Cinema Freaks LIVE: Krampus (2015)

WARNING! WARNING! Yuletide spoilers abound!

If your kids believe in Santa, the best thing to do if you're a normal parent is probably just let them keep believing in Santa. But if you're a terrible (read: hilarious and awesome) parent, you just tell them if they're bad, the Krampus will show up and kill us all, and it will be the worst Christmas since Uncle Jerry pissed in the mashed potatoes last year.

Director: Michael Dougherty

Starring: Emjay Anthony, Adam Scott, Krista Stadler

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This is Krampus, guys. Let's dive right in with a podcast:

Michelle and I saw this movie, by the director of Trick 'R Treat Michael Dougherty, which means he is trying to monopolize the holidays with horror movies. And that is a cause I can really get behind. Fuck Toys for Tots, give money to this guy so he can make more movies.

We both liked it. It's about this mythical beast called Krampus, a monster from Alpine folklore that punishes bad children at the holidays, and which I think is the much better alternative to Elf on a Shelf. Anyway, it is summoned to a house where a young boy named Max is dissatisfied with Christmas. He and his huge, dysfunctional family, stuck inside during a blizzard, have to fend off an assorted array of weird, bizarre creatures in the dark. It's all pretty wacky. But compared to red Starbucks cups, I have to say this isn't the worst slight against Christmas this year.

It's a horror comedy that actually has both horror and comedy – what a fucking revelation, right? That doesn't seem hard, but I guess I just don't understand the subtle nuances of where movies like The Visit and Thankskilling failed. Those films had terrible comedy and were terrible movies. Krampus works because it's funny and knows when to switch it out for the actual horror. Neither one feels half assed or phoned in, so it all works together and makes a better movie. The way all the characters bicker and fight is sort of like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation style. Like Christmas Vacation, too, there is a kind of softening of the characters, too, and they're never portrayed solely as loathsome douchebags like a lot of terrible movies do. They do have a humanity to them.

And also like Christmas Vacation, a monster shows up and kills everyone at the party.

...what? Did I get it mixed up with a different movie?

The horror elements are quite well done, rife with wintry darkness as they are, and the production value is outstandingly high. Finally we have a big budget horror film that uses it to craft some really good scenery and atmospherics. The creatures also look good. In terms of living Jack in the Boxes with vampire fangs and demonic teddy bears, this movie definitely has some of the better ones of those I've seen. A lot of the scares take place inside the house, which is normal for the holidays, but the movie manages to make use of the house well.

So the whole movie basically happens because main character Max wrote this letter to Santa pleading to have a good Christmas without anybody fighting. When his family found the letter and several cousins made fun of him, Max tore it up and threw the pieces out the window. Because he lost faith in Christmas, the Krampus showed up to kill his family, mostly through action scenes so dark that I suspect the power went out in real life on the set.

Now, at the end, Max faces the Krampus – looking like Santa if he spent some time living off the wild of the Everglades – and says he takes back everything and wants to revert things to how they used to be. I was really hoping here that the Krampus would do it, and everyone would be like 'Max, this was the worst Christmas ever, thanks for nothing you little bastard.'

But no, actually the Krampus just drops Max into a flaming hole in the ground too, which is awesome, and the way every Christmas movie should end. The movie doesn't actually end there, which Michelle and I found disappointing, but the actual ending - involving a macabre dream sequence of sorts - was fitting for the dark fairytale-esque nature of the film.

The film is skips along with a gleeful, evil sense of fun. It's a perversion of everything about the holiday is about, and that's great. Though, I do have to say it's kind of funny when you think about it. The Krampus kills people who don't believe in Christmas. That could be stretched, in a very liberal way, to people who want to take the Christ out of Christmas. You could make the argument that he is the ultimate protector of the holiday. Christian rights groups should be loving this guy! He should be their new poster boy.

We both liked the way this movie was a big mainstream horror flick that didn't suck. It isn't cliche, it has a cool idea and a lot of energy. It's a good movie, and it actually is not an indie flick like other luminary films like It Follows or The Babadook. I like that it's this wide-released, big horror movie that isn't a sack of shit. That warms my icy heart. Horror isn't dead, and Krampus is good. Merry pre-Christian Christmas.

Images copyright of their original owners, we own none of them.

Thankskilling (2009)

Thanksgiving is here, which means we can sit around the table with our families, enjoy good food and good company, and post condescending picture memes on Facebook about how sad it is that we took shit away from the Indians hundreds of years ago. But there’s also a dark side of Thanksgiving. A sinister side. A side full of bad puns, worse sexual humor and absolutely abhorrent comedy writing in general. You know I’m talking about Thankskilling. Though, perhaps that’s just because you read the title of this review before clicking on this.

Director: Jordan Downey

Starring: Lindsey Anderson, Lance Predmore

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle and Tony.

This is a horror comedy that needs heavily implied quotation marks around both of those things. It’s probably the only well known horror film to focus on Thanksgiving, which is sad. Halloween has Halloween, Christmas has Black Christmas, and Thanksgiving has this movie, where a talking turkey fucks a girl in the ass. Did that set the bar low enough yet? I think it did.

We start this off with a naked nun who looks like she’s straight out of a porn movie for Amish people. She’s on screen for a whole twenty seconds before dying, so you know this movie’s gonna have tons of character development. And that’s the last time I’ll be sarcastic about this, because it’s old hat and you know all the jokes anyway.

If this were porn, it wouldn't be worth even a dime or a bit of Internet space. But luckily it's just a shitty horror movie.

Instead, let’s talk about how awful these fucking characters are. It’s unrealistic from the start, because these people are coming out of a college, and I don’t believe they would be admitted into a college. These are the kinds of people who run outside for Thanksgiving break and rip their clothes off, excited like they just escaped from being war prisoners. Guys, it’s a fucking four day weekend, you’re not going to find the Holy Grail.

To top it off, the main girl tells her to pull down her shirt, it’s Thanksgiving, not TitsGiving. I just died typing that. I’m dead, and I’m a ghost now, and I’m still doing the review. This is Hell.

These characters are a laundry list of cliches - it’s the same cast as Cabin in the Woods basically, the jock, the pure virgin girl, the stoner, the nerd and the dumb hot girl. Only Cabin in the Woods at least tried to do something else besides say ‘hey, this is how horror movies are! Get it? Get it?!?!?’ Like they bully the nerdy kid a lot, and he still sticks around, because I guess he’s either a masochist or so retarded he can’t distinguish between friendship and vitriolic hatred. Anyway, he says, out loud to everyone, that he’s FINALLY going to have sex with one of them on this camping trip! That’s really how people talk, yeah, you got it.

Oh, by people I actually meant ax murderers. I don’t think I have any more sympathy for this character.

I’ve never thought a scene could be improved by the government randomly deciding to use the set for a nuclear bomb test site, but this movie is really pushing my expectations. Like this next scene where you see the sheriff character sipping his coffee and going “this tastes like shit,” then you see his wife actually did take a shit in the coffee. On the one hand, this is the absolute nadir of comedy, but on the other, you can easily tell who to kill first in a zombie apocalypse by whether they laugh at this.

This is actually just the special edition of the DVD.

The actual backstory behind this is revealed when our brain trust heroes go camping in the woods. Nerdy Guy tells them a story about a sorcerer who summoned an evil turkey five hundred years ago to kill white people, and now it’s coming back. Wow, with all the talk about how these politically correct people want to kill all white people, I guess this is the final nail in the coffin. Evil turkeys are the final frontier.

It turns out the turkey actually is real, as we find out when it scares the lead girl in the woods and she keeps screaming for way too long. Get it? Because most horror lead girls scream a lot? The humor in this is multi-layered, man! The turkey basically looks like a rubber sock puppet that got left in the oven for too long. Really strikes the fear in you, I'll tell you.

Somehow, they all get away, because the turkey is fucking terrible at its only purpose I guess. They drop off the dumb hot chick and the lead girl says her legs are harder to close than the Jon Benet Ramsey case, which is a great thing to say if you’re a wretched sack of flaming manure masquerading as a human. Seriously, what the fuck?

Later, we get a scene of the turkey coming across the dumb hot chick fucking her boyfriend, and the turkey kills the boyfriend and she doesn’t notice. I guess she’s just used to that happening during sex. Then the turkey starts fucking her, too, and this is the point where movies jumped the shark, guys. Movies were just never the same.

If you think that’s bad though, just watch this scene where the sheriff answers the door wearing a turkey costume like it’s actually Halloween. The turkey is at the door, wearing a fake nose and mustache. They sit down at the table together. This is how evolution happens.

With two very much alike people sitting down at a table.

But frankly, I’m glad we at least know the sheriff deserves to die now. I sure wouldn’t want him protecting my town.

Then the kids show up, too, and the turkey is wearing the sheriff’s skinned face mask after killing him. Somehow, the kids confuse THAT for him being the sheriff. This is exactly why the comedy in this movie doesn’t work. You can’t just throw in any random joke that doesn’t make sense with any logic or reason. Why would they confuse that turkey for the sheriff? Are most sheriffs in their world two feet high? It doesn’t make sense, and it’s why the movie sucks.

Even the turkey tells them they’re retarded for not figuring it out. How stupid are you pricks?!

To be fair, this is far scarier than whoever else was riding the slow bus with these characters.

They eventually figure out they have to look in this book called Turkeyology (...I just can’t) to figure out how to kill it. Why did the sheriff have that book? Why is it even written down at all? Fuck it, it’s supposed to be funny! Laugh! Laugh!!!!!

There’s a whole bunch of stupid shit that happens left, like when the fat redneck guy dies, the nerd spends an agonizing several minutes imagining scenes of them skipping around in fields of flowers and shit. It’s just so stupid, and it goes on way too long. Yeah, I get the joke, but that doesn’t make it good. Just repeating something for longer isn’t a joke.

After they finally kill the thing, there’s a retarded ass epilogue scene where a family sitting around a Thanksgiving table gets attacked by their turkey, which it turns out is the same evil turkey we’ve had to suffer all movie long. Then it says “To be continued...in space!” on a black card.

That's not funny either! It's not funny just because it makes no sense! If that were the case, I could say purple lawnmower leprechaun assassins, and that would be enough to put my kids through college. These jokes just aren't even in the same galaxy as anything resembling quality humor. It's like they traveled through the wormhole from Interstellar and that's where they got the "comedic inspiration" to make this.

Only it doesn’t matter! The movie KNOWS it was bad, because it was trying to be a parody of bad horror movies, so it didn't have to try at all with any of its jokes. Therefore, the less you try, the better it is. Like this:

Or even better, this:

Genius!

Happy Thanksgiving, guys.

Images copyright of their original owners, except those two artistic masterpieces I made.

Clown (2014)

Why are people afraid of clowns? There are so many movies about scary ones, and that's because so many people are scared shitless of them. I guess a lot of it just comes from how strange and outlandish they look. People are scared of them because they look weird and goofy and alien to what we're used to, and maybe because they have those creepy-ass smiles on their face all the time. Eugh! The modern man has no need for smiles!

I guess it also comes from a certain book written by a somewhat well known author.

Though, really, I'd think the real life man who dressed up as a clown and also had the unfortunate hobby of murdering people had something to do with it.

But nah, maybe not...

Either way, it seems like the fear of clowns is hear to stay. Which must be the worst feeling in the world for people who grew up unaware of this fear and just wanted to be clowns to make people laugh. That has gotta suck. Imagine spending all your time training to become something else, like, say, a painter, only to find out that painters were regarded as subhuman sexual deviants in the community you lived in, lepers who should in no way be trusted.

But not all movies about clowns portray them as creepy serial killers! Some of them portray them as immaterial, immortal monsters who, if you put on a clown suit, possess you and make you kill people.

Director: Jon Watts

Starring: Eli Roth, Peter Stormare, Andy Powers, Laura Allen

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

Well, OK. That's fine.

Clearly as the movie is called Clown, it had to start off with a bunch of loud noises over pictures of clowns, then the word CLOWN in bright bulbous letters. You know, just to make sure we didn't confuse this for the other kind of clown. We had to know it was about the kind that everyone and their brother is afraid of at birthday parties.

Then we get an opening scene with a birthday party for little kids. Like I said in the Godsend review – nobody wants to see a birthday party for kids in a movie. Especially not one where the only source of drama is that they're waiting for a fucking clown to show up. I think most kids would just be waiting to open up their new Xbox One at this point – the clown really has no relevance. I don't even think the adults remember why they wanted a clown. The clown is going to be there for no one. What a sad nihilistic existence.

Pictured: the face no child makes for a clown.

But the clown doesn't show up, so the mom, Meg, has to call her weenie of a husband, Kent. Kent is a real estate agent who seems to think it's ethical to browse around in the basements of old houses and take shitty looking costumes he finds in the attic. People like this guy are the reason Party City is going out of business. You scum!

"Man, I really need a fucking drink right now."

So he shows up looking like a hungover Ronald McDonald and, apparently, entertains the kids somehow – probably because the birthday boy had already peeked into the closet beforehand and seen that Xbox in there, so he knew he could stand the stupid clown. Later on, he almost has sex with his wife with the clown suit on, but she pusses out at the last second. I'm glad the movie shows both lights of being a clown – the disappointing last-ditch effort nature of taking the job, and the fact that their lives inevitably end up sexless and asleep on couches.

It isn't even a good looking clown suit. It's ugly as fuck. That suit looks like your grandma's knitting quilt made into a costume. I hate to say it, but Gacy did it better in terms of being a clown.

The next day, he discovers that he can't take the clown suit off. Ugh! Yet another annoyance of being a clown in the modern world. He even tries to slice it off with a power drill, but that has no effect except that it makes him bleed like a leaking faucet. He has to go to the hospital, where he insists very adamantly that he isn't a clown – well, buddy, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and appears in a movie titled Clown...I think you're gonna have a hard time convincing anyone.

So I guess his next move is putting on orange face make-up that I imagine he stole from an Oompa Loompa factory nearby and trying to disguise himself as normal.

Zero stars, movie. Zero stars.

He tracks down the guy who originally owned the house he found the suit in, who is of course some scraggly homeless-looking guy who warns him vehemently not to put on the suit – not knowing yet, of course, that Kent already has. Kent shows up and the guy gives him this whole spiel about how clowns are evil and came from these monsters who used to live in caves. Then, somehow, over time, that evolved into makeup people wore to entertain kids at parties.

...movie, I just...don't have any fucking clue what your problem is. I mean, it's good that you're trying to satirize this overdone trope, but it feels like you aren't exactly aware that you're not actually making a joke. That's like saying you don't believe in God because you hate make believe fairytales, but then saying you have absolute faith in Odin and believe he will return next year and smite all of your personal enemies.

One thing I don't get is, how is that clown suit still in existence? Part of the backstory, I guess, is that the crazy guy apparently got it off someone else years ago. Why didn't he burn it or hide it away somewhere better than an old house's attic? I guess he really just wanted to cut off someone's head the next time anyone put the suit on.

Because, apparently, that's how you kill clowns. By cutting off their heads.

Are you taking notes at home, kids? Next time a clown comes to your party, trumping up your driveway in those big annoying red shoes, you know what to do.

Kent escapes though, and bursts into his house screaming about what just happened, only for the camera to pan over and see the rest of their family sitting around. Because, I guess in stupid movies, they didn't exist until the camera panned over there, and Kent is the type of person who can't look a few feet to the left before screaming insanely about clowns.

The faces of everyone who saw the advance screening of the movie, which were promptly disregarded completely.

Then we find out that he tied up that crazy guy and plans on taking him to the police. But the crazy guy escapes, so Kent has to incapacitate him with his newfound clown super strength. He also attacks some other dude a few minutes later.

Yes, another common and well known side of being a clown, super strength. I can't even tell you how many clowns I've seen who go to make a balloon animal and then accidentally break the balloon, causing a horrific loud sound that rips the fabric of time, opens a void into another dimension, and scares all the children at the party. It's just not good.

Kent has to go into hiding in the woods, where he calls some kid from a boy scouts thing over and tries to eat his hand. It doesn't work. But I do think this is one of the more effective scenes in the film – there are quite a lot of cool shots and scenery in this film, but they're so often hampered by boring and tepid cliché.

Later, he hides out in a motel room that I guess he was supposed to be selling at his real estate job. Feeling that everything is hopeless, he takes a gun and tries to kill himself in the bathtub. Like all clowns, his blood has been replaced by rainbow slime:

Wow. You tried to make suicide funny and...didn't succeed at all. Not that I'm offended though, it just isn't funny.

But ultimately he survives that, because I guess the bullets just have no effect on evil clown monsters. He tries the next best thing to being shot – constructing a ludicrous set-up of industrial sawblades and sitting in a chair to fall back into them. You know, the normal go-to when shooting yourself in the head doesn't work – killing yourself via sawblades!

"Man, I can't believe I went through this much trouble to kill myself. I should kill myself for this!"

You know, this whole clown suicide sub plot is interesting and all – not to mention realistic for clowns – but really, for a horror movie it just doesn't work. It's confused as hell; even moreso than that girl in your high school drama class who dyed her hair blue and started talking about how she was a lesbian. The tone is just off. Some parts of the movie were funny earlier, but these darker scenes just really, really don't work in contrast.

But anyway, Kent is still trying to kill himself with that sawblade thing. Unfortunately for him, a kid comes in and distracts him, so he misses the blades when he falls, and knocks a piece of the blade at the kid, which impales and kills him.

Wow. That could only have happened in a completely implausible, stupid ass movie like this. Thanks for not being in any way clever, Clown! You hack-ass piece of shit.

But yeah, I guess that was just a set-up so Kent could then taste the blood of a child, which is an important rite in any clown's career, really.

Next we see his wife coming to find him, telling him she's pregnant and that's why he shouldn't give up on life. Because of course she is – pregnancy is just a catch-all, easy solution in these kinds of shitty movies. What other plot point could a woman ever participate in? Her womb is the only interesting thing about her.

I think the movie missed an opportunity though, by not having the wife be pregnant with a clown baby. Because as you all know, clowns are a separate species of wretched degenerate subhumans.

"There's nothing else to do for a woman besides be pregnant, right?"

The pregnancy thing persuades Kent to come back home, though he forces Meg to lock him in the basement tied to a pole. Meanwhile, Kent's son at school is bullied by a couple of kids who care way too much that his dad looked like a clown. This is the kind of shitty writing these movies always have – making the bullies just way too implausible. Really, they want to smear paint on his face because his dad looked like a clown? THAT was the best bullying they could think of? Fuck, just give him a wedgie, you twerps.

The son goes home and lets out Kent, who then goes and disembowels and eats the little bully kid. Which, yeah, seems a little excessive now that I write it out that way.

This movie sure loves killing kids. And that's the greatest thing about it.

What follows this is something I've always wanted to see in a horror movie. Well, not really, but now that the movie brings it up, it seems like a good idea: a slasher scene set in a mall playplace.

This is why they started to phase out playplaces at McDonalds - too often, demented Ronald impersonators would try to kill anyone who entered them.

This is actually pretty damn good, building tension and atmosphere even despite the goofy setting – actually, I'd argue the setting helps the scene through the contrast. Surprisingly, this part ends up being easily the best thing about the entire movie.

Meg teams up with that crazy guy from earlier, who wants to help her get rid of the clown by cutting his head off. There's this whole fucking dumb, boring scene of the two of them going over all this clown mythology bullshit. Why do these movies constantly do this? We don't need scenes of them researching things and we don't need a made-up “history” of evil clowns in a movie about a clown suit that takes over your body. Just give us a fucking story about an evil demon clown killing people if you want – we don't need to take this so seriously!

That's Eli Roth as the clown monster's final form, by the way. He's mad because this piece of crap movie is still better than his own movies. But seriously - THIS picture is all we need out of the movie. Just a clown being evil. Nothing else.

After that, though, we get another extremely silly scene where the clown demands Meg bring him a child to eat or else he'll just come home and eat his own son. Meg finds a girl she knows from the neighborhood and gets her in the car and drives her out to the woods to give her to the stupid clown monster. My favorite part about this scene is that the girl gets out of the car not realizing she's in the woods and not at her house. How do you not SEE that without getting out of the car? “I live in the woods, but not THESE woods...”

"Praying she's stupid enough to fall for this awfully planned out idea...YES!"

Then we go back to the house where the clown has gone to kill everyone. This climax is seriously just full of every cliché in the universe for these sorts of slasher horror movies. There are shitloads of scenes where it goes quiet, the kid being chased looks out to see if the coast is clear, but then something surprises him...

There's a scene where Meg's father, having seen blood from the clown on the floor, thinks Meg has killed someone and wants to help her cover it up. He of course moves right in front of the door, strategically placed for the clown to burst through the window and kill him.

Then we even get the always-vomit-worthy scene where, after committing God knows how many heinous acts and killing a bunch of people, the clown turns back into Kent for a second and goes “help me!” It's practically a grocery list of bad, bad cliché that all of these kinds of movies have. Wake me up when the credits are done rolling.

Finally, they kill him, and the clown suit is put into evidence at the FBI headquarters.

Truly an image striking fear into the hearts of men.

Wow, I can't wait for a sequel where an FBI agent puts on that suit and becomes an evil clown monster too!

Damn, a lot of kids died in this fucking movie. I mean Jesus. Talk about an overreaction. Most clowns kill a couple of kids during their careers, but THIS many, wow, just too much. Wasn't the movie educational about how clowns really are, guys???

This movie wasn't too awful or anything – the acting was fine, there were a handful of pretty decent scenes, and the movie looked very suitably creepy and also carnivalesque and fun. But despite only being like 90 minutes long, it had so much dead space and padding, and just felt so much longer. Just give us a dumb, corny movie about an evil clown killing kids. We didn't need any of this nonsense about the mythology of clowns or anything like that.

The writing was strictly pedestrian and lazy, padded out with every old cliché in the book, none of them done well enough to justify their use. It's hard to be enthusiastic about this when it mostly doesn't care enough to give us anything beyond the standard. Plus, the tone was just confused as hell – is it a campy horror comedy, or a serious drama about a pregnant woman trying to save her husband? Make up your minds. Some direction really would have helped here.

I guess what really bothered me was – what was this movie trying to say? “Hey, kids, clowns are evil! Be scared of them!”? Yeah, awesome message there. Eli Roth apparently compared this to The Fly, and I dunno – the 1980s The Fly was a better movie than this, with some social commentary on STDs and a good story about a man's tampering with science. In fact, that's the first time something has been better because of STDs.

This has nothing except, I guess, the fear of clowns? There isn't much else to glean from it.

I think people have always been afraid of clowns. It wasn't some newfound fear that never existed before IT came out. Some people don't like the makeup or the smiles or the fake-jubilance. I think scary movies and stories about clowns are made because people like juxtaposing something so cheery and happy with the darkness of a horror story.

But really, if you've got nothing to fucking say aside from 'be afraid of clowns' – is it worth making a movie? It'd be one thing if there were a lot of good movies about evil clowns, but there really aren't. Most of em pretty much fucking suck. I dunno. Maybe it's not a worthwhile story if all you're really doing is making someone's job, that they like doing, look like Satan's caretaker.

I'm pretty sure most real clown suits don't possess you and turn you into a demon, is all I'm saying. Food for thought.

Images copyright of their original owner; I own none of them.

The ABCs of Death 2 (2014)

If you want to learn the alphabet, there are lots of ways you can do it. Feeling left out, the horror movie genre decided to get in on the game, too. Then, a few years later, it tried again.

Directors: Various

Starring: Various

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle and Tony.

Coming off like a children's book written by Ted Bundy, this is yet another anthology of horror stories with 26 different directors trying their hands at making some weird, crazy, creative stuff. Some of it's good, some of it's bad...and some of it just makes me wish I had stayed home today. Let's dive right in and see what this batshit insane lesson has to teach us about the alphabet.

A is for Amateur

The worst hitman in the world, who I'm guessing was hired from the security department of a Toys R Us, botches up his kill and ends up re-enacting Die Hard in the air vents.

B is for Badger

The story of an incredibly obnoxious TV personality who bullies his staff until they presumably want to see blood – either their own or his. Fortunately, a giant demonic badger is there to help them with the second one:

His last word, after he is torn in half, is “Cut!” Which is a line so stupid that it circles the globe, goes into orbit and finds all the knowledge in the universe, then plummets back down to Earth, cures all the world's ills, and then bends time backwards with its newfound superpowers and it goes straight back to being ass-backwards stupid again.

...that's how dumb that line was.

Anyway, I'm just astounded that a giant demonic man-eating badger isn't the focus of this, but a jackass TV personality dying is the focus of this. Priorities schmiorities.

C is for Capital Punishment

In a truly award-winning society, the town conspires to beat the shit out of some random guy who they think kidnapped some girl. It doesn't really give a reason why they think so, so I'll just assume they picked his name out of a hat. Anyway, they take him out in the woods and try to kill him, very unsucessfully, with a rubber ax they apparently bought from Toys R Us where the guy from the “A” segment worked.

"DAMMIT JENKINS, DID YOU BUY A GODDAMNED FAKE AX AGAIN?! *sigh* I thought we learned our lesson the last five times we did this."

But they eventually get it right. At least they can kill a guy five-against-one when his hands are bound! They at least have that. Oh, and it turns out the girl is okay and they killed him for nothing. Have fun with years of soul searching and self loathing, guys!

D is for Deloused

"So this is the end of life...eaten by a giant lice..."

This one is about lice, apparently, as some truly strange things happen with a guy and a bug. I dunno. The mood and atmosphere are creepy, but I can't help but think this is what's going on in Sid from Toy Story's head all the time – either lice, or the batshit insane contents of this short film, you decide.

E is for Equilibrium

Two stoner rejects from a 90s movie have become trapped on a desert island and nobody noticed or cared. A beautiful woman shows up, inexplicably surviving despite the harsh waves and lack of any other land around the island. They fight over her but then decide to kill her because she's breaking up their non-gay 90s-movie-style bromance.

F is for Falling

A really interesting segment about an Israeli woman paratrooper fleeing from Arab law and getting caught in a tree. Some kid finds her and they strike up some quite well written dialogue that is sweet and kind of sad. It's a sort of romance, although I don't think many romances involve the main girl breaking her leg and hobbling around with the bone sticking out. Or, for that matter, the boy shooting himself by dropping his gun.

Buuuuuuut it was still good. Love just knows no boundaries.

G is for Grandad

I just...you know what, no. I'm not talking about this one.

H is for Head Games

No matter who you are or what you like in a partner, no matter what your tastes are in terms of romance, I think there's one thing we can agree on – we all need a guy or gal we can do this with:

Ah, true love.

I is for Inheritance

This one is about as charming as a five-month old child who hasn't been fed in a week, and with even more screaming and less capacity for sympathy. With all the graphics of your least favorite Nickelodeon shows as a kid, the “I” segment is about some kind of immortal grandma who won't die and her screeching hell-spawn relatives who try and kill her to get money or whatever - what a bunch of fucks.

It turns out there's some kind of strange amulet in the grandma's mouth that makes her live forever. She seems to want to die, and all the miserable hellspawn trying to kill her presumably also want that to happen. But instead of just taking the amulet out and getting rid of it, I guess setting her on fire is more appealing.

J is for Jesus

Two gay guys get tortured and killed in some shithole by some piece of shit bigot fuck. Fortunately for them, one of them was hiding the ability to turn into a vengeful spirit from beyond the grave that comes back and eviscerates their tormentors.

K is for Knell

A young woman looks out the window and sees a bunch of people killing each other in hotel windows. Then, the same thing happens to her as a black slime mixes with blood on the floor. It's effective, creepy and way too vague to figure out what the fuck it actually meant.

No, my vacation is turning into an unfinished Windows screensaver! Control Alt Delete! CONTROL ALT DELETE!!

L is for Legacy

A spirit comes alive in Africa and brutally murders several members of a nearby village. Too bad they didn't have the special healthcare plan that offers protection from ancient primordial spirits!

M is for Mastication

When my friends and I were watching this one, about a crazy guy in piss-stained underwear who goes on a cannibalistic rampage on a busy street, I made a joke about bath salts. Which turned out to be exactly the same punchline as the movie itself came up with. I'm not saying I'm the secret writer of this segment, but I am saying the writer of this segment and myself have never been seen in a room together.

Zach Galifinakis, no!

N is for Nexus

A trippy short in which a girl is bitchy to a cab driver while trying to meet her stupid boyfriend on Halloween. This causes a chain reaction of events which ends in a child dying. Moral of the story, be nice to your cab driver, or else little children will die at his hands. Fear the cab drivers. Keep one eye open when you sleep.

O is for Ochlocracy

Another of the really good ones in this, a Japanese film telling the story of a postapocalyptic future where a woman is being put on trial for killing her kid in a zombie apocalypse. It's actually really effective, with some good acting and the oppressive atmosphere working really well.

At the end there's a twist and we find out everyone persecuting the woman is a zombie, as zombies have now become sentient. It's kind of played for shock value a bit, and there's some of the old Japanese vaudeville-esque humor, but mostly it's a very dark story.

Except for the cartoony judge that yells “DEATH!!!!” like it's the biggest thing in the world for him. I love this guy. He should be the judge for every case in real life. Give him a pay raise.

The legal system at its finest.

P is for P-P-P-Scary!

A tribute to old black and white Three-Stooges esque movies. It's funny and has a guy who can shrink his own head as well as make his head appear on a baby!

So like every movie in that genre, I like it.

Q is for Questionnaire

A story about a guy who answered a bunch of questions to get money, only to have his brain put inside of a gorilla instead. Worst April Fool's ever. I dunno though, maybe it was an improvement. We don't really know anything about the guy. Maybe he was actually a big slacker, and the gorilla version of him will fight crime or something.

R is for Roulette

A bunch of people play Russian roulette as zombies wait outside. Or, Walking Dead season 11. Either one.

S is for Split

Another of my favorites here – this one is about a guy who hears a home break-in while talking to his wife on the phone from another country. She gets killed, and it turns out to be another woman – and the wife of the other guy the husband was staying with at a hotel! What a twist!

"Since you'll be going away for murder for the rest of your life now, honey, I guess I'll just stay with this guy and be gay."

T is for Torture Porn

Girl gets man-handled at an audition for a porn tape, and then turns into a demon and rapes and kills everyone in the room for being misogynistic shitheads. Not that what the porn tape guys were doing was good, as they were just being real dicks the entire time, but...what was the story here? Did she just go into that porn tape audition thinking gee, I bet they'll treat me like a respectable person and not ask me to even take off my clothes? I know she's a demon, but it's confusing as shit. Unless she was just a vengeful spirit who planned to kill them in the first place.

Well, actually, that sounds good to me. Let's let that be it.

U is for Utopia

An ugly guy who somehow wandered into the exalted halls of beautiful people finds out that that isn't allowed after he gets incinerated immediately by the robot police that roam the halls of this place. Gee, if your only standard for a Utopian society is “no ugly people,” my guess is you're also the type of person who thinks Budweiser's Superbowl ad this year was accurate.

V is for Vacation

A girl chats on video on the phone with her boyfriend, who for some reason is at a resort without her, but with a male friend of his – huh, yeah, not weird at all...

Anyway, she finds out they've been sleeping with a bunch of whores and doing drugs. The one guy whose girlfriend it is frantically protests that it wasn't him! It was the other guy who was doing all of it alone! The whores, the drugs, everything! What, was the main guy just curled fetal-pose in a corner sucking his thumb the whole time?

Oh well – they get killed by a naked prostitute, which is always the greatest way to end a vacation.

W is for Wish

Two kids get their wish of being teleported inside their favorite TV show, Fantasy Man. Which is a pretty shitty wish when you think about it. You dumb ass kids couldn't think of anything better? I guess they deserve what happens next – being trapped in the castle of the show's villain. The one kid gets killed, and the other gets kidnapped by Fantasy Man, who seems to mistake him for a princess and carries him away trapped in a bag.

He's riding off into the court of lawsuits for child predators. That light in the distance will go out pretty quick.

X is for Xylophone

Little girl plays with a xylophone, babysitter goes nuts and disembowels her and then plays with her bones.

Okay, come on – I know these are just goofy, overexaggerated cartoon-horror type stories, but we have to start asking questions here. Where did they get this babysitter? Is it really the best idea to shop for babysitters for your kids at the nearby mental asylum? I doubt they even waited until she got out – the mother probably just gave the director of the asylum a handjob in a broom closet and he went, okay, take your pick of the litter!

The lesson I take away from this is, never cut corners when hiring a babysitter.

Y is for Youth

A Japanese girl takes out her woes about her family by engaging in some admittedly pretty creative fantasies. I mean, even as shitty as her family must be, they'd at least appreciate the creativity in these fantasies.

Z is for Zygote

A woman fends off birth with medicine that makes her keep a child inside her belly for 13 years. If that didn't sound like something that would end up on the cover of a tabloid rag or the Daily Mail or some shit, it's actually an extremely hamfisted metaphor for a miscarriage.

Yeah, I don't know about this one. For what it was trying to do, it's pretty well done – it's well-directed, creepy in how depressing and dark it is, very disturbing and certainly doesn't pull any punches. I'm sure whoever made this has some reason they wanted to do it – it's not like this is a topic you just skate around lightly.

But it's just so heavy-handed and in your face, and there's just no context to this. Is there a reason I need to see this? It seems like something this intentionally dark, gruesome and serious was made for a reason, but like a really pushy political protester while you're just trying to go to the post office send a package to your sister in the mail, it's just needlessly heavy when we have zero context for it. Maybe some people will find this one powerful – I just found it a huge downer.

Plus, as my friend put it, "it was just really disgusting."

Can't argue with that one either.

Conclusions

So this is the end of our lesson today. What have we learned? Hmm, well, a lot. The ABCs of Death 2 was certainly a mixed bag like the first one, but I liked this one a bit more if I had to choose – more of these were good as opposed to those that weren't. The first couple are pretty shitty, but once we hit F it's actually quite strong – that one, along with H, L, M, O, P, Q, S, V and W were all varying degrees of good.

The only ones that were real downers this time were G, I and X. T wasn't great either, and Z had its own problems as I mentioned above.

And even the bad ones are still better in a minuscule way as opposed to stuff like The Thing remake or some other corporate bullshit with zero effort. So there is that. If you want something weird and crazy, this is a pretty good bed. Personally I hope we see more of the directors in this anthology – maybe full movies for some of them. That's the great thing about horror; the underground is usually the place to go to find good shit.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Fright Night (1985)

These days, movies like The Wicker Man (remake) come out where they get famous based solely on a few minutes of schlocky fun, when really the rest of the movie isn't like that and is, for the most part, a sizable step down in quality from said schlocky fun. But the film gets “so bad it's good” praise from people anyway despite the fact that they're really just praising that short few minutes of schlocky fun.

Well...everything has to start somewhere!

Director: Tom Holland

Starring: William Ragsdale, Chris Sarandon

IMDb

Fright Night is a 1985 horror comedy that got a lot of lip service back in the day, which I'm pretty sure was for the bangin' 80s music and visuals. Yeah! Shake those hips.

The 80s was the only time you could get your party on and get a relaxing back massage at the same place.

But the movie doesn't start off with such extravagant extremes, no; instead we get a much humbler opening of main character Charley Brewster almost having sex with his girlfriend Amy, but she pulls back at the last second, feeling nervous I guess. Then she changes her mind again and wants to do it, but by that time, Charley's goldfish-sized attention span has gone to the next logical place – the weird stuff happening across the street, like new neighbors moving in.

You know, the common hierarchy: New neighbors are more important than sex. Just how it goes, guys.

"Honey, your total willingness to have sex with me is less important than two guys carrying a box around outside. We have a good relationship!"

Downstairs, they get into a fight because he didn't want to have sex when she was ready. Uh excuse ME young lady, but weren't YOU the one refusing HIM sex like five minutes ago? You guys have as much synchonicity as two parallel lines running for miles without intersecting. People on other sides of the planet have better chemistry. A blind guy and a deaf girl could connect better.

The mother, even despite hearing this conversation, continues planning her son's marriage to this girl. Are you just really desperate? I guess the fact that Charley, given the rest of the movie, was able to land a girlfriend at all was so mind-fuckingly, rainbow-burstingly amazing to her that she now insists he marry the chick before he screws it all up as she knows he will.

But it's okay – there's a vampire moved in across the street! Charley knows this because he's apparently related to that jackass from From Dusk Til Dawn 2 – think about it; the same vacant stares, the same lack of any likability AND the same paranoid delusions about vampires validated in implausible ways! Plus they both get distracted from sex by what's on TV. Long lost brothers, you have finally found each other.

You can tell by the identical vacant, wide-eyed stares of dumbfounded idiocy on their faces.

Although overall, Fright Night is the better movie. Why? Because the main character in From Dusk Til Dawn 2 never got the hamburger in the face he deserved:

*slow clap*

So apparently the story here is that Charley saw some really hot prostitute going over to the house next door and then saw her later get killed by the guy next door, who is a vampire. He knows he's a vampire because he was spying on the hot naked chick and then saw...well, vampire shenanigans, I guess is the best way to put it!

"I could have had actual sex with a willing girlfriend if I hadn't been such a dick-cheese and spent more time looking out the window! BUT BOOBS! OOOOHHH!"

That's another thing - a big plot point throughout the first act is Jerry the vampire mad at Charley for exposing him. But Jerry has no fucking problem leaving a window open while he's showing off his vamp powers? C'mon, man - get with the program.

The next day he sees a news report that says a “known prostitute” was killed last night – i.e. the same chick Charley saw in the window. But, uh, how does one become a known prostitute to the level of being mentioned as such on the news? How did she get such a reputation? Maybe she has a Facebook page. Yes, I know it's 1985. Shut up.

Charley calls the only black guy in this movie's world, a cop who comes over and investigates with the panache and professionalism I expect from dumb 80s horror movies – he basically acts like a debate moderator. He lets Charley hurl wild accusations and then turns to the guy at the house and goes, “Well, what do you have to say about that?” Dude, nobody's getting points for the strengths of their argument here. Fucking do your job, or go home.

He's my third favorite movie cop. Right behind the guy from Dead Silence and Danny Glover in Predator 2.

After the vampire dude's helper convinces the detective nothing's going on, Charley storms out after the detective screaming like an insane person that VAMPIRES EXIST! Because that's sure to win him over, ya know, like it does most good cops. I love the way the detective screams at him before he gets in the car – he says if Charley bothers him again, he'll lock him up FOREVER!

"I regularly kidnap law abiding citizens who annoy me and lock them up in grimy dungeons with no hope of escape! SO DON'T CROSS ME, BOY!"

Well, I do agree Charley needs to be locked up. But I don't know if you have enough evidence yet. Give me a call sometime, man; I'll help you plant drugs in his room so you have probable cause.

Then Charley goes to find his TV hero, Peter Vincent, who makes a living as a character even less credible than the Crypt Keeper. But for some reason, Charley seems to think this guy is the answer – a fucking TV actor is apparently the most credible expert in this world.

The common expression anyone who interacts with Charley gets within thirty seconds of speaking to him.

Are you going to call Christopher Lloyd next time you need help on your science project that involves traveling back in time? Maybe call Bill Murray next time you need help fighting a ghost?

I guess it's a funny enough scenario for a comedy, but I just have to wonder about Charley's sanity at this point. Maybe the kid who starts believing in vampires in the span of two seconds looking out his window, to the point where he decorates his room with some rather questionable feng shui:

He's a born again idiot.

...maybe it's time to start asking around about which mental hospital has the best security, hmm?

Either way, we can all agree on one thing – the kid playing Evil Ed was clearly directed to act like he was on a manic drug trip with no clear stopping point.

"I'M GONNA NEED DENTAL WORK AFTER ALL THIS TEETH-GRINDING!"

I just don't know what to say about this except that I really want to go back in time myself now and see what exactly director Tom Holland was telling this guy: “Okay, act like you're strung out on heroin, haven't slept in four days and just took a triple shot of Espresso to compensate! And like you were also raised in a den of insane clowns in a traveling circus. Yeah! Now we got this horror movie performance down.” Oh 1985 – never go away.

Also, what's up with Amy's clothing choices? Is she just wearing the entire GoodWill catalog's fall edition? I mean fuck, it's not that cold, woman – you can take off a sweater or two!

But this is all just window dressing for the main plot of Charley, Ed and Amy getting Vincent to come with them and prove the neighbor, Jerry Dandridge (you know, a name I would expect any fearsome vampire to have) is a vampire. They do this by making him drink some fake holy water. When Charley tries to point a cross at Dandridge, which actually makes him flinch and recoil, the rest of the gang tells him don't be silly, etc.

"My, what big fangs you have."

You idiots, all he has to have now is a fucking neon flashing sign saying I'M A VAMPIRE to be any more obvious! How do you not see it?!?

But I'm not one to just bash ONE side of stupidity – I also think it's pretty lame how douchey Charley acts when they're all walking home later, just screaming hysterically about vampires and insulting his supposed “friend” Ed. As much as I think the Ed character was probably a product of drug-induced insanity, at least he's funny. Charley right now is about as likable as pond scum. Yeah man - you insult your friends and sulk like a big crybaby. You won this argument.

So after a dumb joke where Ed pretends to be attacked, screams and worries his two friends, they part ways and then hear him scream again. Even though it's been several minutes and he has no reason to do another joke exactly like the one from before – it's a horror movie convention that they do the whole “boy cries wolf” routine and ignore him. Even though THIS time he really is in trouble!

"It is I, Fabio's obscure vampire cousin, here to put you out of your misery!"

Yes, now he's a vampire. And also the thing everyone remembers about this movie – nobody really cares about the rest of it; just Evil Ed the vampire. He pretty much acts the same as he did before this, which is to say he acts like a man in the throes of a psychotic breakdown. But now he has a voice that sounds like your grandmother after someone dropped a piano on her pinky toe. So there is that...

He just wants a hug. Though I understand if his scenery-chewing abilities frighten you. He could devour you whole, and not just because he's a vampire.

In addition to that wonderful addition to cinema canon, we get a scene where he has a cross burned into his head. I'm sure he'll have fun attending Westboro Baptist Church meetings from now on.

Meanwhile, at a dance club, Jerry Dandridge (they really couldn't give him a cooler name? Even something generic like Lord Darkness or something?) seduces Amy and takes her away – because I guess 1980s glitter and neon lights just make anyone look more appealing. He takes her back to his house and plays Dress Up like a Toga Frat Party:

Only I'm not sure those parties usually had biting involved. Eh, maybe they did.

So I guess Charley and Vincent team up to go to the house and fight Dandridge. Dandridge's henchman shows up and Vincent ends up shooting him in the face – it would have been funny if that was just the end of it, but alas, he's been turned into a vampire now. So like most of the time when you kill a vampire, he melts into Nickelodeon slime. 

Iiiiiiiiiit's slime time!

We get some more really drawn out scenes, with one really memorable one in the mix somewhere – it's when Peter Vincent goes over to Charley's house and finds Evil Ed under the covers of Charley's mom's bed. After some truly silly and hammy lines where he somehow makes the simple explanation of Charley's mom leaving dinner in the oven for him sound like a goddamn theatrical production. Gee. Really reaching for the bottom of the barrel there, huh? Really no better jokes you could have used than “Dinner's in the oven”?



Then Ed turns into a wolfman and fights Vincent that way. Unfortunately, every hammy over the top 80s performance must come to an end.

"Dammit, another incident where I end up alone in a stranger's house with a naked teenage boy."

Good thing, too; if he had kept going, he probably could have created a black hole and sucked up reality into an alternate dimension where this kind of acting is considered Shakespearean. And that world, my friends, is one I tremble to imagine.

When Vincent gets back over to the other house, they have an extremely long fight scene during which time I'm positive the casting crew, makeup artists and others had time to do their nails, read the rest of Moby Dick, work out real estate deals for new houses, write shitty scripts for unmade Fright Night sequels and work on their memoirs for appearing in a film that somehow drags out this story to two hours.

"I will not be killed by Ray Harryhausen scraps!"

I'm sorry, I was dozing off a bit there.

Anyway, they kill him by punching holes in the wall until he explodes and then driving a stake through his heart, which somehow makes him stand up as if he were a yard rake and you stepped on its teeth.

And he also makes squeaky noises if you punch him in the face.

Either way he's dead and the whole thing is finally over. Amy even turns back into a human, which I didn't know could happen – but hey, vampires. They're wacky! I think mostly they just wanted to spare the world more of this "vagina face" style makeup job:

Eugh. Did somebody just fall asleep when they were doing her face?

So then the movie ends with Charley and Amy back in his room having sex again. Because she's such a good catch, he of course gets distracted by the TV again, proving that he has learned nothing and that they are truly made for each other.

Oh ho ho. In their future I see plenty of nights where the deep hatred stewing between them reaches a near-boiling point as she tries to give him a handjob after making dinner and cleaning the house and he shrugs her off without looking at her because hey, Sons of Anarchy is on and he wants to see what happens next. After months of turgid arguments where she cries how he just doesn't understand her and he says what do you want from me, and she says I just want you to listen to me for once, and then he just shrugs her off and goes down to the bar for a drink and to watch the game in the peace of all the other tired, frustrated old men, and he comes back to find that she's trashed the place in a rage, spray painted FUCK YOU on the walls in bright purple, and gone to live at a lesbian nudist retreat for the rest of her life.

At least I think that's how it goes. You can change up a few details if you want. Never let it be said I don't make this blog interactive – you can give 'em a happy ending if you like.

This movie is just silly. It's got a funny premise and the story moves along okay for the most part, but it's too long and the main character is just a douchebag through and through, with no redeeming qualities as a character. I mean, he's just so lame. I really thought this movie could have been way better if it focused on another character entirely - maybe the story from Ed's point of view would have been good, as he's actually a likable character and elicits a little bit of sympathy. Or from Peter Vincent's point of view, as he seems like he has more invested in all of this.

Charley is just a boring, awful little douche, and really just shows the limitations of so many of these kinds of films - focusing on the most boring cardboard cutout of a suburban white kid just to make it "relatable." We could have had a potentially interesting, funny flick, but what do we get?

Eugh. I get it, the point of the story is a kid who thinks his new neighbor is a vampire. Keep him in the story, sure; but at least do us the courtesy of having a better character be the main focus!

The Evil Ed stuff is funny, and there are some other clever bits, but it really does start to drag as it goes on and it should have been trimmed by at least twenty minutes if not more. It's obviously better than The Wicker Man remake which I mentioned earlier, but I really do think most of the fame tends to stem from the Evil Ed performance - it was the most memorable part of the movie. It's a fairly well made film though and I can see how it was popular back in the day. But I'll stick to Re-Animator for my gory laughs.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.