Day 2 - Them

Add this to the growing list of scary, well - made French films. IMDB lists this movie as French/Romanian, but since I don't have a list of scary, well-made Romanian films, I'm sticking with France.

Unfortunately, this movie is a lot like Martyrs, in that to explain too much is to ruin it. On the other hand, it's nothing like Martyrs, in that the scariness has to do with what you can't see and what isn't shown, and the gore is light.

If you're in the mood for a scary, short, and sweet horror film (77 mins), and you'd like to see the better movie that 'The Strangers' was based on, check this one out. I didn't hate 'Strangers' - but I liked these characters better and I felt they could actually act. Sorry, Liv Tyler, you're pretty and all.....but ...... well, you know. I also felt that the characters in this story were smarter and possessed more wherewithall than the people in 'Strangers'.

Even if you already saw 'Strangers', I don't think that you'll feel that you've already seen this movie. Besides a couple being targeted and harassed by seemingly invisible people with no real motive, this story is entirely different. Also the house is so amazing, it's almost a character in itself. And the story ends up taking us outside the house into some other scary outdoor locations.

And that's about all I can without giving anything away - I caught this on Sundance but you can also rent/stream it on Netflix. There's an afterword at the end of the movie that suggests that the film was based on a true story - but doesn't explicitly state this, and I'm unable to find any information online. It's entirely possible that it was - but that doesn't add or distract to the movie in any way.

-Mother Firefly

Day 1- Don't Make Me Do It!

As I've stated many times in the past, I'm a cheap ass when it comes to buying things for myself. Mainly because I have to be (read = graduate student) and also because, well, I'm just a cheap ass. I don't buy DVDs when they're first released, and I hardly ever buy them when they're not on sale. I learned my lesson paying 14.99 for too many movies only to find them for sale for less than ten bucks in a few months. My philosophy is, if you just wait long enough, everything is five bucks. Well kind of. You know what I mean.

I'm a total stinge when it comes to buying movies, and I'm even more so when it comes to other things (read = anything that is NOT a horror movie). And when it comes to Halloween, I wait till after the holiday and then go to Target so I can buy a skeleton blanket and say Hey! I NEEDED a skeleton blanket and this one is only FIVE bucks. Because, in my cheap ass mind, everything should be five bucks.

Anyway- I was in Madison last weekend, and there are all kinds of cool and funky stores, and I look at lots of cool things and then don't buy them because I just can't bring myself to spend the money on them for myself. But then I ran into this thing, and as over priced as I thought it was, Mother F had to bring it home and hang it on the wall.

Or put it on my coffee table, as it is in this picture. (which is just about its real life size)


I think it speaks for its own tiny self.

And uh - don't make me do it. Because I WILL.

And your little dog too,
Mother Firefly

Day 1- House of the Devil!

I'm soooooooooooooooooo excited to start the Halloween blogging! I'm going to attempt to watch a movie every day - and post a favorite Halloween themed 'thing'. At the very least, I'd like to do better than last year. I'm hoping to - and I'm hoping to be able to just enjoy this October more than the last two - which were earlier in my program and much, much more hectic and stressful. But there's still enough to do this semester - so forgive me if life and school get in the way and I'm not able to get to this every day.

With that said.....on with the MOVIES!!!

I had the thrill of seeing this little gem last Friday as part of the Milwaukee Film Festival.
We didn't have a film festival in Milwaukee last year - which was a disappointment. The Milwaukee International Film Festival was still pretty young, but apparently there were internal issues and the whole thing was dismantled, took a year off, and reborn again as the Milwaukee Film Festival. Luckily many of the same people are still running it and choosing films. Unfortunately for people like me, they don't show many horror movies - we usually get only get one that falls under the category of true horror. Fortunately, their choices are usually pretty stellar. In past years I've seen great films like Severance and The Signal.

This year they didn't let me down. It initially looked like I wasn't going to get to see this film - but then we changed our plans and ended up at the Oriental at midnight to see this fun film.

The story is pretty simple and the cast is small. We have a young woman who needs to make 300 bucks in just a few days so she can move in to her new apartment. She answers an ad for a babysitter job and then the weirdness begins.

When she arrives at the house (in the middle of nowhere, of course) she finds that there's actually no children to sit for at all. What the couple wants from her is just to be in the house in case the woman's elderly mother has some kind of accident or there's an emergency - you see, her daughter just can't bear to leave her alone. The situation is weird and the people creepy, but eventually the young woman is convinced to stay when the gentleman offers her 400 hundred dollars! For just a few hours! Hell, he'll even give her 20 bucks to have pizza delivered. And the best part of all, she doesn't even have to talk to the old lady or do anything for her. You see, she's kind of a private person and she really is pretty independent.

I'm going to stop with the plot synopsis there - because to tell you any more would really kind of ruin things. I don't know how other people will review this film, but I absolutely loved it. The house in the film is really a character in the movie. It's noisy and creaky and it seems like there's an endless array of closets, rooms, hallways, and dark corners.

One warning - if you're an action junkie or you really need a lot of energy on the screen, you may find yourself bored or wanting the movie to just get on with it already. But the movie unfolds slowly, building tension after tension till you just want to explode. At one point I really thought there was no way the movie could live up to all the suspense it was building. But suddenly, boom, it's here, everything we've been waiting on, and for me, it wasn't a letdown.

I also loved the way the film captured the early 80's from the hairstyles to the clothes to the portable cassette player the heroine carries around. And it was great to see Dee Wallace and Mary Woronov - their parts were small but memorable, especially Mary's. And I REALLY appreciated that when the final climax came, we weren't treated to 'the big speech' from the bad guys explaining their evil plan in great detail. No, you pretty much have to put it together for yourselves. Not that it's extremely difficult - it's pretty simple - but the elegance is in its simplicity. Hint : The title may give you some indication.

I'm happy to see a film that genuinely creeped me out and had me wanting to cover my eyes and didn't use tons of CGI or a huge budget to do it. Sometimes just going back to the basics is a good thing.

Web site HERE - with trailers and play dates.

Here's to 30 more days of Halloween!
Mother Firefly

It's Here, It's Here!!!!!!!

October is on its way......and sometime tomorrow I'll be starting my 31 Days of Halloween posts, along with all these wonderful blogs listed here:

Countdown to Halloween

Even if I didn't have a calendar or was completely unaware of the weather outside, I'd still know October was near because I wake up to this on one side of me:


and this:
on the other.

One day they're stretched out on the stone tables and sleeping under the ceiling fans, and then suddenly they're sacked out next to me stealing the warm and pretending they've been there all year long.

Fall is officially here.

See you tomorrow.......
Mother F.

YIPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did want:

Did WIN!!!!!!


From HERE.


Thank you,
Stacie!!!!

Now go read her AWESOME blog.

This Is Why I Loved This Man

Because when he read this scene, he didn't say, 'You want me to skate around and take off my belt and do what?"
No, he said 'Give me that belt. I'ma hit this out of the park.'



I know Dirty Dancing and Ghost are probably his best known movies, but Roadhouse is one of my most favorite guiltiest pleasure movies EVER



And if you haven't watched this at least once today, now's your chance. I only wish this didn't have the ending removed where they give it to Swayze and he tells Farley that he thought that Farley was going to win....

Watch more My Video videos on AOL Video

and I think one of the most fun roles he ever did was the informercial king in Donnie Darko.



In fact, I'm going to go watch it right now........
Rest in Peace Patrick. Thanks for all the fun.

Sooooooooooooooooo Excited

DO FREAKING WANT

From Amazon:
"Over fifty years ago, with the release of The Curse of Frankenstein and Christopher Lee in Dracula, Hammer ushered in a whole new era of blood and barely restrained cleavage in glorious colour, mixing sex and horror with a style and panache that made the small British company world famous.

Bursting at the seams with rare and previously unpublished photographs from Hammer’s archive and private collections worldwide, and featuring many new interviews, Hammer Glamour is a lavish, full colour celebration of Hammer’s female stars, including Ingrid Pitt, Martine Beswick, Caroline Munro, Barbara Shelley, Joanna Lumley, Nastassja Kinski, and of course Raquel Welch (who can forget her fur bikini in One Million Years B. C.?) "

Did I ever tell ya that Ingrid Pitt emailed me once? Oh yeah baby, yes she did.

Order it for me here.

God Bless the Canadians

Because they're the only country taking zombies SERIOUSLY. And the BBC is reporting it, y'all.
'Science ponders zombie attack'

And basically, people, the news ain't good.

A couple of professors from Carelton University and University of Ottawa decided they wanted to know what would happen if there was a zombie outbreak. Who would win?

The professors say : "We model a zombie attack using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies.

"We introduce a basic model for zombie infection and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions."

Which loosely translates to: We smoked a bowl and watched Dawn of the Dead and then we got out our calculators.

God I love horror nerds.

Then they went and published their paper in a book called Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress. You can buy the book for 70 bucks on Amazon, or you can just download the pdf "When Zombies Attack! Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of a Zombie Infection" here. A warning, though. This sucker is 18 pages and contains all kinds of charts, equations, and other things that look like this:

the number of zombies destroyed through this process per unit time per susceptible is:
(N)(Z=N)S = (alpha)SZ

The ODEs satisfy
S0 + Z0 + R0 = II

and hence
S + Z + R = infinity

Huh, What???
I suggest going right to the summary of the paper:

In summary, a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it
is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.

Which again, loosely translated means:
Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.








And in other reasons for me to do the happy dance, AMC is announcing they're about to develop a zombie tv show! The series will be based on The Walking Dead and possibly directed by Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption)

Zombie TV show

Going to board up my windows,
Mother Firefly

Race With the Devil

What do you get when you cross Loretta Swit, motocross, Peter Fonda, a couples' vacation, a cute puppy, and a decked out RV with all the trimmings, including a full stocked bar? Yep, you guessed it - you get SATANISM.
I don't know why the DVD didn't use this great poster as cover art instead of the cheesy collage of photos they slapped on the cover, but whatever. The poster suggests that this is some kind of RV racing action film, but its not. Which is good, because I would A)not spend five bucks on a RV action film, or B)review it on my blog. But lucky for you, I would spend five bucks on a 70's RV Satanism film AND review it on my blog.

The motocross thing is actually pretty incidental - besides it being featured in the beginning of the film and once in a friendly race between Peter Fonda and Warren Oates, it's really not that important. What IS important is Peter Fonda's shag haircut:

Do you think Kristy McNicol stole it from him or vice versa?

Anyway, the two couples set off for vacation in their kick ass RV, complete with all the trimmings:
Dog not included.


They have a friendly motorcycle race and then later that evening notice that there's a big bonfire on the other side of the river. Of course, the fellas need to take a closer look.



They decide that it's just some dancing and chanting, no big deal. No, really, take another look:



Yep, just friendly dancing.



Oh shit!

Finally these morons (seriously, have they never left the house?) figure out that maybe what's going on across the river is BAD and they shouldn't be WITNESSES. When is exactly when Loretta Swit decides to start yelling at the guys to come in - and then the party across the river knows they're being watched. Peter and the gang hurry up and pack it up but not in enough time :

I couldn't get a good screen capture of the satanists jumping on the RV (with capes on!) but the lady who isn't Loretta Swit and her puppy are REALLY, REALLY SCARED:




They head straight to the local law to get some help and end up going back to the site to show them where they saw the sacrifice. At this point in the movie, the plot becomes really transparent and you get a sense of exactly where this movie is going.



don't they look like nice, decent, helpful policemen? Uh-huh.
They find an area that looks like blood, and the cops take a sample, but they're pretty sure it's just from some animal or something - nothing to be all concerned with, people!

Meanwhile, Loretta and not-Loretta find a piece of paper jammed in their broken window with a bunch of weird letters and symbols on it. They have no idea what they could mean so they decide to investigate at the local library.

Turns out that it's runes and witchcraft and spells and evil 'n shit. (They're about as freaking vague -not to mention the completely WRONG definition that runes are used as 'evil spells'- as they can POSSIBLY be with their research)


So they leave town (with a blood sample of their own to have tested somewhere else)
but not before they stop at a gas station so this guy and his cat can fix their window.
(Oh, I'm so not kidding about that part)



and end up at an RV park with the most annoying neighbors ever.



And this is why I don't go to RV parks, people.

Of course, shit goes down at the RV park, and they end up feeling it's not such a friendly place after all. More hi-jinks follow, such as finding that someone has stocked their RV with two pissed off serpents:



I'M FED UP WITH THESE MOTHER F**KING SNAKES ON THIS MOTHER F**KING RV!!!

And the rest of the movie pretty much continues this way, with the Satanists trying to kill them and Peter and the gang really never knowing who to trust. I'll save the 'shocking' ending that the DVD box advertises (although you can really see it coming the whole time).

Bottom line is, if you like RVs, Satanists, and Loretta Swit, this movie is custom made for you. Or - if you enjoyed the cheese fests called 'Devil Dog' or 'Devil Times Five' (starring a very young - and murderous!- Leif Garrett), you will freakin' love this. I had fun, I laughed (where I wasn't supposed to) and I didn't even need a martini to make it go down smoother.

Here Comes the Apocalypse - 60's Style

In case you're wondering if I continued working my way through my unwatched DVDs by decade - wonder no more. Because I have. But with October approaching (and therefore the 30 days of Halloween!) I'll be saving some of my reviews to post then.
I watched this MGM Midnite Movies double feature:
I wanted this set mostly so I could have a decent copy of Last Man on Earth - it's a public domain film and the other copy I had was of the 1.99 variety.

As far as Panic, it's an interesting film if you want to know how people might behave in an 'end of the world as we know it' 60's style. Milland and family have packed up their camper and are on their way out of town, when oops, nuclear bombs fall in Los Angeles. They try to return home, but when that fails, Milland slips into 'preservation mode' and goes about doing what he needs to do to protect his family. I thought this was an interesting film in that you can see what people in the 60's may have thought a nuclear war might bring as far as trying to survive and what people might have to do - and how a nice, ordinary, everyday typical 'nuclear' (!) family might have to behave in ways they never thought they would.

I liked Last Man on Earth before I bought this, and I still enjoy it. Years ago I read 'I Am Legend' when I heard that it was the inspiration for Romero's zombie films. As you probably already know, three films have been made from that book by Richard Matheson, 'Last Man', 'Omega Man' (with Chucky Heston), and 'I Am Legend'. I have seen 'Omega Man' but hardly remember it. All I really remember are these spooky lookin' folks:
And unfortunately I don't think the rest of the film is as fun as that picture might lead you to believe. I can't say for sure but I don't have any urge to go back and rewatch it - so I must have been barely entertained at best.

I did enjoy I Am Legend - out of all three films, it has the benefit of a large budget and the full Hollywood treatment complete with CGI.

But there's something about the simplicity and barrenness of Last Man on Earth with the added benefit of watching Vincent Price deal with being, well, the last man on earth. I think the film captures a certain creepy isolation that the other films don't quite have. Or at least not in the same way. Especially haunting is the scene where soldiers are tossing bodies into a huge fire pit and Price is there searching out one of his deceased loved ones - not wanting them to go into the fire - but ultimately realizing that the body has to be disposed of that way.

Once I got into the 60's, I went to another Price double feature - but I'm going to stash that review away for October. After all, no Halloween season is complete with a Price film or two. I'll continue to work my way through the 60's and beyond - but I'll probably only post every other review for now, and keep the rest until then. I'm taking the advice of other bloggers who do the same since I was unable to keep up last year.

I'll post a link to the full list of Halloween bloggers once the list is compiled. Big thanks to John Rozum for putting this together once again! Check out his fantastic blog here.

-Mother Firefly

Splinter

Since I'm on break this week and therefore subjected to the constant loud drone of construction outside my window for 12 hours a day, it's the perfect time to use my headphones and take advantage of Netflix streaming. So I decided to check out this little film -->

This is a fun little movie that goes along great with the summer season. If you're a fan of 'nature goes wild' or even zombie films, I encourage you to check this one out. For my part, it appealed to my fear of 'don't touch it or you're dead' kind of The Blob mentality. When I was a kid, the idea that if you even so much touched with one finger, you were done for, was terrifying. The same goes here - except that The Blob couldn't reanimate corpses or chase after you.

The cast is small - just four people if you don't count the reanimated corpses already infected that they encounter. There's the unfortunate couple who attempt to go camping and the other unfortunate couple on the run from the law. They cross paths - and what begins as a kind of action/thriller soon descends into an all out horror film as they find themselves defending an attack from something they don't understand (and neither do we since we never get a real explanation for this thing - but that just makes it scarier).

One interesting thing about this movie was the dynamic between the couple celebrating their anniversary. The woman was the one who knew how to drive the stick shift, who knew how to pitch a tent, while hubby was a kind of whiny nerdy science loving stereotype. At first I found it a little hard to believe that these two could really be a couple until the shit hit the fan and Mr. Biology Degree actually came in handy as far as observing and understanding how the monsters worked.

The reanimated corpses are scary and nasty looking and move in really messed up ways. My only complaint was that sometimes the movie was edited in a way that made it hard to really get a good look - I thought that the camera could have lingered longer on the corpses as they shuffled around.

The Splinter website says the movie has won multiple awards at Screamfest and other festivals - and they're certainly deserved. You can read about those here:
Splinter website
and also have a look at all the places online that it's available.

Martyrs

I have two things to say.
1) It's hot and I'm whiny; and
2) I watched a movie two weeks ago that blew my mind and I'm finally ready to say something about it.

I literally had to take some time out to let this movie roll around in my head a while to decide what I wanted to say about it. Which is about a third of the time it took for me to get the nerve up to watch it. It sat at the top of my Netflix list for about six weeks listed as available. I lost track of the number of times I moved it from the number one spot to a somewhat safer placing a little further down the line. I'd heard so much about this movie yet I somehow (thankfully) managed to avoid hearing TOO much. Finally I decided I better watch it because the hosts (and call in guests) of my favorite horror radio show, Deadpit.com, were talking so much about it that I was afraid I'd end up hearing the whole plotline before I finally sat down to watch it.

What I knew about the movie was that torture was among the main themes of the movie. What I kept hearing was how horrifying and difficult to watch it was. But - what I also kept hearing was that it was worth it, and that it was possibly the best horror film of the year. Plus - it was also French - and if you're any kind of horror fan whatsoever, you've got to be somewhat aware that France has been kicking out some pretty intense (but fantastic) horror movies in the last few years. While we in the good old USA, home of Hollywood, tend to either get Saw sequels or remakes of movies that were actually good. Or we get lame crap like The Unborn, The Haunting of Sarah What'sHerFace, or The Orphan.

So I tend to either rewatch my favorites or search out independent or foreign horror movies when I hear about them on the grapevine. I again give a shout out to Deadpit, because as a grad student I don't always have time to keep up on the latest, but I always have time to listen to their show while I do mindless (but necessary) tasks like cooking dinner and doing laundry. I just want to take a moment of silence to give thanks for the internet, mp3 players, and podcasting.

There.

So between Rue Morgue, Deadpit, and my brother (here's his review) this movie was definitely on my radar. So I finally left it in the number one spot and it came. And then I took a week to watch it.

Part of my trepidation concerned another French film that I think is just about one of the most frightening films I've ever seen, called Inside. I lost track of the number of times I either swore or covered my eyes, or both. I recently watched it again with a friend (who asked me before hand if the warnings on the box really lived up to their promise - and wholeheartedly agreed afterwards that they did) and I had just as much trouble and turmoil watching it the second time as the first. So based on my experience of Inside, and everything I heard going in, I was scared as hell to watch it.

Now - I am a true horror film fanatic. I've been watching horror films since my preschool years. I love them all from the silents to the Universal classics to Hammer to exploitation to the slasher films of the 80's. I'm constantly searching out new things from the 30's to the 80's looking for films I may have missed. Unfortunately with that many films behind me, I'm also somewhat jaded, as we true horror fans tend to me. I'm lucky if I blink fast during the 'scary' parts. The most I can hope for is maybe some well done makeup effects or some memorable imagery. I don't ever watch horror films anymore expecting to be scared.

That is until French people started all this nonsense. It started (for me) with a free pass to see a preview of High Tension a few years ago. If you haven't seen High Tension, bookmark this page, turn off your computer, and go watch it. Now. I'll wait.

I had no idea that a movie could still put me on the edge of my seat - literally. I usually rewatch my old favorites with a bit of nostalgia recalling how those movies made me feel when I was a kid watching them for the first time. I've never EVER seen a movie in at least the last ten years that put me firmly and squarely back in my pre-teenage self and made me remember what it was like to watch those movies for the first time. AND a female protagonist to boot. It was a gift from the horror movie gods.

I'll save my reviews of the other French films I've seen for another post - I have a couple others lined up to watch in the next week - and get back to Martyrs. I've said often enough before that you don't need to give me ALL the answers. In fact, I prefer to leave a movie with a mystery or two to ponder in my head. Having said that, there's a fine line between leaving purposeful gaps and creating a stink pile of nonsense that lacks any kind of real logic at its center. (See- Haunting of Molly Hoo-Ha)

I also do NOT enjoy watching movies that contain violence merely for violence's sake. I quit watching the Saw franchise after part 3 when halfway through the movie I felt queasy and kind of, well, dirty inside. Another movie that illustrates this phenomenon perfectly to me is the Australian film Wolf Creek. I went to the theater to see it and honestly just wanted to walk out. I felt like the three characters had no other purpose in the film other than to be maimed and tortured. It was literally a movie where three young people run into a bad man, and he kills them painfully and slowly. And that's the entire film. The End.

I realize that there is an audience for films like Saw (obviously- they still make a mint) and Wolf Creek. And that's perfectly fine with me - I applaud and encourage people to make any kind of film that they choose to. But if you're going to graphically maim and dismember people in front of my eyes, you need to give me more than that to get me to watch your movie. You've got to make your story compelling enough that I'm willing to watch those images. In other words, take me somewhere and make me feel something other than wanting to throw up and take a shower.

Now I know some people might point out that I watch all kinds of films with violence and gore that have absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. And I don't think that every horror movie needs a social statement. Sometimes it's just pure fun. Sometimes gore and violence are tongue in cheek. For instance, I don't take the Friday the 13th or Halloween films seriously at all. To me they're our generation's version of Grimm's fairy tales. Fairy tales contained warnings imbedded within them. If you're naughty, the witch will get you. Friday the 13th has the same message. Do drugs, have premarital sex, and Jason will get you. Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers are all just different versions of the Boogeyman.

Back to Martyrs - so I went into this film with all kinds of trepidation. Hell, even the director provides an intro in which he says that you might hate him after you watch the film. But overall - I have to say that the film was less hard for me to watch (going by the total number of times I literally covered my eyes - once - vs about a half dozen for Inside) than I thought it was going to be. I pretty much attribute this to all the warnings I had going in. It is NOT a pretty film. It is violent and graphic and bloody and there are all sorts of things being done to women in this film that you probably never wanted to imagine.

I don't really even want to get into a plot synopsis - it wouldn't be difficult to find one if you're really interested. I think the less you know about this movie, the more you'll get out of it. I will say however, that it's almost like three films in one - it literally has acts that unfold one after the other - and with every act you slip deeper and deeper into depravity. Instead, if anything I've said has made you curious, take a deep breath, rent it, and hold on. Oh - and probably don't eat dinner while you watch this, either.

I don't think this film is for everyone. It's one of the most twisted things I have ever seen in my life. But it also made me think - and it kept me thinking long after the movie was over. Unfortunately I can't really explain any of that without giving away some major plot points - but suffice it to say I really do feel that this is a film that goes beyond its harsh images to be provocative and to leave its imprint on your mind. And it wasn't the torture scenes that I kept coming back to as I thought of it - it was more character motivation, plot, just the whole general depravity of what was going on in the film. I'm not dying to watch it again - but I'd definitely add it to my collection and someday, I"ll be brave enough to watch it again.

Coming to DVD in October

To watch trailers go here

House of 1,000 Corpses Living Dead Dolls

One Last Blast from the 50's

I found this in the big sale on Amazon last year, and I bought it because it fit my criteria:

-it looked all kinds of stupid

- and it was under five bucks.

We have a scientist who gets exposed to radiation -
and everything seems to be okay until he goes out in the sun. Then he turns all kind of ugly.

This is classic 50's fun - science gone wrong, a goofy monster suit, and lots of girls screaming. Although don't think too hard about the plot - after all, if the dude just STAYED IN THE DANG HOUSE ALREADY, he wouldn't have his little monster problem.



Good times.

Update: If you're so inclined, you can watch the entire movie on Youtube courtesy of Image Entertainment.

Link

Science Fiction Double Feature

This double feature is courtesy of the Midnite Movies People.
Phantom is from 1955 and Beast is from 1958.
Both clock in under 80 minutes.
Yay for short attention span friendly fare!




Pay attention to the pretty posters....because unfortunately they're the best thing about both of these movies.

Phantom: I tried hard with this movie, believe me, I did. I even started it over twice.
But I just couldn't get into it. At first I thought it was going to be kick ass when I saw this in the first five minutes.



Yippee! Underwater rubber monster suits - and in the first five minutes! But unfortuntately the rest of the film doesn't hold up to the cheesiness. There's a scientist, and his daughter, and a cop, and radioactive material in the ocean, that the scientist somehow made the monster to protect. As you can imagine, that plan does't work so well. It all ends with dynamite and a big boom and that's that.

Beast: Again, not the best film - but definitely more interesting than Phantom. For one thing, the characters and their relationships are definitely unusual for the time. We have mom, dad, and their teenage daughter living on a failing farm. Dad feels like a fuck up and is sure that wifey agrees; Mom is a real biotch and even admits she's 'not easy to live with' and takes her frustrations out on the hired mute help. Daughter just wants everyone to be happy and doesn't understand why they're not. Oh and it's her bday.

We have some weird air disturbance, which everyone thinks is a low flying plane that went over emitting a terrible noise, and first animals and then people start acting homicidal. Turns out it's not a plane but this dude, who comes off in the movie like he's about six inches tall.

Sorry for the bad capture - every scene of the alien is superimposed by a big dumb eye.

And how do the one million eyes come into play? Because in the beginning of the film the alien does a menacing voice over letting us know he will be keeping an eye on every move we make....thus the one million eyes bit. Because i guess we'll feel like he has a million eyes. Ooookay. Based on the easy way the family dispose of him in the end, a million eyes is not such a big deal after all.

So not scared,
Mother Firefly

Do Want

Dear Santa, Please bring me this for Christmas. Or my b-day. Or a groovy graduation gift.

I will love him and feed him and call him George.

(Actually, I'll call him whatever the hell he wants so he doesn't kill me in my sleep)

All my love,
Mother Firefly.

I Married A Monster From Outer Space

With a title like this, who needs a review, right?

I picked this little goodie up for 3.99 at Blockbuster. It hasn't been sitting around as long as some of my other acquisitions, but since it was made in 1958, it fits into our mini 50's sci-fi festival.

Mr. About to be Married goes out for a few drinks with his buds the night before the big day. On the way home, he manages to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a big mean old ugly alien decides to take over his body.




The wedding takes place, and even though the groom seems strangely devoid of emotion, a year of wedded bliss goes by....when suddenly the bride is all bummed out because she can't get knocked up.



Guess alien sperm + human egg = noncompatible life. But no worries, Hubby actually is not alone on this planet and has a few other male companions who all also happen to have been possessed by aliens. His alien buds assure him that 'scientists back home' are working diligently on chromosome compatibility.



Seems we have the timeless story of an alien race on a dying planet just trying to make a home for themselves. Their sun is burning up or something. And they have no women or something. So they need ours. To make their alien babies.

The story isn't anything too original, but it's typical of other 50's sci-fi fare, short, sweet, and to the point. Good film for a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Choice Anxiety

Finally I have a little more time to watch some flicks, and I'm faced with a pile of horror movies that range from 50's sci-fi to good old Vinny Price to an assortment of double features from Something Weird to 70's drive in fare to a couple of the '8 films to die for' series. Not to mention 2 or 3 MST3K box sets. I haven't watched any of them yet and quite a few are from the killah Amazon Halloween sale last year. I usually never let movies sit this long unwatched, but time has been precious these last few months.

So finally I have some breathing room, and what happens? I sit there and stare at the pile of movies trying to pick something, anything....

I call it choice anxiety.

I can't take credit for the phrase - I stole it from a friend i used to talk to online many years ago when I used to do the chat thing. I think it's definitely a phrase for our times. Think about going to the store and trying to do something simple like pick a scent from the myriad of choices of deoderant, shampoo, soap.....even if you have a favorite brand you have used for years - chances are that brand comes in about 50 different flavors, styles, or colors.

Choice Anxiety.

Go ahead, try it out. Use it. I give you permission and a huge kudos to my long lost friend who had the genius to come up with it. (Or steal it from somewhere else, whatever the case may be).

Anyway - to finally start to combat my own particular struggle with movie choice anxiety, I decided to sort my movies by decade and just start digging in.

I started with the 50's - and went back to a small box set I started on last December.

If you remember, I reviewed The Giant Claw - a fun little b & w about a flying turkey.
The other three films in this set include Creature with the Atom Brain, Zombies of Mora Tau, and The Werewolf.

My favorite by far was Zombies. It takes place in Africa where a group of people are planning on salvaging a treasure of diamonds from the bottom of the ocean. The only problem is that the local zombies are very much against this plan, and have a history of killing anyone who goes for the treasure. Adding to the fun are an old woman (whose husband died doing the same thing) and her granddaughter, who thinks this zombie business is just a bunch of tomfoolery.

Granny is also interested in getting her husband's soul some peace, and she believes the only way to do that is to give the diamonds back to the zombies......by throwing them out to sea where nobody can find them. Yeah, that part's kind of sketchy....but no matter! We have so many other fun things going on in this film, who needs a coherent plot?

For instance.....

Zombies that can be controlled by candles
Zombies walking on the bottom of the ocean
And zombies that attack you underwater when you try to steal their diamonds
(and I always thought Zombie was the first movie to feature swimming zombies...although as far as i know it's still the only movie to feature zombie vs. shark)


The Werewolf was shockingly enough, a movie about a guy who turns into a hairy killing machine....but not when the moon is full....he seems to change whenever he's threatened or stressed....kinda like The Hulk.
He also didn't come to lycanthropy the good old fashioned way.....nope, no being bitten by a werewolf for him (neither do the people he bites turn into wolves), our friend is a werewolf courtesy of science.

Seems Mr. Unlucky had a minor car accident one day, went to a local doctor, who just so happened to be conducting experiments with radiation in the back of his office. Doc injects his patient with radiation and voila! Instant Werewolf.

But it turns out that Doc had a good reason to conduct his experiment. See, he believes that the human race is on track to eventually destroy itself....slowly. And what better way to prove that by making werewolves in your home laboratory?
EXACTLY.

Creature with the Atom Brain was probably the least exciting of the four, although it was enjoyable enough if you like your sci fi cheesy and aged to perfection, which I do.
Some crazy dude is stealing dead bodies and reanimating them, and then sending them to do his evil bidding. Then he uses a microphone to speak through the dead guys.

Dead Man Talking...

Overall, I think this is a fun set. It's probably not the best bunch of horror/sci-fi you could pick from this era, but I think if you're a fan of this kind of thing, you'll enjoy it.

With my choice anxiety relieved, let's see if I can make it through the other films from the 50's without breaking my stride....