Friday the 13th movie review
A remake that you SHOULD remember
I’ve already kind of read some of the reviews that this movie got elsewhere on the net, it is pretty much unanimous that the movie sucked and it is getting ripped apart by critics. Well, of course it is, I don’t think many critics understand horror films and dismiss them as stupid, childish, immature, cheap thrill rides. But I disagree, I really liked the movie, I think it showcased and excellent blend of horror and comedy, some interesting deaths, pretty good scenes of some nudity but most importantly – the return of the greatest slasher of them all – Jason Voorhees.
For those of you that know me, or have read some of my previous posts, you know of my love of the Friday the 13th series and the Jason character. You might have also known that I once called out sick from work to have a Friday the 13th marathon drinking game (it was rough by the way and I made it all the way up to Jason X before I got too sick). I’ve been through the good (F13 part 4 & 6), the bad (F13 part X & 8) and the ugly (F13 part 5) but I hold each one of these films as a treasure from my childhood. I mean, how many films can you think of where the audience roots for the bad guy, while simultaneously being frightened by him?
When I initially heard that a Friday the 13 part 12 idea was scrapped and was going to be turned into a remake, I groaned and worried, “oh man, not another – is there no franchise safe from Hollywood?” But, I then heard that the team behind the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes were going to be working on it, along with the writing team from Freddy vs. Jason AND Paramount was going to be involved in the franchise again – I felt the project was going to be in good hands. I became curious as to what direction they might take as far as a remake went and I was hoping that the film would perhaps relieve some of the mystery behind the Jason character and not just “pop him into the series” for the sake of making more sequels. And then prolong those sequels and try to make his back story just a knock off of Michael Myers.
Yeah, that’s right – I said it. Jason / Friday the 13th has been a knock off of Halloween films right from the get go. Now this is just my humble opinion, and I still love the Friday films regardless but here is my biggest gripe. Okay, so the original Friday film ended with Jason’s mom dying, and then the second film opens up saying that “by the way, Jason never really died, he was alive all along and saw his mom murdered that night.” I feel the producers had to do this because the original Friday the 13th film was so popular they needed a sequel. SO they must have done a springboard off the original ending of Jason coming out of the water to do his infamous final scare. Jason became the main killer for parts 2-4, and then it seems attention was going to be sent onto Jason’s childhood nemesis Tommy Jarvis (originally played by the legendary Corey Feldman) so they didn’t use Jason as the murder for part 5.
BUT in part 6 he came back as basically a zombie, in seven he was defeated by supernatural/E.S.P powers, in eight he was washed away by toxic waste. BUT in nine he came back whole again and the film makers tried to create a horror film for the horror fans with Jason Goes to Hell. A film with a new direction in the series since obtained by New Line Cinema, and featured homage to horror films and gore fans alike (such as Evil Dead) but I felt the plot was too much similar going back to the Halloween series. In part 9, they claim that Jason keeps coming back and there was this curse on his blood line and he can’t rest until he ends his bloodline. SO he has to kill his sister, and then his niece and his niece’s daughter. Just like the Laurie Strode angle and ended up with a druid cult in the original Halloween films. Finally, going back full circle, we have created another horror franchise named after a holiday, featuring a masked/strong psychopath, killing teenagers and having their corpses drop/pop up around the place. Halloween set the tone for the slasher genre with numerous imitators in the 80’s (April Fool’s Day, Graduation Day, Silent Night Deadly Night) but it is Friday the 13th that dared to bare with it’s gore and interesting kills.
SPOILER ALERTS LISTED BELOW:
Well, I was a little disappointed that the film didn’t really tie up all loose ends from the original series, and is kind of like a remake – but featured elements from about the first three or four Friday films. The film opens up on June 13, 1980 just like a near word for word remake for the ending of the original film. Pamela Voorhees is giving her speech to the last camp counselor before getting her head cut off. And then out of no where, Jason is a little boy standing by her decapitated body. SO my whole thing they need to talk about if they make a sequel to this or just dedicate a whole film to Jason’s back story is, “if he loved his mother so much and she was going around killing all of these counselors on his birthday to avenge him – why didn’t he just tell her, hey mommy I’m really not dead by the way!”
The film then jumps to modern day, and then begins almost like the second Friday the 13th film. A group of teens gathering around a camp fire and recapping Jason’s legend and how “you know what’s weird is that Jason’s body just came back.” Thankfully, the teens get drunk, one girl rubs oil over her boobs and they are murdered off one by one by “bag head” Jason. Yeah, just like Jason in the original Friday part 2, this Jason wears like this burlap sack thing wrapped over his head. For some reason or another, there is rumored pot field growing around Crystal Lake that initially this group came to find. Well, I guess Jason didn’t like the fact they were touching his bud, so he murders them, and then another two stumble into his house and take his mom’s locket. Well, thank God one of those kids looks QUITE like Pamela Voorhees and Jason keeps her trapped in his underground tunnel of his cabin for about six weeks.
So, that one girl ends up having a brother who goes searching for her, and he ends up crossing paths with yet another group of teens that want to stay and some asshole’s parents’ cabin for the weekend. Well, it isn’t too long before this group of kids intrude on Jason’s territory of Crystal Lake and he kills them off one by one. That’s another gripe that I have, if these people know that Jason is going around murdering people, why would you want to build a super luxurious house on Crystal Lake? The brother character ends up coming to a barn, which made me think a lot about of the infamous barn scenes in Friday part 3. There is this really dirty red neck character who also offers to sell some of Jason’s weed in the woods. Later on the red neck hears some scuffling coming from upstairs in the attic, and it is Jason trying to steal some kerosene. BUT along the way, Jason also discovers his legendary hockey mask and puts it on after the red neck comments on seeing his face, “oh dude, that’s not right.”
Well, I won’t get into tooooooo many details, but the film is intertwined with some pretty funny jokes, a lot of pot smoking humor, pretty good titty scenes and okay deaths. I wished there was some more interesting and original deaths (and a higher total body count) that they could have taken advantage of (once I saw the tools and circular saw in the tool shed, I was hoping Jason would have a field day). But for the most part, he stays true to his machete, there is some interesting slow gouging and penetration of various objects and he even proves to be an excellent archer. But overall, I really enjoyed the movie, even if I was criticized for laughing too much whenever someone gets murdered – and others might criticize the film for being a little bit too predictable. But, I just blame that on the genre and what Scream did to it years ago. So, you should go see this movie if you are true to the slasher genre or just a Jason complete-est. Or perhaps you just wanna take your kids and they can relive the Jason craze you had from years ago.
Showing posts with label horror movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horror movies. Show all posts
Monday, June 22, 2009
The top ten horror films that couldn't make it to my Halloween countdown - but deserve an honorable mention
Well for those of you that have been either with or without me for the past few months oughta know by now that I've been having a lil countdown going on. Specifically listing some of the best (and perhaps critcally worst perhaps) horror films that you need to feast your eyes upon. These films are all listed as intentionally to be either bought at your local video place (such as an FYE, Best Buy etc.) because a lot of video stores to rent them - like Blockbuster (aka Cockbuster) will never in their mind carry these films - and if your lucky enough you need to get the unrated director's cuts of a lot of them.
So it's about one week and counting until Halloween officially comes about. We're already starting to catch a few of these horror films on television now, but like I've listed over and over again - you're never gonna get the real deal through programs found on AMC, SCI-FI channel or anyone else. If you want to see what these films are really about, find the few places that you can rent them from or just buy them on taking my word of mouth from the review. Check out my countdown to see which films that you DEF need to see before getting any of these other films.
Listed below are the films that ALMOST made it but just couldn't cut it all the way (no pun intended for the slasher fans). I don't think that this list in particular is in any order of preference like my true countdown. This film is more like the second stringers that I hadda cut back in preference of other films that really came to my mind in time that I think they really needed to get the recognition and word of mouth that they deserve. So here we go, if I can list you guys the amount of blood and breasts and such for the specific films: I shall - if not they are still def movies you need to check out. And if you don't see a film that YOU FEEL BELONG TO DESERVE ON THIS LIST please list a lil comment below. Cause the more of us that stick together on this thing, all the more better that we can make a more unified and glorified (or should I say gorified) essence of horror in the world.
Here we go - in no particular order, here are some truly great horror films that I believe you all need to check out. If you're a lil particular about a few, I really want to narrow my films to horror specific, and say, not truly a sci-fi gorey film (such as John Carpenter's The Thing or Critters) to say a fantasy based film like perhaps The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Army of Darkness or even Lord of Illusions. No, this is straight up horror, so unless you thik otherwise, please feel free to drop me a line or comment on my blogs:
1)Dawn of the Dead (aka Zombi or Zombie:Dawn of the Dead)
1978, Directed and written by George A. Romero
George A. Romero's epic zombie film and the follow up to his original classic Night of the Living Dead (number 2 on my list). A comibination with George A Romero and Italian horror master Dario Argento turns out to be a match made in Hell that lived on through a long team up including Two Evil Eyes. The film itself is about four people (a helicpoter pilot, a newswoman and two SWAT soldiers) find refuge in an indoor shopping mall while the zombie epidemic wipes across the face of the Earth. They hold their ground off against a maruading band of bikers/pirates who also try to steal what they can to survive. In the end, it's an all out war/pie fight against the bikers and zombies and whoever survives - hitches a ride onto a helicopter to find safety elsewhere.
The film itslef was filmed at the Monroeville Mall in Monroeville,PA whenever the mall would close up- the crew would set up for the night until Dawn, and then start again for the next day of shooting the following night. The film itself is a legendary cult classic and along with Night of the Living Dead, has inspired many, many zombie films. Some like to even consider that Shaun of the Dead, is an uncompromised sequel to Dawn of the Dead that continues it's story line. Along with it's prequel, (but no so much with it's prequel) there are a lot of social issues that pracitacally satirically look at the world in it's time with ourselves against the zombies. You can call the zombies whatever you like and picture the global problem with them in it's place (whether famine, God's wrath, war or a domineering government - the zombies are just mankind's most natural enemy.)
Did you know that there's an alternate ending suppossedly? Where Peter shoots himself in the head and Fran sticks her head in the blades of the copter she would have flown away from. In my humble opinion, this could def make sense and make a clear cut (even though down trotten ending) but everyone knows there is NO escape from the zombie epidemic Some other side notes, it's a very awesomely gorey film and it includes pretty much where Tom Savini, gore make up fx extradoinaire and George Romero teamp up. A lot of the gore was thought of right on the spot and they just create a gag for it right then and there. Look for deaths like someone getting themselves ripped to shreds in the blood pressure tester, a screw driver in the ear and a pie fight sequence.
The film touts an insane amount of zombies and last year had it's remake, which wasn't all to bad considering how remakes are nowadays. The director of that remake will now also be doing a remake to that original sequel, Day of the Dead. So expect the remake to Day of the Dead to come out next year. Probably the most notable thing in the remake is the differences of the zombies, that are more typically faster and probably smarter and even more ferocious (more parell with the ones you'd find in Return of the Living Dead, which is number 8 on my listing I do believe)
NOTE: Be on the lookout for the rather racist, hilarious and losing it WOOLY in the beginning of the film whose in the task force int he apartment complex. Thanks Wooly, for blowing the zombie's head totally off. :D
Breast shots: One, nearly in the bed scene as done by Fran.
Body count: 88 (includes the living and the undead)
Gore factor: 9 out of 10 heaping buckets of blood and ripped up cow intestines.
2)Hellraiser
1987, Directed and Written by Clive Barker
This was a hard one to call for me between Hellraiser 1 and 2, but I hadda pick the first one since Clive did direct it and I feel it's quite transcendental for horror films at the time, a bit of a step above a typical slasheresque horror film, and we had a new boogeyman born known as Pinhead the Cenobite (as played so coldly by Doug Bradley). I feel that Hellbound: Hellraiser II is a bigger epic in scale of the Hellraiser films and with each film (with the originals at least) we get to know more and more about Pinhead and the Box. So they spent the first three films really getting to know the man behind Pinhead and his curse, and the fourth film is all abou the Mythos of the puzzle: THe Lament of Configuration. Then Hellraisers 5-8 which really just have Pinhead as lil cameos as far as I'm concerned and are just direct to video pieces of crap. But this is what you get with the first one to really have a feeling for the Hellraiser saga:
The story- So, a young girl: Kristy Lawrence moves into a house with her mother and father. The house belongs to her father's half brother (Uncle Frank) Now the story between Frank and the mom is that they used to be lovers and fuck around and the such - basically Frank was a scumbag. Frank, a lil while ago, discovered the puzzle box - and basically discovered and solved the riddle for the Lament of Configuration: All of these hooks and shit ripped his flesh right off, and these demonic S & M creatures called the Cenobites were conjured up as well and brought Frank down to Hell.
So you can think of this as almost like a haunted house story and features the typical almost wicked step mother kinda role int he film. A drop of blood from the father ends up absorbing down into the house into the remnants of Frank. And with each bit of flesh or blood he gets, he becomes more and more man again. Well, the "wicked stepmom" finds out the secret and so wants to be re-united with her lover again - so she helps lure in men so that he can have their flesh and he can be whole again- that includes his own half-brother and her husband Larry.
So Uncle Frank is whole again, but now the Cenobites are pissed that he escaped hell - so they come back to retrieve him and no matter the cost. I find that the film is all about pain and the love of pain. The tearing of the flesh and the reprimanding of the wicked. Did you know that the film was originally going to be called "Sadomasochists from Beyond the Grave" that just sounds like a bad porn title right? Anyone a big Clockwork Orange fan? Well the address of the house is the same as the institue young Alex attends in order to become a better man in society. The film is a bit demented with the whole Love of Pain and pleasure of the flesh themes going on withint the film. Clive kinda makes within the film series itself a mythos about Hell and what is to be possiably expected in the afterlife, it's more so present in the second Hellraiser film though. Anything else prior to Hell was just simply Demonic possessions and or the Devil himself with such films like The Exorcist, THe Omen and Rosemary's Baby- Hellraiser took a vast realm as Hell, and added a lot more of a flare to it. If not, this film woulda just been another cliched slasher film like all of the other Freddy's and Jason's at it's time. Don't worry too much about a super director's cut though, cause Clive Barker only had to trim about 20 seconds from his initial cut which are lil hammer blows, fingers entering the flesh and some S and M ass spanking. But do check out the first two Hellraiser films to get a great idea down for how the whole bizarre mythos works.
Body count- 7
Breast seen-1
Gore factor- 9 out of 10 buckets of blood. Watching Uncle Frank slowly returning to a man is a slowly, gorey and bloody process.
3)Freddy vs. Jason
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Buckets of Blood: 10 out of 10- hilarious Kung-Fu style bloody spraying as if when you cut people's limbs or major arteries they'd shoot out like puncturing a hole in a spray can.
4)Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
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1987, Directed and written by Sam Raimi, also written by Scott Spiegel.
As listed in my countdown for the original Evil Dead (number 4 on the list) as Sam Raimi's sequels progress, they become less gorey and more comedic- that's why as much as I LOVE Army of Darkness, I really don't consider it a horror film. But Evil Dead 2 is yet another ingenious blend of comedy and horror, more so comedy and creepyesque horror. So we got some more slap stick where Bruce Campbell has a bit more acting ability in him to roam around the house and either get possessed, laugh with a lamp shade and lose his mind, or play a Tom and Jerry lil sequence with his hand that he had to cut off.
The story- As I've mentioned before, Evil Dead 2 isn't so much of a sequel - but more like a bigger budgeted remake of the original. the boys wanted to make it more commercially viable than the original, so that's why it's not so much necessarily gorey - but you're not just gonna see red blood. Cause a lot of RED blood means a film has to be trimmed down a lot more. So instead they featured a lot more like green blood, black bood and anyting else gorey they can feature in the movie. So if you've seen the original, the first twenty mintues or so of this one is pretty much the same.
Ash and his girlfreidn Linda are in a cabin, by mistake the discovers the book of the dead and the demonic incantantions that awaken the dark forces in the woods. THe demons come for his girlfriend so that Ash is forced to kill her, then they come for his hand which he cuts off (and then the hand runs around causing trouble all throughout the film - waaay too funny.) So we got Ash acting all paranoid, throwing himself around the cabin and smashing plates over his head like a goof ball. Then, two hill billies and relatives to the archeologist who discoverd the book of the dead return to the cabin wonderign what happened.
Ash is blamed for all of the madness and they think he called the Archeologist and his wife Henrietta. Well this couple gets sucked into all of teh madness as well (there's no tree raping but Bobbi Joe is sucked out intot he woods by some trees) and other's die and or possessed. The only way to get rid of the evil, is by using some new passages that were discovered that were intially came out of the Necronomicon, the original book of the dead. The first passage puts the force into a viewable form, and the second part of the passage will suck it into a worm hole back to where it belongs, in the medieval times int he days of Henry the Red and King Arthur (no not that one)
This movie is very hilarious and some (such as Jack Black in High Fidelity) will proclaim it as one of either the greatest a)horror b)cult c)cinematic films of all time. There's a lot of goofy tongue in cheek humor, Oldsmobile and of course three stooges humor all through the film. The reason people consider this as a remake is only because the film makers couldn't obtain the rightsto the first film to give the audience a recap. So they reshot scenes with Bruce and his girlfriend, but there is an exact point where Evil Dead 1 begins and the "semi official" Evil Dead 2 begins when Ash is possessed by the evil but is saved by Dawn.
Having a "possessed" Ash comes from the original short film - Within the Woods, which Raimi and crew shot for funding to get the original Evil Dead made. They used a lot of the scares in their first film (to the "T") but having Ash romaing around as a possessed monster is closer to the Woods plot. But did you all know that some of the film was shot within a gymnasium in North Carolina, but also on the set of The Color Purple, due to the fact that the original Evil Dead cabin burnt down under "mysterious reasons"
"For God's sake, how do you stop it?" Well, that's obvious - you can't. THe franchise is still thriving with a hopeful Evil Dead 4 in the works, comic books, a remake of the original Evil Dead and numerous video games of the series. To me, it is the quintessiantial cult film/series.
Breasts seen: Almost one from the decapitated muppet body of Linda running around with the chainsaw and I guess the same can go for Henrietta in the basement - but really no boobs. ANother graphic semi-porographic seen woulda involved Bobby Joe having her legs spread and rammed so hard/fast with a tree between her crothch she woulda been split in half.
Body count: 6
Gore factor: 6 out of 10 buckets of blood, as mentioned up top, not a very gorey film but they did what they could to make it a more marketable peice of art. Even if that involves decapitated puppet bodys, head in a vice a hole in the wall that shoots blood or juice of some sort (almost like black coffee at times) that spurts and blows all over Ash.
5)The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2
1986, Directed by Tobe Hooper and written by L.M. Kit Carson
Y'know, I just got done writing about the TCM movies not too long ago so I'm not gonna get into it. But here are the reasons that you probably should chec it out for - A) Tobe Hooper returns to direct B)Dennis Hooper with a barrage of chainsaws C)Tom Savini does the make up fx D)Kinky pseduo chainsaw sex. Gunnar Hensen isn't back to be Leatherface, but a kinda retarded and perverted Leatherface is back with an evne goofier mask. Only the actor of the cook has returned from the original, but we do have a new family member, Chop Top, who is the twin of the Hitchhiker from the original whom was away in Vietnam during the original film. He is totally over the top and always hilarious, and likes to use a hot wire hanger to scratch at the metal plate in his head.
The story- A radio DJ (Stretch) ends up having a recording of some kids calling in her show and getting chopped up by the crazy Leatherface family of Cannibals. This intrigues the local sherrif who is played by Dennis Hopper and is on a vengeful quest to get back at those bastards what they did to his family from the previous film. Leatherface falls in love with the DJ and all hell is rampant in this film. I should probably check it out again, since I haven't seen the movie myself in a while, and can only really remember a cheesy ending, the over the top Chop Top and some of teh more memorable moments in the rest of the series. The cannibals carry around a corpse with them thourgh out the film (I'm not too too sure if it's their brother the Hitchhiker from the original) but it does people a few people hacked up with a chainsaw and a dude skinned alive. So it def features more in your face gore, but doesn't hit on the same graphic (felt but not seen) impact that the original had. But it does incorporate the legend of the cannibal family but their victims in chili, which was actually award winning in the fine ol state of Texas.
I remember first getting sucked into this movie with the drive by chainsawing, and then losing faith in it when I saw Dennis Hoopper sobbing over his nephew Franklin's skeleton in the wheelchair. Liek he even knows that's the skelton (oh that's his wheelchair that's right) Ah but there is an awesome chainsaw fight at the ending, think of it like Obi Wan vs. Darth Vader but no Force and using Chainsaws instead of light sabers. And did you know if you can find the proper posing from the 2nd video box, the family has posed their bodies in a parody to the Breakfast Club?
Breasts seen: 0, but there is some kinky pseudo chainsaw sex where Leatherface likes to put his big ol long blade between Stretch's legs.
Body count: 8, including a fun one of a dude gettign skinned alive.
Gore Factor: 6 out of 10 buckets of blood, the beginning scene of the chainsaw drive by still sells me to this day :D
6)Frankenstein/ 7)Bride of Frankenstein
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1931/1935 both Directed by James Whale, both written by John Bolderston
Unlike my other sequels listed, these are the ony two I consider as back to back make a whole. They are so directly linked, so unique and some may even consider that Bride is better. I for one believe so, but both are just SOO awesome and transcending that none of our modern day horror films would have been nothing without the original masters of horror and their monsters like the directing of James Whale, Boris Karloff as the monster or even Colin Clive as the kooky Dr. Frankenstein. There's a lot of immoral ethic undertones about Frankenstien playing God and the reprecussions about "being God." Whereas he really doesn't take responsbility for his actions, and the monster runs rampant and destructive through one sequel after the next (and still does to this day).
The story- Like I'm evne gonna get into the concept of Frankenstein. If you don't know anyting about this masterpiece of the macabre (whether it's novel or various adaptations) you need not read my blogs anymore. Well Frankenstein anyways wants to create life, he accidentally puts a criminal mind inside the monster (along with other spare parts) and he's created and the monster kills. WHere the original novel, the monster kills out of neglect, this one kills from the mind that it was given "from Abby Normal" lol. People are to believe that the monster and creator are destroyed but their wrong.
In Bride, it's so beatufilly shot in scope, from teh lighting of the scenes to the angles played on the characters. Oh, speaking of great characters this one is chop full. From the gay ol'd Dr. Waldman the alchemist necromancer whom really pushes Frankenstein so that they can combine their talents to better use (he kinda represents the Devil in this movie) in fact there's a lot of this movie with a lot of religious themes and tones. Frankenstein also wanders in search of a mate and friendship where he befriends a blind man and is instructed things like smoking, drinking booze and speaking. Which in this film makes us feel even MORE sympathetic towards the monster and to his untimely ending. Def check it out if you're any bit of a man of horror or monster movies this is one is a def see!
Breasts seen: 0, it is the 30's, but you can really use your imigination to see through the Bride's wrappings ;)
Body Count: 6 between both films
Gore Factor: In our time, I'd say about 2 out of 10, but in the 30's I'd say around 10 out of 10.
8)Halloween 2
loomis-5.jpg (8622 bytes)
1981, Directed by Rick Rosenthal, written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill.
Hey, has society seen enough of John Carpenter's getting redone or what? I'm just awaiting for someone to redo his original Halloween classic because they can only go SO FAR with the Myers sequels already, which probably have the MOST conviluded continuity than any other kinda slasher film In fact, the ninth Halloween film is currently in pre-production, no plot yet but could be possiably called Halloween:Retribution or Halloween:Blood Lines. But, we should give the film series it's due but pretty much beginning the whole slasher genre from teh influences of Psycho and the Italian Giallo films. But this sequel as equally good as the original.
Maintaining that THE SHAPE has escaped and just magically disappeared give the film it's eerieness, and at it's points has some essence of Frankenstein. This film though only has John and Debra (Mr. Carpenter's main producer and co-worker for years) as the writers, and some unknown named Rosenthal (who besides this film directed the 80's cult classic The Russkies, which is like the Russian version of Goonies lol) and he now directs many many tv episodes. But we got Jamie Lee Curtis as a deranged victim still trying to escape her brother and Donald Pleasence is still the only doctor mad enought so stop the Shape known as Michael.
The story- This film takes place the same night ast the original Halloween, actually takes place DIRECTLY after the end of the original where Michael's body just kinda mysteriousily disappears. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee) is taken to a hospital to recooperate for the night. No one truly knows about the murders that happened besides Laurie, Dr. Loomis and Sheriff Brackett (whose daughter died in the original). So the two men are really the only ones out on a manhunt to stop Myers and prevent the town from further panic.
In the mean time, Loomis is ordered to get off the case and return to Smith's Grove from hence he came. But he knows he's really the only one that can stop the force of Michael, he then discovers that Laurie Strode is Michael Myers sister who went up for adoption after the incident where he killed his older sister. Which we later end up finding out in the series is that Michael has to kill off hsi blood line to maintaint eh piece in his life blah blah blah.
Want some hidden tidbits? Look for Dana Carvey in his film debut, playing an assistant , he's taken some directions from a blonde reporter. John Carpenter turned down the direction of this film, but helped write the script. He was also brought in because some people thought that Halloween 2 wasn't gorey enoughh, so they called John in to shoot a few scenes from some extra gore. The film a couple is watching around the set is Night of the Living Dead, but the film you might catch fromt eh two kids watching int he original is the original version of The Thing, which John Carpenter would end up remaking a few years later.
This marks the only film in the Halloween series to feature anyting the day after Halloween, all of the other ones endo on Halloween night. The film has some truely more hardcore killing than the original film but almost not as fun. Loomis is still a psycho and seeing Michael burn to death at the end of the film makes you wonder how/why exactly he should appear int he 4th film. Oh, because in the third film, it has nothing to do with the series and exists within it's own pocket universe. I'll get more into the Halloween series on a futrue date....
Breasts seen: 1- A very hot bath scene, and hot can be used as a pun if you like
Body Count: 11
Gore factor: 6 out of 10 buckets of blood, I'd say a lot of it goes towards the slipping on blood scene in the hospital and the burning of the bitch in the hot bath.
9)American Werewolf In London
1981, Directed and Written by John Landis
Who woulda thought that the director of the great comedies Animal House and The Blues Brothers would go on to create two landmarkish points in horror. The latter of the two being Michael Jackson's Thriller (which granted, whether you like to knock it or not- was probably the greatest video ever made in it's day.) The other landmark would be the QUINTESSENTIAL WEREWOLF film...American Werewolf in London. Where previous werewolf movies dwelled a lot of gypsy curses or time lapse photography to show makeup being applied very slowly to Lon Chaney Jr. - this film broke all molds in special effects style and and cocept within the werewolf films and it's own distinctive take on the horror genre as well.
On another side note, if you wanna watch a werewolf movie - I can think of only a few that are really needed for considered viewing. First is this film, then if you wanna go nostalgic, check out some of the good ol versions of Universal's Werewolf movies with Lon Chaney Jr. Some people have questions of the Howling series, I for one have tracked down and owned the old school VHS versions of the first 6 or 7 Howling movies. Well, they all such and have terriably funny makeup in it - and none of the films are truly connected throught he series. T he first one was great because ti was directed by Joe Dante, but all of the others are fairly cheesy. A great modern horrific werewolf movie I saw not too long ago was Dog Soldiers a new kinda werewolf movie, that's kinda got some Resident Evil/Evil Dead stuff going on for it but the special effects are awesome and it's quite graphically gorey to watch the werewolves actually eat people up.
The story- Landis had the idea for this film since he was still a teenager, but it wasn't until he'd done his work on Kelly's Heroes and directign two of America's greatest comedies we'll have to hold, was he able to finally direct a horror film like he wanted to. Two american guys (David and Jack) are out on a trip to jolly old England. On their hike on night, they take basically the "wrong" path. The local werewolf of the parts comes on by and attacks them. Jack is killed and David is mauled, and the townspeople save the day by killing the werewolf. David survives but grieves for Jack, and then all of the townspeople deny anything about a werewolf especially after David notices the wolf reformed to a man.
So David just kinda shrugs it off while he is hospitalized, he starts to have nightmares at night - oh and he's devoloping a Florence Nightingale syndrome with his nurse by the way. So, he's banging his nurse and sometimes he tends to sneak out at night and wake up naked in the zoo. He doesn't know why, he thinks he's going insane - especially when he starts to see his best friend Jack coming back to life.
Jack has been telling him night after night that David was bitten by a werewolf, and he must kill himself because he is kiilling others. And everyone that he does kill, they will also be caught in the same limbo that Jack is. Of course David thinks that he is slowly going crazy and just shrugs it off. Becuase everynight he wakes up refreshed and can't recall what happened the night before when he turned into a wolf. So night after night, Jack's body gets a lil bit more and more decomposed and another victim or two joins his ranks. It's really quite ghastly how they just pop in and out in the film and they're like, "Hey David, have you killed yourself lately?"
Jack: Now, I'm really sorry to be upsetting you, but I have to warn you.
David: Warn me?
Jack: We were attacked by a werewolf.
David: I'm not listening to this!
Jack: On the moors, we were attacked by a lycanthrope, a werewolf. I was murdered, an unnatural death, and now I walk the earth in limbo until the werewolf's curse is lifted.
David: Shut up!
Jack: The wolf's bloodline must be severed; the last remaining werewolf must be destroyed. It's you David.
So we got A LOT of internal struggle rushing through David's mind. How would you take it when your best friend and corpses are springing up to tell you to kill yourself - it's very nutty. OH and how's a bout the werewolf nazi nightmare he has lol, when they'r eattacking his family while they watch the Muppet Show. WHICH is yet another Muppet connection obsession that John Landis likes to use, such as in The Blues Brothers when just before the Mall chase sequence, the one guy is like : "Do you have this in a Miss Piggy?" or in Landis' take on Vampires in his film called Innocent Blood he hires muppeteer Frank Oz as a coroner in his film.
So again, we got some great internal struggle going on with our main character and some ghastly gorey scens elsewhere in the film for the deadly ghost nightmares. On top of all of this, we have THE GREATEST WEREWOLF TRANSFORMATION OF ALL TIME, basically because this wasn't done by keeping the actor still and slowlly apply make up to him - this werewolf is full on screen transformation using a lot of warping, wire pulling, animatronices and just about every trick in the book to make it such a memorable scene in cinematic history.Rick Baker did the special effects for the film, which earned him an 1982 Oscar for his work on this film. THe movie was also won/nominated some Saturn Awards (which are like the oscars for fantasy/horror/sci-fi films) for various categories including best film, best make up, best writing and best actress.
How's about some worthless trivia for you? Such as a bit of John Landis' trademark usage of porno, or the fact that every song in the film has the word: MOON in it. The special effects in this film were doen so well, that the Academy had to recognize such efforts- London became the first film to recieve an Oscar for special effect treatment in a film.
Breasts seen: 2 pairs
Body count: 13
Gore factor: 8 out of 10, having the corpses hanging around all of the time and the quick/sudden late night killings give us the gore we need. The bloodiness and ghastliness go hand in hand with the awesome special efffects and make up.
10)Zombie
1979, Directed by Lucio Fulci and written by Elisa Briganti and Dardano Saccheti
Now as noted from previous listings this film known as Zombie is also known as Zombie 2 in parts of the world. In Itally it is intended as the sequel to Romero's Dawn of the Dead, but Argento called his cut Zombie so that's why this is a sequel. But only in name, there is really no connecting story line here. Lucio Fulci is probably the second best Italian horror director around and has made some really great (and sometimes pretty bad horror films) but if you want the cream of his crop (eeeww) then go for this film, The Beyond (which they like to also call Zombi 3 over there, again no continuing story line but make sure you get the The Beyond from '81 wich is also known as the seven doors to death) The House by the Cemetary and City of the Living Dead (aka the Gates of Hell, which is an awesome second installment in Fulci's zombie trilogy - which are again just 3 dif zombie films, no continuing story line)
It's still a great movie and has some memorable stuff in it. Like a zombie vs. a shark, girl getting a huge wood splinter in her eye, quick striking zombies with maggots in their eyes and zombies slowly roaming towards NYC. This Zombie film like all of the other sequels have no continuity between them, but except fro teh first two - are pretty much all second rate peices of Italian horror trash.
The story- A boat suddenly appears in the NY harbor with zombies on it, the track the boat and it belongs to this scientist. A girl is on a mission to find out what happened to her father (the scientist) she teams up with journalist and stuff to reach a small island in the Caribbean. Where there is a plague going through the community which is turning them into zombies.
It's gotta some rather creepy, graphic and gorey scenes in this film. I enjoyed the main theme in it and Fulci's zombies almost have a differnt flare than all of the others that I've ever seen. They move slow at first, but when you get close to them - they strike like vipers and rip your jugular out as it gushes up a fountain of blood.
Breasts seen: 2 pair
Body count: 8
Gore factor: 8 out of 10 buckets, if not for the eyeball scene, underwater zombie and quick striking jugular ripping- this movie would be nothing.
So it's about one week and counting until Halloween officially comes about. We're already starting to catch a few of these horror films on television now, but like I've listed over and over again - you're never gonna get the real deal through programs found on AMC, SCI-FI channel or anyone else. If you want to see what these films are really about, find the few places that you can rent them from or just buy them on taking my word of mouth from the review. Check out my countdown to see which films that you DEF need to see before getting any of these other films.
Listed below are the films that ALMOST made it but just couldn't cut it all the way (no pun intended for the slasher fans). I don't think that this list in particular is in any order of preference like my true countdown. This film is more like the second stringers that I hadda cut back in preference of other films that really came to my mind in time that I think they really needed to get the recognition and word of mouth that they deserve. So here we go, if I can list you guys the amount of blood and breasts and such for the specific films: I shall - if not they are still def movies you need to check out. And if you don't see a film that YOU FEEL BELONG TO DESERVE ON THIS LIST please list a lil comment below. Cause the more of us that stick together on this thing, all the more better that we can make a more unified and glorified (or should I say gorified) essence of horror in the world.
Here we go - in no particular order, here are some truly great horror films that I believe you all need to check out. If you're a lil particular about a few, I really want to narrow my films to horror specific, and say, not truly a sci-fi gorey film (such as John Carpenter's The Thing or Critters) to say a fantasy based film like perhaps The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Army of Darkness or even Lord of Illusions. No, this is straight up horror, so unless you thik otherwise, please feel free to drop me a line or comment on my blogs:
1)Dawn of the Dead (aka Zombi or Zombie:Dawn of the Dead)
1978, Directed and written by George A. Romero
George A. Romero's epic zombie film and the follow up to his original classic Night of the Living Dead (number 2 on my list). A comibination with George A Romero and Italian horror master Dario Argento turns out to be a match made in Hell that lived on through a long team up including Two Evil Eyes. The film itself is about four people (a helicpoter pilot, a newswoman and two SWAT soldiers) find refuge in an indoor shopping mall while the zombie epidemic wipes across the face of the Earth. They hold their ground off against a maruading band of bikers/pirates who also try to steal what they can to survive. In the end, it's an all out war/pie fight against the bikers and zombies and whoever survives - hitches a ride onto a helicopter to find safety elsewhere.
The film itslef was filmed at the Monroeville Mall in Monroeville,PA whenever the mall would close up- the crew would set up for the night until Dawn, and then start again for the next day of shooting the following night. The film itself is a legendary cult classic and along with Night of the Living Dead, has inspired many, many zombie films. Some like to even consider that Shaun of the Dead, is an uncompromised sequel to Dawn of the Dead that continues it's story line. Along with it's prequel, (but no so much with it's prequel) there are a lot of social issues that pracitacally satirically look at the world in it's time with ourselves against the zombies. You can call the zombies whatever you like and picture the global problem with them in it's place (whether famine, God's wrath, war or a domineering government - the zombies are just mankind's most natural enemy.)
Did you know that there's an alternate ending suppossedly? Where Peter shoots himself in the head and Fran sticks her head in the blades of the copter she would have flown away from. In my humble opinion, this could def make sense and make a clear cut (even though down trotten ending) but everyone knows there is NO escape from the zombie epidemic Some other side notes, it's a very awesomely gorey film and it includes pretty much where Tom Savini, gore make up fx extradoinaire and George Romero teamp up. A lot of the gore was thought of right on the spot and they just create a gag for it right then and there. Look for deaths like someone getting themselves ripped to shreds in the blood pressure tester, a screw driver in the ear and a pie fight sequence.
The film touts an insane amount of zombies and last year had it's remake, which wasn't all to bad considering how remakes are nowadays. The director of that remake will now also be doing a remake to that original sequel, Day of the Dead. So expect the remake to Day of the Dead to come out next year. Probably the most notable thing in the remake is the differences of the zombies, that are more typically faster and probably smarter and even more ferocious (more parell with the ones you'd find in Return of the Living Dead, which is number 8 on my listing I do believe)
NOTE: Be on the lookout for the rather racist, hilarious and losing it WOOLY in the beginning of the film whose in the task force int he apartment complex. Thanks Wooly, for blowing the zombie's head totally off. :D
Breast shots: One, nearly in the bed scene as done by Fran.
Body count: 88 (includes the living and the undead)
Gore factor: 9 out of 10 heaping buckets of blood and ripped up cow intestines.
2)Hellraiser
1987, Directed and Written by Clive Barker
This was a hard one to call for me between Hellraiser 1 and 2, but I hadda pick the first one since Clive did direct it and I feel it's quite transcendental for horror films at the time, a bit of a step above a typical slasheresque horror film, and we had a new boogeyman born known as Pinhead the Cenobite (as played so coldly by Doug Bradley). I feel that Hellbound: Hellraiser II is a bigger epic in scale of the Hellraiser films and with each film (with the originals at least) we get to know more and more about Pinhead and the Box. So they spent the first three films really getting to know the man behind Pinhead and his curse, and the fourth film is all abou the Mythos of the puzzle: THe Lament of Configuration. Then Hellraisers 5-8 which really just have Pinhead as lil cameos as far as I'm concerned and are just direct to video pieces of crap. But this is what you get with the first one to really have a feeling for the Hellraiser saga:
The story- So, a young girl: Kristy Lawrence moves into a house with her mother and father. The house belongs to her father's half brother (Uncle Frank) Now the story between Frank and the mom is that they used to be lovers and fuck around and the such - basically Frank was a scumbag. Frank, a lil while ago, discovered the puzzle box - and basically discovered and solved the riddle for the Lament of Configuration: All of these hooks and shit ripped his flesh right off, and these demonic S & M creatures called the Cenobites were conjured up as well and brought Frank down to Hell.
So you can think of this as almost like a haunted house story and features the typical almost wicked step mother kinda role int he film. A drop of blood from the father ends up absorbing down into the house into the remnants of Frank. And with each bit of flesh or blood he gets, he becomes more and more man again. Well, the "wicked stepmom" finds out the secret and so wants to be re-united with her lover again - so she helps lure in men so that he can have their flesh and he can be whole again- that includes his own half-brother and her husband Larry.
So Uncle Frank is whole again, but now the Cenobites are pissed that he escaped hell - so they come back to retrieve him and no matter the cost. I find that the film is all about pain and the love of pain. The tearing of the flesh and the reprimanding of the wicked. Did you know that the film was originally going to be called "Sadomasochists from Beyond the Grave" that just sounds like a bad porn title right? Anyone a big Clockwork Orange fan? Well the address of the house is the same as the institue young Alex attends in order to become a better man in society. The film is a bit demented with the whole Love of Pain and pleasure of the flesh themes going on withint the film. Clive kinda makes within the film series itself a mythos about Hell and what is to be possiably expected in the afterlife, it's more so present in the second Hellraiser film though. Anything else prior to Hell was just simply Demonic possessions and or the Devil himself with such films like The Exorcist, THe Omen and Rosemary's Baby- Hellraiser took a vast realm as Hell, and added a lot more of a flare to it. If not, this film woulda just been another cliched slasher film like all of the other Freddy's and Jason's at it's time. Don't worry too much about a super director's cut though, cause Clive Barker only had to trim about 20 seconds from his initial cut which are lil hammer blows, fingers entering the flesh and some S and M ass spanking. But do check out the first two Hellraiser films to get a great idea down for how the whole bizarre mythos works.
Body count- 7
Breast seen-1
Gore factor- 9 out of 10 buckets of blood. Watching Uncle Frank slowly returning to a man is a slowly, gorey and bloody process.
3)Freddy vs. Jason
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Buckets of Blood: 10 out of 10- hilarious Kung-Fu style bloody spraying as if when you cut people's limbs or major arteries they'd shoot out like puncturing a hole in a spray can.
4)Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
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1987, Directed and written by Sam Raimi, also written by Scott Spiegel.
As listed in my countdown for the original Evil Dead (number 4 on the list) as Sam Raimi's sequels progress, they become less gorey and more comedic- that's why as much as I LOVE Army of Darkness, I really don't consider it a horror film. But Evil Dead 2 is yet another ingenious blend of comedy and horror, more so comedy and creepyesque horror. So we got some more slap stick where Bruce Campbell has a bit more acting ability in him to roam around the house and either get possessed, laugh with a lamp shade and lose his mind, or play a Tom and Jerry lil sequence with his hand that he had to cut off.
The story- As I've mentioned before, Evil Dead 2 isn't so much of a sequel - but more like a bigger budgeted remake of the original. the boys wanted to make it more commercially viable than the original, so that's why it's not so much necessarily gorey - but you're not just gonna see red blood. Cause a lot of RED blood means a film has to be trimmed down a lot more. So instead they featured a lot more like green blood, black bood and anyting else gorey they can feature in the movie. So if you've seen the original, the first twenty mintues or so of this one is pretty much the same.
Ash and his girlfreidn Linda are in a cabin, by mistake the discovers the book of the dead and the demonic incantantions that awaken the dark forces in the woods. THe demons come for his girlfriend so that Ash is forced to kill her, then they come for his hand which he cuts off (and then the hand runs around causing trouble all throughout the film - waaay too funny.) So we got Ash acting all paranoid, throwing himself around the cabin and smashing plates over his head like a goof ball. Then, two hill billies and relatives to the archeologist who discoverd the book of the dead return to the cabin wonderign what happened.
Ash is blamed for all of the madness and they think he called the Archeologist and his wife Henrietta. Well this couple gets sucked into all of teh madness as well (there's no tree raping but Bobbi Joe is sucked out intot he woods by some trees) and other's die and or possessed. The only way to get rid of the evil, is by using some new passages that were discovered that were intially came out of the Necronomicon, the original book of the dead. The first passage puts the force into a viewable form, and the second part of the passage will suck it into a worm hole back to where it belongs, in the medieval times int he days of Henry the Red and King Arthur (no not that one)
This movie is very hilarious and some (such as Jack Black in High Fidelity) will proclaim it as one of either the greatest a)horror b)cult c)cinematic films of all time. There's a lot of goofy tongue in cheek humor, Oldsmobile and of course three stooges humor all through the film. The reason people consider this as a remake is only because the film makers couldn't obtain the rightsto the first film to give the audience a recap. So they reshot scenes with Bruce and his girlfriend, but there is an exact point where Evil Dead 1 begins and the "semi official" Evil Dead 2 begins when Ash is possessed by the evil but is saved by Dawn.
Having a "possessed" Ash comes from the original short film - Within the Woods, which Raimi and crew shot for funding to get the original Evil Dead made. They used a lot of the scares in their first film (to the "T") but having Ash romaing around as a possessed monster is closer to the Woods plot. But did you all know that some of the film was shot within a gymnasium in North Carolina, but also on the set of The Color Purple, due to the fact that the original Evil Dead cabin burnt down under "mysterious reasons"
"For God's sake, how do you stop it?" Well, that's obvious - you can't. THe franchise is still thriving with a hopeful Evil Dead 4 in the works, comic books, a remake of the original Evil Dead and numerous video games of the series. To me, it is the quintessiantial cult film/series.
Breasts seen: Almost one from the decapitated muppet body of Linda running around with the chainsaw and I guess the same can go for Henrietta in the basement - but really no boobs. ANother graphic semi-porographic seen woulda involved Bobby Joe having her legs spread and rammed so hard/fast with a tree between her crothch she woulda been split in half.
Body count: 6
Gore factor: 6 out of 10 buckets of blood, as mentioned up top, not a very gorey film but they did what they could to make it a more marketable peice of art. Even if that involves decapitated puppet bodys, head in a vice a hole in the wall that shoots blood or juice of some sort (almost like black coffee at times) that spurts and blows all over Ash.
5)The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2
1986, Directed by Tobe Hooper and written by L.M. Kit Carson
Y'know, I just got done writing about the TCM movies not too long ago so I'm not gonna get into it. But here are the reasons that you probably should chec it out for - A) Tobe Hooper returns to direct B)Dennis Hooper with a barrage of chainsaws C)Tom Savini does the make up fx D)Kinky pseduo chainsaw sex. Gunnar Hensen isn't back to be Leatherface, but a kinda retarded and perverted Leatherface is back with an evne goofier mask. Only the actor of the cook has returned from the original, but we do have a new family member, Chop Top, who is the twin of the Hitchhiker from the original whom was away in Vietnam during the original film. He is totally over the top and always hilarious, and likes to use a hot wire hanger to scratch at the metal plate in his head.
The story- A radio DJ (Stretch) ends up having a recording of some kids calling in her show and getting chopped up by the crazy Leatherface family of Cannibals. This intrigues the local sherrif who is played by Dennis Hopper and is on a vengeful quest to get back at those bastards what they did to his family from the previous film. Leatherface falls in love with the DJ and all hell is rampant in this film. I should probably check it out again, since I haven't seen the movie myself in a while, and can only really remember a cheesy ending, the over the top Chop Top and some of teh more memorable moments in the rest of the series. The cannibals carry around a corpse with them thourgh out the film (I'm not too too sure if it's their brother the Hitchhiker from the original) but it does people a few people hacked up with a chainsaw and a dude skinned alive. So it def features more in your face gore, but doesn't hit on the same graphic (felt but not seen) impact that the original had. But it does incorporate the legend of the cannibal family but their victims in chili, which was actually award winning in the fine ol state of Texas.
I remember first getting sucked into this movie with the drive by chainsawing, and then losing faith in it when I saw Dennis Hoopper sobbing over his nephew Franklin's skeleton in the wheelchair. Liek he even knows that's the skelton (oh that's his wheelchair that's right) Ah but there is an awesome chainsaw fight at the ending, think of it like Obi Wan vs. Darth Vader but no Force and using Chainsaws instead of light sabers. And did you know if you can find the proper posing from the 2nd video box, the family has posed their bodies in a parody to the Breakfast Club?
Breasts seen: 0, but there is some kinky pseudo chainsaw sex where Leatherface likes to put his big ol long blade between Stretch's legs.
Body count: 8, including a fun one of a dude gettign skinned alive.
Gore Factor: 6 out of 10 buckets of blood, the beginning scene of the chainsaw drive by still sells me to this day :D
6)Frankenstein/ 7)Bride of Frankenstein
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1931/1935 both Directed by James Whale, both written by John Bolderston
Unlike my other sequels listed, these are the ony two I consider as back to back make a whole. They are so directly linked, so unique and some may even consider that Bride is better. I for one believe so, but both are just SOO awesome and transcending that none of our modern day horror films would have been nothing without the original masters of horror and their monsters like the directing of James Whale, Boris Karloff as the monster or even Colin Clive as the kooky Dr. Frankenstein. There's a lot of immoral ethic undertones about Frankenstien playing God and the reprecussions about "being God." Whereas he really doesn't take responsbility for his actions, and the monster runs rampant and destructive through one sequel after the next (and still does to this day).
The story- Like I'm evne gonna get into the concept of Frankenstein. If you don't know anyting about this masterpiece of the macabre (whether it's novel or various adaptations) you need not read my blogs anymore. Well Frankenstein anyways wants to create life, he accidentally puts a criminal mind inside the monster (along with other spare parts) and he's created and the monster kills. WHere the original novel, the monster kills out of neglect, this one kills from the mind that it was given "from Abby Normal" lol. People are to believe that the monster and creator are destroyed but their wrong.
In Bride, it's so beatufilly shot in scope, from teh lighting of the scenes to the angles played on the characters. Oh, speaking of great characters this one is chop full. From the gay ol'd Dr. Waldman the alchemist necromancer whom really pushes Frankenstein so that they can combine their talents to better use (he kinda represents the Devil in this movie) in fact there's a lot of this movie with a lot of religious themes and tones. Frankenstein also wanders in search of a mate and friendship where he befriends a blind man and is instructed things like smoking, drinking booze and speaking. Which in this film makes us feel even MORE sympathetic towards the monster and to his untimely ending. Def check it out if you're any bit of a man of horror or monster movies this is one is a def see!
Breasts seen: 0, it is the 30's, but you can really use your imigination to see through the Bride's wrappings ;)
Body Count: 6 between both films
Gore Factor: In our time, I'd say about 2 out of 10, but in the 30's I'd say around 10 out of 10.
8)Halloween 2
loomis-5.jpg (8622 bytes)
1981, Directed by Rick Rosenthal, written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill.
Hey, has society seen enough of John Carpenter's getting redone or what? I'm just awaiting for someone to redo his original Halloween classic because they can only go SO FAR with the Myers sequels already, which probably have the MOST conviluded continuity than any other kinda slasher film In fact, the ninth Halloween film is currently in pre-production, no plot yet but could be possiably called Halloween:Retribution or Halloween:Blood Lines. But, we should give the film series it's due but pretty much beginning the whole slasher genre from teh influences of Psycho and the Italian Giallo films. But this sequel as equally good as the original.
Maintaining that THE SHAPE has escaped and just magically disappeared give the film it's eerieness, and at it's points has some essence of Frankenstein. This film though only has John and Debra (Mr. Carpenter's main producer and co-worker for years) as the writers, and some unknown named Rosenthal (who besides this film directed the 80's cult classic The Russkies, which is like the Russian version of Goonies lol) and he now directs many many tv episodes. But we got Jamie Lee Curtis as a deranged victim still trying to escape her brother and Donald Pleasence is still the only doctor mad enought so stop the Shape known as Michael.
The story- This film takes place the same night ast the original Halloween, actually takes place DIRECTLY after the end of the original where Michael's body just kinda mysteriousily disappears. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee) is taken to a hospital to recooperate for the night. No one truly knows about the murders that happened besides Laurie, Dr. Loomis and Sheriff Brackett (whose daughter died in the original). So the two men are really the only ones out on a manhunt to stop Myers and prevent the town from further panic.
In the mean time, Loomis is ordered to get off the case and return to Smith's Grove from hence he came. But he knows he's really the only one that can stop the force of Michael, he then discovers that Laurie Strode is Michael Myers sister who went up for adoption after the incident where he killed his older sister. Which we later end up finding out in the series is that Michael has to kill off hsi blood line to maintaint eh piece in his life blah blah blah.
Want some hidden tidbits? Look for Dana Carvey in his film debut, playing an assistant , he's taken some directions from a blonde reporter. John Carpenter turned down the direction of this film, but helped write the script. He was also brought in because some people thought that Halloween 2 wasn't gorey enoughh, so they called John in to shoot a few scenes from some extra gore. The film a couple is watching around the set is Night of the Living Dead, but the film you might catch fromt eh two kids watching int he original is the original version of The Thing, which John Carpenter would end up remaking a few years later.
This marks the only film in the Halloween series to feature anyting the day after Halloween, all of the other ones endo on Halloween night. The film has some truely more hardcore killing than the original film but almost not as fun. Loomis is still a psycho and seeing Michael burn to death at the end of the film makes you wonder how/why exactly he should appear int he 4th film. Oh, because in the third film, it has nothing to do with the series and exists within it's own pocket universe. I'll get more into the Halloween series on a futrue date....
Breasts seen: 1- A very hot bath scene, and hot can be used as a pun if you like
Body Count: 11
Gore factor: 6 out of 10 buckets of blood, I'd say a lot of it goes towards the slipping on blood scene in the hospital and the burning of the bitch in the hot bath.
9)American Werewolf In London
1981, Directed and Written by John Landis
Who woulda thought that the director of the great comedies Animal House and The Blues Brothers would go on to create two landmarkish points in horror. The latter of the two being Michael Jackson's Thriller (which granted, whether you like to knock it or not- was probably the greatest video ever made in it's day.) The other landmark would be the QUINTESSENTIAL WEREWOLF film...American Werewolf in London. Where previous werewolf movies dwelled a lot of gypsy curses or time lapse photography to show makeup being applied very slowly to Lon Chaney Jr. - this film broke all molds in special effects style and and cocept within the werewolf films and it's own distinctive take on the horror genre as well.
On another side note, if you wanna watch a werewolf movie - I can think of only a few that are really needed for considered viewing. First is this film, then if you wanna go nostalgic, check out some of the good ol versions of Universal's Werewolf movies with Lon Chaney Jr. Some people have questions of the Howling series, I for one have tracked down and owned the old school VHS versions of the first 6 or 7 Howling movies. Well, they all such and have terriably funny makeup in it - and none of the films are truly connected throught he series. T he first one was great because ti was directed by Joe Dante, but all of the others are fairly cheesy. A great modern horrific werewolf movie I saw not too long ago was Dog Soldiers a new kinda werewolf movie, that's kinda got some Resident Evil/Evil Dead stuff going on for it but the special effects are awesome and it's quite graphically gorey to watch the werewolves actually eat people up.
The story- Landis had the idea for this film since he was still a teenager, but it wasn't until he'd done his work on Kelly's Heroes and directign two of America's greatest comedies we'll have to hold, was he able to finally direct a horror film like he wanted to. Two american guys (David and Jack) are out on a trip to jolly old England. On their hike on night, they take basically the "wrong" path. The local werewolf of the parts comes on by and attacks them. Jack is killed and David is mauled, and the townspeople save the day by killing the werewolf. David survives but grieves for Jack, and then all of the townspeople deny anything about a werewolf especially after David notices the wolf reformed to a man.
So David just kinda shrugs it off while he is hospitalized, he starts to have nightmares at night - oh and he's devoloping a Florence Nightingale syndrome with his nurse by the way. So, he's banging his nurse and sometimes he tends to sneak out at night and wake up naked in the zoo. He doesn't know why, he thinks he's going insane - especially when he starts to see his best friend Jack coming back to life.
Jack has been telling him night after night that David was bitten by a werewolf, and he must kill himself because he is kiilling others. And everyone that he does kill, they will also be caught in the same limbo that Jack is. Of course David thinks that he is slowly going crazy and just shrugs it off. Becuase everynight he wakes up refreshed and can't recall what happened the night before when he turned into a wolf. So night after night, Jack's body gets a lil bit more and more decomposed and another victim or two joins his ranks. It's really quite ghastly how they just pop in and out in the film and they're like, "Hey David, have you killed yourself lately?"
Jack: Now, I'm really sorry to be upsetting you, but I have to warn you.
David: Warn me?
Jack: We were attacked by a werewolf.
David: I'm not listening to this!
Jack: On the moors, we were attacked by a lycanthrope, a werewolf. I was murdered, an unnatural death, and now I walk the earth in limbo until the werewolf's curse is lifted.
David: Shut up!
Jack: The wolf's bloodline must be severed; the last remaining werewolf must be destroyed. It's you David.
So we got A LOT of internal struggle rushing through David's mind. How would you take it when your best friend and corpses are springing up to tell you to kill yourself - it's very nutty. OH and how's a bout the werewolf nazi nightmare he has lol, when they'r eattacking his family while they watch the Muppet Show. WHICH is yet another Muppet connection obsession that John Landis likes to use, such as in The Blues Brothers when just before the Mall chase sequence, the one guy is like : "Do you have this in a Miss Piggy?" or in Landis' take on Vampires in his film called Innocent Blood he hires muppeteer Frank Oz as a coroner in his film.
So again, we got some great internal struggle going on with our main character and some ghastly gorey scens elsewhere in the film for the deadly ghost nightmares. On top of all of this, we have THE GREATEST WEREWOLF TRANSFORMATION OF ALL TIME, basically because this wasn't done by keeping the actor still and slowlly apply make up to him - this werewolf is full on screen transformation using a lot of warping, wire pulling, animatronices and just about every trick in the book to make it such a memorable scene in cinematic history.Rick Baker did the special effects for the film, which earned him an 1982 Oscar for his work on this film. THe movie was also won/nominated some Saturn Awards (which are like the oscars for fantasy/horror/sci-fi films) for various categories including best film, best make up, best writing and best actress.
How's about some worthless trivia for you? Such as a bit of John Landis' trademark usage of porno, or the fact that every song in the film has the word: MOON in it. The special effects in this film were doen so well, that the Academy had to recognize such efforts- London became the first film to recieve an Oscar for special effect treatment in a film.
Breasts seen: 2 pairs
Body count: 13
Gore factor: 8 out of 10, having the corpses hanging around all of the time and the quick/sudden late night killings give us the gore we need. The bloodiness and ghastliness go hand in hand with the awesome special efffects and make up.
10)Zombie
1979, Directed by Lucio Fulci and written by Elisa Briganti and Dardano Saccheti
Now as noted from previous listings this film known as Zombie is also known as Zombie 2 in parts of the world. In Itally it is intended as the sequel to Romero's Dawn of the Dead, but Argento called his cut Zombie so that's why this is a sequel. But only in name, there is really no connecting story line here. Lucio Fulci is probably the second best Italian horror director around and has made some really great (and sometimes pretty bad horror films) but if you want the cream of his crop (eeeww) then go for this film, The Beyond (which they like to also call Zombi 3 over there, again no continuing story line but make sure you get the The Beyond from '81 wich is also known as the seven doors to death) The House by the Cemetary and City of the Living Dead (aka the Gates of Hell, which is an awesome second installment in Fulci's zombie trilogy - which are again just 3 dif zombie films, no continuing story line)
It's still a great movie and has some memorable stuff in it. Like a zombie vs. a shark, girl getting a huge wood splinter in her eye, quick striking zombies with maggots in their eyes and zombies slowly roaming towards NYC. This Zombie film like all of the other sequels have no continuity between them, but except fro teh first two - are pretty much all second rate peices of Italian horror trash.
The story- A boat suddenly appears in the NY harbor with zombies on it, the track the boat and it belongs to this scientist. A girl is on a mission to find out what happened to her father (the scientist) she teams up with journalist and stuff to reach a small island in the Caribbean. Where there is a plague going through the community which is turning them into zombies.
It's gotta some rather creepy, graphic and gorey scenes in this film. I enjoyed the main theme in it and Fulci's zombies almost have a differnt flare than all of the others that I've ever seen. They move slow at first, but when you get close to them - they strike like vipers and rip your jugular out as it gushes up a fountain of blood.
Breasts seen: 2 pair
Body count: 8
Gore factor: 8 out of 10 buckets, if not for the eyeball scene, underwater zombie and quick striking jugular ripping- this movie would be nothing.
The top ten horror films to watch just prior to Halloween part 9: Night of the Living Dead (movie review)
Ooooh we're getting so close arent' we?
Well, here I promise you the true gritty details: I give you the facts, list the breast counts and how much buckets of blood are gonna come spurting on out at ya. As told in Joe Bob Briggs fashion, I get right to business (after listing a lot of bullshit or useless tidbits of information) but I want you, the little people, to really get the gist of these films the way they were intended. So for god's sake: Join up with Netflix, cause every lil rinky dinky Blockbuster video has capitolized and smothered out the lil mom and pop video rental stores to ever carry any of this stuff ever again. Some of them are rare gems, and some are commercialized. And some yet have so many cuts, versions and even remakes - you'll never really know which ones to get. SO my suggestion to you guys is either be lucky enough to bump into these films on your digital cabel/satelite provider - or just go out and buy these films. Some of them I bought just on a whim or from info I've read from the great sites like www.imdb.com or www.houseofhorrors.com I put out the money for them and never live to regret it.
If you just happen to stumble upon my countdown, you can either read my previous listings OR just read the following messages of the recent reviews that you have missed: 10)A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors 9)Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives 8)Return of the Living Dead 7)Dead Alive (aka Brain Dead) 6)Re-Animator 5)Demons (aka Demoni) 4)Evil Dead 3) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original) and now for the next addition to my countdown.....
2)Night of the Living Dead
1968, Directed and written by George A. Romero, also written by John A. Russo
Being barricaded within a house so that people can't destroy you. This formula has been duplicated over and over again the night that Night started springing up all across the drive in theatres and late night showings of this new type of horror film that practically RE DID the genre and transcended it into what we now call as Modern Day Horror. Much like it re did the genre, you can think of Night as the NEW society taking over the old - yet RomeroGeroge A. Romero and Russo do it with zombies. Or more specificially your own loved ones have been turned against you, and your choices are to either kill them so that they don't spread they're almost rabies-esque disease to you - or barricade yourself into safe keeping.
This film is quite low budget, and it's startlign black and white cinematography just make it more frightening from the definition of shapes to the contrast of light and dark - live and dead. Some can possiably consider it one of the earliest independenent feature films (well not mentioning the likes of the old days of let's say American International Pictures) but Romero made his film much like a blown up student film, or in his case a very big commercial, since he was so used to make short advertisments and commercials in Pittsburgh at the time before his big ol' directorial debut in a feature film.
The story-It is believed that a NASA satellite was returning from a visit to Venus and the radiation on the satellite had an effect on the dead. It re-animated corpses to spring back to life and attack the living. Any one that it kills, bites or scratches comes alive (or dead alive, or undead, or walking dead?) and it kills. It kills for food, and they only eat that of the fresh human flesh. Back then they were only known as Ghouls, probably not wanting to confuse the more golden age stylization of a zombie: as someoen transfixed under a Voo Doo state that will do what their master wills them to do. But now their flesh devouring monsters, and the only way to stop them is to kill the brain - and the rest will follow.
Romero's classic has become a staple in pop culture and horror films for close to 40 years now. He created the Zombie genre, and the rules that other film makers like O'Bannon, Anderson, Yuzna, Wright, Snyder and even Boyle along with many, many others have been toying with Romero's ideas for years (and some mentioing of Russo as well). Okay, so the dead are back to life and it creates a small band of survivors to barricade themselves into a small farmhouse through out the night until help or even salvation arrives. To survive the day, they must first make it through - THE NIGHT. mwhwhhahah okay, I'm done with the macabre feel of this thing.
The macabre, the golden age of the Universal monster movies and EC comics were all heavy influences into George A Romero and he plugged it all into this film - not mention all of his other works. There have been books and films that just let alone talk about the camera work and how it terrorfies with light shadow and slow movement alone. It is quite possiably THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT HORROR FILM OF OUR DAY AND AGE. This one comes before Texas, cause TCM couldn't have come about if not for something like Night to pave the way for true in depth horror that kept making folks come back for more and why Night of the Living Dead (along with it's sequels) shall always remain an excellent tradition that plows into mankind's psyche.
So here we have oru small bunch of heroes, slowly becomign out numbered. If the zombies know the living are inside, they're gonna get at them no matter what it takes. We don't get much plot exploitation of WHY they're doing it, and WHY Romero is still expanding on such a premise to this day with his previous installment - Land of the Dead. All we do get from this film is that if you're previousily dead before the satellite landed you're now back from the dead. AND anyone else that dies (whether natural cause or via zombie) they too will be stricken with the so-called virus (or let's say maybe a trauma within their mind,body and psyche that causes them to desire the flesh of the living?)
The film Night of the Living Dead (also known as Night of Anubis or Night of the Flesh Eaters) tries to get everyone within this small lil farmhouse (setting racial,sexual and social differences aside) that they most work together despite greed or claiming who is wrong and who is right in order to survive the film. Everyone tries to work on a plan, whether it's to wait it out or escape. While others are stricken by a moment of irony, or down right they desreved it for being an idiot like Tom (cause he tried to blow a lock off a gas pump with a shot gun) or a self-righteous asshole like Cooper. This film is deliciosily written (much like the taste of the victims in the film) it's lit light a creepy take off of Bride of Frankenstein and it's a stark reality that hits on SO many levels. Whether you think it's the end of the world and God is punishing them through judgement day, a satelite sci-fi theory or just a coincidence of mass hysteria - Night of the Living Dead is what you make of it. Let yourself be terrorfied by this film and get lost in the imagery the ideas of being over run by the unburied dead and having even your own former loved ones strip the meat off your bones and they won't even reconcile your pain.
Of course, as we may have already known how far the Night has gone. It was followed up by the awesome international sequel Dawn of the Dead, and the lesser creepy but sometimes more gorey and thought provoking third part Day of the Dead. Romero fell of the face of the Earth for a while with his hatred of how the film business is run and eventually returned years later to create his fourth installment of the series Land of the Dead. THe film of Night of the Living Dead remake in 1990 was shot entirely in color and pretty much follows the core sample of the original. Except now we have horror makeup/sfx master Tom Savini in the director's chair and Tony Todd (Clive Barker's The Candyman) as the main hero. The remake was scripted by Romero - but doesn't fully capture the original's fright. Yet, watching Tony working his Black-Fu on the zombies is awesome lol. Night of the Living Dead 30th Anniversary was featured by shooting new scenes (which is pretty much an extended opening for someback ground on the first zomibe and perhaps a bit more exploitation on why this is happenign ot the world) and the new beginnig half of the film was directed by original Night co-writer: John A. Russo. But if you want the real deal effect, go for the cheapiest and grittiest copy you can find that has that low budgeted almost documentary like appeal to the film. Don't worry about the whole remastered look - seeing this film in it's worst condition almost makes it more frightening.
Things to look out for:
-Utter Racism
-Trough Fu
-Getting Barbara
-Cooper is an asshole
-Dumb hillbillies blowing locks off of gas pumps with shotguns
-Shooting the wrong guy, (by mistake?)
-Redneck Militia to the rescue
Memorable quotes:
Barbara: They oughta make the day the time changes the first day of summer.
Johnny: What?
Barbara: Well, it's eight o'clock, and it's still light!
Johnny: A lot of good the extra daylight does us. You know, we've still got a three-hour drive back; we're not gonna be home until after midnight.
Newscaster: All law enforcement agencies and the military have been organized to search out and destroy the marauding ghouls. The Survival Command Center at the Pentagon has disclosed that a ghoul can be killed by a shot in the head, or a heavy blow to the skull. Officials are quoted as explaining that since the brain of a ghoul has been activated by the radiation, the plan is kill the brain, and you kill the ghoul.
Field Reporter: Are they slow-moving, chief?
Sheriff McClelland: Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up.
Field Reporter: Chief, if I were surrounded by eight or ten of these things, would I stand a chance with them?
Sheriff McClelland: Well, there's no problem. If you have a gun, shoot 'em in the head. That's a sure way to kill 'em. If you don't, get yourself a club or a torch. Beat 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty easy.
Johnny: They're coming to get you, Barbara, there's one of them now!
Sheriff McClelland: All right, Vince, hit him in the head, right between the eyes.
Ben: Now get the hell down in the cellar. You can be the boss down there, but I'm boss up here!
Newscaster: Reports, incredible as they may seem, are not the results of mass hysteria.
Harry Cooper: "Mass hysteria?" What do they think, we're imagining all this?
Ben: Shut up!
[to Harry Cooper after having been locked outside]
Ben: I ought to drag you out there and FEED you to those things!
Ben: How long have guys you been down there? I could have used some help up here!
Harry Cooper: That's the cellar. It's the safest place.
Ben: You mean you didn't hear the racket I was making up here?
Harry Cooper: How were we supposed to know what was going on? Could have been those things for all we knew!
Ben: That girl was screaming. Surely you know what a girl screaming sounds like. Those things don't make any noise. Anybody would know somebody needed help!
Tom: Look, it's kind of hard to know what's going on from down there.
Harry Cooper: We thought we could hear screams, but for all we knew, that have meant those things were in the house after her.
Ben: And you wouldn't come up here and help?
Tom: Well, if there were more of them...
Harry Cooper: That racket sounded like the place was being ripped apart. How were we supposed to know what was going on?
Ben: Now wait a minute. You just got finished saying you couldn't hear anything down there. Now you say it sounded like the place was being ripped apart. It would be nice if you get your story straight, man.
Harry Cooper: All right, now you tell me! I'm not gonna take that kind of a chance when we've got a safe place! We lock into a safe place, and you're telling us we gotta risk our lives just because somebody might need help, huh?
Ben: Yeah, something like that.
Harry Cooper: Helen! I have to get that gun!
Helen Cooper: Haven't you had ENOUGH?
Harry Cooper: Look, two people are already dead on account of that guy! Take a look out that window!
Helen Cooper: We may not enjoy living together, but dying together isn't going to solve anything.
Newscaster: It has been established that persons who have recently died have been returning to life and committing acts of murder. A widespread investigation of funeral homes, morgues, and hospitals has concluded that the unburied dead have been returning to life and seeking human victims. It's hard for us here to be reporting this to you, but it does seem to be a fact.
Reverend John Hicks: This is like the flood that happened during Noah's time, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah! We ARE being punished for our sins! The dead are rising, and Judgment Day is upon us!
Sheriff McClelland: Good shot! OK, he's dead; let's go get 'im. That's another one for the fire.
Worthless tidbits of info:
In 1999, it was inducted into the National Film Preservation Board and recieved the award of National Film Registry.
Ranked in as Number 93 on the American Film Institutes 100 most frightening horror films. 100 being the bottom of the list, number 1 being Psycho and 2 was Jaws.
As stated earlier, the earlier title of the film was Night of Anubis, Anubis being the Ancient Egyptian God of the Dead.
Romero quickly rewrote the scene that gave Johnny and Barbara that huge dent on the side of their car. They make it look like they crashed into the tree, but the dent on the car door wouldn't have come the way they crashed intot he tree.
Legendary Make Up Master Tom Savini was originally hired to do Night, unfortunately he was called off to duty to serve as a combat photographer in Vietnam. The two were later re-united wehn Tom had his acting debut in Romero's Martin, and was def able to put his make up application skills to use when he made Dawn of the Dead.
Some people tend to consider George Romero also soo innovative for giving a black man the leading role of the film. It ends up create muching underlying racial issues at the time and a controversial ending if you look at it in a certain point of view. But it was in fact that George ended up hiring Duane Jones for the role, soley because he was the best actor in the whole group. ANd thusly beign the best actor, means he got the best role.
Also marks as being the first horror film with an African American as the lead role and pavign the way for many others. And it was also in such a tradition that Romero kept going with it as he did in The Crazies, Dawn of the Dead and even Land of the Dead.
Karl Hardman, who plays the asshole Cooper in the basement - also did the makeup, coproducing, sound effects engineer and even helped create the closing credits.
In true independent film fashion, the sound track was created from copywritten expired material. Sometimes known as also (S-Drop music) it's found a lot in Romero's early films such as The Crazies and parts of Dawn of the Dead that The Goblins didn't create. In fact, you're more than likely to catch this music on some of those old "NFL Greatest Superbowl Moments" television specials. Their music is also found in other films around just years before the release like Killer Shrews and Teenagers From OUter Space.
When originally intended as Night of the Flesh Eaters, the creators thought the killers would be extraterrestial in origin. Bringing the film to be much more cliche at the time as a cheesy sci-fi B movie. A good thing they went for the horror approach and transcended the whole genre instead.
Romero has admitted he was heavily influenced by the film Carnival of Souls. Also many people find that night has many social parallels of Hitchcock's THe Birds.
THe word "zombie" is never used but the creatures are called ghouls. Even in Dawn and Day they are either called things or creatures. It's not until Dennis Hopper mentions them in Land of the Dead as "zombies creep him out."
The Cooper family in the basement, is in real life the The Hardman family consisting of a mother, father and daughter.
It was booked in the movie theatres with a promise: "If Night of the Living Dead scares you to death, we're insured up to 50,000 dollars."insurance policy
Romero has also stated that above "visual" references came from other films - it was the initial idea that was found in the novel I am Legend by Richard Matheson.
Night is solely responsible for making the "midnight movie" the thing that movie goers wanted to check out for ages now.
In case you haven't noticed, the action packed shoot em up video game series of Resident Evil is directly influenced by the Romero films. When a Resident Evil movie was in the works, they hired Romero to write the script, they didn't like it so they fired him. SO now we have the two beautiful Resident Evil films out there because Capcom didn't like what Romero had for them - faq-u.
Night was such a huge success in Europe, Italian master of horror Dario Argento gar2.jpg (18228 bytes)SOOO wanted a sequel to the film. He approached George and the two helped create the driving force that would eventually become Dawn of the Dead.
On the night that Romero was driving the print to NY to seel the theatrical rights was the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
The soundtrack to the 30th Anniversary edition to Night is totally new, it's written by Scott Vladiimir Licina - who also plays the role of the Priest of the new beginning scenes.
Final rudnwon of the film
No breasts
Body count 8
Buckets of blood-5, not too much blood splattering - but this is probably the first time you'd see ghouls chomping on guts and human flesh (even though it's really leftovers from the producer who was really a Butcher).
Well, here I promise you the true gritty details: I give you the facts, list the breast counts and how much buckets of blood are gonna come spurting on out at ya. As told in Joe Bob Briggs fashion, I get right to business (after listing a lot of bullshit or useless tidbits of information) but I want you, the little people, to really get the gist of these films the way they were intended. So for god's sake: Join up with Netflix, cause every lil rinky dinky Blockbuster video has capitolized and smothered out the lil mom and pop video rental stores to ever carry any of this stuff ever again. Some of them are rare gems, and some are commercialized. And some yet have so many cuts, versions and even remakes - you'll never really know which ones to get. SO my suggestion to you guys is either be lucky enough to bump into these films on your digital cabel/satelite provider - or just go out and buy these films. Some of them I bought just on a whim or from info I've read from the great sites like www.imdb.com or www.houseofhorrors.com I put out the money for them and never live to regret it.
If you just happen to stumble upon my countdown, you can either read my previous listings OR just read the following messages of the recent reviews that you have missed: 10)A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors 9)Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives 8)Return of the Living Dead 7)Dead Alive (aka Brain Dead) 6)Re-Animator 5)Demons (aka Demoni) 4)Evil Dead 3) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original) and now for the next addition to my countdown.....
2)Night of the Living Dead
1968, Directed and written by George A. Romero, also written by John A. Russo
Being barricaded within a house so that people can't destroy you. This formula has been duplicated over and over again the night that Night started springing up all across the drive in theatres and late night showings of this new type of horror film that practically RE DID the genre and transcended it into what we now call as Modern Day Horror. Much like it re did the genre, you can think of Night as the NEW society taking over the old - yet RomeroGeroge A. Romero and Russo do it with zombies. Or more specificially your own loved ones have been turned against you, and your choices are to either kill them so that they don't spread they're almost rabies-esque disease to you - or barricade yourself into safe keeping.
This film is quite low budget, and it's startlign black and white cinematography just make it more frightening from the definition of shapes to the contrast of light and dark - live and dead. Some can possiably consider it one of the earliest independenent feature films (well not mentioning the likes of the old days of let's say American International Pictures) but Romero made his film much like a blown up student film, or in his case a very big commercial, since he was so used to make short advertisments and commercials in Pittsburgh at the time before his big ol' directorial debut in a feature film.
The story-It is believed that a NASA satellite was returning from a visit to Venus and the radiation on the satellite had an effect on the dead. It re-animated corpses to spring back to life and attack the living. Any one that it kills, bites or scratches comes alive (or dead alive, or undead, or walking dead?) and it kills. It kills for food, and they only eat that of the fresh human flesh. Back then they were only known as Ghouls, probably not wanting to confuse the more golden age stylization of a zombie: as someoen transfixed under a Voo Doo state that will do what their master wills them to do. But now their flesh devouring monsters, and the only way to stop them is to kill the brain - and the rest will follow.
Romero's classic has become a staple in pop culture and horror films for close to 40 years now. He created the Zombie genre, and the rules that other film makers like O'Bannon, Anderson, Yuzna, Wright, Snyder and even Boyle along with many, many others have been toying with Romero's ideas for years (and some mentioing of Russo as well). Okay, so the dead are back to life and it creates a small band of survivors to barricade themselves into a small farmhouse through out the night until help or even salvation arrives. To survive the day, they must first make it through - THE NIGHT. mwhwhhahah okay, I'm done with the macabre feel of this thing.
The macabre, the golden age of the Universal monster movies and EC comics were all heavy influences into George A Romero and he plugged it all into this film - not mention all of his other works. There have been books and films that just let alone talk about the camera work and how it terrorfies with light shadow and slow movement alone. It is quite possiably THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT HORROR FILM OF OUR DAY AND AGE. This one comes before Texas, cause TCM couldn't have come about if not for something like Night to pave the way for true in depth horror that kept making folks come back for more and why Night of the Living Dead (along with it's sequels) shall always remain an excellent tradition that plows into mankind's psyche.
So here we have oru small bunch of heroes, slowly becomign out numbered. If the zombies know the living are inside, they're gonna get at them no matter what it takes. We don't get much plot exploitation of WHY they're doing it, and WHY Romero is still expanding on such a premise to this day with his previous installment - Land of the Dead. All we do get from this film is that if you're previousily dead before the satellite landed you're now back from the dead. AND anyone else that dies (whether natural cause or via zombie) they too will be stricken with the so-called virus (or let's say maybe a trauma within their mind,body and psyche that causes them to desire the flesh of the living?)
The film Night of the Living Dead (also known as Night of Anubis or Night of the Flesh Eaters) tries to get everyone within this small lil farmhouse (setting racial,sexual and social differences aside) that they most work together despite greed or claiming who is wrong and who is right in order to survive the film. Everyone tries to work on a plan, whether it's to wait it out or escape. While others are stricken by a moment of irony, or down right they desreved it for being an idiot like Tom (cause he tried to blow a lock off a gas pump with a shot gun) or a self-righteous asshole like Cooper. This film is deliciosily written (much like the taste of the victims in the film) it's lit light a creepy take off of Bride of Frankenstein and it's a stark reality that hits on SO many levels. Whether you think it's the end of the world and God is punishing them through judgement day, a satelite sci-fi theory or just a coincidence of mass hysteria - Night of the Living Dead is what you make of it. Let yourself be terrorfied by this film and get lost in the imagery the ideas of being over run by the unburied dead and having even your own former loved ones strip the meat off your bones and they won't even reconcile your pain.
Of course, as we may have already known how far the Night has gone. It was followed up by the awesome international sequel Dawn of the Dead, and the lesser creepy but sometimes more gorey and thought provoking third part Day of the Dead. Romero fell of the face of the Earth for a while with his hatred of how the film business is run and eventually returned years later to create his fourth installment of the series Land of the Dead. THe film of Night of the Living Dead remake in 1990 was shot entirely in color and pretty much follows the core sample of the original. Except now we have horror makeup/sfx master Tom Savini in the director's chair and Tony Todd (Clive Barker's The Candyman) as the main hero. The remake was scripted by Romero - but doesn't fully capture the original's fright. Yet, watching Tony working his Black-Fu on the zombies is awesome lol. Night of the Living Dead 30th Anniversary was featured by shooting new scenes (which is pretty much an extended opening for someback ground on the first zomibe and perhaps a bit more exploitation on why this is happenign ot the world) and the new beginnig half of the film was directed by original Night co-writer: John A. Russo. But if you want the real deal effect, go for the cheapiest and grittiest copy you can find that has that low budgeted almost documentary like appeal to the film. Don't worry about the whole remastered look - seeing this film in it's worst condition almost makes it more frightening.
Things to look out for:
-Utter Racism
-Trough Fu
-Getting Barbara
-Cooper is an asshole
-Dumb hillbillies blowing locks off of gas pumps with shotguns
-Shooting the wrong guy, (by mistake?)
-Redneck Militia to the rescue
Memorable quotes:
Barbara: They oughta make the day the time changes the first day of summer.
Johnny: What?
Barbara: Well, it's eight o'clock, and it's still light!
Johnny: A lot of good the extra daylight does us. You know, we've still got a three-hour drive back; we're not gonna be home until after midnight.
Newscaster: All law enforcement agencies and the military have been organized to search out and destroy the marauding ghouls. The Survival Command Center at the Pentagon has disclosed that a ghoul can be killed by a shot in the head, or a heavy blow to the skull. Officials are quoted as explaining that since the brain of a ghoul has been activated by the radiation, the plan is kill the brain, and you kill the ghoul.
Field Reporter: Are they slow-moving, chief?
Sheriff McClelland: Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up.
Field Reporter: Chief, if I were surrounded by eight or ten of these things, would I stand a chance with them?
Sheriff McClelland: Well, there's no problem. If you have a gun, shoot 'em in the head. That's a sure way to kill 'em. If you don't, get yourself a club or a torch. Beat 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty easy.
Johnny: They're coming to get you, Barbara, there's one of them now!
Sheriff McClelland: All right, Vince, hit him in the head, right between the eyes.
Ben: Now get the hell down in the cellar. You can be the boss down there, but I'm boss up here!
Newscaster: Reports, incredible as they may seem, are not the results of mass hysteria.
Harry Cooper: "Mass hysteria?" What do they think, we're imagining all this?
Ben: Shut up!
[to Harry Cooper after having been locked outside]
Ben: I ought to drag you out there and FEED you to those things!
Ben: How long have guys you been down there? I could have used some help up here!
Harry Cooper: That's the cellar. It's the safest place.
Ben: You mean you didn't hear the racket I was making up here?
Harry Cooper: How were we supposed to know what was going on? Could have been those things for all we knew!
Ben: That girl was screaming. Surely you know what a girl screaming sounds like. Those things don't make any noise. Anybody would know somebody needed help!
Tom: Look, it's kind of hard to know what's going on from down there.
Harry Cooper: We thought we could hear screams, but for all we knew, that have meant those things were in the house after her.
Ben: And you wouldn't come up here and help?
Tom: Well, if there were more of them...
Harry Cooper: That racket sounded like the place was being ripped apart. How were we supposed to know what was going on?
Ben: Now wait a minute. You just got finished saying you couldn't hear anything down there. Now you say it sounded like the place was being ripped apart. It would be nice if you get your story straight, man.
Harry Cooper: All right, now you tell me! I'm not gonna take that kind of a chance when we've got a safe place! We lock into a safe place, and you're telling us we gotta risk our lives just because somebody might need help, huh?
Ben: Yeah, something like that.
Harry Cooper: Helen! I have to get that gun!
Helen Cooper: Haven't you had ENOUGH?
Harry Cooper: Look, two people are already dead on account of that guy! Take a look out that window!
Helen Cooper: We may not enjoy living together, but dying together isn't going to solve anything.
Newscaster: It has been established that persons who have recently died have been returning to life and committing acts of murder. A widespread investigation of funeral homes, morgues, and hospitals has concluded that the unburied dead have been returning to life and seeking human victims. It's hard for us here to be reporting this to you, but it does seem to be a fact.
Reverend John Hicks: This is like the flood that happened during Noah's time, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah! We ARE being punished for our sins! The dead are rising, and Judgment Day is upon us!
Sheriff McClelland: Good shot! OK, he's dead; let's go get 'im. That's another one for the fire.
Worthless tidbits of info:
In 1999, it was inducted into the National Film Preservation Board and recieved the award of National Film Registry.
Ranked in as Number 93 on the American Film Institutes 100 most frightening horror films. 100 being the bottom of the list, number 1 being Psycho and 2 was Jaws.
As stated earlier, the earlier title of the film was Night of Anubis, Anubis being the Ancient Egyptian God of the Dead.
Romero quickly rewrote the scene that gave Johnny and Barbara that huge dent on the side of their car. They make it look like they crashed into the tree, but the dent on the car door wouldn't have come the way they crashed intot he tree.
Legendary Make Up Master Tom Savini was originally hired to do Night, unfortunately he was called off to duty to serve as a combat photographer in Vietnam. The two were later re-united wehn Tom had his acting debut in Romero's Martin, and was def able to put his make up application skills to use when he made Dawn of the Dead.
Some people tend to consider George Romero also soo innovative for giving a black man the leading role of the film. It ends up create muching underlying racial issues at the time and a controversial ending if you look at it in a certain point of view. But it was in fact that George ended up hiring Duane Jones for the role, soley because he was the best actor in the whole group. ANd thusly beign the best actor, means he got the best role.
Also marks as being the first horror film with an African American as the lead role and pavign the way for many others. And it was also in such a tradition that Romero kept going with it as he did in The Crazies, Dawn of the Dead and even Land of the Dead.
Karl Hardman, who plays the asshole Cooper in the basement - also did the makeup, coproducing, sound effects engineer and even helped create the closing credits.
In true independent film fashion, the sound track was created from copywritten expired material. Sometimes known as also (S-Drop music) it's found a lot in Romero's early films such as The Crazies and parts of Dawn of the Dead that The Goblins didn't create. In fact, you're more than likely to catch this music on some of those old "NFL Greatest Superbowl Moments" television specials. Their music is also found in other films around just years before the release like Killer Shrews and Teenagers From OUter Space.
When originally intended as Night of the Flesh Eaters, the creators thought the killers would be extraterrestial in origin. Bringing the film to be much more cliche at the time as a cheesy sci-fi B movie. A good thing they went for the horror approach and transcended the whole genre instead.
Romero has admitted he was heavily influenced by the film Carnival of Souls. Also many people find that night has many social parallels of Hitchcock's THe Birds.
THe word "zombie" is never used but the creatures are called ghouls. Even in Dawn and Day they are either called things or creatures. It's not until Dennis Hopper mentions them in Land of the Dead as "zombies creep him out."
The Cooper family in the basement, is in real life the The Hardman family consisting of a mother, father and daughter.
It was booked in the movie theatres with a promise: "If Night of the Living Dead scares you to death, we're insured up to 50,000 dollars."insurance policy
Romero has also stated that above "visual" references came from other films - it was the initial idea that was found in the novel I am Legend by Richard Matheson.
Night is solely responsible for making the "midnight movie" the thing that movie goers wanted to check out for ages now.
In case you haven't noticed, the action packed shoot em up video game series of Resident Evil is directly influenced by the Romero films. When a Resident Evil movie was in the works, they hired Romero to write the script, they didn't like it so they fired him. SO now we have the two beautiful Resident Evil films out there because Capcom didn't like what Romero had for them - faq-u.
Night was such a huge success in Europe, Italian master of horror Dario Argento gar2.jpg (18228 bytes)SOOO wanted a sequel to the film. He approached George and the two helped create the driving force that would eventually become Dawn of the Dead.
On the night that Romero was driving the print to NY to seel the theatrical rights was the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
The soundtrack to the 30th Anniversary edition to Night is totally new, it's written by Scott Vladiimir Licina - who also plays the role of the Priest of the new beginning scenes.
Final rudnwon of the film
No breasts
Body count 8
Buckets of blood-5, not too much blood splattering - but this is probably the first time you'd see ghouls chomping on guts and human flesh (even though it's really leftovers from the producer who was really a Butcher).
The top ten horror films to watch just prior to Halloween part 8: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (movie review)
Ah yes, welcome back true believers - I must apologize that last weekend I went away with my family on a trip to the fair. And all of this week I've either been exhausted or tied up as of yet to take care of business. The business being, time to write about yet ANOTHER awesome horror film that you gore fans need to catch up on before the season is out. Now I'm not talking to find these shits on televison - there going to be edited to crap. So forget about any presentations on USA, SCI-FI channel or AMC you will be denied the gorey experiences that you NEED to have this holiday season. Like the otherday I saw all of these quick clips for horror films that would be show on AMC. They've been doing this every year for sometime now, and it's typically the same couple of horror films: Halloween 4/5, American Werewolf in London, Freddy 2 and others. Now I'm sad to see Friday the 13th Part 6 (my ranked number 9 on the countdown) will be joining their ranks in the cutting room floor :(
Well, here I promise you the true gritty details: I give you the facts, list the breast counts and how much buckets of blood are gonna come spurting on out at ya. As told in Joe Bob Briggs fashion, I get right to business (after listing a lot of bullshit or useless tidbits of information) but I want you, the little people, to really get the gist of these films the way they were intended. So for god's sake: Join up with Netflix, cause every lil rinky dinky Blockbuster video has capitolized and smothered out the lil mom and pop video rental stores to ever carry any of this stuff ever again. Some of them are rare gems, and some are commercialized. And some yet have so many cuts, versions and even remakes - you'll never really know which ones to get. SO my suggestion to you guys is either be lucky enough to bump into these films on your digital cabel/satelite provider - or just go out and buy these films. Some of them I bought just on a whim or from info I've read from the great sites like www.imdb.com or www.houseofhorrors.com I put out the money for them and never live to regret it.
If you just happen to stumble upon my countdown, you can either read my previous listings OR just read the following messages of the recent reviews that you have missed: 10)A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors 9)Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives 8)Return of the Living Dead 7)Dead Alive (aka Brain Dead) 6)Re-Animator 5)Demons (aka Demoni) 4)Evil Dead and now for the next addition to my countdown.....
3)The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
1974, Directed and written by Tobe Hooper, with story also by Kim Henkel.
OF COURSE I"M NOT GONNA LIST THAT REMAKE! I for one have yet to see the 2003 remake - nor do I ever intend to do so. I remember my first year of teaching, I had tons of lil pre-teen kids bragging how it was the SCARIEST film they'd ever seen. I think that ANYONE that thinks that the re-make was SO frightening would never have ever dreamed of watching the original - nor baring witness to the gritty, hot and grueling presentation that is made in that film from the acting abilities of Marilyn "The Screamer" Burns or those creepy ass sound effects of metal on metal that make you wanna rip your ears right off. Nor will I ever think that Jessica Beil could take on the great Leatherface, nor should I show sympathy to a serial killer who has now claims of having a skin disease and needs flesh masks for himself? FILGERCARB!@
The other thing that I really don't like is that this original film has been remade, redone and reinspired so many times on over. Granted, you can take the base plot of a couple of kids out on the road, get lost and killed and apply that to just about every modern day horror film out there - but you have to look much closer at the entire Texas series. I for one will never have intentions of seeign the remake - why? It's been remade so many times already. Not only, in my humble opinion, is House of a 1,000 Corpses a remake of this film, but I also like to call to mind other films similar to it that are almost pseudo remakes - or heavily influences such as my personal favorite Evil Dead or the more modern and somewhat evern more of a remake to Evild Dead is Cabin Fever. Don't get me wrong - I absolutely LOVE House of a 1,000 (especially Rob Zombie's directing!) Evil Dead and Cabin Fever - but there is a core sample of horror that Tobe Hooper helped create almost 30 years ago - and it's been going strong ever since.
For example, if you wanna be a strictler for continituy in films: don't start with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films. I've found all of them to either just start all other - or not have much continution between them. Except for possiably Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2: TCM 2 It's really not a great film, but Tobe Hooper returns to direct but now we have Dennis Hooper
Not only do you get that creepy feeling from the start of what you're seeing is true - but the way this thing was shot is that it looks almost like old school home movies at the time - or at least a gritty peice of documentary. You get lost in the whole aspect of the film and sometimes you probably forget what you're seeing is just fake - just a story. So a couple of these hippies are off to investigate their grand daddy's place - they pick up a hitchhiker and in one way or another stuck on the back roads of Texas - you stumble upon the farmhouse of the crazy cannibals.
I've personally met people wh are from Texas, and they will surely tell you that they have either met Leatherface himself, heard of their award winning chili or have in some way shape form or another come across the likes of the TCM family. This led me on a mission to uncover the truth for myself: The truth is that there was no cannibal famiily weiliding chainsaws to chop up their victims. The story comes from a sick man around the 1920's and 30's called Ed Gein.
Gein was a sick bastard, he was known for his acts of cannibalism, necrophilia, killing 2 women and using the flesh of women to make a suit for himself to essentially become a woman. He was a totally deranged fuck and some may note him as America's first serial killer. He was digging up dead bodies from the nearby graveyard, and making lil trophies and furniture made out of flesh and bones (much like some of the lil things that you see in the farm house of the original TCM) He was arrested and sentenced to death for murdering those 2 women. THe likes of his persona ended up on the cinema as found in Norman Bates of Psycho (as the split personality and wanting to become a woman) Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs (from making a woman suit out of their flesh) And Leatherface - including his whole family (as in their creepish decorations and lovely taste of the flesh) As far as the Chainsaw itself goes- well that comes from Tobe Hooper one day stuck in a Montgomery Ward's during xmas time stuck in the hardware section and thinking of a fun way to utilize chainsaws during the crowded xmas season.
So again - society needs to view TCM not as truth, but a film with a smill slither of truth within it to subdue the concisosness into fright. You're scaring yourselves by thinking it's real. Which is a great marketing ploy, especially for a much younger generation that are just beginning to capitolize on a 30 year old franchise. So tell everyone - tell your friends - it's not true but check out the original film for a fun time and some truly great fright.Ed Neal in Bryanston Films' The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Things to look for:
- Beating a bitch with a broom
-Hot Dog nipples
-Listening to her scream
-Photos from the slaughterhouse
-NEVER PICK UP HITCHHIKERS!@
-Time to feed Grandpa
-That weird ass legion on the Hitchhiker's face
-People in wheelchairs are "dead weight" in a horror film
-Creative use of a hammer
-Creative use of a meat hook
-The Hitchhiker's bargaining postures are highly dubious
-The Cook repeatedly poking the girl with a stick while she gags in a burlap sack. HILARIOUS!
-Watching Grandpa bash Sally in the head OVER and OVER again trying to get her blood in the slop bucket.
-Black Maria saving the day by running over the Hitch hiker and throwing a wrench at Leatherface's head.
-After getting hit int he head with a wrench and cutting his leg with his chainsaw, Leatherface still gets up for a air guitar solo-esque with his mighty blade swinging around int he air.
-Franklin is a whiney bitch.
Memorable Lines:
Old Man: Look what your brother did to the door! Ain't got no, no pride in his home!
Old Man: You damn fool you ruined the door!
Hitchhiker: [to Sally] And, and I thought YOU was in a hurry!
Hitchhiker: My family's always been in meat.
Jerry: That's the last goddamn hitchhiker I ever pick up.
COOK: ..."Ol Grandpa is one of the best killers there ever was..."
Worthless tidbits of info:
-When they're feeding Grandpa through Sally's finger - Gunnar really cut her finger cause he was tired of doing the scene over and over again.
-Originally titled as Headcheese and wasn't changed until just before release.
-The truck in the film that saves the day is written with Black Maria and the truck that runs the college kids almost off the road in Evil Dead is Lazy Mary. Coincidence?
-John Laroquette from Nightcourt, Madhouse and Meatballs 2 does the opening narration to the film.
-The Cook is the only actor to return in TCM 2, but there are some returning cameos from people like Sally and Grandpa as different characters in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
Final Rundownof the film:
Pairs of Boobs seen: 0,
Body Count: 5 (it can technically be six cause by the time Sally reaches the mental hospital to tell her story, she practically dies from hysteria.)
Gore factor: 4 out of 10 buckets of blood, not a very gorey film - BUT VERY effective in everything needed to be done. One of those "more frightening when you don't see it kinda things"
Well, here I promise you the true gritty details: I give you the facts, list the breast counts and how much buckets of blood are gonna come spurting on out at ya. As told in Joe Bob Briggs fashion, I get right to business (after listing a lot of bullshit or useless tidbits of information) but I want you, the little people, to really get the gist of these films the way they were intended. So for god's sake: Join up with Netflix, cause every lil rinky dinky Blockbuster video has capitolized and smothered out the lil mom and pop video rental stores to ever carry any of this stuff ever again. Some of them are rare gems, and some are commercialized. And some yet have so many cuts, versions and even remakes - you'll never really know which ones to get. SO my suggestion to you guys is either be lucky enough to bump into these films on your digital cabel/satelite provider - or just go out and buy these films. Some of them I bought just on a whim or from info I've read from the great sites like www.imdb.com or www.houseofhorrors.com I put out the money for them and never live to regret it.
If you just happen to stumble upon my countdown, you can either read my previous listings OR just read the following messages of the recent reviews that you have missed: 10)A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors 9)Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives 8)Return of the Living Dead 7)Dead Alive (aka Brain Dead) 6)Re-Animator 5)Demons (aka Demoni) 4)Evil Dead and now for the next addition to my countdown.....
3)The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
1974, Directed and written by Tobe Hooper, with story also by Kim Henkel.
OF COURSE I"M NOT GONNA LIST THAT REMAKE! I for one have yet to see the 2003 remake - nor do I ever intend to do so. I remember my first year of teaching, I had tons of lil pre-teen kids bragging how it was the SCARIEST film they'd ever seen. I think that ANYONE that thinks that the re-make was SO frightening would never have ever dreamed of watching the original - nor baring witness to the gritty, hot and grueling presentation that is made in that film from the acting abilities of Marilyn "The Screamer" Burns or those creepy ass sound effects of metal on metal that make you wanna rip your ears right off. Nor will I ever think that Jessica Beil could take on the great Leatherface, nor should I show sympathy to a serial killer who has now claims of having a skin disease and needs flesh masks for himself? FILGERCARB!@
The other thing that I really don't like is that this original film has been remade, redone and reinspired so many times on over. Granted, you can take the base plot of a couple of kids out on the road, get lost and killed and apply that to just about every modern day horror film out there - but you have to look much closer at the entire Texas series. I for one will never have intentions of seeign the remake - why? It's been remade so many times already. Not only, in my humble opinion, is House of a 1,000 Corpses a remake of this film, but I also like to call to mind other films similar to it that are almost pseudo remakes - or heavily influences such as my personal favorite Evil Dead or the more modern and somewhat evern more of a remake to Evild Dead is Cabin Fever. Don't get me wrong - I absolutely LOVE House of a 1,000 (especially Rob Zombie's directing!) Evil Dead and Cabin Fever - but there is a core sample of horror that Tobe Hooper helped create almost 30 years ago - and it's been going strong ever since.
For example, if you wanna be a strictler for continituy in films: don't start with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films. I've found all of them to either just start all other - or not have much continution between them. Except for possiably Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2: TCM 2 It's really not a great film, but Tobe Hooper returns to direct but now we have Dennis Hooper
Not only do you get that creepy feeling from the start of what you're seeing is true - but the way this thing was shot is that it looks almost like old school home movies at the time - or at least a gritty peice of documentary. You get lost in the whole aspect of the film and sometimes you probably forget what you're seeing is just fake - just a story. So a couple of these hippies are off to investigate their grand daddy's place - they pick up a hitchhiker and in one way or another stuck on the back roads of Texas - you stumble upon the farmhouse of the crazy cannibals.
I've personally met people wh are from Texas, and they will surely tell you that they have either met Leatherface himself, heard of their award winning chili or have in some way shape form or another come across the likes of the TCM family. This led me on a mission to uncover the truth for myself: The truth is that there was no cannibal famiily weiliding chainsaws to chop up their victims. The story comes from a sick man around the 1920's and 30's called Ed Gein.
Gein was a sick bastard, he was known for his acts of cannibalism, necrophilia, killing 2 women and using the flesh of women to make a suit for himself to essentially become a woman. He was a totally deranged fuck and some may note him as America's first serial killer. He was digging up dead bodies from the nearby graveyard, and making lil trophies and furniture made out of flesh and bones (much like some of the lil things that you see in the farm house of the original TCM) He was arrested and sentenced to death for murdering those 2 women. THe likes of his persona ended up on the cinema as found in Norman Bates of Psycho (as the split personality and wanting to become a woman) Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs (from making a woman suit out of their flesh) And Leatherface - including his whole family (as in their creepish decorations and lovely taste of the flesh) As far as the Chainsaw itself goes- well that comes from Tobe Hooper one day stuck in a Montgomery Ward's during xmas time stuck in the hardware section and thinking of a fun way to utilize chainsaws during the crowded xmas season.
So again - society needs to view TCM not as truth, but a film with a smill slither of truth within it to subdue the concisosness into fright. You're scaring yourselves by thinking it's real. Which is a great marketing ploy, especially for a much younger generation that are just beginning to capitolize on a 30 year old franchise. So tell everyone - tell your friends - it's not true but check out the original film for a fun time and some truly great fright.Ed Neal in Bryanston Films' The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Things to look for:
- Beating a bitch with a broom
-Hot Dog nipples
-Listening to her scream
-Photos from the slaughterhouse
-NEVER PICK UP HITCHHIKERS!@
-Time to feed Grandpa
-That weird ass legion on the Hitchhiker's face
-People in wheelchairs are "dead weight" in a horror film
-Creative use of a hammer
-Creative use of a meat hook
-The Hitchhiker's bargaining postures are highly dubious
-The Cook repeatedly poking the girl with a stick while she gags in a burlap sack. HILARIOUS!
-Watching Grandpa bash Sally in the head OVER and OVER again trying to get her blood in the slop bucket.
-Black Maria saving the day by running over the Hitch hiker and throwing a wrench at Leatherface's head.
-After getting hit int he head with a wrench and cutting his leg with his chainsaw, Leatherface still gets up for a air guitar solo-esque with his mighty blade swinging around int he air.
-Franklin is a whiney bitch.
Memorable Lines:
Old Man: Look what your brother did to the door! Ain't got no, no pride in his home!
Old Man: You damn fool you ruined the door!
Hitchhiker: [to Sally] And, and I thought YOU was in a hurry!
Hitchhiker: My family's always been in meat.
Jerry: That's the last goddamn hitchhiker I ever pick up.
COOK: ..."Ol Grandpa is one of the best killers there ever was..."
Worthless tidbits of info:
-When they're feeding Grandpa through Sally's finger - Gunnar really cut her finger cause he was tired of doing the scene over and over again.
-Originally titled as Headcheese and wasn't changed until just before release.
-The truck in the film that saves the day is written with Black Maria and the truck that runs the college kids almost off the road in Evil Dead is Lazy Mary. Coincidence?
-John Laroquette from Nightcourt, Madhouse and Meatballs 2 does the opening narration to the film.
-The Cook is the only actor to return in TCM 2, but there are some returning cameos from people like Sally and Grandpa as different characters in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
Final Rundownof the film:
Pairs of Boobs seen: 0,
Body Count: 5 (it can technically be six cause by the time Sally reaches the mental hospital to tell her story, she practically dies from hysteria.)
Gore factor: 4 out of 10 buckets of blood, not a very gorey film - BUT VERY effective in everything needed to be done. One of those "more frightening when you don't see it kinda things"
The top ten horror films to watch just prior to Halloween part 7: The Evil Dead (movie review)
Wow, we're really getting down to the nitty gritty are we not? As I hit this film, I'm totally seeing excellence in film making. Oh, before I get a little ahead of myself today, allow me to give you the usual recap. Thank you for joing me and my new blog about some of the greatest horror films you'll need to see before this holiday season is out. For the previous people that are returning, thanks for being loyal enouhg to read my rants, see the pics and reading the stats for the body count, gore and boobs. Again, this film is represented in true Joe Bob Briggs fashion, from the style of the writing to the review only hoping that I can catch the flare that Joe Bob has and hopefully intrigue a few of you to go out and check out some of these horror films (or possiably go buy them if you haven't seen them just yet). To the people that are new to my listing, feel free to read the previous blogs on this countdown. ANd if you don't wanna do that, this is where we are currently standing in the countdown: 10)A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors 9)Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives 8)Return of the Living Dead 7)Dead Alive (aka Brain Dead) 6)Re-Animator 5)Demons (aka Demoni) so without further adieu - the next listing in the countdown is gonna be....
4)Evil Dead
This film is a DEF MUST see. Every lil film that I have ever worked on, it was mandatory that my friends/actors had to watch this film before they worked with me. It's a total inspiration to all young film makers allike and I personally feel that it helped change the world of horror films. Granted again, the special effects at the time are pretty funny to see nowadays, but this film did something to the market. It was soo gorey that it could be hardly shown anywhere, and if they did - they'd hae to cut so much shit out of it. SO it's very hard to have ever probably seen this film on television (cable, satellite or otherwise) it's a real cult gem that NOT enough people know about - horror or appreaciators of film in general.
The first time I saw it, I don't recall my eyes blinkin gfor the longest time trying to ingest all of the Karo syrup covered eye candy that I could take in. Blood, guts, body parts and demon excretement is flying all throughout this film. It's got some fun lil stop motion clay animated gore within it, and the entire end scene just seems to keep on getting grosser and grosser and progressing with just more oozing guts and bugs.New Line Cinema's The Evil Dead
This film has some things that I'm sure you're never gonna see anywhere else - whether it's done visually with Raimi's style of handling the camera OR how they present themselves with gore and sheenanigans. Like how many times are you going to see a forest try to molest a girl running around in her jammies? A drainage pipe burst blood? Blood coming out of electical outlets? The film's score and the vocalization of all of the Deadites (commonly known as the possessed persons with the Demon as revealed in Army of Darkness)
Oh, and for people with questions of continuity - think of it like this. There is a fine line of continuing the same storyline between Evil Dead 1 and 2. Evil Dead 2 links directly up with Army of Darkness. But due to legality problems, think of Evil Dead 2 as a remake to one with a bigger budget. Evil Dead ends with Ash surviving until dawn and then "THE FORCE" crashing throuhg the cabin and attacking him with Ash's scream as the screen goes to black.
In the beginning of Evil Dead 2, they pretty much redo what goes on in Evil Dead 1, but just with Ash and his girlfriend. So they're able to recap everything that happens from the first one, within about the first half an hour or so, then que when THE FORCE attacks Ash that we saw at the end of Evil Dead 1. After that happens, well pretty much a new story starts to unravel that is truly the marking point of Evil Dead 2 - and thusly hooks up with Army of Darkness. SO basically as the sequels progress, they get funnier and less gorey - for marketable reasons. THe boys saw that no one wanted the first Evil Dead, without doing a lot of censoring to it first. But it did eventually find a home in England, which eventually became the rest as history of keeping the film alive. Not to mention it's success in parts of Asia as well.
Memorable lines:
1)ASH: "You bastards, why are you torturing me like this? WHY?!"
2)SCOTTY: "She's your girlfriend - you take care of her. I'm getting out of here."
3)SCOTTY: "Hehe, I'm gonna break your face."
4)SCOTTY: "PARTY DOWN."
5)LINDA: "We're gonna get you, we're gonna get you. Not another peep, time to go to sleep."
ASH: "SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"
6) CHERYL: "You're not going to leave me here, are you Ash? Heheheh"
7) THE FORCE: "Join usss. Join ussss."
8)PROFESSOR: "I know now that my wife has become host to a Candarian demon. I fear that the only way to stop those possessed by the spirits of the book is through the act of... bodily dismemberment. "
9)CHERYL: "Soon all of you will be like me... And then who will lock you up in a cellar? New Line Cinema's The Evil Dead
10)SHELLY: I don't know what I would have done if I had remained on those hot coals... Burning my pretty flesh. The Evil Dead
11)CHERYL: Kill her if you can, loverboy.
12)SCOTTY: Hit it Ash, HIT IT! Argghh."
13)ASH: Now, the sun will be up in an hour or so and we can all get out of here together. You, me, Linda, Shelly. Hmm... Well... not Shelly, she? We'll all be going home together. Wouldn't you like to be going home? I bet you'd like that, wouldn't you? Scott?
14)SHELLY: "WHAT HAPPENED TO HER EYES?!"
Things to look for:
-Bodily dismemberment with axe and chainsaw
-Burying bodies, sticking a cross into the ground and then the ominious thunder and lightning strike.
-Tree rape
-Headless Linda dry humping Ash
-FAKE SHEMPS
-Cheesy super matted shot of the Moon getting ink poured over it
-Claymation Necronomicon wagging it's tongue around
-Saving the day utilizing a cheesy ass necklace charm
-Bitch slapping a demon for being childish and annoying
-Look for the "Steel City" outlets that pour blood - a straight up refernce to the boys hometown of Michigan.
-The cabin that this was shot in somehow burnt down, all that stands is a fireplace. Most fans try to hunt down for this place is, cause they like to take the bricks to fan conventions so that Bruce Campbell can sign them and he gets freaked out by their dorkiness. Trust me I know, I got Bruce to sign my Evil Dead painting which freaked him out lol. The cabin also acutlaly had no basement, ..
4)Evil Dead
This film is a DEF MUST see. Every lil film that I have ever worked on, it was mandatory that my friends/actors had to watch this film before they worked with me. It's a total inspiration to all young film makers allike and I personally feel that it helped change the world of horror films. Granted again, the special effects at the time are pretty funny to see nowadays, but this film did something to the market. It was soo gorey that it could be hardly shown anywhere, and if they did - they'd hae to cut so much shit out of it. SO it's very hard to have ever probably seen this film on television (cable, satellite or otherwise) it's a real cult gem that NOT enough people know about - horror or appreaciators of film in general.
The first time I saw it, I don't recall my eyes blinkin gfor the longest time trying to ingest all of the Karo syrup covered eye candy that I could take in. Blood, guts, body parts and demon excretement is flying all throughout this film. It's got some fun lil stop motion clay animated gore within it, and the entire end scene just seems to keep on getting grosser and grosser and progressing with just more oozing guts and bugs.New Line Cinema's The Evil Dead
This film has some things that I'm sure you're never gonna see anywhere else - whether it's done visually with Raimi's style of handling the camera OR how they present themselves with gore and sheenanigans. Like how many times are you going to see a forest try to molest a girl running around in her jammies? A drainage pipe burst blood? Blood coming out of electical outlets? The film's score and the vocalization of all of the Deadites (commonly known as the possessed persons with the Demon as revealed in Army of Darkness)
Oh, and for people with questions of continuity - think of it like this. There is a fine line of continuing the same storyline between Evil Dead 1 and 2. Evil Dead 2 links directly up with Army of Darkness. But due to legality problems, think of Evil Dead 2 as a remake to one with a bigger budget. Evil Dead ends with Ash surviving until dawn and then "THE FORCE" crashing throuhg the cabin and attacking him with Ash's scream as the screen goes to black.
In the beginning of Evil Dead 2, they pretty much redo what goes on in Evil Dead 1, but just with Ash and his girlfriend. So they're able to recap everything that happens from the first one, within about the first half an hour or so, then que when THE FORCE attacks Ash that we saw at the end of Evil Dead 1. After that happens, well pretty much a new story starts to unravel that is truly the marking point of Evil Dead 2 - and thusly hooks up with Army of Darkness. SO basically as the sequels progress, they get funnier and less gorey - for marketable reasons. THe boys saw that no one wanted the first Evil Dead, without doing a lot of censoring to it first. But it did eventually find a home in England, which eventually became the rest as history of keeping the film alive. Not to mention it's success in parts of Asia as well.
Memorable lines:
1)ASH: "You bastards, why are you torturing me like this? WHY?!"
2)SCOTTY: "She's your girlfriend - you take care of her. I'm getting out of here."
3)SCOTTY: "Hehe, I'm gonna break your face."
4)SCOTTY: "PARTY DOWN."
5)LINDA: "We're gonna get you, we're gonna get you. Not another peep, time to go to sleep."
ASH: "SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"
6) CHERYL: "You're not going to leave me here, are you Ash? Heheheh"
7) THE FORCE: "Join usss. Join ussss."
8)PROFESSOR: "I know now that my wife has become host to a Candarian demon. I fear that the only way to stop those possessed by the spirits of the book is through the act of... bodily dismemberment. "
9)CHERYL: "Soon all of you will be like me... And then who will lock you up in a cellar? New Line Cinema's The Evil Dead
10)SHELLY: I don't know what I would have done if I had remained on those hot coals... Burning my pretty flesh. The Evil Dead
11)CHERYL: Kill her if you can, loverboy.
12)SCOTTY: Hit it Ash, HIT IT! Argghh."
13)ASH: Now, the sun will be up in an hour or so and we can all get out of here together. You, me, Linda, Shelly. Hmm... Well... not Shelly, she? We'll all be going home together. Wouldn't you like to be going home? I bet you'd like that, wouldn't you? Scott?
14)SHELLY: "WHAT HAPPENED TO HER EYES?!"
Things to look for:
-Bodily dismemberment with axe and chainsaw
-Burying bodies, sticking a cross into the ground and then the ominious thunder and lightning strike.
-Tree rape
-Headless Linda dry humping Ash
-FAKE SHEMPS
-Cheesy super matted shot of the Moon getting ink poured over it
-Claymation Necronomicon wagging it's tongue around
-Saving the day utilizing a cheesy ass necklace charm
-Bitch slapping a demon for being childish and annoying
-Look for the "Steel City" outlets that pour blood - a straight up refernce to the boys hometown of Michigan.
-The cabin that this was shot in somehow burnt down, all that stands is a fireplace. Most fans try to hunt down for this place is, cause they like to take the bricks to fan conventions so that Bruce Campbell can sign them and he gets freaked out by their dorkiness. Trust me I know, I got Bruce to sign my Evil Dead painting which freaked him out lol. The cabin also acutlaly had no basement, ..
The top ten horror films to watch just prior to Halloween part 6: Demons / Demoni (movie review)
Whoa, well welcome to yet another installment of my countdown. For those of you that are new to the game, this countdown is done in Joe Bob Briggs fashion - featuring the amounts of gore, breast count and all of the ridicioulsness that runs rampant in these great horror films of the 80's. You'll find tidbits of info and plots for the films - so here's what we've gotten to so far: 10)A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors 9)Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives 8)Return of the Living Dead 7)Dead Alive (aka Brain Dead) 6)Re-Animator and now for the next film on the list
5)Demons
1985, written and directed by Lamberto Bava (also written by Franco Ferrini {with story by Dardanno Sacchetti})
Ah yes, I can remember when I was watching Demons for the first time. It was my first true taste of the Italian horror genre, which are most commonly known for their Giallo type films. Giallo is an Italian word that basically comes from yellow, and it's the color of the paper that these sorta cheap pulpy crime stories that were printed out in the 20's and 30's. The Giallo films take the elements of a detective-esqu story and also mixing in the elements of horror or fantasy. Demons has an element of why there is this terror being caused when all of these people are mysteriousily invited for the screening of a film, someone gets possessed and all hell breaks loose.
I don't know if it happens through translation or what, but even John Carpenter can be quoted specifically about Dario Argento's films: "The thing with Dario's films is.....they never make any sense - but he kills people so beautifully." Those of you who DON"T know who Dario Argento is, he is the modern day master of Italian horror. He pretty much took over the reigns for Mario Bava (the father of the Lamberto and director of the film I'm trying to get into) This man takes a blend of the surreal, bright colors, infamous POV shots, and his gloved killer. In fact, John Carpenter saw quite a few of Dario's films and instead of a gloved killer - he created a masked one: Michael Myers in Halloween - and thusly creatign the whole slasher genre - so thank you Italian horror films for all you do for us over here.
Before I can keep on blowing Dario more (whose also done a lot of work with George Romero such as on Dawn of the Dead, the fine people of Troma and not to mention a slew of some of the finest shockers, slockers and gorey pieces of almost beautifully massacred cinema.
Profondo Rosso_pics.jpg (40075 octets)
Like I said, he took over the before master of the Italian genre Mario Bava. Mario was close friends with Alfred Hitchcock and some could even consider Mario as the Hitchcockini. In fact, between some saying the that Psycho was the first slasher film, then Bava's Blood and Black Lace is the first body count film in color - and the genre exploded ever since then - all thanks to them Italians.
So now lil Bava created a HUGE hit with this film, this third generation Italian film maker had worked with Dario Argento quite a few times so far. Where Bava ended up as an AD and various other tasks for Dario's films. With Demons, Lamberto wrote it and directed with Dario writing it as well and produced the film - this becomes a match made in Heaven - or Hell speaking in horrorific terms. This film has some great special effects, lots of murder and an awesome Heavy metal soundtrack with bands like Billy Idol, Scorpions, Motley Crue and Goblin (aka The Goblins or to eventually become Daemonia) Dario's favorite metal band. Ah yes, I forgot that heavy metal also plays an awesome part in these films. It excites and totally brings up the pace in the film once people start to die on out.
Now, the only downside to the Italian films is that they lack major bits of continuity problems - let's take the "Zombie" films for example. Now Lucio Fulci -another fine Italian master of horror made his best hit would be Zombie (but it's known as Zombie 2 B in Italy) Now the reason for that is going back to Dario Argento. Dario was the producer on George A Romero's Dawn of the Dead. It's really only known as Dawn of teh Dead in the US It's primarily known as Zombie or Zombies (mainly due to my ranting about the zombie title rights found in my countdown for Return of the Living Dead)
So Argento got the foreign producer rights to Dawn of teh Dead, he even made his own cut of the film and it was called Zombie in Europe. Lucio Fulci became the director for the second film called Zombie 2 in Europe, but plain old ZOMBIE in the US. THere is no continuity connection with this film, and actually utilizes mainly voo doo esque connections for causing the dead to rise. But I do enjoy the way the dead rise whom are covered in blankets and sheets, much like the dead found within Romero's Dawn of the Dead in teh basement apartment sequence. None of the zombie films are connected except in name only and just pretty much jump from one typical scenario to the next.
Same goes for the Demons series: Demons 1 I shall cover in the plot further on. Basically people are requested to view a horror film, there is something hidden and evily mysterious about the film. A girl gets scratched and a "zombie like virus" is spread from one person to the next whether from bites, scratch or death. People die like crazy and a few survivors.
Simulataneous death for art imitating life imitatind death
Guy dangling from his noose
People making out together and dying together for it
Blind guy gets it
THE FUCKING PIMP with the bitching sideburns. Bobby Rhodes shoulda stuck around for the whole film but he unfortunately gets turned. But he does return for the sequel along with his sideburns - but no mroe switchblade.
Demon rebirth through the back ..y count: 26 (plus lots of carnage out int he streets as West Berlin is destroyed)
Gore factor: 6 out of 10 buckets of blood. Not too BLOODY but gorey in every aspect of the film. Gorey with awesome special effects.
5)Demons
1985, written and directed by Lamberto Bava (also written by Franco Ferrini {with story by Dardanno Sacchetti})
Ah yes, I can remember when I was watching Demons for the first time. It was my first true taste of the Italian horror genre, which are most commonly known for their Giallo type films. Giallo is an Italian word that basically comes from yellow, and it's the color of the paper that these sorta cheap pulpy crime stories that were printed out in the 20's and 30's. The Giallo films take the elements of a detective-esqu story and also mixing in the elements of horror or fantasy. Demons has an element of why there is this terror being caused when all of these people are mysteriousily invited for the screening of a film, someone gets possessed and all hell breaks loose.
I don't know if it happens through translation or what, but even John Carpenter can be quoted specifically about Dario Argento's films: "The thing with Dario's films is.....they never make any sense - but he kills people so beautifully." Those of you who DON"T know who Dario Argento is, he is the modern day master of Italian horror. He pretty much took over the reigns for Mario Bava (the father of the Lamberto and director of the film I'm trying to get into) This man takes a blend of the surreal, bright colors, infamous POV shots, and his gloved killer. In fact, John Carpenter saw quite a few of Dario's films and instead of a gloved killer - he created a masked one: Michael Myers in Halloween - and thusly creatign the whole slasher genre - so thank you Italian horror films for all you do for us over here.
Before I can keep on blowing Dario more (whose also done a lot of work with George Romero such as on Dawn of the Dead, the fine people of Troma and not to mention a slew of some of the finest shockers, slockers and gorey pieces of almost beautifully massacred cinema.
Profondo Rosso_pics.jpg (40075 octets)
Like I said, he took over the before master of the Italian genre Mario Bava. Mario was close friends with Alfred Hitchcock and some could even consider Mario as the Hitchcockini. In fact, between some saying the that Psycho was the first slasher film, then Bava's Blood and Black Lace is the first body count film in color - and the genre exploded ever since then - all thanks to them Italians.
So now lil Bava created a HUGE hit with this film, this third generation Italian film maker had worked with Dario Argento quite a few times so far. Where Bava ended up as an AD and various other tasks for Dario's films. With Demons, Lamberto wrote it and directed with Dario writing it as well and produced the film - this becomes a match made in Heaven - or Hell speaking in horrorific terms. This film has some great special effects, lots of murder and an awesome Heavy metal soundtrack with bands like Billy Idol, Scorpions, Motley Crue and Goblin (aka The Goblins or to eventually become Daemonia) Dario's favorite metal band. Ah yes, I forgot that heavy metal also plays an awesome part in these films. It excites and totally brings up the pace in the film once people start to die on out.
Now, the only downside to the Italian films is that they lack major bits of continuity problems - let's take the "Zombie" films for example. Now Lucio Fulci -another fine Italian master of horror made his best hit would be Zombie (but it's known as Zombie 2 B in Italy) Now the reason for that is going back to Dario Argento. Dario was the producer on George A Romero's Dawn of the Dead. It's really only known as Dawn of teh Dead in the US It's primarily known as Zombie or Zombies (mainly due to my ranting about the zombie title rights found in my countdown for Return of the Living Dead)
So Argento got the foreign producer rights to Dawn of teh Dead, he even made his own cut of the film and it was called Zombie in Europe. Lucio Fulci became the director for the second film called Zombie 2 in Europe, but plain old ZOMBIE in the US. THere is no continuity connection with this film, and actually utilizes mainly voo doo esque connections for causing the dead to rise. But I do enjoy the way the dead rise whom are covered in blankets and sheets, much like the dead found within Romero's Dawn of the Dead in teh basement apartment sequence. None of the zombie films are connected except in name only and just pretty much jump from one typical scenario to the next.
Same goes for the Demons series: Demons 1 I shall cover in the plot further on. Basically people are requested to view a horror film, there is something hidden and evily mysterious about the film. A girl gets scratched and a "zombie like virus" is spread from one person to the next whether from bites, scratch or death. People die like crazy and a few survivors.
Simulataneous death for art imitating life imitatind death
Guy dangling from his noose
People making out together and dying together for it
Blind guy gets it
THE FUCKING PIMP with the bitching sideburns. Bobby Rhodes shoulda stuck around for the whole film but he unfortunately gets turned. But he does return for the sequel along with his sideburns - but no mroe switchblade.
Demon rebirth through the back ..y count: 26 (plus lots of carnage out int he streets as West Berlin is destroyed)
Gore factor: 6 out of 10 buckets of blood. Not too BLOODY but gorey in every aspect of the film. Gorey with awesome special effects.
The top ten horror films to watch just prior to Halloween part 5: Re-Animator (movie review)
Welcome back to another review as another week has rolled on by. I'm sure you all know the routine by now, so lemme at least recap what's been going on thus far as far as the countdown goes: 10)A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors 9)Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives 8)Return of the Living Dead 7)Dead Alive (aka Brain Dead) And now with the next installment in the countdown, as told in the Joe Bob Briggs kinda review......
6)Re-Animator .... (which is a MUST SEE for any horror fan since it's sooo hard to find and let alone be able to view) Gordon ..s gone off to do much more of a directing career (and in my humble opinion, the lesser talented of directors between the two of them) Re-Animator was Brian's first produced film which he still continues to do a lot of to this day. But he's also directed a few other horror films over the years in various franchises. Not only did he continue the Re-Animator franchise with it's two sequels Bride of Re-Animator and Bride of Re-Animator, but he's also worked on Progeny, both of the Dentists ..
This film is a def MUST SEE for horror fans that just enjoy that over abundance of corpses running around, if you enjoy any type of Zombie film (which Re-Animator technically isn't a zombie film, but does deal with the re-animated dead brought back to life) The gore and special effects is fantastic, the music is creepy and Jeff Combs (who plays the creepy lil re-animating Dr. Herbert West) is just great. You can currently find him as the voice of The Question on the animated series The Justice League, he's playing Kevin Burkhoff on The 4400 and has done various characters through many many Star Trek series. Not to mention the primary antagonist (and some suggest manipulative telekenitc mind control guy as well) David Gale A little headlesswho unfortunately died during heart surgery of the early 90's and wasn't able to complete anymore bad horror films for us :( This film is also a new twist on the zombie/undead genre, with a type of medical gore to it, not to mention a fun lil tongue in cheek humor at times.
The story: Dr. Herbert West is working on a serum that can prolong and defeat the dreaded "brain death" when the brain dies the body dies. So his serum is to defeat that but there comes bad consequences. The bodies of the dead do become re-animated, but becoming uncontrollable spazming beasts (and some say with the intellectual capabilites of a retarded child to say)
So West pretty much gets kicked out of Switzerland for "giving someone life with his serum" and continues his studies in America. It goes from one thing after the next- the main goal is to obtain a dead body for his studies. Now mind, much unlike a zombie film, when the dead come back they do not spread like a virus. It stays only within the person that has been injected with the serum. The only thing is that these things are powerful and uncontrollable (except when they are controlled by the likes of Dr. Carl Hill, who not only wants the Dean's daughter (Megan Halsey {with quite an estute Soap Opera career}, who is also the girlfriend of Dan Cain - the roommate/sidekick of Herbert West the Re-Animator) BUT Dr. Hill wants to steal the serum to cheat death all for himself and all of the prize, money and fame to go with it.
Basically, West is so transfixed on perfecting his serum, he needs to find a dead body to try it on - the fresher the better. So he'll inject it into somebody, the original corpse goes out of control and kills somebody. It's victim needs to be injected to perfect West's work. Who never seems to comprehend his actions and is only focused on perfecting his serum and research. So, he himself is a lil mad scientist - but not the typical kind focused on ruling the world. THat role really is meant for Dr. Hill. So these spaztic retarded zombies are causing all of this trouble and messing up the lives of the innocent Dan and Megan until they themselves get all sucked into the re-animated drama. bend over
Memorable lines:
1)SWISS NURSE: "You killed him!"
WEST: "No, I did not. I gave him life."
2) WEST: "OVERDOSE!"
3) HILL: "You will do, what I tell you to - do."
4) DAN: "For God's sake stop!"
WEST: "Dan. Look out."
5)DAN: "What if we get caught?"
WEST: "What'll they do? Embalm us?"
6) WEST: "Who's going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a sideshow."
Things to look for:
Exploding eyeballs ..or-me-dvd-image-07.jpg" width=266 align=left border=0>
Medical Tools Fu
Syringe Fu
Attacking Cat puppet
Decapitation via shovel
Megan's boobs and bush
Head giving head
Re-animated body turning face and saving the day
Intestines attacking
Crushed in and oozing heaSooner or later I'll get youd
Severed head thrown and smashed against a wall with exploding brains
Reusage of serum despite knowing what's going to happen
Worthless tidbits of info:
-A combined tale of three stories based on HP Lovecraft's (including Herbert West - Reanimator from the book "Dagon and other Macabre tales" ) And from one true horror fan to another, check out Lovecraft's stuff - very creepy for his day and age.
-Miskatonic University (where most of the film takes place) is a lil device that HP Lovecraft used a lot of in his stories. Such as the fictitious town of Arkham for example.
-The film's main score is an adaptation of Bernard Herrmann's Psycho
-Re-Animator was first contrived as a television series with 13 half-hour episodes but was instead sold as a film.
-Jeff Combs and Barbara Crampton went on to do another Lovecraft film - From Beyond
-The R rated version is 8 minutes longer (just because of a lot more dialogue) The unrated version is chop full of gore and the specially erotic scene at the end. intestine
-25 gallons of blood were used throughout the film
-James Cameron's father plays a small bit part of a man with a damaged jaw at the hospital
-Posters of the Talking Heads in Dan's room (perhaps a lil joke of the other talking heads in this film)
-There was so much fake blood and meat within the head of Dr. Hill that is thrown against the wall -the crew was hiding behind garbage bags because they had no idea how far it would fly.
Final rundown of the film:
Pairs of boobs seen: Two
Body count: 5 plus one dead cat.
Gore factor: 7 out of 10 buckets of blood.
6)Re-Animator .... (which is a MUST SEE for any horror fan since it's sooo hard to find and let alone be able to view) Gordon ..s gone off to do much more of a directing career (and in my humble opinion, the lesser talented of directors between the two of them) Re-Animator was Brian's first produced film which he still continues to do a lot of to this day. But he's also directed a few other horror films over the years in various franchises. Not only did he continue the Re-Animator franchise with it's two sequels Bride of Re-Animator and Bride of Re-Animator, but he's also worked on Progeny, both of the Dentists ..
This film is a def MUST SEE for horror fans that just enjoy that over abundance of corpses running around, if you enjoy any type of Zombie film (which Re-Animator technically isn't a zombie film, but does deal with the re-animated dead brought back to life) The gore and special effects is fantastic, the music is creepy and Jeff Combs (who plays the creepy lil re-animating Dr. Herbert West) is just great. You can currently find him as the voice of The Question on the animated series The Justice League, he's playing Kevin Burkhoff on The 4400 and has done various characters through many many Star Trek series. Not to mention the primary antagonist (and some suggest manipulative telekenitc mind control guy as well) David Gale A little headlesswho unfortunately died during heart surgery of the early 90's and wasn't able to complete anymore bad horror films for us :( This film is also a new twist on the zombie/undead genre, with a type of medical gore to it, not to mention a fun lil tongue in cheek humor at times.
The story: Dr. Herbert West is working on a serum that can prolong and defeat the dreaded "brain death" when the brain dies the body dies. So his serum is to defeat that but there comes bad consequences. The bodies of the dead do become re-animated, but becoming uncontrollable spazming beasts (and some say with the intellectual capabilites of a retarded child to say)
So West pretty much gets kicked out of Switzerland for "giving someone life with his serum" and continues his studies in America. It goes from one thing after the next- the main goal is to obtain a dead body for his studies. Now mind, much unlike a zombie film, when the dead come back they do not spread like a virus. It stays only within the person that has been injected with the serum. The only thing is that these things are powerful and uncontrollable (except when they are controlled by the likes of Dr. Carl Hill, who not only wants the Dean's daughter (Megan Halsey {with quite an estute Soap Opera career}, who is also the girlfriend of Dan Cain - the roommate/sidekick of Herbert West the Re-Animator) BUT Dr. Hill wants to steal the serum to cheat death all for himself and all of the prize, money and fame to go with it.
Basically, West is so transfixed on perfecting his serum, he needs to find a dead body to try it on - the fresher the better. So he'll inject it into somebody, the original corpse goes out of control and kills somebody. It's victim needs to be injected to perfect West's work. Who never seems to comprehend his actions and is only focused on perfecting his serum and research. So, he himself is a lil mad scientist - but not the typical kind focused on ruling the world. THat role really is meant for Dr. Hill. So these spaztic retarded zombies are causing all of this trouble and messing up the lives of the innocent Dan and Megan until they themselves get all sucked into the re-animated drama. bend over
Memorable lines:
1)SWISS NURSE: "You killed him!"
WEST: "No, I did not. I gave him life."
2) WEST: "OVERDOSE!"
3) HILL: "You will do, what I tell you to - do."
4) DAN: "For God's sake stop!"
WEST: "Dan. Look out."
5)DAN: "What if we get caught?"
WEST: "What'll they do? Embalm us?"
6) WEST: "Who's going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a sideshow."
Things to look for:
Exploding eyeballs ..or-me-dvd-image-07.jpg" width=266 align=left border=0>
Medical Tools Fu
Syringe Fu
Attacking Cat puppet
Decapitation via shovel
Megan's boobs and bush
Head giving head
Re-animated body turning face and saving the day
Intestines attacking
Crushed in and oozing heaSooner or later I'll get youd
Severed head thrown and smashed against a wall with exploding brains
Reusage of serum despite knowing what's going to happen
Worthless tidbits of info:
-A combined tale of three stories based on HP Lovecraft's (including Herbert West - Reanimator from the book "Dagon and other Macabre tales" ) And from one true horror fan to another, check out Lovecraft's stuff - very creepy for his day and age.
-Miskatonic University (where most of the film takes place) is a lil device that HP Lovecraft used a lot of in his stories. Such as the fictitious town of Arkham for example.
-The film's main score is an adaptation of Bernard Herrmann's Psycho
-Re-Animator was first contrived as a television series with 13 half-hour episodes but was instead sold as a film.
-Jeff Combs and Barbara Crampton went on to do another Lovecraft film - From Beyond
-The R rated version is 8 minutes longer (just because of a lot more dialogue) The unrated version is chop full of gore and the specially erotic scene at the end. intestine
-25 gallons of blood were used throughout the film
-James Cameron's father plays a small bit part of a man with a damaged jaw at the hospital
-Posters of the Talking Heads in Dan's room (perhaps a lil joke of the other talking heads in this film)
-There was so much fake blood and meat within the head of Dr. Hill that is thrown against the wall -the crew was hiding behind garbage bags because they had no idea how far it would fly.
Final rundown of the film:
Pairs of boobs seen: Two
Body count: 5 plus one dead cat.
Gore factor: 7 out of 10 buckets of blood.
The top ten horror films to watch just prior to Halloween part 4: Dead Alive (movie review)
Welcome back gore fans, to a new edition of my countdown. For those of you that have been sticking around for the latest news of my countdown I just want to letcha know I've been getting used to these things more and more as my creative juices have been flowing yet again. Been making art nonstop, anxious about Halloween and watching PLENTy of gore. Like watching zombie films and eating nachoes with Koopa.
I'd like you all to know that I've actually uncovered some transcripts that a fan made of Joe Bob Briggs' host segments from Monstervision. And I'm sure you can all see the similarities between my countdown and his overviews. Well, now that I've actually found his transcripts http://www.angelfire.com/mn/nn/Monstervision.html (which can be found at this link) brought me back to my days when i'd spend nothing but watch his hilarities on the weekend. So now I'm even MORE influenced by his countdown, listing and diagnosis of films. So for now on, I'm gonna give you the Bo take on the Joe Bob report. I also will be posting pics up on these movies (some of them will be taken from other web pages so I'm sorry that I'm not stealing.) So overall you're gonna see less big ol blocks of text and more broken up with bullits and and pictures.
The rules are of course on this countdown are that I'll only be listing one film per series and per director (I like to be as favorable to everyone as possiable) You'll find things like the plot of the movie, memorable lines, useless tidbits of info, breast count, body count and gore factor per film. If you didn't notice from my other postings of the films - here's a recap: 10)A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors 9)Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives 8) Return of the Living Dead. And so without further adieu, another week has come by closer to Halloween and you guys should be spending it engulfing as much gore into your minds that you can muster.
7)Dead Alive (aka Brain Dead) ..u creepo bastardssss!" chlast chlast
9)LIONEL: "Party's over."
10)VERA: "No one will ever love you like your mother."
11)ZOO KEEPER: "Reckon they're only found on one island y'know. Story goes: thse great big rats, come scuttling off the slave ships. And raped all the little tree monkeys. Y'know, the natives use 'em in black magic rituals.
THINGS TO LOOK FOR:
-Monkey having it's leg ripped off and devoured
-Puppet Monkey death (crushed with Vera's heel inthe head)
-Farting guts puppet Gruesome giblets!
-Giant reborn, naked Vera puppet zombie
-Dog death (deskinned with guts left on teh bed)
-Head being pulled off and snapped back
-Cheek peeling
-Arm hole pussing and projectile
-Projectile cream corn vomit
-Custard devouring (with ear and pearl earring)
-Numerous amounts of flying blood, guts and slime. (Lawnmower scene!)
-Lips sucked and chewed off
-Head and arms in a blender
-Chewing through zombie intestine
-Corpse overflowing with embalmbing fluid
-Spoon full of eggs through the mouth to the back of the skull and out and then having the eggs eaten off the spoon.
-Rib cage ripped out
-Face ripped off
-Lower torso devoured to the bone yet still moving around
-Slipping and sliding on blood and resorting to use guts like stepping stones
-Fist flying through back of the head, to come out of the mouth and look like a blow up doll Braindead / Dead Alive: Grand Slam
-Light buld through back of the head
-Head cracked open like an egg
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-Head exploding like Gallagher and a watermelon
-WWII Nazi refuggee Veterinarian selling tranquilizers
-Syringe full of tranquilizer in the nose (3 times)
-Lawnmower Fu
-Priest Fu
-Kitchen utensil Fu
-Yard Tools Fu
-Lawn Gnome Fu
-Dirty Ol' Uncle Les passing kidney stones and trying to molest anything
-Dirty Ol' Uncle Les kicked in the balls 5 times
-Dirty Ol' Uncle Les utilizing an old school washing machine to squeeze all of the guts out of a zombie.
-Peter Jackson's cameo as the bumbling undertaker's asst
-Zombie sex and instant zombie maternalhood
-Zombie babysitting
-Zombie child abuse
-Zombies shooting out of the ground
-Zombie teeth being slowly yanked out of their mouth
-Zombie exploding
-Zombie torn in half so that other parts of body may continue to devour flesh.
-Zombie rebirth (Freudian style)
Worthless tidbits of info:
-Fran Walsh and Stephen Sinclair, who helped write this film, also helped out writing the LOTR trilogy's screenplays.
-Stuart Devenie, who plays Father McGruder did work in other Jackson films like The Frighteners, Meet the Feebles and Jack Brown Genius. It's really only him and Elizabeth Moody (Vera) that also worked on Jackson on a few other projects besides Dead Alive. She can be found in the extended version of The Fellowship fo teh Ring and Heavenly Creatures
-Peter Jackson, plays the cameo of the Undertaker's asst. Braindead / Dead Alive: the crazy Peter Jackson himself...He is also one of the lead actors in his first film Bad Taste. He normally inserts himself as a cameo in many of his films including the LOTR trilogy and The Frighteners.
-At the church, the music on the organ can also be found in Meet the Feebles as the song "Sodomy".
-At the gore filled conclusion of teh film with the lawnmower - blood was pumped out at 5 gallons per second! With a total of 300 liters used in the final sequence as well.
-It is said by many horror fans (including myself) that this is truly the bloodiest of all time. THe closest film that I know of to come close would be Evil Dead, but even this movies final sequence puts the exploding blood pipe to shame in Evil Dead.
Final Rundown of the film:
Pairs of boobs seen: One (on a reborn zombie puppet of Vera)
Body count: 35, plus one dead dog, one dead monkey and one dead Rat Monkey Sumatra
Gore factor: 11 out of 10 buckets of blood.
"But wait, these buckets only go to 10. Why not just make 10 more powerful?"
"But this bucket goes to eleven"
The amount of gore, blood, guts and slime in this film is IMMEASUREABLE. A total gross out from one scene to the next.
I'd like you all to know that I've actually uncovered some transcripts that a fan made of Joe Bob Briggs' host segments from Monstervision. And I'm sure you can all see the similarities between my countdown and his overviews. Well, now that I've actually found his transcripts http://www.angelfire.com/m
The rules are of course on this countdown are that I'll only be listing one film per series and per director (I like to be as favorable to everyone as possiable) You'll find things like the plot of the movie, memorable lines, useless tidbits of info, breast count, body count and gore factor per film. If you didn't notice from my other postings of the films - here's a recap: 10)A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors 9)Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives 8) Return of the Living Dead. And so without further adieu, another week has come by closer to Halloween and you guys should be spending it engulfing as much gore into your minds that you can muster.
7)Dead Alive (aka Brain Dead) ..u creepo bastardssss!" chlast chlast
9)LIONEL: "Party's over."
10)VERA: "No one will ever love you like your mother."
11)ZOO KEEPER: "Reckon they're only found on one island y'know. Story goes: thse great big rats, come scuttling off the slave ships. And raped all the little tree monkeys. Y'know, the natives use 'em in black magic rituals.
THINGS TO LOOK FOR:
-Monkey having it's leg ripped off and devoured
-Puppet Monkey death (crushed with Vera's heel inthe head)
-Farting guts puppet Gruesome giblets!
-Giant reborn, naked Vera puppet zombie
-Dog death (deskinned with guts left on teh bed)
-Head being pulled off and snapped back
-Cheek peeling
-Arm hole pussing and projectile
-Projectile cream corn vomit
-Custard devouring (with ear and pearl earring)
-Numerous amounts of flying blood, guts and slime. (Lawnmower scene!)
-Lips sucked and chewed off
-Head and arms in a blender
-Chewing through zombie intestine
-Corpse overflowing with embalmbing fluid
-Spoon full of eggs through the mouth to the back of the skull and out and then having the eggs eaten off the spoon.
-Rib cage ripped out
-Face ripped off
-Lower torso devoured to the bone yet still moving around
-Slipping and sliding on blood and resorting to use guts like stepping stones
-Fist flying through back of the head, to come out of the mouth and look like a blow up doll Braindead / Dead Alive: Grand Slam
-Light buld through back of the head
-Head cracked open like an egg
µ¥µå¾ó¶óÀ̺ê
-Head exploding like Gallagher and a watermelon
-WWII Nazi refuggee Veterinarian selling tranquilizers
-Syringe full of tranquilizer in the nose (3 times)
-Lawnmower Fu
-Priest Fu
-Kitchen utensil Fu
-Yard Tools Fu
-Lawn Gnome Fu
-Dirty Ol' Uncle Les passing kidney stones and trying to molest anything
-Dirty Ol' Uncle Les kicked in the balls 5 times
-Dirty Ol' Uncle Les utilizing an old school washing machine to squeeze all of the guts out of a zombie.
-Peter Jackson's cameo as the bumbling undertaker's asst
-Zombie sex and instant zombie maternalhood
-Zombie babysitting
-Zombie child abuse
-Zombies shooting out of the ground
-Zombie teeth being slowly yanked out of their mouth
-Zombie exploding
-Zombie torn in half so that other parts of body may continue to devour flesh.
-Zombie rebirth (Freudian style)
Worthless tidbits of info:
-Fran Walsh and Stephen Sinclair, who helped write this film, also helped out writing the LOTR trilogy's screenplays.
-Stuart Devenie, who plays Father McGruder did work in other Jackson films like The Frighteners, Meet the Feebles and Jack Brown Genius. It's really only him and Elizabeth Moody (Vera) that also worked on Jackson on a few other projects besides Dead Alive. She can be found in the extended version of The Fellowship fo teh Ring and Heavenly Creatures
-Peter Jackson, plays the cameo of the Undertaker's asst. Braindead / Dead Alive: the crazy Peter Jackson himself...He is also one of the lead actors in his first film Bad Taste. He normally inserts himself as a cameo in many of his films including the LOTR trilogy and The Frighteners.
-At the church, the music on the organ can also be found in Meet the Feebles as the song "Sodomy".
-At the gore filled conclusion of teh film with the lawnmower - blood was pumped out at 5 gallons per second! With a total of 300 liters used in the final sequence as well.
-It is said by many horror fans (including myself) that this is truly the bloodiest of all time. THe closest film that I know of to come close would be Evil Dead, but even this movies final sequence puts the exploding blood pipe to shame in Evil Dead.
Final Rundown of the film:
Pairs of boobs seen: One (on a reborn zombie puppet of Vera)
Body count: 35, plus one dead dog, one dead monkey and one dead Rat Monkey Sumatra
Gore factor: 11 out of 10 buckets of blood.
"But wait, these buckets only go to 10. Why not just make 10 more powerful?"
"But this bucket goes to eleven"
The amount of gore, blood, guts and slime in this film is IMMEASUREABLE. A total gross out from one scene to the next.
The top ten horror films to watch just prior to Halloween part 3: Return of the Living Dead (movie review)
Ah, alrighty - 8 weeks to go before the big holiday. And so before I can get ranting as usual, I'll give a recap of the previous films. Number 10 on the list went to Nightmare on Elm Street part 3, Number 9 was Friday the 13th part 6 (which also has a connection with my number 8 film, and for you hardcore horror fans you should be able to pick up on it before you finish reading my review.) Again to those just coming along, this list is made in tribute to the greatest horror movie critic out there - Joe Bob Briggs, and for always showing crappy movies for years on Monstervision on TNT. This list is just my own personal favorites, nothing is set in stone, and if you like to add something or make your own list - that'd be awesome. Spreading the love of film around is what it's all about. The other rule on this list is that I will only pick one film in a series of (say only one Nightmare or Friday the 13th) I want to be fair to all fans. And yes, I want many other people to bare witness to some horror films that they may have never seen or even HEARD of before. My list will provide a summary of the film, great lines, counts of gore and nudity and useless tidbits of info as this review progresses. And also this special time around, I like to be able to insert some pics in the review to break up the overflow of text. And so without further ado, I give you number 8 on my countdown....
8)Return of the Living Dead ..chtrap, Night of the Demons and Nightmare on Elm Street 4 (there she didn't have a true speaking part, but did play a soul poking out of Freddy's chest. And if you saw Linnea's chest which you do see a lot of in this movie, you can def tell she hasn't gotten a lot of roles due to her fine portrayal of being able to scream. It's screaming and running around topless which gets the jobs.
Brian Peck plays Scuz, and the only person to be in all three of the original Return of the Living Dead films. Clu Galagher, also appeared in Nightmare on Elm Street 2, and has had a very long line of films. In fact, his son, just won the last Project Greenlight Feast, which is also a horror film and he plays a bartender in it. James Karen, is also the other big name in the film and you can see him in ALOT of small lil character parts in movies. He played Frank in this movie, but will be appearing in the new Superman movie and has also been in Any Given Sunday, Nixon, The Willies (which was directed by costar Brian Peck and is a terriable horror film) Poltergeist and many many others.
Thom Matthews, if you haven't caught on yet, he is Freddy in this but played Tommy Jarvis in Friday the 13th part 6, the last film on my list, AND the only character besides a Voorhees to be in more than one Friday film. Another Friday alumni goes to Miguel Nunez Jr., who was in Friday the 13th part 5, and is remembered most by his bathroom stall death. But, not to slouch of his other fine movie roles in Leprechaun 4, Life (he's actually been in 3 movies with Eddie Murphy together), and his AWESOME role of Dee Jay in the even more AWESOME movie of Street Fighter The Movie. Also, Mark Venturri, who played Suicide inthis film - also was in Friday the 13th Part 5. He played the very very angry Vic who kills Joey with his axe just becasue Joey was bothering him about a candy bar question lol.
Unfortunatley, despite how well Dan O' Bannon did with this film - and yes he's even long line of credits behind him. He created the characters in Alien, worked on his characters from Heavy Metal (the story's Soft Landing and B-17) he wrote Total Recall, and even worked on the design and specil effects aspects of the original Star Wars. Unfortuanetly, due to Dan's health, he's only directed this film and Resurrected. But if the fans knew of his appreciation, I only hope he'd go out and do some more.
Memorable lines:
FREDDY:"Are we going crazy?"
FRANK:"No, it's that God damn crap those chemicals there all over everything."
FREDDY:"Stupid asshole!"
FRANK:"Watch your tongue boy if you like this job!"
FREDDY:"LIKE THIS JOB?!"
here's some erotic lines for you and probably one of the better pieces of dialogue in the film and followed by some gratuitious nudity:
TRASH: "Do you ever fantasizie about being killed?"
SPIDER: "Never."
TRASH: "Do you ever wonder about all the different ways of dying. You know, violently. And wonder like, what would be the most horriable way to die."
SPIDER: "I try not to think about dying too much."
TRASH: "Mmmm...(she gets up and starts rubbing herself) for me, the worst way would be for a bunch of old men to get around me and start biting and eating me alive."
SPIDER: "I see."
TRASH: "First, they would tear off my clothes" (and she rips her top off)
..http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y197/thundrshot/7.jpg " alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">
CHUCK (Off screen): Let's get some light over here, Trash is taking her clothes off again."
common sense from Burt:
BURT: "Well, if that is a reanimated cadaver in there, we'll just have to kill it."
to breaking that fourth wall
BURT: "I thought you said if we destroyed the brain it'd stop them."
FRANK: "Well, it worked in the movie."
BURT: "Well it ain't working now."
FREDDY: "You mean the movie lied?"
gore fest:
FREDDY: "How are we going to destroy this thing?"
BURT: "Give me the bone saw."
comedy:
ERNIE: "WHAT? What the hell are you doing with rabid weasels?"
horror iconic line:
TAR ZOMBIE: "Brainnnnnnnsss"
Zombies at their creative best to lure more flesh to their trap:
RADIO ZOMBIE 1: "Come in dispatch. Send - more - paramedicsss..."
Ernie about to unload Bronson style:
ERNIE: "What are you crazy?! Are you on PCP?"
Also Kudos to Scuzz for realizing what's going on, not the typical guy of we love you guys - we can't kill you.
SCUZ: "Your dead, your dead man - you're going to turn into one of those things!"
Signs of the end is near:
BURT: "Cops. They've got the cops. It means they're breaking out of the barricade."
Things to look for:
-Half of a dog still panting and yelping
-Spontaneous nudity to dance in the cemetary ..http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y197/thundrshot/8.jpg " alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">
-Pick axe in the back of the head only to make it scream at the top of it's lungs. Then, the head being slowly cut off via hacksaw to hear the vocal cords slowly seperating ..http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y197/thundrshot/11.jpg " alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">
-Headless and naked cadaver running around and breaking stuff...http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y197/thundrshot/12.jpg " alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">
-A great original synthesized song whenever the fumes are mixing with the outer environment.
-Linnea Quigley (the nudist punk known as Trash and scream Queen extraidonaire) hates the rain and has to run around naked to avoid the rain, "I wonder what's in that rain."
-Over the top violent vomiting done by Frank as he is slowly dying.
-A puppet skeleton that pops out of the ground, when it's eyes open - cue that classical 80's punkish metally music. ..http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y197/thundrshot/17.jpg " alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com"> "Do you wanna party, it's party time!"
-The tar man zombie in the basement that coined that classic phrase - "braiiiiinnns."
-Suicide having a chunk of his head bitten into and then convulsing on the floor...http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y197/thundrshot/16.jpg " alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">
-Trash's dreams come true when she is slowly devoured by a bunch of muddy old men
-When the paramedi turns on the light for the ambulance, ..http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y197/thundrshot/19.jpg " alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com"> to notice all of the zombies in front of him. Then the other zombie open up the front door and yank him out. The screams of Jerry are totally horrific! :D
-The lil midget zombie ..http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y197/thundrshot/20.jpg " alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com"> eating brains only to get shot in the face and come waddling after Ernie.
-The second set of paramedics that get tricked and lured into the trap. Especially look for the second paramedic guy that gets sacked SO hard into the mud by the zombies.
-Scuz being yanked out of the window to have the effect of aerosol blood spraying out from his head when the topless female torso zombie latches onto him.
-The spinal fluid that leaks out of the female zombie torso puppet when she gives her meaning of eating brains to the guys.
-Brains slowwwwwllly oozing out of a paramedic's head.
-Freddy foaming at the mouth and then getting Sulfuric Acid splashed int he face.
-Ernie OH SO CONVENTIALLY breaking his foot while trying to secure the chapel. Becoming the cliche guy in the zombie film that not only is packing the heat, but is now unable to move around. (Think of the guy in Dawn of the Dead in his wagon shootign zombies)
-Beating down zombies with a sledge hammer.
-Car chase through the cemetary in the police car, then fighting through an army of zombies. Car eventually blows up and burns some zombies on down. Along with Frank and Burt''s cars outside.
-Frank being a real trooper and actiivating the furnace (like he said he could - cause this film is ripe with foreshadowing) and cremating himself. But not without a prayer and taking off his wedding ring.
-Ernie contemplating about putting that bitch out of her misery up in the attic.
-Tarman Zombie having his head flown off via baseball bat.
-FINALLY dialing that damn 1-800 number ont he side of the barrel.
-Overtly cheap and ridiculous cheap special effect of the tank that shoots the nuke missle at Louisville, Kentucky.
Worthless tidbits of info:
-Director Dan O' Bannon does the voice of the police officer in the helicopter.
-Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist and Life Force fame was scheduled to direct this film but left at the last minute giving it over to Dan O' Bannon.
-George Romero was to be initially involved with the project, but his producer Richard Rubinstein suggested it would be bad that people would confuse Romero's "Dead" films with this film.
-The legality issues behind this film: John Russo, who initially co-wrote Night of the Living Dead with George Romero, got into a scuffle over who got the proper rights to the films and sequels. The judge eventually ordered that Romero would get the rights to the word "Dead" and Russo would get the right of "Living Dead". Thus is why Romero went on to make Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead whereas Russo began the Night of the Living Dead series, which is just about to simulataneously release parts 4 and 5 in a few weeks.
-After the split, Russo wrote a book that is the basis of this film. But when O' Bannon took over the reigns on the project, he felt that the book and script, stepped on the toes of Romero too much. So he added comedy into the fold much more.
-The original concept is taken from Romero's idea of the Army utilizing the dead, which he features prominatnely in Day of the Dead. So the Living Dead series went on using a small sliver of an idea that Day had. In fact, Day of the Dead came out and flopped. It came out shortly not too long after this film did (Living dead should have came out a year earlier except due to legal troubles). Most people think that Day wasn't taken seriousily after a lot of people saw Living Dead - which did do fairly well at the box office.
-The sequel to this was Return of the Living Dead Part II - a total piece of crap and a very bad comedy if antying. It utilizes a lot fo the original cast, and merely suggests that part I was a dream. Part III is pretty good, and is directed by Brian Yuzna of Reanimator fame. It's def a horror film worth to watch especially if you enjoy part I.
-Fantasy II Film Effects did the special effects on this movie along with the Terminator movies. So for a film with a 4 million budget, they did a pretty damn good job.
-Not only is Dan O'Bannon a great artist and a draftsman, his heavy inspiration of the old creepy EC Comics (like Tales from the Crypt and such) poured there way into the graphic tellin gof this film.
Final rundown of the film:
Pairs of boobs seen: 2, also Linnea Quigley dancing topless AND bottomless in the cemtary.
Body count: I count 36 on victim death, plus you also gotta account for the fact that all of Louisville Kentucky gets nuked at the end.
Gore factor: 7 out of 10 buckets of blood. We get to see cow brains chewed on, heads being crunched open and some cool blood gushing out of Suicide and blood spraying from Scuz. Not necessarily a film full of blood, but some very very awesome special effects. And in my opinion, up there with some of the great zombie special effects in a film.
8)Return of the Living Dead ..chtrap, Night of the Demons and Nightmare on Elm Street 4 (there she didn't have a true speaking part, but did play a soul poking out of Freddy's chest. And if you saw Linnea's chest which you do see a lot of in this movie, you can def tell she hasn't gotten a lot of roles due to her fine portrayal of being able to scream. It's screaming and running around topless which gets the jobs.
Brian Peck plays Scuz, and the only person to be in all three of the original Return of the Living Dead films. Clu Galagher, also appeared in Nightmare on Elm Street 2, and has had a very long line of films. In fact, his son, just won the last Project Greenlight Feast, which is also a horror film and he plays a bartender in it. James Karen, is also the other big name in the film and you can see him in ALOT of small lil character parts in movies. He played Frank in this movie, but will be appearing in the new Superman movie and has also been in Any Given Sunday, Nixon, The Willies (which was directed by costar Brian Peck and is a terriable horror film) Poltergeist and many many others.
Thom Matthews, if you haven't caught on yet, he is Freddy in this but played Tommy Jarvis in Friday the 13th part 6, the last film on my list, AND the only character besides a Voorhees to be in more than one Friday film. Another Friday alumni goes to Miguel Nunez Jr., who was in Friday the 13th part 5, and is remembered most by his bathroom stall death. But, not to slouch of his other fine movie roles in Leprechaun 4, Life (he's actually been in 3 movies with Eddie Murphy together), and his AWESOME role of Dee Jay in the even more AWESOME movie of Street Fighter The Movie. Also, Mark Venturri, who played Suicide inthis film - also was in Friday the 13th Part 5. He played the very very angry Vic who kills Joey with his axe just becasue Joey was bothering him about a candy bar question lol.
Unfortunatley, despite how well Dan O' Bannon did with this film - and yes he's even long line of credits behind him. He created the characters in Alien, worked on his characters from Heavy Metal (the story's Soft Landing and B-17) he wrote Total Recall, and even worked on the design and specil effects aspects of the original Star Wars. Unfortuanetly, due to Dan's health, he's only directed this film and Resurrected. But if the fans knew of his appreciation, I only hope he'd go out and do some more.
Memorable lines:
FREDDY:"Are we going crazy?"
FRANK:"No, it's that God damn crap those chemicals there all over everything."
FREDDY:"Stupid asshole!"
FRANK:"Watch your tongue boy if you like this job!"
FREDDY:"LIKE THIS JOB?!"
here's some erotic lines for you and probably one of the better pieces of dialogue in the film and followed by some gratuitious nudity:
TRASH: "Do you ever fantasizie about being killed?"
SPIDER: "Never."
TRASH: "Do you ever wonder about all the different ways of dying. You know, violently. And wonder like, what would be the most horriable way to die."
SPIDER: "I try not to think about dying too much."
TRASH: "Mmmm...(she gets up and starts rubbing herself) for me, the worst way would be for a bunch of old men to get around me and start biting and eating me alive."
SPIDER: "I see."
TRASH: "First, they would tear off my clothes" (and she rips her top off)
..http://i5.photobucket.com/
CHUCK (Off screen): Let's get some light over here, Trash is taking her clothes off again."
common sense from Burt:
BURT: "Well, if that is a reanimated cadaver in there, we'll just have to kill it."
to breaking that fourth wall
BURT: "I thought you said if we destroyed the brain it'd stop them."
FRANK: "Well, it worked in the movie."
BURT: "Well it ain't working now."
FREDDY: "You mean the movie lied?"
gore fest:
FREDDY: "How are we going to destroy this thing?"
BURT: "Give me the bone saw."
comedy:
ERNIE: "WHAT? What the hell are you doing with rabid weasels?"
horror iconic line:
TAR ZOMBIE: "Brainnnnnnnsss"
Zombies at their creative best to lure more flesh to their trap:
RADIO ZOMBIE 1: "Come in dispatch. Send - more - paramedicsss..."
Ernie about to unload Bronson style:
ERNIE: "What are you crazy?! Are you on PCP?"
Also Kudos to Scuzz for realizing what's going on, not the typical guy of we love you guys - we can't kill you.
SCUZ: "Your dead, your dead man - you're going to turn into one of those things!"
Signs of the end is near:
BURT: "Cops. They've got the cops. It means they're breaking out of the barricade."
Things to look for:
-Half of a dog still panting and yelping
-Spontaneous nudity to dance in the cemetary ..http://i5.photobucket.com/
-Pick axe in the back of the head only to make it scream at the top of it's lungs. Then, the head being slowly cut off via hacksaw to hear the vocal cords slowly seperating ..http://i5.photobucket.com/
-Headless and naked cadaver running around and breaking stuff...http://i5.photobucket.com/
-A great original synthesized song whenever the fumes are mixing with the outer environment.
-Linnea Quigley (the nudist punk known as Trash and scream Queen extraidonaire) hates the rain and has to run around naked to avoid the rain, "I wonder what's in that rain."
-Over the top violent vomiting done by Frank as he is slowly dying.
-A puppet skeleton that pops out of the ground, when it's eyes open - cue that classical 80's punkish metally music. ..http://i5.photobucket.com/
-The tar man zombie in the basement that coined that classic phrase - "braiiiiinnns."
-Suicide having a chunk of his head bitten into and then convulsing on the floor...http://i5.photobucket.com/
-Trash's dreams come true when she is slowly devoured by a bunch of muddy old men
-When the paramedi turns on the light for the ambulance, ..http://i5.photobucket.com/
-The lil midget zombie ..http://i5.photobucket.com/
-The second set of paramedics that get tricked and lured into the trap. Especially look for the second paramedic guy that gets sacked SO hard into the mud by the zombies.
-Scuz being yanked out of the window to have the effect of aerosol blood spraying out from his head when the topless female torso zombie latches onto him.
-The spinal fluid that leaks out of the female zombie torso puppet when she gives her meaning of eating brains to the guys.
-Brains slowwwwwllly oozing out of a paramedic's head.
-Freddy foaming at the mouth and then getting Sulfuric Acid splashed int he face.
-Ernie OH SO CONVENTIALLY breaking his foot while trying to secure the chapel. Becoming the cliche guy in the zombie film that not only is packing the heat, but is now unable to move around. (Think of the guy in Dawn of the Dead in his wagon shootign zombies)
-Beating down zombies with a sledge hammer.
-Car chase through the cemetary in the police car, then fighting through an army of zombies. Car eventually blows up and burns some zombies on down. Along with Frank and Burt''s cars outside.
-Frank being a real trooper and actiivating the furnace (like he said he could - cause this film is ripe with foreshadowing) and cremating himself. But not without a prayer and taking off his wedding ring.
-Ernie contemplating about putting that bitch out of her misery up in the attic.
-Tarman Zombie having his head flown off via baseball bat.
-FINALLY dialing that damn 1-800 number ont he side of the barrel.
-Overtly cheap and ridiculous cheap special effect of the tank that shoots the nuke missle at Louisville, Kentucky.
Worthless tidbits of info:
-Director Dan O' Bannon does the voice of the police officer in the helicopter.
-Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist and Life Force fame was scheduled to direct this film but left at the last minute giving it over to Dan O' Bannon.
-George Romero was to be initially involved with the project, but his producer Richard Rubinstein suggested it would be bad that people would confuse Romero's "Dead" films with this film.
-The legality issues behind this film: John Russo, who initially co-wrote Night of the Living Dead with George Romero, got into a scuffle over who got the proper rights to the films and sequels. The judge eventually ordered that Romero would get the rights to the word "Dead" and Russo would get the right of "Living Dead". Thus is why Romero went on to make Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead whereas Russo began the Night of the Living Dead series, which is just about to simulataneously release parts 4 and 5 in a few weeks.
-After the split, Russo wrote a book that is the basis of this film. But when O' Bannon took over the reigns on the project, he felt that the book and script, stepped on the toes of Romero too much. So he added comedy into the fold much more.
-The original concept is taken from Romero's idea of the Army utilizing the dead, which he features prominatnely in Day of the Dead. So the Living Dead series went on using a small sliver of an idea that Day had. In fact, Day of the Dead came out and flopped. It came out shortly not too long after this film did (Living dead should have came out a year earlier except due to legal troubles). Most people think that Day wasn't taken seriousily after a lot of people saw Living Dead - which did do fairly well at the box office.
-The sequel to this was Return of the Living Dead Part II - a total piece of crap and a very bad comedy if antying. It utilizes a lot fo the original cast, and merely suggests that part I was a dream. Part III is pretty good, and is directed by Brian Yuzna of Reanimator fame. It's def a horror film worth to watch especially if you enjoy part I.
-Fantasy II Film Effects did the special effects on this movie along with the Terminator movies. So for a film with a 4 million budget, they did a pretty damn good job.
-Not only is Dan O'Bannon a great artist and a draftsman, his heavy inspiration of the old creepy EC Comics (like Tales from the Crypt and such) poured there way into the graphic tellin gof this film.
Final rundown of the film:
Pairs of boobs seen: 2, also Linnea Quigley dancing topless AND bottomless in the cemtary.
Body count: I count 36 on victim death, plus you also gotta account for the fact that all of Louisville Kentucky gets nuked at the end.
Gore factor: 7 out of 10 buckets of blood. We get to see cow brains chewed on, heads being crunched open and some cool blood gushing out of Suicide and blood spraying from Scuz. Not necessarily a film full of blood, but some very very awesome special effects. And in my opinion, up there with some of the great zombie special effects in a film.
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