Jaa whose moves were pretty sick inside the grocery store.

The final series of fights is pretty fantastic too. The mob has caught up with the son and Wongkamlao has come to save the day. He takes on all kinds of fighters, including the guy with Down's who kicks the crap out of him only to be taken out on accident. Wongkamlao then fights a guy who fights like Jaa (or would if he hadn't stepped on a board with nails Home Alone-style), then a Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon guy who floats around and kicks like crazy. Wongkamlao's only way to combat the floaty style is to dance fight his way out of it. It's kind of amazing the amount of punishment our hero takes in this scene and still comes out on top, which is the mark of a true action hero.

If you're a fan of martial arts movies, this is the movie for you. Not only do you get some good solid storytelling, but also a lot of comedy, even tips of the hat at the various genres and fourth wall-breaking dialogue (including the TV reporter explaining the plot of the movie during the final credits and asking the director when he can stop). I've actually found that foreign action comedies tend to be my favorites. Between this and the two Police Story movies with Jackie Chan, I can't think of an American action comedy that matches them when it comes to both genres. Well done!

A quick note on watching martial arts movies on NetBox (or NetPS3 as it will be soon enough), make sure you've got 3-4 bars of service for the fight scenes otherwise things get all wonky and pixelated and you can hardly tell what's going on. After watching my DVD copy of Protector, I tried watching Ong-Bak on NetBox and had to stop because it couldn't handle the awesomeness of that movie. I recommend turning off your web browser or at least cutting down on your web applications to fully enjoy them.

Oh, and don't fret, I found my Protector notes and will probably be posting them soon. Probably.

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A Command Performance From Dolph Lundgren

Okay, so the title of this post is a bit misleading. Instead of Dolph Lundgren's performance actually being commanding, it's the name of this movie from 2009, which I heard about from my buddy Brian Warmoth. In truth, it's not a great movie, though Lundgren does give one of the better performances in the movie. Maybe it's because in addition to starring in the flick, he also co-wrote and directed it. The idea is that Dolph is a mysterious drummer named Joe in a band who is opening up for a pop diva named Venus for a concert requested by the Russian president and his daughters. Of course, he's no normal man and this turns out to be no normal concert as a bunch of paramilitary guys burst in, kill about 200 people and take the president captive.

Once the bad guys show up, we do get treated to exactly what you expect from a movie like this: Dolph kicking ass, killing dudes and throwing quips like daggers. His first kill comes after he stumbles out of a bathroom where he was smoking weed only to be accosted by a man with a knife. Instead of getting stabbed, Dolph shoves a drum stick through the man's skull and then says "Watch the hair dude." A little bit later Dolph smashes a Gibson Les Paul over a man's head. I don't know if you've ever tried to smash a guitar, but they are incredibly solid pieces of equipment, especially that guitar. Yowch.

Anyway, after that it gets a little boring/typical. Dolph teams up with the only surviving member of the president's security detail, we learn that he doesn't like guns because they kill people (do did that drum stick homey) and we find out that the bad guy isn't in it for money but for revenge. The lack of quips and music related killings makes the second half of the movie comparably boring, which is too bad because I was having a pretty good time with it for the first half. Oh, also, the music that Dolph's band plays is pretty good. I think I'd rather listen to their album than watch the movie again (and for the record, Dolph really is drumming, not just faking it, you can tell because they don't do those lame "show a person sitting near an instrument and then close-up on their hands" shots, we see full-on Dolph rocking out).

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Death Becomes Him: The Weekend At Bernie's Films

Wow. I fully intended to watch both Weekend At Bernie's (1989) and Weekend At Bernie's II (1993) within a fairly short amount of time. Instead, it turned out to be an almost two week process thanks to watching so many horror movies and falling asleep a few times during WAB2. In fact, Rickey and I tried watching 2 after we watched Terror Train. I had watched the first one and thought I had seen 2 when it came out, but was completely blown away by it's weirdness. Not so blown away that I could stay awake, mind you, but it's pretty crazy.

I'm getting ahead of myself though. Everyone always remembers the WAB plot very simply: two guys pretend like their boss is dead so they don't get in trouble. But it's SO much deeper than that. See, our heroes played by Jonathan Silverman and Andrew McCarthy are interns at Bernie's firm (insurance, I believe). They find a discrepancy of millions of dollars in one account. Bernie asks them to come to his house in the Hamptons to celebrate the discovery, but what he's really doing is setting them up so his mobster cohorts can kill the guys. Flipping the script, the mob boss tells his goon to kill Bernie instead. The goon gets there before the guys, kills Bernie with a lethal injection and leaves him, passing the guys on their way to Bernie's house. At first they don't think he's dead, just sleeping, but eventually they figure it out, but just as they do a traveling party shows up to rock out and have fun. The girl Silverman's trying to bag also shows up, which is why he doesn't say anything (he's the straight-laced one to McCarthy's wacky dude). So, at first it's a "we're already in too deep" kind of a story, but then the guys hear a message on Bernie's answering machine with Bernie asking about killing the guys. So now they keep Bernie around so they don't get killed.


All in all it's a pretty fun, though fundamentally morbid film that keeps getting crazier and crazier, but in a way that WAB 2 tops in spades. See, in the sequel Silverman and McCarthy are back (it's only a day or two after the events of the first one, but these dudes are Clearly worse for wear after the four years that passed in real time) and they're trying to use dead Bernie to get the money that he stole from his company. To do that they have to take him to St. Thomas, but before they can do this, a couple of voodoo dudes grab Bernie and bring him half-back to life. Basically, when music plays around the corpse, Bernie gets up and dances his way toward the money (hence the "Zombies" label). It seems they were hired by the mobsters to find the money. Meanwhile, firm employee Barry Bostwick, is on the guys' trail (they were fired from their job after returning to New York and getting blamed for the missing money), but he keeps looking crazy and getting arrested.

This is absolutely a weird movie. If you have trouble accepting the idea that two guys could haul a dead man around for two days in the original, then steer clear of this one. If the scenes where Bernie walks under water thanks to a Walkman and headphones to find the treasure aren't enough, they meet up with a girl who's father studies voodoo, but also accepts the fact that these men have been carting around a corpse-turned-zombie for days with little-to-no problem.

If you like bad movies, this is it. A studio actually made this movie and released it in theaters. That's shocking to me. To add to the weirdness, McCarthy plays his character like a coked up chimp, which is distracting to say the least. But, with a few beers and friends, I think this movie is a party waiting to happen. Both are still on the NetBox, so you can hit them up whenever you want!

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Halloween Scene: Backwoods (2008)

To say I was apprehensive about watching Backwoods would be an understatement. What you can't see is that that boards you see on the box to the side is actually a slip cover that reveals this huge mountain of a man holding Haylie Duff. That combined with the fact that I had never heard of the movie and that watching a Deliverance/Hills Have Eyes-like movie doesn't get me very excited, left the Backwoods DVD I was given when I still worked at Wizard on my "to watch" pile for quite a while. I popped it on last night, promptly fell asleep and started it back up today and I was pleasantly surprised.

I would guess that your enjoyment of this movie will directly correlate with how many of these kinds of movies you've seen. Like I said, these aren't really my thing, so I tend to avoid them, which means I wasn't comparing it too much. The plot focuses on this group of employees from a video game company going on a company paintball retreat. They stop somewhere and, because one of the guys is wearing an FBI hat, the redneck proprietor directs them to an off-the-map location where they start getting attacked by people in the woods. As it turns out, the people in the woods are part of a cult-like group that is really into God and has taken over a military base (or were they actually in the military? I'm not sure if it's ever explained). They usually kill the men and keep the women as breeding stock to keep their little society going. The dummy who thought they were all actually part of the FBI told the leader of the cult, so he's operating under the assumption that that is the truth. Soon enough our heroes are on the run, trying to escape.

There were several times in the movie where I thought things were going to completely slow down and get boring, but luckily that never happened. See the paintball people are broken up into two teams. One team (Team Canon Fodder) gets taken out pretty quickly, so I was thinking "Well, there goes the potential for cool deaths throughout the movie." But it turns out some were captured, not killed which allows for a much more interesting second half.

And speaking of the cast, they all did a pretty great job. Haylie is definitely my favorite of the Duff clan and our hero turns out to be Ryan Merriman who was in Final Destination 3 and played young Jarod in The Pretender. You've got your regular dickish guy, the girl who can't stop screaming and the head of the backwoods folk who is all about God and military. The most surprising member of the cast to me was Deborah Van Valkenburgh as Mother Ruth, the woman who runs this whole messed up operation. Turns out she was Mercy in The Warriors! And wow, what a difference almost 30 years can make.

I want to jump into some major SPOILER territory right now because I do take issue with the end. See, you've got your usual showdown where the good guy takes out the bad guys. He's facing down the big bruiser, the main guy and another guy. He easily shoots the other guy, then plugs the big guy a couple times and then the old guy drives his car into another car before our hero shoots him in the head. Now, here's the thing. Why doesn't he go over to shoot the giant guy in the head a couple times. Instead, we get a post script where the hero wakes up to the FBI telling him they only found two corpses. Then we see the FBI raiding the facility the backwoods people lived in and it's almost empty (which is weird because there were a ton of people there before and not all of them were killed, like the kids) only to see the one female officer get killed by the giant before the credits come up. See, I don't mind abrupt endings like this, but what the hell does it mean? Are we supposed to think that they giant killed all of the guys in the FBI unit? That he was taken down after this? It's annoying sequel-bait that bugs me, even though I'm actually working on a story right now that picks up where a movie like this or Texas Chainsaw Masacre ends. Anyone interested, let me know!

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Halloween Scene: Jack Frost (1996)

After being bored with Terror Train and Funhouse, I knew I was going to have a good time with Jack Frost. And I knew this because it might be the horror movie I've watched the most. See, while older horror fans came up with a myriad of Friday the 13th and Halloween sequels, I was enjoying Scream and Jack Frost. I'm not 100% on the details, but I think I saw that crazy lenticular box at the video store and rented it. Then, when HBO did one of those free weekends, I taped it.

The plot follows a serial killer called Jack Frost who gets in an accident while being transported to his execution. His genes mix with the experimental genetic material in the oncoming truck and the snow which turns him into Jack Frost the killer snowman. So he heads back to Snowmonton, the town where he got busted by small town cop Sam. Now Jack is wreaking havoc while Sam, a government agent and a scientist try to put a stop to it.

As a teenager just getting into horror, this movie was perfect. You've got a villain who's funny, but very scary in theory (how do you stop water?), some really creative POV shots, a ton of great kills and all kinds of humor. And it's a great kind of humor because it's very dark. Watching it again after a few years, I can also appreciate that the dark humor isn't solely based on horror tropes. Yes, you get some of those, but then there's just great throwaway lines like just before Jack gets splashed with the genetic goo and he says something like "This is gonna hurt." I'm also not exactly sure if the story is supposed to be a joke all around (I would guess so), so the gaps in logic can either be read as funny or lame. I read them as funny. It's a lot like Dance Of The Dead in that respect.

I was also impressed with the acting. Yes, the special effects look very homemade at times, but I thought the acting was spot on and realistic. And, as you may or may not know, one of those good actors is Shannon Elizabeth in her very first movie. Her character definitely falls into the logical gap I mentioned before (she wants to go out and party after her brother dies), but I took it as satire. She also takes part in the infamous carrot bathtub scene which is...weird to say the least. If you haven't gotten enough Jack Frost goodness, hit the jump for my live blog of Jack Frost and tons of screencaps!

*Woah, I do not remember this weird voice over opening. This is super annoying. And not appropriate at all to tell a kid.

*Showing the credits as actual Christmas ornaments is very creative.

*Woah, I forgot Shannon Elizabeth was in this. Is she the carrot girl?

*"State Executional Transfer Vehicle" written on the side of the van transporting Jack? Seems like a highly specific vehicle, that county must have a ton of money.


*Haha, Snowmonton, that's almost as good of a town name as Nilbog.

*Jack's penchant for looking at the camera and tossing out one liners is pretty epic.

*Oh no, the Genetic Research truck flipped over. Too bad this isn't a Marvel comic, otherwise, Jack would be moments away from turning into a superhero.

*The shots of Jack melting are pretty great, but the shots of the cop watching him are even better. He looks like he's trying to do a Magic Eye from a few feet away.

*Yes! Animated DNA/snow sequence. As if you couldn't understand what was happening.


*Now we're introduced to our hero Sam, the guy who nabbed Jack and swore revenge.

*How had his son not heard about Jack Frost? Word like that spreads like crazy in a small town school.

*It looks like his son literally made him poop with marshmallows for breakfast. They're actually oats and they'll come into play later.


*Are those supposed to be real snowmen? How are they supposed to last till Saturday?


*Shannon Elizabeth is super hot in this.

*Haha, what the heck is this guy going to put that giant ornament on? He looks so happy about it too!


*Sam asks "What's the matter, somebody die?" Then the secretary shows him the note "Somebody died." Good stuff.


*Ah yes, the creepy "behind the dead, frozen guy in a still-rocking rocking chair shot. "Take your foot of the chair." Damn this movie's funny.

*Haha, the country store owner was also in Lost Highway!

*"It wasn't meant to happen like this!" The scientist guys says they hadn't even tested an acid on an amoeba, but why were they transporting an entire trunk of the stuff anywhere? Don't scientists usually do experiments with a small amount of things?

*I like that the coroner actually knows his shit. This was even before CSI!

*The sound of Jack dragging himself is awesome.

*They probably should have filmed this movie somewhere where there might actually be real snow.

*How did those men find out about the killing so quickly? Sam JUST got back.

*Sam's kid needs a freaking puppet to figure out where the coal and carrots go on a snowman? Yet, this isn't the stupidest thing he does in the movie.


*Why does that bully talk with such a stupid accent?

*Also, why would you want to go on "black ice sled run" on flat ground?

*Yes! Decapitation! That's what happens when you mess with Jack Frost! Why would their runners be so sharp?

*"He's usually not so short tempered." the dead boy's mother says. Lady, your son just died, get emotional.

*Sam's kid is old enough to know that telling anyone "the snowman did it" probably won't make any sense.

*The acting in this movie is surprisingly strong.

*Woah, it was Shannon Elizabeth's brother who died. "The lord forsook this house long ago." - Shannon. That was intense.

*Screw physics, I love that Jack shoves the axe down Billy's dad's throat.


*Haha, Jack took the time to put the lights on the tree just to lure Billy's mom into death.

*This goes to show how much of a bastard Jack is. Not only does he frame Sam's kid for murder, but he also decides to off an entire family after killing their kid.

*Gotta love the meanness behind the death of Billy's mom with her mouth stuffed with an ornament and her head smashed into the ornaments repeatedly.


*Yes! Another weird death POV shot, this time from inside the tree.

*ANOTHER cool POV shot: underneath the puddle.

*"F#cker's a snowman!" - Paul

*"What the hell is eating him." - one cop "I bet it's not his girlfriend." - the other cop

*Yeah! Jack Frost driving a cop car!


*The map of Snowmonton is hilariously basic.


*Shannon Elizabeth would rather break into the sheriff's house to bone than mourn.

*The awkward winter strip down is hilarious (gloves, parkas, scarves, long johns).


*Now they're stealing the sheriff's wine? You never steal a man's booze!

*Heh, the freezer just has a carrot sticking out of it and a TON of ice.

*"Who's out there?" - Shannon's boyfriend "Well, it ain't f#cking Frosty!" - Jack

*Woah Jack can shoot icicles, forgot about that one.

*Yeah, she's bathing in Jack. And there's the carrot. Things are about to get...weird.


*Hey, where's his carrot?

*"Looks like Christmas came a little early this year." - Jack. Yeesh.

*You're walled in, just tell Sam what's going on!

*Haha, he's shooting a puddle, but the floor isn't getting damaged.

*I like that it's the nerdy scientist who's all "remember your orders to bring it back alive" and not the secret agent man.

*Yeah, hair dryer's as guns, blowing him into the furnace.


*Hey, it's not really over. That's the brilliant thing about this character, you can't really ever get rid of him because water can turn into steam, ice, etc. If it wasn't so goofy, he'd be scarier than Freddy.

*Haha, Jack's "frost bite" is awesome!


*Jack inside the scientist dude is pretty funny.

*Hey Sam's son is a friggin psychopath, he put antifreeze in his dad's food!!!

*Jack's melted head looks surprisingly cool.

*Finally! A hero playing dead so the killer will stop strangling him, but it's a trick!!!

*Gotta love the idea of killing the bad guy with a truck full of anti-freeze.


*Trusting the cap of a plastic bottle to be air tight is probably not the best idea in the world when dealing with a killer snow man, just saying guys.


*Now I just need to watch the sequel, which I've never seen. Giant pupper snowman on the beach? Score!
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Halloween Scene: Terror Train (1980)

I'm back from Ben and Megan's wedding and it was great all around. Congrats to them! But, back to the Halloween Scene business. Before leaving for the wedding on Friday, Rickey came up Thursday night and we watched Terror Train. We also had several beers between us and, as usually happens, we got to talking quite a bit during the movie. I didn't mind too much, because the plot to Terror Train didn't seem all that complex (unless I missed something huge, which is very possible). Also, it's not one of those horror movies that I've heard about for years and haven't seen. I think I first heard about it was while reading one of the reviews over on Horror Movie A Day. If that makes me a bad horror fan, so be it.

The basic plot is actually very similar to that of Slaughter High with the picked-on kid coming back to have his vengeance on the people who pranked him (and others, by the looks of it). This time it's college kids and the revenge takes place during a costume party on a train which adds some claustrophobia to the story. We also get the killer wearing several different masks, starting with the one in the poster above and and making his way through those who picked on him.

I won't be going into the plot and details too too much, partly because I don't remember a lot of them and also because I'm trying to keep these short and sweet, but I liked the movie enough (for a great summation, check out Final Girl Stacie Ponder's TT post. I wasn't overwhelmed by it's awesomeness and I've discovered that Jamie Lee Curtis is not an actress I particularly like. She's fantastic in Halloween and Halloween II, but in this she just got on my nerves. That scared mousy routine works when you're supposed to be a high school student, but it's tired on a college senior.

Also, Rickey and I had an argument when the magician popped up on screen. He was like "That's David Copperfield." And I was all "No way." Of course, I was wrong and he was right. That got me talking about the time I saw him when I was a kid. Dude got sawed in half with a giant buzz saw and then jumped. When he jumped his top half went higher than his bottom half. Swear to God. Convos like this probably lead to why I don't remember much.

Actually, after reading Stacie's post I was reminded of how dumb the end was. After the reveal, we get a replay of the incident that made our nerdy weirdo go crazy in the beginning. Really? I get that he's crazy, but does he do twirlies every time he kisses a girl? Bleh. It just came off as kinda cheesy to me. Next up? Henry Portrait Of A Serial Killer, Jack Frost and Funhouse. Plus, the epic Weekend At Bernie's franchise. Get excited!

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Six Movies I've Seen Recently

Even with all the Halloween Scene posts I've been doing this month, I still watch non blood and guys flicks, I just don't necessarily have the time or energy to do lengthy posts about all of them. So let's just jump right into it. Let's just assume there are SPOILERS in all these reviews.

SPECIAL (2006)
I remember hearing about this Michael Rapaport movie about a guy who gains superhero-like powers a while back and thinking it sounded interesting. I dig superhero movies, even when they're not about known characters and I like Rapaport. Movies like this can be an interesting take on elements of comics and superheros that norms might not have experienced before, but geeks like us have. Special does something like though. See, in Special, Rapaport is a comic book fan who takes part in a pharmaceutical study. He thinks it's giving him super powers, when really it's just messing with his mind. To be honest, I turned it off with about 20 minutes left because it was crazy-depressing. Rapaport is such a sad sack lunatic, that he's hard to watch. For a while you're not sure whether he really does have powers or not, but by the time I turned it off, after you're convinced he's just nuts, I'm not sure how things are supposed to make sense. For instance, when we see him in a chase scene, are we seeing the whole thing through his mind or not? Or the invisible fight? How did these work in real life? I don't often go in for the "comic book readers as a community" thing, but I do feel like this movie doesn't help paint comic book fans in any kind of positive light. Eh, moving on.

THE TV SET (2006)
After being disappointed with Special, I wanted to watch something I had heard good things about recently. When I was still at ToyFare, Justin, just told me he watched The TV Set and dug it. See, it's written and directed by Jake Kasdan who was a director and producer on Freaks & Geeks and is about a producer trying to get his show off the ground only to find his vision being trampled on at every turn thanks to TV executives. David Duchovny is the producer while Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd) are the execs giving him trouble. There's even a brief appearance from Big Bang Theory's Simon Helberg (Howard). As a creative person who likes the idea of creating art and just letting it speak for itself, it was hard watching a man's vision get picked apart and seeing him try to fight for his ideas, but ultimately losing. But unlike with Special, the downer tone didn't bother me because it reads like a cautionary tale. Not necessarily one that says "don't get into TV because THIS can happen," but more along the lines of "hey, heads up, this friggin happens." The TV Set should be required viewing for anyone looking to get into the TV business and also is kind of a perfect meta bookend for Freaks & Geeks fans.

BREAKOUT (1975)
Sometimes I go through the Netflix Instant Watch movies and just look for a certain actor. One of those actors is Charles Bronson, because he's a badass. One of those movies is Breakout, which gives us the story of a woman trying to get her husband (Robert Duvall) out of a Mexican jail with the help of Bronson and his right hand man Randy Quaid. I'll be honest, I wasn't paying a ton of attention so I missed a lot of the intricacies of the plot. See, Bronson cons a bunch of people in order to pull off this prison break, with all kinds of twists and turns that I didn't get all of. I will say that Bronson is the man, no doubt about that and it was a lot of fun seeing such a young Quaid and I didn't even recognize Duvall as I've probably never seen a movie where he was this young. Anyway, you can do a lot worse when going through movies from the the 70s starring badass mothers.

FAME (1980)
As I've talked about before, I'm a big Kevin Smith fan and love listening to his Smodcast podcast. And, Smith is a big fan of Fame, having talking about it on several occasions. That combined with the new movie coming out and the fact that I've been hogging the Netflix DVDs with horror junk, I thought it'd be nice to put Fame at the top of the list so we could watching something on Tuesdays when you don't watch anything else. And man, what a weird movie this is. You've got the message of how hard the life of a performer can be (graduates as waiters instead of actors, photographers looking to take advantage of girls, alcohol) mixed with these over-the-top dance sequences that flow out into the streets of New York or completely take over a lunchroom. Now, I know that performing arts kids can be dramatic, I did musicals in high school and knew plenty of them in college too, but this is just nuts. Though, I do appreciate the fact that it's a practical musical, one in which the singing and dancing can practically take place in real life. In the end I liked the movie and was glad I had heard Smith talk about it so I wasn't so surprised by all the intense craziness so I was ready for it, but I did find it a little unfocused. I didn't have a grasp of who our main characters were until the fourth year and I feel like some of the characters were dropped as it did zoom in on our few main characters. Ah well, good stuff. I'm guessing the remake isn't as hardcore and the new version of the theme song sucks all the energy and life out of the original. Fail. Oh, also, Alan Parker, who directed Fame also directed Pink Floyd's The Wall, weird right?

AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS (2001)
Remember how I said I hog the Netflix? I do, it's a fact. But anytime Em and I try going through NetBox to find something to watch, it takes FOREVER. It's not that our taste in movies is so wildly different, it's just that the movies on Instant Watch tend more towards my weird tastes than hers. So, when we came across America's Sweethearts starring John Cusack, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julia Roberts and Billy Crystal. The idea is that John and Catherina are big time movie stars who break up and break down, essentially, but they still have a movie premiering that they need to do press for. Like The TV Set, Billy Crystal co-wrote the story based on his experiences in Hollywood, so it's another kind of insider look and seems to gel with things I've read. Crystal plays John's agent while Julia is Catherine's sister/assistant. It boils down to a romantic comedy, but it was a good enough one to pass some time. Plus, as you know, I love me some John Cusack.

SIDE OUT (1990)
Are there any other sports movies about volleyball? It seems like the people behind Bring It On and Stick It should be working on one right now, though stay away from Ultimate Frisbee, I've got something in the works (ie, I want to eventually make something). Anyway, I had heard about Side Out before somewhere, saw it was available on the NetBox and just decided the hell with it, I'm doing this thing! And, it was just okay. I'd still rather watch Bring It On or Stick It. The story follows C. Thomas Howell as a guy working for a bank or something (I can't even remember what the actual job is). He's serving papers to a rad beach dude and ends up playing volleyball with another guy. They get their asses kicked, then train and get pretty good, but the other guy gets hurt and the rad beach dude takes his spot. You've absolutely seen this kind of movie before, but this time you get Howell and Courtney Thorne-Smith and even Kathy Ireland for a few seconds. Good enough for a few beers and a watch, but I'm not counting the days till I watch it again.
Oh, DO go on.