DROOLZ

This sweetness came in my mailbox today:


No, WAIT, it gets better:

I am a HUGE Planet of the Apes fan. but I have never owned ANY of them. Not on DVD,not on VHS, not even taped off the TV.

More to come..............

Beware The Blob!

After Nintendo finally drank the Netflix Kool-Aid and joined the X-Box and the PS3 in being able to stream movies instantly to our TV, and after spending one morning watching Happy Tree Friends, two episodes of Masters of Horror (and not the GOOD episodes either), three episodes of SOAP (didya hear me, my friends? FRIGGIN' SOAP. Now just give me streamin' Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and I'll cry tears of joy.), and falling asleep during a totally not-about-Bigfoot-really documentary called 'Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie' ,Mama finally settled on something I could really get into.

Beware the Blob is not only my favorite kind of cheese ball movie, it's one that I remember from childhood.


Since this is a Blob movie, it makes perfect sense to play the credits over a montage of:


A Kitten!!!!!
Awwwww. I hereby make the proclamation that more bad movies start with kittens!!!

Well, I hope you enjoyed the credits brought to you by Kittens! Inspired by Kittens! because we're about to cross the line into stupidity.
First, we have this couple, and I'm at odds as to who is the weirdest. The husband, who is camping in the living room; or his wife, who apparently is all kinds of okay with this arrangement.

The good news: Kitten's back!

The bad news: He has the unfortunate luck to be owned by these two weirdos.

Wifey finds the 'specimen' and when she asks her husband what it is and why he has it, he's all 'don't worry yer purty lil head about it'

which is apparently how the director feels about us.

And the director, by the by, is none other than:

J.R. Ewing.

Yes, it's true, Larry Hagman directed this slice of 70's cheese.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OHMIGOD ITS GOT ME BY THE JEANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lookie what's on TV:

Oh, the irony.
Now that the blob's out and about town, here comes the sequences of random blob killing:

In the tub with gettin yer Fez On!

Joining your makeout sessions:

And it all comes down to the showdown at the bowling alley/ice rink. I remember watching this movie when I was very young (I think it was a double feature with the original Blob) and my mom and I had it playing on a small TV in the kitchen while we made cookies. I actually remember a lot of the ending, including these scenes:
yes, they are wearing BULLET PROOF vests while shooting at the blob.



And I've never forgotten the ending:
LOLZ.
And that's about it for Beware! The Blob. The Blob just goes around....doing Blob stuff. Which is pretty much what happens in all of the Blob movies. Kind of crazy when you realize that we've had not one, not two, but THREE dang movies made about a pile of killer jello. That's the kind of fucked - up reasoning that also got us more than one movie about killer tomatoes. (Which Lord Knows I heart the first one, but c'mon). Anyway, it's fun, it went down fairly quicky and easily, and the dude with the yorkie and the fez made me laugh.

I said SOAP, people!
Mama Firefly

A Perfect Movie

Mama is at the end of her rope. I really don't know what else to do.
After giving up not one, not two, but THREE weekends to this illness that's been plaguing me (more on that in another post)

Maybe what I need is A Perfect Movie. There are many movies that I love with all of my little black heart but few of them that I would label as Perfect.



The Omen is one of those movies. From the script to the acting to the rottweilers to the score to the nanny flapping in the breeze; for my money, you can't do much better than The Omen.

(Aannnnnnnnnd as a creepy aside, I was in the middle of typing when Miss Baylock came in the room and is all Jedi Mind Trick with, Yo, I'm the New Nanny, and No, You Don't Need to Check My References, Bitches.....and not once but TWICE while typing that last sentence I woke up under some kind of trance with about two sentences of type consisting of nothing but 'pppppppttttttttttttttttttt' or 'nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn')

Some Things I Love:

The montage sequence filled with one 'happy family' picutre after another. Any one of them in and of itself looks like nothing but shiny, happy people. Put them together with THAT music and whoa, hold on.


Lee Remick wears a blue turban to CHURCH. A Freaking Blue Turban. And she rocks the shit out of it.
The 'Look at me, Damian! It's all for you!' still remains, for me, one of the most bone chillingly frightening things I have ever seen on film.
When Monkeys Attack!

Freaky Shadows that Predict Death!

I feel the same way about going to church:


Until later, wish me back to a speedy recovery....

Mother Firefly

Werewolf of Washington

Really? Play the movie without Elvira? What kind of sick, twisted world do some folks live in? One where I guess people need to view quality films like Werewolf of Washington so they can study the nuances and subtleties without interruption, breaks, or healthy doses of luscious Elvira cleavage.

I so do NOT want to know these people.

I'm still not feeling better, and I just want to get started with the Elvira-ness, so let's get this bee-yatch started:


OMG. I. So. Did. NOT. Know.

if it wasn't only mid afternoon (and I wasn't looking forward to a mango margarita in a few hours) I'd start doing shots with every stupid expression that Dean Stockwell makes.

So Dean Stockwell is some kind of big shot journalist in Washington, and before we're ten minutes into this shitfest, he gets into a car accident during the full moon and tries to get these people to help him:

Yeah, guess where we're going, people.

One dog later
(and Yes, that would be your standard European werewolf)

Boom, Baby!
We've got ourselves a Gen-U-INE Werewolf Movie, Peeps!

Oh well, let's get back to Washington, get to some parties, and start making faces!

Before long, we have this:

and this follows soon after:

thank god for this throughout on a regular basis:

And eventually I guess our friend Dean kills someone else. I say 'I guess' because we never actually see it; or the body- we just get to see Dean talking about it the next day:

Which is just as good, right?


And BTW, this movie is the kind that thinks it's funny to have the other actor in the scene say to Dean Stockwell, 'What's the pentagon got to do with this?" every time Dean mentions that he has a PENTRAGRAM on his body ever since he was attacked in Budapest.

Yeah.
It's just THAT good.

FINALLY, Werewolf Action via stop motion photography:

ONLY Dean Stockwell could still manage to make stupid faces through all that fur.

And then there's some political speeches n shit and some other political crap and even some bowling. Yep. Bowling.
Annnnnnnnnnnd then there's this scene:
I'll just let this one speak for itself.

I'll give the movie this: At least it had the original idea to go with a bona fide werewolf whisperer:

AHAHAHAHAHAHA
It's just so fucking surreal and randomly inserted in the movie - the scene lasts less than five minutes and features Stockwell literally licking and sniffing Mr. White Coat like a dog.
Best line of the movie delivered by the little man in the white coat-
"Are you REAL? Are you REALLY REAL??'

then we get Dean changing into a werewolf with the President yelling things at him like 'Heel!' 'Sit!" and the classic "Down, Boy!'

so wish I was kidding right now.......

I'd fill you in on more of the actual plot, but I'm not sure that there's much more to this movie than what I've showed you. And I say I'm not sure there is because I can't make myself care enough to go back and try to figure out if there was. I'll be honest, I took a couple of five to ten minute snoozes during this crap-fest and I couldn't even be bothered to rewind.

However, I didn't fall asleep for any time that Elvira was on screen. And I can't bitch too much, because somehow Elvira managed to more than make up for the previous hour and a half of awfulness:


You're welcome,
Mother Firefly

Old People Get Scared TOO, Y'Know!!!!!

FINALLY. Finally after weeks (?) months (?) of waiting, Netflix got around to see into their greedy black hearts (I see you in there, making deals with studios for $$ to hold back new releases, Cheap Asses!) and give me a turn with their (apparently) only copy of The Hills Run Red.

After waiting forever and a day, I popped it in on a Saturday night, crossed my fingers, and immediately lowered my expectations. (It's not just a way to watch movies - it's a way of life, my friends.)

I thought the storyline - cult movie from the early 80's that seemingly 'disappeared' after showing in only a handful of places and making people so upset that it was deemed too terrible for people to watch and thus had to be destroyed- was interesting even though the whole urban legend angle sort of feels a little overdone at this point.
I thought the killer dude was a whole TON of Creepariousness, and I started getting invested in the story - or so I thought.



I fell asleep despite my best attempts at staying awake (and genuinely wanting to see the end) - or so I thought.

I planned on getting right back to it the next night - but instead it sat on my shelf for an entire WEEK before I got back to it. I finished it the next weekend - and I thought the end was fairly satisfying and I'll probably buy it once I don't have to pay more than five bucks for it. (I know, I'm the proverbial Pot calling the Kettle a Cheap Ass).

But there was something about the movie that didn't quite satisfy - and finally, it hit me.

You're probably not going to believe me, but there was a day and a time and YEARS when horror movies did not always consist of a whole cast of teenagers. I know - it's like when I talk about growing up with THREE WHOLE CHANNELS, you're all.....How did you LIVE, Lady????



Some chick doin'....something.

And it's not that I think we need to eliminate movies with high school or college students - after all, they are what makes the slasher movie go 'round-it's just that I wonder what kind of different flavor a movie like this could have had if the plot had featured maybe an older movie buff (perhaps with a failed movie career themselves) who had a chance to see this movie when they were younger, and maybe chickened out (and always regretted it) - and were since obsessed with it - perhaps to the detriment of their life and relationships around them - and maybe by chance suddenly find a new lead to (finally!) real proof that this movie actually existed - maybe a story line like that with a little more meat on it - with actors with more life experience - would have given the movie a little more substance and interest than watching a younger, cockier, 'hey I'm so obsessed with this and it makes me so coooool' type of vibe.

Or maybe I'm just old.

In any case, just to show you that I'm not completely nuts, let me give you some evidence.

For Example:

The Omen: Gregory Peck and Lee Remick. A great director, a great story, and outstanding acting. Who doesn't love this movie? Compare this with the remake we were treated to a few years ago with the 'younger, hipper' version staring Julia Stiles and Liev Schreiber. While not the worst remake ever (whoops, didn't see you standing there, The Fog!) I can't feel for the young couple who have the bad fortune to end up with Satan's firstborn like I do for Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, a couple who are a little older and more clearly desperate for a child (and thus, I think, a lot more likely to sweep their son's, ahem, idiosyncrasies, under the table).

Vincent Price:
Was Vincent Price ever a teenager? I keed, I keed. Price's later hijinks involving the Brady Bunch aside, pretty sure he made the majority of his films not about scary things that happened at the beach, or on campus, or during some drunken college party.






(Side note: not that I don't enjoy myself a movie or two from the 50's that involve dancing teenagers and scary things that happen at the beach....F*CK YEAH, I do!)






AND not that there aren't great horror stories on film about teenagers - think Carrie, for instance - I just wish that every dang horror movie didn't have to be about them. House of the Devil is another great example where the desperateness and naivete of youth are part of the whole backbone of the story.

So I'm not saying, let's get rid of movies where we play that game of 'Let's Kill off The Naughty Teenagers', I'm just saying - let's share the love a little bit and think about expanding story lines to include people who may have different experiences or perspectives to bring to The Scary.

And maybe stop with the remakes and the sequels for a while. Just you know, a thought.

Until next time, DearHearts,
Mother Firefly