Night of the Creeps (1986) [REVIEW]

November 30, 2010 5 Comments

 

Really had no fucking clue what this movie was about when it showed up at my house. I had heard it was a classic from the 80′s, but “classic” doesn’t always mean “good”. Take Killer Klowns from Outer Space, for example. That’s considered a classic but I think it sucks dicks. It seemed like in the 80′s, the term “horror film” was used quite loosely. Take aliens/zombies/monsters, have them get involved with some coeds, have at least one babe show her boobs, make sure a fat guy does something like fart or burp, then have an ambiguous ending. That’s not really what I would consider a classic. And when I read the description from Netflix out loud, Rampaige wasn’t all that excited to watch it. With terms like “evil slugs from outer space”, “lusty coeds”, and “campy cult classic”, I think it’s safe to say we set our standards pretty low.

 

If I had no dick, I’d puke up slugs and go kill crazy too!

We see space slugs arrive in the 1950′s, and one guy gets one in his mouth and goes crazy and murders his girlfriend. We jump forward to the 80′s and it’s pledge week on a college campus and, considering it’s the 80′s, we meet the main characters who just so happen to be dorky guys. In an attempt to get into a frat, they break into a science lab and accidentally thaw out the body of the guy from the 50′s who was infected with the space slug. That guy starts running amuck all over the campus, and it’s up to the two of them, a detective whose sweetheart was killed by the slugs, and some babes that the dorks are hoping to kiss to stop the slugs. I think that pretty much covers it, except I think there’s lots of cheesy special effects, a flamethrower, a scene with a bunch of girls getting dressed for homecoming, and yup, you guessed it, an ambiguous ending where we see a space slug crawl into a graveyard.

 

LOOK AT THIS STUPID FUCKING CAT PIECE OF SHIT! Goddamn I hate cats.

Rampaige wanted me to review this film with the simple phrase of “creepy and booby”, but I’ll give you a little bit more. Although it fits the stereotype of horror movies from the 80′s, at least it does it’s job well. Entertaining special effects, characters that you laugh at rather than with, and boobs. It’s similar to the successful execution of Night of the Demons, that I’m sure if I had seen this movie when I was much younger, I would look back on it with nostalgia. I’m not trying to say that any movie that is cheesy and was made in the 80′s is bad, but I would like to see them going in one direction or the other. A movie like Dead Alive definitely went the more ridiculous route, which is why it was so successful. Evil Dead 2 was able to walk that fine line quite well. This film just seemed to tread water just enough to stay above water, compared to a lot of other pieces of shit just seemed to drown.

 

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Screamers (1995) [REVIEW]

November 30, 2010 Leave a comment

 

This is another film that I have vague memories of from when I was younger, despite having never actually seen it. I kind of remember the trailer and thinking, “Oh cool! That is kind of like Tremors…but COOLER!”, and never actually saw it. Cut to a few years later and the internet existing, and thought that this movie was actually called “Sirens“. There already was a movie called “Sirens”, that was a little different, and I’ll let you figure out which one it is I reviewed. One involves robots that kill people from underground and make a screaming sound, and the other features Hugh Grant, accompanied by a naked Elle Macpherson and a naked Portia de Rossi, because their characters are sirens for a famous artist or something. Can you guess which film is which?! Good luck!

 

Awwwww, it’s a cute little dinosaur robot thing.

In the not too distant future (fucking great, another one of these movies), there was some sort of war between people and it was somehow centered around nuclear weapons? Or something? I don’t know, but they are on a different planet and there is a lot of sand. One of the groups built robots that live in the sand that kill the bad guys, but the guys who made them lost control of them and now everyone is scared of them. For some reason, one dude goes off in search of the warehouse that built them in hopes of finding out how to stop them and get off the planet. When they get to the warehouse, they learn that the sand robots were just phase 1 of a bunch of different robots, going all the way up to phase 3 and 4. The newer ones look just like people! Whoa! They are robots but when they get pissed and blow up, they still scream. So some shit happens with robots and explosions, eventually the guy who was investigating what was happening gets all “WHOA SHIT, GET ME OFFA THIS ROBOT PLANET!” and takes some chick he wants to bone with him. He eventually finds a spaceship that will take him off the planet but then the chick turns out to be a screamer. And I don’t mean in  a sexy way, I mean in the robot way. So he fights her or something, but eventually he gets on the plane to head back to Earth, only to reveal that there is another screaming robot traveling with him! DAMMIT!

 

DAMN BITCH, YOU NEED A ROBOT DENTIST.

Great, just what we needed, another sci-fi film that has allegories to a nuclear holocaust and how cultures deal with the aftermath. And it takes places somewhere with lots of sand? EVEN BETTER! This movie just reminds me of a term my professor used all the time in a course in college, “cyber punk”. Apparently in the 80′s and 90′s, everyone had this wacked out idea of how important computers would be in the future, so all this dystopian garbage has this aesthetic to it that is just Blade Runner, but shitty. That’s pretty much what the first half of this movie is, but when the idea of who/what are these robots, that’s when it gets pretty cool. The bad part was you had to sit through 45 minutes of crap that was supposed to mimic our worst fears of the future, which was just a snoozefest.

 

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Lost Highway (1997) [REVIEW]

November 27, 2010 3 Comments

 

Nine Inch Nails and boobs. Those are my initial reactions to this movie. I remember when it came out that Nine Inch Nails had that song “Perfect Drug” on the soundtrack, and that song ruled/rules. I think I considered buying the CD way back when, then realized I had no money because I was in Junior High. I remember thinking how awesome Bill Pullman was because Independence Day came out the year before, so I watched this movie once it got to HBO. I remember getting really bored and changing the channels, but one day I caught it once it already started and saw Patricia Arquette‘s boobs, which was awesome. Then I made damned sure to always keep it on when I stumbled across it. And now, 13 years later, I finally made it through the whole thing.

 

Bill Pullman, if you really loved her, you’d bring your saxophone to bed with you.

I’m going to try to summarize what happens in this movie, but it’s pretty weird, so, wish me luck. Bill Pullman is just being awesome and playing saxophone. He is boning Patricia Arquette, like, ALL the time. I think? Anyways, they have been getting strange videotapes left on their doorstep with footage of the two of them sleeping. Bill Pullman has some weird dreams, and he is found in front of Patricia Arquette’s body, with no explanation of why she’s dead or who did it, but he takes the blame. While he is in jail, he turns into someone completely different, a person who has been missing for years, so he gets released from jail (duh). This new guy falls in love with Patricia Arquette, again, who now is a different person with different colored hair. The two of them team up to steal money from some porno guy or something, then they kill him accidentally, drive into the desert and do each other. That’s when he turns back into Bill Pullman, and Patricia Arquette turns into Robert Blake? Or the devil? Then the house blows up and we see high-speed footage of someone driving down the highway.

 

You on the left! How’d you become a blonde?! You on the right! What’d you do with Bill Pullman and why did you cheat on Natasha Gregson Wagner?!

WHAT THE FUCK DAVID LYNCH, YOU’RE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE! Okay, I confess, I think I enjoyed this film more than some of David Lynch’s other films. I’m not some expert or anything, but Eraserhead was a little too surreal and didn’t have much of a story. Don’t get me wrong, it’s terrifying and really succeeds in what it’s intent was, but as far as a film with a story, I prefer this or maybe Mulholland Drive. Blue Velvet was pretty good, but I think I was expecting far more insanity, thus leading me to be disappointed, and that was mostly just a vehicle for Dennis Hopper to be insane, rather than a storytelling effort. I think this film really walks that line between having a cohesive story as well as just being bizarre and unsettling. How did Bill Pullman turn into some other guy? How can Patricia Arquette be two people? Why would fake Bill Pullman ever cheat on Natasha Gregson Wagner, is he an idiot or is he a retarded? These are the deep philosophical questions poised by this film. If you’ve never seen a David Lynch film before, I’d say this is a good barometer of whether or not you can handle his more bizarre films.

 

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Fire in the Sky (1993) [REVIEW]

November 25, 2010 1 Comment

 

This movie scared the shit right out of me back in junior high, without ever even having seen it. I was watching some daytime show, Jerry Springer or Montell Jordan or who knows what, and they were talking about alien abductions. In between the commercial segments they showed clips from this movie, in particular, there was a scene where a guy had his eye held open while an alien drilled some fucking drill or whatever into it. Scary stuff! For as much as I loved The X Files when it was on, aliens scared the shit out of me. I remember that for my birthday one year I had gotten a lot more money than anticipated and needed to blow it on garbage, so I bought this weird little alien statue that held shiny blue marble in it’s hand. I kept it on my windowsill, but some nights I got scared that aliens could see it from space and would abduct me, so I moved it away from the window. I partially blame this movie for those fears. Oh, and me being a pussy.

 

Reminds me of my weekend.

A group of guys are all trying to clarify a “story” at a bar of things that took place that night. When local authorities show up and they start telling their story, it sounds questionable, at best. These men were all in the woods chopping down trees when they saw a “fire in the sky”, which they obviously investigated. One of the guys got out of the car and was struck by some bright light that threw him back a ways and apparently killed him. The guys freak out and drive back into town, and surprisingly, no one believes them. Authorities search the woods and find no sign of the supposed dead guy. Everyone goes through lie detector tests, and there’s no proof of these guys lying. One night, one of the men gets a call in the middle of the night, and it’s the guy who they left in the woods. He recounts the events of what happened, which mostly involved being on a spaceship, being held captive and tortured. He eventually made his way back to Earth, and tried to put it all behind him. That’s basically it. The end!

 

It looked like all the aliens were played by weird old men.

There wasn’t really much to this movie, it was more like an episode of Law & Order. It was almost like that episode of The X Files called “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space”, but not even. That episode was about two people interpreting the same event in different ways. Authorities were implying that things didn’t happen the way they claimed to have happened, but the audience knew there were aliens and that the guy was obviously shot with a laser beam from the sky. And then when he finally showed up and we learned what happened, it was just, “Oh okay, the aliens were jerks who were mean to you, but now you are home”, so who cares? This was a movie based on a book that was supposedly based on a true story. I have really lost a lot of faith in anything based on real events, so I also wasn’t really sure how much of that stuff I could be interested in. I believe that a guy existed, and he either was, or thinks he was abducted, but he is home now, so who cares? There are plenty of people out there who think they have been abducted, but I guess if you think it happened in the 70′s, they’ll make a movie about it.

 

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Black Christmas (1974) [REVIEW]

November 22, 2010 1 Comment

 

Not to be confused with Black X-Mas from 2006 starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert, and Michelle Trachtenberg, I’m talking about the original. I was merely attempting to name as many of the actresses as possible without checking IMDb, and I think I did pretty well. The first time I watched this movie is always a good memory for me, because I was working at a movie theater and watching it on a laptop. It was around Christmas time and the last movie got out late, so another coworker and I just kind of hung out, did all of our work, and just shot the shit while watching this movie, which really puts you in the Christmas spirit! I think it was snowing too. Either way, it reminded me of how awesome it was being in school the day before Christmas vacation, where all you do is hang out, watch Christmas movies, and don’t really mind being at school. Oh, that has nothing to do with this movie? I guess I should review it then.

 

Interesting bit of trivia: They took that choker off, and her head fell off. Pretty crazy!

Christmas is approaching everyone, including a sorority house filled with 1970′s babes, including the foxy 1974 version of Margot Kidder. The house is receiving obscene phone calls from someone they have nicknamed “The Moaner”, because apparently he calls often…and moans. The viewers see a P.O.V. shot of someone entering the attic and stalking the girls, which isn’t information the girls in the house are aware of. One of the girls goes upstairs, and we see another P.O.V. shot of her getting a grocery bag over her head, strangling her, but because of the holiday party/inebriation, nobody really notices. Her dad shows up the next day to meet her, but not getting any information about where she is, informs authorities who think it’s connected to The Moaner. The police decide to trace the phone calls, only to learn that the calls are coming from inside the house! One of the girls gets paranoid that it’s her boyfriend, and a verbal battle turns into a physical altercation that ends in his death, so the police assume it was him and that everything is fine. As the film ends, we realize that the killer is still upstairs in the attic, and the phone starts ringing again!

 

Take that bag off of your head, ya doofus! You’ll catch a cold!

This film is typically regarded as one of the very first “Slasher” movies, having come out years before Halloween. Even though this premise has been seen countless times since this version, it really does it the best. I think one reason is because 35 years ago, tracing a phone call was really fucking hard, and those scenes are awesome. In films from the past few years, all you really have to do is stay on the line with someone for 30 seconds and computers can geographically locate you from anywhere on the planet and even show your picture from Google Street View. Showing a giant room with lots of mechanical equipment moving and pulsating and some guy running around who can somehow just tell by looking at machines where the call is coming from is really entertaining. It really demonstrates how things were a little bit easier with horror movies back then, because you could show an actual search party going out to find a missing person, rather than rely on computers and cameras, and believe it. You also never really learn who is doing this or why, and from a more modern mindset, you keep expecting them to explain it, but they don’t, making it that much more creepy.

 

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The Mist (2007) [REVIEW]

November 19, 2010 Leave a comment

 

I remember seeing trailers for this film and thinking, “Nope, don’t think so”, despite Thomas Jane being involved. How awesome is Thomas Jane, by the way? Anyways, I remember reading online about the ending to this film and how much of a bummer it was. I love movies that are a bummer! Rather than paying the money to go see it, I found a way to see it online (who knew you could do that?) and skipped right to the ending. I wasn’t disappointed by it, but considering I hadn’t seen everything leading up to the ending, it was hard to truly understand the impact. Eventually I got around to seeing the movie in full, and got to enjoy the looks on other people’s faces at the ending. And now, three years later, I own the Blu-ray. See! Who says watching movies online is bad?! I bought your damned Blu-ray!

 

Thomas Jane, what are you doing?! This is no time to fly a kite! I don’t care how excited everyone in the grocery store is!

Thomas Jane lives in a small town on the coast of Maine as a storm rolls into town and knocks out the power. There is a residual mist over the ocean that has accompanied the storm as he heads into town with his small child and neighbor. There are a combination of police and army vehicles going in and out of town, that, considering the power outage, don’t seem all that weird. While at the grocery store, the mist appears to get thicker and thicker, when someone covered in blood comes into the store, yelling that there is something in the mist. Everyone stays put, but while investigating a generator, Thomas Jane catches a glimpse of a tentacle coming in through under a door and killing a young teenager. Clearly something’s in the mist, and clearly it’s monsters. There are attempts to escape, that fail, attempts to get supplies from next door, which succeed, and weird bug monster things attacking the store. Add to this the group of people in the store who believe the rapture is upon them and trying to prevent everyone else from coming up with solutions. Eventually, Thomas Jane and a small group of others are able to escape the grocery store, but then…

 

The film was originally called “The Vaporous Condensation”, but it didn’t roll off the tongue as well.

That’s when shit gets real, as the kids say, and that’s where I’m going to leave it. If you hate horror movies and will never see this movie, then I’m sure you can Google what the ending is. But considering most people who stumble upon this website enjoy horror films, I’m not going to ruin it. The reason I initially had trepidation about seeing this film ended up being the reason it was enjoyable. At first, it seemed like a cheesy monster movie, or maybe a ripoff of The Fog, and, well, it kind of was. It was intended to be a throwback to older monster movies where monsters showed up, caused bad things to happen, then people went on their way. The filmmakers were so genuine to that idea that they even released a version on DVD and Blu-ray that was in black and white. No additional scenes, the same exact movie, but converted to black and white. And because the power goes out, it eliminates most of the modern technology that would place this film in a specific time period, adding to the nostalgic feel of it. If older B-movie Sci-Fi is your thing, definitely check this out. Or even if you want to watch it just once so you can ruin the ending for other people, it’s worth it.

 

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Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) [REVIEW]

November 16, 2010 Leave a comment

 

Similar to with the first film, I tried to avoid any and all marketing for this film. I think I might have seen the teaser trailer for it a few months ago when that first popped up, but that was really about it. I knew that this couldn’t match up with how much I enjoyed the first film, but I was still intrigued with how they were going to go with it. Was it going to be like the Saw franchise, repeating the same exact shit over and over again? Or was it going to be more like The Blair Witch Project sequel, where they took mythology that was created and repackaged it into a different style of film? The answer is, well, both.

 

Don’t eat that shit! It’s not a sandwich!

I would consider this a spoiler alert, but since you learn it in the first five fucking minutes, this story is about the sister of Katie from the original film, so both Katie and Micah from the first film are in this one. Shitty, right? The house in this film is broken into, so security cameras are installed in the whole house, which “explains” why there are so many different angles to capture the haunted-ness. As you can guess, doors creak open, objects move, shadows follow people, pretty much all the shit you expect. Turns out, the ancestors of the characters supposedly made a deal with the devil for lots of money, and in return, some demon gets to claim the first-born male, which happens to have been born in the beginning of the film. I guess the demon takes over the body of the sister, but somehow, through Mexican sorcery, the demon gets passed on to Katie from the first film, and that’s why the events of the first film happened. But then this film jumps to what happens AFTER the end of the first film, and shows Katie killing everyone and taking the baby anyway. Confused? You should be.

 

It’s almost like the dog and baby are seeing something that we aren’t…almost…

Making a sequel is generally approached in one of two ways. One way is to do everything the exact same way as the original, because if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. The other approach is typically to raise the stakes and crank things up a bit. This film was a little bit of both, and was mildly successful. On the one hand, it isn’t really hard to do the same exact gags from the first film, but in a different setting. I would have been happy to see those things happening in any house, and if it was done well, it would have been pretty scary. The places that this film tried to escalate the gags made them be CRAZY and took away the subtlety of the first film. For example, in the first film, one of the last things to happen is a woman getting dragged out of bed and down a hallway by a mysterious force. In the sequel, a similar, more exaggerated thing happens with over 30 minutes left. Where can you go from there? Down the toilet, that’s where. Not to say that this film didn’t have some gags that were entertaining, but it’s hard to focus on the good when the bad ones were so bad.

 

Do you know how hard it is finding pictures from this movie that aren’t a baby and a dog staring at something? Well, it is. So you end up with this fucking weird picture. Sorry!

I mention that you could have placed any characters into this situation and it would be enjoyable to see the reactions, because it’s more about YOUR reaction than it is about the characters. Instead, the filmmakers tried much too hard to justify what was going on. This is also stupid considering the original ending of the first film was changed. The original ending to the first film involved the characters dying, and no one ever knowing the real story. For the theatrical release, the ending was changed so that the demon escaped and no one knew what happened. With the sequel, we learn that the demon comes back to finish what it started. What? Shut up. Who cares. I know I’m talking a lot of shit on this film, but considering how successful the first film was and what was intended, and this film tried so hard to have it tie into the original unnecessarily, so I can’t help but be a little annoyed. Some of the scares were pretty effective, but ultimately it falls a little flat after trying too hard to focus on the mythology of the story, which I’m pretty sure no one gave any fucks about.

 

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Halloween (1978) [REVIEW]

November 16, 2010 3 Comments

 

Are you guys sick of me talking about John Carpenter yet? Too bad, losers! Yes, here we go, another John Carpenter film. Not just any Carpenter film, but probably his most well-known. I think I’ve mentioned before that when I was a kid, there wasn’t really one defining moment of watching a scary movie that traumatized me. I kind of wish there was, but I know a lot of people reference this film as one that always scared people when they were kids. It also makes up another triumvirate of films that had a long-lasting impact on horror film, joined by Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. It was that time of the year to watch this film, which was two weeks ago, but I am lazy so it took me awhile to write this review.

 

What kind of hair is this?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!

As a child, Michael Myers kills his sister while dressed as a clown on Halloween. As an adult, he escapes from the insane asylum and goes on a road trip to get back to his hometown of Haddonfield, IL, and the only one who knows enough about him is Dr. Samuel Loomis, played by Donald Pleasence. Once Michael gets back into town, it seems as though he has focused his creepy stalking on Jamie Lee Curtis for some reason, probably because of her old lady hair. There is some running, chasing, hiding, killing, and stalking throughout the film, which eventually ends with Dr. Loomis shooting him seven times with a six-shooter (I know, right?) and Michael falling out of the window. When the cops arrive, the body is no longer laying where it landed, and nobody knows what happened to Michael.

 

Michael! What are you doing! You know that you’re Halloween costume isn’t in this closet! Just your bathrobe!

Not really that complicated of a film, but why does it scare people so much? First off, let’s talk about the fact that it’s Halloween. The one night of the year where people are allowed to wear disguises to hide who they really are. I’m sure everyone has had an experience on Halloween where you see someone wearing a mask and wonder if they are some weirdo or not, so this film proposes the idea of whether or not there really is a psycho underneath a mask. That would be Michael! Another reason why it seems to strike a chord with people is how many scenes there are where Jamie Lee Curtis thinks she sees someone, or gets a feeling that someone is watching her, but when she looks back, no one is there. The movie goes by rather slowly, and the deaths aren’t that brutal, I think it’s just the tension throughout the film that makes it successful, which is really why it stands out in the genre, especially against Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

 

You found it! Good job Michael!

I used to really like Friday the 13th, for no real reason other than how awesome Jason Voorhees looks. The more I look back on it, the more I realize how dumb it is. A completely mindless killer, with no real reasons as to why he came back, other than to avenge the fact that he died due to neglect from camp counselors. Freddy Krueger gains his power from the psychological fears he inflicts on a small town, and that fear manifests itself with him coming to life. So with those two films you have someone who presents a purely physical threat, and if you can run away from Jason or don’t do drugs and have sex, you don’t have to worry about him, and then you have the psychological fear with Freddy, that the more you fear him the stronger he becomes. Halloween is so effective, at least this film, before they tried to explain Michael Myers, because there wasn’t much rhyme or reason as to what he was doing, or why, or what could stop him. When he is wearing a mask, he is also typically referred to as “The Shape”, rather than Michael, which really defines the fear. It doesn’t matter who he is, or why he is, but being stalked by a “Shape” who can’t be stopped is what terrifies people. And John Carpenter, once again, uses music and a slow pace to really create a tense mood throughout the film that other directors have a hard time competing with.

 

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The Thing (1982) [REVIEW]

November 16, 2010 7 Comments

 

It’s hard to talk about and analyze one of your favorite movies. I think one of the saddest parts about this being one of my favorite movies is the fact that I really have no idea when I saw it for the first time and how it became my favorite. I do know that the first time I wanted to see was in college and seeing something about A.F.I.’s best horror movies or something like that, and that they spent a whole bunch of time talking about the special effects. I kept thinking in the back of my mind, “Of course I have seen The Thing. I mean, hasn’t everyone?”. The more I watched this documentary, the more I realized I had never seen any of it, and must have at some point sat down and watched it. I can tell you it certainly wasn’t one of those epiphany moments where I immediately realized how much I loved it, but it’s with each subsequent viewing that it gets better and better and better.

 

WHAT A FUCKING STUDLY MAN.

Kurt Russell and a bunch of other dudes are chillin’, literally and figuratively, down in Antarctica when they are interrupted by some people trying to shoot a dog from a helicopter. They are all like “WTF?”, and the chopper blows up and the dog seeks rescue from Team Kurt Russell. Using evidence from the helicopter, Kurt, who plays Jack MacReady, goes to investigate who was on the helicopter, why they were there, and why they were trying to kill a dog. It turns out that they came from a group of Norwegian scientists who had discovered a U.F.O. below the ice and attempted to excavate it. They unleashed something alien that can perfectly replicate other living things, and it turns out the dog is an alien, so the rest of the movie is spent trying to figure out who is/isn’t an alien and taking the appropriate actions. I’m gonna leave it at that, because either you have seen this movie and know what happens, or you haven’t seen it (idiot), and are now encouraged to.

 

You might wanna get that armed checked out, bro.

It’s hard to begin talking about what makes this movie so awesome. First off, it takes place in Antarctica, which seems to be a land that time forgot. Due to the lack of people and limited technology, this film has more of a timeless quality. People don’t look at their cell phones and see that they don’t have service, but because of the desolation, even if everyone did have a cell phone, who would they contact? This is definitely in my top three favorite Kurt Russell characters, along with Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China and Stuntman Mike from Death Proof. What’s so enjoyable is that it’s actually a lot darker than his other characters. Even though he takes leadership in some moments, he also threatens to blow everyone up if they cross him, shortly after he leaves a tape recording admitting that none of them will make it out alive. Very subtle performance, and very awesome.

 

I mean, I could have NOT shown the dog, but look at how awesome he is? I mean seriously! This dog rules!

I mentioned the effects earlier, but they need to be mentioned again. This film was made right on the cusp of when computers and animation were starting to take over all special effects, but John Carpenter made the choice to only use practical effects. This might not seem like a big deal anymore, but it makes everything that much more enjoyable. Sure, that leads to maybe a few cheesy scares that are more humorous than scary, but trying to figure out how they made the effects is what’s so entertaining about it. The music is awesome too. Definitely an 80′s horror movie with the synthesizers, but a slightly more somber and depressing score. One of the guys turns into an alien and is being set on fire, turns to face Kurt Russell, and lets out one of the most unexpected and terrifying screams in all of horror film history. It still creeps me the fuck out when I hear it. This film really is the perfect combination of actors, director, location, effects, storyline, and score, to produce one of the best films of the 80′s, one of the few remakes that surpass the original, and one of the best horror films of all time. Oh, and Kurt Russell has one of the best lines in history, right before he throws dynamite at an alien, he just yells “YEAH?! FUCK YOU TOO!”. GENIUS!

 

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Army of Darkness (1992) [REVIEW]

November 13, 2010 6 Comments

 

This is definitely my least viewed film of the Evil Dead series, and I’m not really sure why. I remember the first time I watched Evil Dead, knowing a little bit about it, I was confused as to why he kept both arms intact and had no chainsaw on his arm. I had to go and watch Evil Dead 2, and even then, he only got the chainsaw on the arm towards the end of the film. But then I saw Army of Darkness, and everything made a lot more sense. Every time that I think about watching this movie, I always assume it moves a lot more slowly than it actually does, so I’m generally not in a rush to throw it in. I blame my senior year high school English teacher, who for Halloween, let us watch Army of Darkness. The problem is that one English class was only 45 minutes, so we only got up to the part where Ash throws dirt on Evil Ash’s face, so I always think that part is only 20-30 minutes in, and there is a shit ton of boring stuff after that. Lucky for me, I am always wrong…DEAD WRONG!

 

Rather than a (barely) witty caption, I just want to quote the movie. So, uh, “USE THE FORCE LUKE!”

Ash, played by Bruce Campbell, visited a cabin and accidentally set loose an evil force that killed all of the friends he went with. Evil infected his hand, but he chopped it off, and he gets sucked into a time warp to the renaissance and everyone is confused. He explains that he has travelled from the future and everybody is cool with it because they think he is a prophet. He goes to get a mystical book, the Necronomicon, that will send him back, but after mistakenly uttering the wrong magic words, he awakens more evil. In addition to more evil, he turns into two people, a Good Ash and an Evil Ash, the evil one leading the army of the dead. The evil army storms the castle, there’s lots of wackiness, but eventually Ash utters the words that take him back to his time. Then it turns out he said them wrong again! Damn! And he kills a Deadite in S-Mart. Victory for Bruce Campbell!

 

I mean, if he was evil, they should have made his chin smaller, to denote that that’s where Bruce Campbell’s power came from. But what would I know, it’s not like I was responsible for Spider-Man 3.

I suppose I could have been a little more elaborate with the plot, but if you haven’t seen this movie, do it now. I think it’s a tie between this film and Evil Dead 2 for which film in the trilogy I enjoy most. The first one seemed like it wanted to be a horror movie, but based on the lower budget, ended up slightly sillier than intended. Don’t get me wrong, of course it was intended to be silly, but maybe not as silly as it actually was. The second film seemed to hit it’s stride a little better, being able to take advantage of the humor while also trying to still be kind of scary. Army of Darkness seemed to completely abandon the scary aspect and focus solely on the absurdity of it all. The Raimis must have come up with lots of cliché and cheesy one-liners for Bruce Campbell to say, then wrote a plot around it, which is awesome. Bruce Campbell in this film is P-E-R-F-E-C-T. Between his dialogue and just the physicality of his humor, he is really at the top of his game in this one. I’m still on the fence about whether this is better than Evil Dead 2, but they are both just fucking awesome.

 

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