ABE SAPIEN: THE DROWNING VOL. 1 (Dark Horse)
Written by Mike Mignola
Drawn by Jason Shawn Alexander
Like I said the other day, I love the Hellboy-verse and a big part of the world is Abe Sapien. This trade collects the very first Abe mini which also recounts his first Hellboy-less mission back in 1981. Remember how I said that even stories like this that take place in the past refer back to other stories? Well, there’s a quick look at Abe’s origin, but again, you don’t need to know anything about that to enjoy this story. It’s really fun trying to work everything out because, while this story came out after the B.P.R.D. trade which explained Abe’s past, The Drowning, chronologically speaking, comes before that. I’d like to see a huge Hellboy timeline laying everything out (maybe even with the order you’re supposed to read them in).

I’ve got the same complaint about this trade as the B.P.R.D. Vol. 9, though, in that we don’t get treated to a Mignola intro (though there still is the requisite sketchbook). And speaking of the art, Jason Shawn Alexander is awesome. I have no idea what else he’s done, but the way he draws the creepy little ghost things with the writing all over them is pretty damn creepy. Well done Jason, someday I’d like to have you contribute to my Green Lantern or eventual horror movie themed sketchbook.

I guess I haven’t really talked about the story, so here goes. Abe’s on an island looking for a magic spike in a demon, but soon enough these short demon dudes show up and everyone on the island dies! So, it’s up to Abe to save the day. I don’t want to get too much more into it without giving stuff away, but it’s another great Hellboy-verse story that any fan or novice can pick up and love.

NIGHTWING: FREEFALL (DC)
Written by Peter J. Tomasi
Drawn by Rags Morales & Don Kramer
I’m not the biggest Nightwing fan in the world, though I did enjoy most of the Devin Grayson and Chuck Dixon issues I read back in the day. Of course, things haven’t been so great in recent memory. But no more! I’ve been loving former editor Tomasi’s run on the book. Tomasi has boiled the character down to his essence, added his own spin and really cemented him in his post-One Year Later setting of New York City. In this book we get to see Dick taking up skydiving, getting a new job and home and trying to track down a villain who’s stealing super-corpses. What Tomasi does that I love is, he shows how much a part of the DCU Nightwing really is (remember, he lead the JLA at one point when they were stuck in the past). Not only does Flash (Wally) stop by for a beer, interact with Batman and Robin and confab with Superman on a case, but he also ha the JSA help set up his new pad (they’re not too far away, also being located in NYC).

I also have to admit I’m fond of Peter’s use of the New York area. I’m not as familiar with the city itself, but I totally geeked out when Nightwing flew under the Bear Mountain Bridge, which I pass every day on my way to work. There’s also a few other locations that I think I recognized (hey, I’m still learning). Aside from the locations, I appreciate the writer’s creativity and logic when dealing with the superhero world. Nightwing flies around on a ‘Wing wing (a kind of jetpack with wings), but he also asked Bruce Wayne to purchase various buildings placed strategically throughout NYC to give him plenty of places to get to if he needs to hid out. Brilliant! Does Batman even do that?

There are a few downsides though. There’s a bit of wordiness int he first few pages of the trade explaining how much Dick loves skydiving. It’s not poorly written by any means, but it’s a little bit dense and I know it turned a few guys at the lunch table off from reading the book (though I convinced them too soon enough). I’m also not sure what’s up with Rags’ art. I much prefer Don Kramer’s work in the book. It’s a lot cleaner and crisper and I kind of hope he becomes the regular artist.

So, if you’re even a cursory fan of Nightwing or Batman, you should definitely check this trade out as it, in my opinion, greatly represents the character as well as the logical standing he has in the DCU as one of the very first sidekicks who has literally grown up in the superhero world.

B.P.R.D. 1946 Volume 9 (Dark Horse)
Written by Mike Mignola & Joshua Dysart
Drawn by Paul Azaceta
I love me some Hellboy, you guys and, of course, that includes B.P.R.D. I didn’t get into the Hellboy-verse until a few years ago, which was pretty good timing because I was able to read all the trades at Wizard and I was able to hop over the long gap when there weren’t any new books and Hellboy was spending a few years under the ocean. I’m a big fan of how intricate the history is. There’s elements in 1946 that resonate later on, though I can’t point all of them out, because it’s really hard to keep everything straight in my head. I do like to re-read the books every year or so, but I haven’t done that in a while and even right after I do it’s hard to remember.

This story follows Hellboy’s adoptive pops Trevor Bruttenholm in one of his post-WWII adventures with a group of soldiers in a bombed out Germany. This one’s got everything from vampires and werewolves to little girls in white dresses leading the Russian version of the B.P.R.D.

One of the great things about Dark Horse’s Hellboy and B.P.R.D. trades is that you can pretty much pick any of them up, understand what’s going on and enjoy a great story with a beginning, middle and end. Sure there are smaller elements that you might not pick up on, but might also drive you to check out other books. The other thing I love about these books is that they almost always have extras. Usually that includes an intro by Mignola along with a sketchbook with commentary in the back by Mike and whoever else is drawing the book. Unfortunately, this volume lacks the intro, which usually has Mignola explaining the genesis of the idea (where the mythology came from, that kind of thing). I really like those and was bummed to see there wasn’t one. There was, however an Afterward by Dysart explaining his first 1946 meeting with Mignola and the sketchbook.

Oh, one more thing, I really dug Paul Azaceta’s art. Like a lot of the non-Mignola or Dan Davis Hellboy/B.P.R.D. it took me a while to get used to his style (what can I say? I’m used to my superhero artists), but Azaceta seems like the perfect artist for this project. I look forward to seeing him on future B.P.R.D. projects almost as much as I’m looking forward to all the other Hellboy-verse books.

CATWOMAN: CRIME PAYS (DC)
Written by Will Pfeifer
Drawn by David Lopez
Catwoman’s one of those characters that I have an on-again off-again relationship with. I actually had a subscription to the Jim Balent-drawn version for a year which I dug. I’d also grab whatever crossover issues came out. I completely missed out on Brubaker’s relaunch and still want to go back and read it, but I have read a few of Pfeifer’s trades, this being, I believe, the second to last of the current run (it’s getting canceled right? I’m super behind).

Anyway, this story follows Selina’s attempt to start a new life with her baby, then get rid of the baby and finally waking up in her empty apartment which then explodes, leaving Cats on the run in Gotham without her mask or whip. There’s a character called The Thief who disappears due to Catwoman’s involvement in the Salvation Run storyline which feature supervillains being sent to a crazy planet far far away.

I was actually pretty interested in the Thief storyline and seeing Catwoman stripped of everything and on her own, but it got cut off by the Suicide Squad getting the jump on her and sending her to the prison planet. I wasn’t a big fan of the whole Salvation Run storyline, partly because it seemed a bit too close the Marvel’s Negative Zone prison (did they even really flesh that out? All things Civil War are a blur thanks to the Civil War Room column), even though it’s a pretty sound idea in theory. I don’t even know how that mini-series ended and this trade doesn’t offer up much insight. You get an issue of Cats wandering around from faction to faction only to end up with Luthor’s crew, but then she ends up in this weird world where’s practically SuperCat and runs everything. Once she’s out, she presumably rejoins the Salvation Run storyline. I feel bad for Pfeifer because it doesn’t feel like the Salvation Run stuff was very organic, probably more dropped on his plate. But he handled it well, though the story itself doesn’t hold much consequence (even though it’s pretty cool).

I’ve liked Pfeifer’s writing in the past, his Aquaman Sub Diego stuff was rad and HERO is one of the coolest books from the past five or six years not yet collected (seriously, what’s the deal with that? come on DC, where’s my omnibus?!), but for whatever reason Catwoman hasn’t really absorbed me yet, though I’ll probably grab the next trade when it makes its way into the Wizard office. I also like David Lopez, he’s a solid artist with a distinct style that makes him stand out. He seems equally adept at drawing grim and gritty street-level stuff as huge superhero group shots, which he also gets to do in this book.

I can’t really recommend Crime Pays to non Catwoman readers. There’s a lot going on in this book that’s not only connected to past Catwoman continuity, but also a part of DC’s last year that seems generally ignored (seriously, I read a ton of DC books, how did the villains get back?). Hopefully the next volume will wrap things up with The Thief (I’m seriously interested in that storyline, as well as what the heck Catwoman’s supposed to do with all her stuff gone).

Of course, that might not be enough for most people and I don’t blame ‘em as there’s all kinds of craziness going on. First off (not chronologically, of course, just the first thing to pop into my head as I watched this movie over a week ago), the Myers house is being lived in by Laurie Strode’s adoptive family the Strodes. Now, this is incredibly frustrating on a few levels. First off, it looks absolutely nothing like the house. It’s the wrong shape, the wrong color, the rooms are different, the basement is different and the yard is the wrong shape. Maybe you’re average viewer wouldn’t notice something like that, but your average Halloween fan will. Oh, also, the Strodes appear to have no knowledge of Michael Myers and the dad is a complete jerk. He’s close to unbearable to watch.

Really, the only reason they’re in the movie is to have some weird connection to Laurie, oh yeah and their daughter has a kid who has some unexplained connection to Michael which leads him to wander over towards the killer at times. What?! It makes no sense and the only purpose it serves is to get his mom closer to Michael.

So what’s the plot? To be honest I’m not all the way sure. In the beginning you’ve got Michael’s pregnant niece Jamie as a teenager. Some weird dudes in robes kidnap her and force her to give birth in their weird warehouse place. Jamie eventually escapes with her baby but dies. Somehow (I can’t really remember, to be honest) Paul Rudd winds up with the baby. Meanwhile, Loomis is on the hunt as Michael starts attacking again, older and crazier than ever. Loomis is dealing with a doctor (played by Greg’s dad from Dharma and Greg) who SPOILER turns out to be head of the cult.

We also find out that Michael appears to be related to some kind of druid curse, which is an element I actually liked as it’s a fairly creative use of what’s been laid down before it and makes sense (like a Geoff Johns comic). Anyway, it gets fumbled by the poor directing. The whole movie looks like it was made for TV instead of the big screen (which may have been the case as I don’t really remember seeing ads for this movie in 1995, but hey, my memory sucks).

Meanwhile, the rest of the movie gets pretty well fumbled as there’s no real ending (apparently Sutherland passed away during filming and they didn’t really have an ending so they just threw something together, ugh). Michael does way too much corpse-posing which is an element I appreciated in the early films, but after watching 6 or so Friday the 13th movies, it’s getting old. That added to the poor choice for the Myers house and the general lack of likable characters and a coherent plot really make this a disappointing finale to the original Halloween series. I’m still waiting to watch H2O and Resurrection (or whatever it’s called), but I’m not really looking forward to them which is why I’m taking a bit of a horror break to watch some (hopefully) good action movies.

WAXWORK (1988)
So, after working most of the day, waiting for Rickey to come up (traffic was pretty bad between him and us) and the four hour drive from our place to Em’s parent’s house, we were understandably tired. But that didn’t stop Rickey and I from attempting to watch our first horror movie of the weekend and boy did we choose a doozy. Waxwork is about a bunch of kids who decide it’s a good idea to go to a wax museum that pops up in their neighborhood one day. Actually, there’s a pretty funny scene where two of their group decide it’s a bad idea and bounce. I loved that scene. It reminded me of what I would do in that situation. “You want to go into a stranger’s wax museum even though we have no idea who he is or whether the wax figures will come to life and kill us? No thanks, I’m good.”

In actuality the movie is a bit more creative than that as the kids get sucked into whatever kind of scene the wax figures represent. So, when the girl approaches the vampire set, she’s transported to a creepy castle where she’s forced to eat what looks like cranberry surprise. And then…

Okay, we didn’t get any further than this scene. We were both tired and bored by this point and I’m pretty sure we both fell asleep while watching it. The only other interesting piece of info is that Zach Galligan, of Gremlins fame, stars as a spoiled rich kid. The funny thing is is that Rickey and I are both avid readers of Horror Movie a Day and it turns out that he watched the movie too, though he actually finished it. Sounds like it actually got kind of cool towards the end. Oh well, the on demand stuff saves your progress in the film for 24 hours, but by then we were watching…

CHRISTMAS EVIL (a.k.a. You Better Watch Out, a.k.a. Terror in Toyland) (1980)
And boy, what a stinker. After a long day of being terrorized, uh, I mean spending Thanksgiving with Em’s family, we came back and everyone eventually went to bed so we decided to get ready for Christmas by watching a movie about a dude dressed as Santa killing people. According to my beloved Creature Features, this is the first incident of such a film and it is not a good one. The whole plot revolves around this dude who saw his parents not really doing anything sexual (they were barely touching and fully clothed while pops was dressed as Santa) who now sleeps in Santa PJs, works in a toy factory and keeps tabs on the neighborhood kids to see who’s naughty and nice. That’s a big chunk of the movie.

I think we both fell asleep at about the same time Thursday night. The next evening we figured we didn’t have too much time left and put the boring flick back on. It’s actually kind of interesting in the last 15 minutes. If you feel compelled to watch this movie, do so from that point on and you’ll get the gist of it. Once the killings finally start happening (on the steps of a church with the jerkiest, most apathetic clergy I’ve ever seen), the movie doesn’t really pick up as our killer finds himself back at his company Christmas party celebrating with the people who were earlier making fun of him. It really doesn’t make any sense. Oh, there’s also a scene where Santa scares a kid by hiding in the bushes in his bright red suit. In true horror movie fashion, the kid’s mom doesn’t investigate her son’s accusations of a man in the bushes and just gives them a quizzical look before driving off.

But the best part of the movie is the very end where Santa runs into some kids who he then uses as human shields once the parents get a look at him. By this point, we’ve already seen some Santas in a line-up, so you know the police are on the case. The problem is, how do these people know this Santa is the killer? One dude is so convinced that he pulls a switchblade on Santa. Santa gets away which leads to a Frankenstein-like mob with torches and everything chasing Santa through the street. He just barely escapes into his chimo van with a sleigh and reindeer painted on it (how the cops weren’t able to track this down after the church murders while it was just sitting outside the office party, I’ll never know). He heads over to his brothers house, where his brother almost chokes him to death, but he gets up and hops back into the chimo van just in time for the torch-carrying mob to catch up, causing him to swerve off of a bridge and…fly off into the sky Grease-style. I guess there’s some discussion about whether he survives or not, seeing as how you can hear a car crash sound at the same time as the van flies away. I don’t really care either way because this movie’s not good, but the image of that van flying away is just great. Rickey took a picture with his iPhone and it’s awesome. So, after finishing Christmas Evil on Thursday we watched an actual good movie called…

MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN (2008)
Which I had thought was a Clive Barker movie ever since I first heard about it, but it turns out it’s based on one of his stories. Anyway, some of you who are more into the goings on of the horror industry know that Lionsgate kind of buried this movie by giving it a limited release in cheap theaters only, which I’ve never actually heard of before. I was really surprised when I first heard this and still thought it was a Clive Barker movie, but I was still surprised after watching it because the cast is fairly well known, though less in the star power vein and more in the “hey, it’s that guy from that thing” way. You’ve got Bradley Cooper who will always hold a special place in my heart for his involvement in Wedding Crashes, Vinnie Jones who’s just awesome, Brooke Shields (?!), Ted Raimi and Leslie Bibb who played the reported who tried to corner Tony Stark in Iron Man (and then slept with him). With the right advertising and one of those annoying “from the creator of Hellraiser/Nightbreed/Lord of Illusion/half my nightmares” things, I don’t see why MMT couldn’t have had a fairly successful run in theaters. I understand the whole concept of studios wanting to make money on valid properties, but how the heck did Saw become a valid property? Someone needs to give another new franchise a chance. Gimme Trick r Treat already!

Anyway, I didn’t fall in love with MMT, but I did really like it. Cooper plays a photographer who’s trying to capture the real, raw underbelly of late night New York. While doing this he comes across a man (Jones) who he thinks killed a model he photographed the night before. As he slips further and further into obsession (following Jones at all hours of the night and showing up at his job as a butcher), Cooper’s girlfriend, Bibb, gets more and more concerned for him. From here on out, I’ll be in SPOILER territory.

So, as you can imagine this being a work based on Clive Barker, this movie doesn’t just lie in the real world, though there are plenty of real world scares. Jones is pretty terrifying as the killer. He’s already a huge dude, but by making him a huge silent guy in a crisp suit with a meat hook and a huge metal meat mallet, man, he’s just creepy. As Rickey pointed out, he doesn’t even need a mask like your typical slasher. And Cooper as the obsessed photographer really kills it, especially because it turns out that he’s right, but no one will listen to him. That’s one of my big fears in life, to know what’s really going on but not having anyone listen to you. Plus, there’s some real nail biters with Cooper getting way too close to Jones.

Like I said, the ending comes with some unearthly elements as it turns out that Jones isn’t exactly what he seems to be (even though he does murder people, remove their clothes and leave them hanging naked in a car of the subway. I don’t want to ruin it all, but it’s definitely worth checking out for fans of any of the above actors (though Shields only appears as a photo critic), Barker or horror.

Uncharacteristically, Rickey and I weren’t done with horror movies so we moved on to…

PUMPKINHEAD (1988)
I’d actually watched Pumpkinhead before at Em’s parents’ place so I wasn’t really paying attention. Lance Henriksen stars in this Stan Winston-directed flick in which SPOILER WARNING Henriksen’s son gets killed by a dude on a dirt bike (it’s okay to laugh, it’s kind of silly) and then finds a witch who brings a vengeance monster called Pumpkinhead to life so it can kill the killer and his friends. That brief summary doesn’t really do the movie, which is actually pretty interesting, justice. There’s a lot more to this whole thing than just a revenge plot, as Henriksen grows to regret his decision and tries to actually stop Pumpkinhead. There’s really a lot going on and Winston did a great job with the movie, it’s too bad he didn’t direct more movies. And, of course, you can’t talk about a Stan Winston movie without talking about the creature effects. Pumpkinhead does look an awful lot like an alien, but it’s a really cool design, though I’m not really sure why they bother calling him Pumpkinhead (he looks nothing like a Pumpkin, though his grave is surrounded by pumpkins. Like I said I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, but the movie doesn’t really end like you might expect and is definitely a fun one to check out.

Okay, that’s enough for today. Check back tomorrow for the second and final part!

First up was The Substitute from Denmark (Vikaren in whatever people from Denmark speak) which was awesome. The story reminds me of movies from my childhood (though I can’t remember any specifically) where a group of kids learn the truth about their teacher (she’s a whole chicken-eating alien) but the parents don’t believe them, partly because she has some kind of mind control powers when it comes to making people say things (she can also shrink people). There’s a ton of great scenes playing off this concept, like the teacher starting a relationship with the main kid’s dad and showing her true face only to him at the dinner table and another kid telling his parents something along the lines of “I hope you realize this is the last time you’ll ever see me alive” after trying to convince them of his teacher’s evilness and them still sending him on a field trip with her. There’s even a great scene where the kids sneak into the teacher’s house with terrifying results.

The story gets a bit confusing at the end, but all in all it’s a really solid story that’s got it’s own visual style and even sports opening and closing voiceovers about how humanity and earth are awesome. My only problems come with the fact that I’m not from Denmark and couldn’t watch this movie in a language I understand. The dubbing wasn’t as bad as some of the other movies I’ve watched, but my real problem stemmed from not being able to tell if the long haired blonde children were boys or girls. As the story plays on, though, I figured it out.

Like I said this was a really enjoyable movie, one that I’d actually like to see get remade in the states, but with a really solid director. How great would it be to have another Goonies-type movie showing kids in somewhat adult situations and dealing with a crazy situation? Do they make movies like that for kids anymore? I watched about 10 minutes of High School Musical 2 and wanted to hurt things, so I had to leave the room. Needless to say, I’m not real tapped in to what the kids like, but this would be good for them.

Pulse 2, however, probably wouldn’t be so good for the kids. Not because it’s a bad movie or even all that disturbing, but moreso because the ridiculous amounts of needless greenscreening may warp young minds. More on that in a minute. The story apparently follows directly from the original Pulse, which I did not see, so I was pretty lost. I’m also pretty sure that they don’t really go into many of the details of what happened in the first movie beyond “Computers caused it” or whatever.

The story follows a dad played by Jamie Bamber (who’s on Battlestar Galactica, but I don’t watch that show so, eh) trying to make sure his daughter’s okay in a world that’s slowly creating more and more black and white static ghosts that can only appear around technology (?). We start off following his ex-wife/the girl’s mom as she’s wandering around some weird dream world looking for her daughter (which is made even more dreamlike thanks to the greenscreening). Then it weirdly jumps to the dad grabbing the daughter and leaving for a cabin in the woods where his weird girlfriend comes in. There’s a whole lot of other weird plot elements, like a dude who claims to know how to stop the techno ghost plague (or whatever).

I had less than zero interest or expectations for this movie going in and even though it wasn’t great and the plot was a little sloppy in the beginning, I still kind of liked it. I’m not sure why, really. The story was compelling and the Battlestar Galactica dude acted pretty well even with all the weirdness and the greenscreening.

Okay, I can’t go on anymore without addressing this. There are tons of scenes filmed on green screens for some reason. And it’s not like this movie takes place on Mars or in Sin City, it’s a dude in a cabin, yet, instead of filming it normally it’s on a green screen. It didn’t bother me in the beginning because I assumed the mom was in some kind of weird dream world, but there were so many scenes sporting sloppy greenscreening that I couldn’t help but notice and I’m not usually able to spot this stuff so easily. It’s really distracting, but it also kind of adds to the weird goofy atmosphere of this movie. I probably wouldn’t watch Pulse 2 again, but it did kind of make me want to watch the Kristen Bell original to see what the heck is going on and I would definitely rent the third installment to see if the weird dude really did figure out a way to block the signal.

Oh, there’s also a completely weird scene where the dad and the kid are driving away, but dad stops as he sees a fat man in a diaper readying himself to jump off a bridge. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but if that was me, I’d speed up and get on the other side of that bridge ASAP. He stops, looks up, waits and then decides to drive, just in time for the fat man to smash into the top of his SUV and roll off the back. Haha, weird.

The first one follows a boy through three stages of his life. As a youngster he goes to visit his grandpa in the asylum (there’s a car shot that looks like something out of Vacation for a moment). The old man’s supposed to be catatonic, but becomes animated as soon as the parents leave the kid in the room, talking about how Santa punishes the bad kids and only gives presents to the really good ones and then goes back to being a vegetable when the parents come back in (hilariously great scene, I’d watch this old man in anything). Anyway, on their way home that night a dude dressed as Santa kills his parents. Skip ahead a few years and the kid and his brother (who was a baby in the first sequence) are in an orphanage run by violent nuns who are really into the idea of punishing the naughty. And finally, the rest of the movie focuses on our star once he turns 18, goes crazy and starts killing people.

You see, after turning 18, he’s too old to be in the orphanage, so one of the nice nuns helps get him a job at a toy store. If you’re a toy fan, go rent this movie right now and just watch the toy store scenes. I recognized a few choice toys in the background, including a Jabba’s Palace playset from Jedi. Anyway, the kid gets forced to dress up as Santa (who he’s understandably afraid of), flips and goes around killing a bunch of people for being “naughty” which brings us up to 3 (four counting the sequel) horror movies in the past two weeks that have stayed with the killer as a main character for a good portion of the movie.

From there, our Santa clad killer goes on a bit of a spree. It’s pretty mindless, but I do have two favorite scenes from this part of the movie. In one sequence we cut to two kids sledding in the woods at night until two older bullies scare them off, steal their sleds and, well, go sledding. The first makes it down the short looking hill with no problems, but his buddy meets the sharp end of our killer’s axe as he jumps out of the woods from nowhere and beheads Bully #2. Apparently the hill’s a lot bigger than it looks as Bully #1 is at the bottom still waiting for his buddy to come sledding down, but all he gets is a rolling head and a decapitated body on the sled. It definitely comes off as the kind of scene where the writer just had a great idea for a kill even though it didn’t really make sense in the film. But hey, I loved it, so I’m not complaining.

My other favorite moment comes when our killer gets to the orphanage to wreak some havoc and for absolutely no reason cuts the head off of a snowman on the way. I wish I had been watching this movie with people because there’s all kinds of moments like that.

I dug the first one so much that I figured, why not pop the sequel on right away? Well, before I did, I did a little reading and found out that 2 is about 50% footage from the original with extra shots thrown in. The plot of this one follows the brother of the killer from the original. He’s in an asylum and some doctor guy is going over his case, which is where all the footage from the original comes in. I found myself fastwordarding through all that junk and stopping when we got back to our spectacuarly over the top main character and the doctor who, at times, had the same look of disbelief on his face as his co-star’s acting abilities as I did. My personal favorite part about these flashbacks is that not only is he remembering things that he wasn’t privy too (”My brother told me everything.”) but he’s also recounting scenes that neither he nor his brother saw first hand. Brilliant!

But there are also original flashbacks showing us that this guy is completely nuts on his own. The color red (especially in the form of a car) sets him off on crazy rampages. He even starts blasting away at random people in the streets for no reason. Haha, oh man. Anyway, as you’d expect, he kills the doctor and breaks out of the asylum to go back to the orphanage and wreck shop on the old lady Mother Superior who’s got a pretty gnarly scar on her face.

I highly recommend renting this bad boy as both movies are on opposite sides of the same disc. The original is a great over-the-top slasher flick with some pretty fun kills. And if you do rent it (or buy it, I’m looking for a copy of my own!) make sure to watch the sequel right afterward and just fast forward through all the recap stuff, it’ll be worth your while to see our leading man. Oh boy, is he a hoot.

On Friday, Em went to bed early, so I ran up to Blockbuster and did a trade in for a double feature of Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi (1992) and Desperado (1995). I’d seen Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico before, but had never seen the original piece of the Mexico Trilogoy, plus I’m a sucked for a 2-for1 and traded it in. I did not know that Mariachi is completely in Spanish and it seems as though the version I had rented didn’t have an English dub, but it did have an awesome commentary by Rodriguez. So I listened to that and put subtitles on and enjoyed the heck out of myself. Turns out he made the movie for $7,000 and most of that cost went towards film. He worked with mostly no crew and local people who’d never acted before. And while I can’t understand what they’re saying on screen, they really seemed natural. Rodriguez gives a play by play of how he did everything on screen which is super informative and then, in the special features, offers up a segment called “10 Minute Film School” showcasing how he did some of the more complex stunts and basic stuff like shooting scenes with editing in mind. I’ve never been to film school, but I feel like I got a heck of an education from just listening to the commentary. It was worth the rental for the feeling of “heck, I can do this too.” Who wants to make a movie with me?

So, I was pretty hyped up after Mariachi and put Desperado on immediately after. It definitely looks and feels like a different animal with it’s slicker look, bigger actors and crazier action sequences, but Rodriguez maintains the feel of the original which is impressive. This time Antonio Banderas plays El Mariachi and Salma Hayek plays his love interest. You’ve also got Quentin Tarantino, Cheech Marin, Steve Buscemi and Danny Trejo (my personal favorite interviewee so far). What stuck in my head from my previous viewing of Desperado was how bad ass it was. And that still holds up as Banderas leaps around shooting dudes from all kinds of awesome camera angles. I also love how cool the guitar case full of weapons is. It’s like Rodney Dangerfield’s golf bag from Caddyshack 2! Anyway, I also really dug the final scene where Mariachi calls in his boys who also have guitar cases concealing weapons (machine guns and a rocket launcher!). It’s an awesome revenge story with tons of action and plenty of bad ass characters walking around looking bad ass, but none as bad ass as Mariachi. BAM!

After that I was pretty exhausted (it was 3AM), so I went to bed. The next day Em took a nap in the afternoon and I started tinkering with my VCR and actually got the dumb thing to start working again which meant I could watch some of the tapes I’ve picked up at work and garage sales lately. So I popped Don’t Answer the Phone (1980) on. It wasn’t very good. The story follows a serial killer as he calls in to a radio psychologist and taunts her. The video tape quality added to the atmosphere of the film, but it was overall just kind of uncomfortable and I didn’t even both finishing it. What I did find interesting was the fact that we as the audience spent a good deal of time with the killer even when he wasn’t killing. We see him walking along the street and calling into the radio show. I’ve often thought it would be interesting to see a slasher movie done like this, where you really get to see things from the killer’s perspective. If Don’t Answer the Phone is any indicator, maybe it’s not such a good idea.

After giving up on that flick, I still had a little more time, so I popped in F/X2 (1991), which is a tape I grabbed from Em’s parents when they were cleaning out all the tapes. They used to own a video store back in the day, so I can only assume it’s a leftover from those days (how I wish I was around when they were getting rid of their boxes and boxes of movies!). I actually thought F/X2 was a horror movie, so I was confused when I couldn’t find it in my Creature Features book. It turns out that it’s more of an action thriller than a horror movie, though. Bryan Brown (Cocktail!) stars as a Hollywood effects man who gave up the game after the events of the first movie (which I haven’t seen). This time, the woman he’s dating’s ex husband asks him to help out with a case (making him look like a woman), but it turns out that the ex gets killed and Bryan stumbles upon a much bigger plot involving cops killing cops, mobsters and the Vatican. Bryan calls in his buddy from the previous flick Brian Dennehy and now they’re on the case. It’s a fairly standard plot from here, but what I really liked about the movie is how Brown uses his crazy special effects talents to go after the bad guys. At one point, a dude breaks into his house to kill him, but Brown’s able to slip into this motion control suit that coincides with a robot clown, so anything Brown does, the clown does. Then there’s this amazingly hilarious fight scene with Brown and the clown vs. the assassin. There’s also all kinds of craziness at the end. Definitely worth checking out if you want to see the kind of movie that will never get made nowadays, one with a sense of humor about itself, but also takes itself seriously.

The aforementioned wedding interrupted my movie watching (it’s okay, I forgive them). On Sunday, I caught part of Bad Boys II (2003) on TV and you know what? That movie’s awesome. I think Michael Bay gets a bad rap. I don’t know much about the guy aside from what he puts on the screen, but I definitely appreciate his love of big crazy movies with lots of action and explosions. Some people call him a hack for that, but I don’t buy it. I’ve liked Armageddon, The Rock, Bad Boys I and II (though definitely II better) and Transformers. I haven’t seen The Island yet and I didn’t really like Pearl Harbor at the time, but would definitely give it another shot. I didn’t get to see the entirety of BBII (I’ve seen it before though) and man, there are some awesome scenes in there. The 360 degree scene of Will Smith on one side of a room and dudes with machine guns on the other. The chase scene where the bad guys throw cars at them. You can’t beat that kind of stuff. And, I didn’t get to see it this time, but the absolute disregard for human life while driving through Cuban homes! This is what movies used to be like back in the 70s and 80s and it’s awesome to see that again. (NOTE: I in no way support the ACTUAL disregard of human life in Cuba, just in the movies!) Also, I forgot how cool Will Smith can be when he wants to (and when the camera angels make him look so). There were a lot of fun similarities between how Rodriguez shot Banderas and how Bay shot Smith. Fun stuff.

Finally, I ended my weekend movie watching with the original When A Stranger Calls (1979). I’ve got a bit of a history with the remake. My first year here in New York, before I got married, I didn’t really have a lot going on, so on my birthday Rickey, Ben and I (sorry if I forgot anyone else, my memory’s fuzzy at best) I thought it would be awesome to go see a horror movie (Em was still in New Hampshire). WASC had just come out and Rickey and I had just seen the main girl, Camilla Belle, in Chumscrubber and had school boy crushes on her so it seemed like a great idea. It was not and I still get reminded of how bad of a movie it was. Soon after, I looked the original up in Creature Features to find out that the original actually split it’s time between the babysitter getting terrorized story and then a seven years later story when the killer breaks out of an asylum. No wonder it felt like it was way too drawn out.

So, last night I finally watched the original and was even more surprised to find out that the babysitter portion only takes up about 15 minutes of screen time! Oh remake people, you’re so crazy. Anyway, it’s a pretty effective movie, the babysitter stuff in the beginning is definitely creepy and spawned the line “The call is coming from inside the house.” You’ve also got a pretty creepy killer, he killed the kids she was babysitting in their bedrooms with his bare hands while she was downstairs. After the 7 year jump we end up splitting our time between the escaped killer as he wanders around New York trying to hit on (or kill?) some woman and the private detective who’s on his trail. Here’s another movie where we get to see things from the killer’s perspective for a significant part of the movie. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to feel sorry for him or what, which adds to my not loving this movie, but eventually he finds the babysitter, who now has two kids and a husband and starts screwing with her again. There are some creepy moments and the killer definitely walks the line between total creep and somewhat not-hateable. It’s not a great movie, but definitely not as bad as the remake, though this kind of makes me want to watch it again. Somebody stop me…

The movie, directed by Neil Marshall who also directed Doomsday which I had a great deal of fun watching and The Descent which I haven’t seen, but have heard good things about, features a bunch of Scottish soldiers in the woods as they stumble upon werewolf attacks during a routine training mission. The movie ends up feeling very much like Predator, but with werewolves instead of awesome Predators. It’s not a bad movie, but it just didn’t feel all that original. I’m also not much of a werewolf movie fan. I dug Silver Bullet, but for the most part I don’t really like werewolf flicks. For whatever reason they’ve never really resonated with me. Then again, I’ve never seen American Werewolf in Paris or the original Wolf Man movie.

In the end, it’s a good movie if you haven’t seen Predator or if you really love werewolves. Otherwise, you might want to pass on this one and check out Ginger Snaps which I remember liking at the time, but haven’t seen since.

So, this year, I was psyched for Halloween and refused to get sick. It helped that I was sick about two weeks before (yeah!). And boy was it a fun one! I was even able to make it last for a full week as we had a party to go to on the 25th. Thanks to Em’s smartness I went to the first party as a black and white zombie from Night of the Living Dead.

I wasn’t able to find a black suit based on the first zombie we see in the beginning of the movie, but I was able to get a gray one and then Em did my makeup. Ah, it reminded me of my days doing musicals in high school.

It also reminded me of a horror movie because, while we were getting ready the freaking power went out and Em had to do both of our makeup(s?) by candle and flashlight. I was pretty sure a slasher was going to break in at any moment OR a real zombie outbreak would happen. Oh, it was also a dark and somewhat stormy night. Crazy! We then went to a party where we drank, which as you all know is just asking for trouble (especially for Miley Cyrus cut outs).

Oh and at the party we also played a super fun board game called Pimps and Ho’s. I’d throw in a link for you to check out their site, but it might seem a bit lewd, just put the name in the browser without punctuation or spaces and check out the fun.

So, that party was great great fun, but it wasn’t the end of the Halloween festivities. In addition to the plenty of horror movies I watched, we also dressed up at Wizard and there was a costume contest. I took second place and won $10. Woo hoo, thanks Summer for setting it up! (I’m the one in the monkey suit by the way).

We also carved pumpkins and I took the old school Nintendo approach and did Boo from the Mario games. It didn’t involve much actual carving, but I did have to shave all the orange off. I think it turned out pretty good and the trick or treaters seemed to like it, even the punk kid who said “More” twice after I had already given him two pieces of candy. Little jerk.

But even THAT wasn’t it. Halloween night we went to a party of one of Em’s coworkers’ house. We didn’t want to do the makeup thing again and I didn’t want to wear the monkey suit (it’s freaking HOT inside that thing), so we stole Rickey and James’ idea from a few years ago (the rabbit/Charlie year) and wore big boys footy pajamas. Man that was fun.

I also played beer pong for the second time and for two games, my partner and I were champions of the world (which I told everyone at the party, most of whom were strangers to me up until that point). There’s nothing funnier than thinking about myself, drunk and dressed like a little kid playing beer pong. There was also a baby at the party which was weird. I tried not to swear too much around her, but I did. Sorry Abby.

So yeah, that was this year’s Halloween. I’m gonna try and get my streak of not being sick on Halloween back up again and keep enjoying the creepiest night of the year.

So I started out very confused because I was getting sleepy when I turned the DVD on the other night. Liv Tyler’s “always whispering even when she’s screaming” tone of voice didn’t help matters any. I had no idea what was going on, why Liv and Scott Speedman (the dude from Felicity) were mad at each other because I couldn’t hear anything (Em was sleeping) and I fell asleep by the first flashback.

Which leads me to last night when I couldn’t handle one more second of politics and popped it back in. It turns out that he proposed and she declined. The first 15-20 minutes are basically them being upset and awkward around each other, a strange woman showing up, banging on the door and asking for a woman who doesn’t live there and then the dude leaving. But, that being said, the whole time you know something is going to happen so it’s still kind of tense.

But what really adds to the discomfort of the entire movie (which is a compliment) is the fact that the camera seems to always be moving just a little. According to IMDb, it’s because it was all hand held and steady cams. To me, this is the direct descendant of movies like Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre where there’s so much going on on screen as well as the screen itself kind of adding to the ambiance. I think I mentioned this when talking about some kind of fake documentary, but this kind of camera movement, which could be done with film and digital, makes the movie feel more realistic, like you’re a voyeur watching something insane going down without making it an actual video camera in the story.

So the dude leaves and Liv’s left in the house alone and the people in the creepy masks start screwing with her. This is where the Halloween/TCM comparisons started (specifically Halloween) and basically didn’t let up until the end. One of my favorite aspects of Halloween is when you can just see Michael in the background or when he’s nearby, but the kids can’t see him. This has plenty of that as the characters get incredibly close to Liv, Steve and the only other good guy character in the flick, Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Glenn Howerton (Dennis). There’s even a scene where Steve’s trying to get a car started when you see this hand just barely hovering over his shoulder. You’re not sure what it’s going to do, then it touches him and disappears!

At this point, I’m super into this movie. I felt tense the whole time (up to a certain point) and was definitely sucked into the flick. Especially because it got me really thinking about what it would take to be these killers. I’m assuming they’re normal humans (there’s nothing on screen to the contrary), so these people are actually putting themselves at great risk to terrorize these strangers (it seems to be just a random choice). You don’t know who’s in that house, maybe it’s Rambo or a freaking ninja, anyone could live there! There’s also got to be a fair amount of planning or at least non verbal communications you would have to work out (we only hear them speak once or twice though they could talk when they’re in the woods or whatever). At various times they’re at all the exists screwing with her and Steve, it’s crazy! Those are some well organized psychos.

Okay, so the movie continues on and the dude gets taken out and I start to loose a bit of interest as Liv continues to make more and more mistakes. I get that she’d be scared and there’s a lot going on, but she takes off into the woods and runs into something (my TV sucks, so I’m not sure if you could tell what it was or not) and it almost completely incapacitates her. She spends most of the rest of the movie (about 15-20 minutes) crawling and hobbling around. Wouldn’t adrenaline kick in? Maybe I’m being too picky, but from there she continues to bring attention to herself by crashing into things and hiding directly under a light source in a barn while trying to make a call on an old radio (what?). It was frustrating to see the creepiest movie I’ve seen in a long time with an actually accomplished cast falling into the same old tropes you’re used to when watching a slasher flick. Liv even hides out in a closet (or pantry) in the kitchen while the masks wonder around being weird. At that point it kind of went from “natural successor” to “I’ve seen this before.”

But then, the last few minutes brought be right back in. SPOILERS follow. Liv gets captured and tied up along with Steve. They’re sitting there in the daytime as the killers stand in front of them. Liv asks why they’re doing all this to which one responds “you were home.” Creepy, right? This could have literally happened to anyone with an out-of-the-way house. That sense of randomness is pretty scary to me, like it could happen to me (which is why I live around lots of other people). Anyway, they take their masks off (though we don’t get to see their real faces) and then each take turns stabbing Liv and Steve. It cuts away, but you still hear the sounds of both the knife and Liv and it’s pretty stomach churning. Good work on that, sound guys.

The finale really got me though. There’s two Mormon boys walking their bike along the rode as the truck with the killers passes by and stops. You’re not sure what they’re going to do, but one of the girls just asks for one of their pamplets and they drive on, one girl saying to the other something like “It’ll be easier next time.” What? She was new to the gang? The boys then go on to discover Liv and Steve in the house and those bastards got a huge scare out of me. I lurched so hard that I felt it in my leg until I went to sleep about an hour later. I can’t think of the last time a movie got me like that. Even I’m not going to spoil it for you though.

Seriously, go rent this movie. I know we’re supposed to be getting into the family/holiday season, but dang man, The Strangers is a treat for any horror movie fan.