650
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
649
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
648
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
647
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
The Christmas Tapes
Oh look, it’s a found footage Christmas horror movie. I mean, I was certain it was going to be found but I was hoping for a ghost hunters spoof. The Christmas tape Opens up at a family Christmas at home, where are young protagonists gets her first video camera.
Then, a stranger knocks on the door, his car broke down on Christmas Eve, and he comes in holding a large Box.
Of course, there’s a guy in the Box, and now, Rachel gets to film Our family’s home invasion! He’s also got a bunch of videotapes in his Box… You see, it’s not just a Christmas found footage film, it’s a Christmas found footage anthology!
We took it off with a haunted Christmas Scarecrow. A couple traveling to see this evil Christmas Scarecrow and see if they can summon the spirit of it. Serious biz. A little advice? if you’re going to spend Christmas camping? Don’t try and piss off some the local follklore boogie man.
The whole thing gets very Blair witch.. only with an actual monster, and I gotta say, I do enjoy the cree
py Scarecrow, even if I’ve seen that costume before at the Halloween store.
The next story is about a man who’s trying to get himself mailed home for Christmas. Santa shows up to put him in a crate to ship him back home so he can surprise his kid’s period of course, there’s no way this ends badly, right?
Of course, it’s an abduction… and quite frankly, it’s Saw with a Santa Claus.
It does however make more sense than the next one which was a 1st person video game style quickie where you have to deliver a gift 
without getting caught by the shadowy bad guys
It being a quick was OK though, because our last one’s gonna take about half of the movie… and it’s called “Christmas spirit”
We have a young couple moving into a new home, so we’re hitting the tropes from the word go. The big problem however, is the moving truck broke down and it’s not gonna arrive Pour another day. They’re stuck in a bear house with air mattresses and pizza and nothing much more.
But I’m coming as a sleep, but camera blanks on. Even stranger though, inot a wife vanishes in the middle of the night! The husband finds her in the empty living room, standing in the corner, holding A Christmas ornament while faint christmas music plays in the background.
In the morning, there are ornaments that have been lost and broken All over the place. The wife breaks out, and demands they find somebody who can go through and cleanse the house. The husband’s not so sure that’s going to work on Christmas Eve, but may find somebody…. bumpling paranormal investigator
Looks like We have some cursed Christmas ornaments. But what are we gonna do about that? We’re going to call Dave Sheridan! I have no idea what he’s doing slumming it in this film, but he does a great job as the bumbling ghostbuster. A little creepy, a little goofy – it’s possibly the best performance of the film.
So at the end of the day, this is not exactly what I expected, but it’s an okay idea. Good background noise, but not a stand out selection. Party movie, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to hunt it down.
Carol and John’s Christmas party 2023
It that time of year again. The biggest event in the Cleveland comic book community – the Christmas party and art show at Carol and John’s comic shop! I’ve got noting much more to say than that- just enjoy the photos while you sit back and wish YOUR comic shop held parties like this!
646
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
Mahoning Valley Comicon 2023
For some reason I thought Mahoning Valley had moved to a bigger venue. I mean, I didn’t even know they were going for a second year until about five weeks ago after the Cleveland toy show fell apart. But heading in, I saw the same doors from last summer.
Indeed a lot is the same this year. Same venue, same vendors, even the same celebrity guests. Fortunately the costume contest was on Saturday this year so I could jump in, but otherwise you could almost read my whole review from last year and it’s pretty much the same thing.
It was also a second pass at Deep Roy. I was glad he had his pricing displayed clearly this time around and to his great credit, he’s not upcharging for photos. He’s
friendly in person and during panels as well, with an interesting career to go through. Towards the end of his panel he suddenly got a glimpse of me in the back of the room and brought me up on stage to get a better look at my Voltron suit! He grabbed a trident fro a cosplaying girl up front to match swords with me and it was just the best thing ever.
Well, almost the best thing. I think the highlight of the show for me was the ROWS AND ROWS of quarter bins. I havent seen quarter bins in a few years. Fifty centers, dollar boxes, but quarter bins? and this many?? I pulled and plundered and stacked and walked out with my arms heaving full of books.
It’s still too long a trip for such a small show, but I made a good day of it (stopping by Carol and John’s Comic shop for the Christmas party on my way home too!). I’d like to see this show grow, but they are going to have to mix things up a bit for that to happen.
Paranormal Entity
Without even looking at the credits, I knew that with a name like paranormal entity this would bean Asylum film. It opens with the 911 call “they’re all dead! My sister is dead! “, before switching to a handheld camera. We get the premise that they were advised to set up cameras in the house to capture the activity, and then cut back to a black screen that gives us a Blair witch type description; This footage was down in their attic a year later, et cetera, et cetera
Back to the handhelds as the narrator introduces us to where the cameras are supposedly placed in the house. It’s a kind of smart idea to give us an idea of what the space looks like and feels like, before we plunged too far into this story. They tried to inject some creepiness right away by introducing us to the slightly catatonic mother – staring at an old stuffed animal. We get a placard telling us that it’s “night one” and start watching footage that has been tinted green to look like nightvision. We go back and forth between this and and daytime footage of annoyed characters who don’t seem too pleased to see the camera. They talk about who they think might be in the house… or might be haunting it, and slowly e to things start to happen – a glass breaks, the television turns on, and a cross falls off the wall – at this point you can tell it’s going to be a slow burner. We get a peek inside the diary, with a plea for God to help the writer. They also sneak in what is meant to be a creepy sketch along with the question “why am I seeing this?”.
Sleepwalking begins at night three around 25 minutes in – and ominous message is written onto a glass coffee table. Around the same time, the wife starts talking about her feelings that something is there – something in the room with her when she goes to sleep, something pressing down on her and trapping her.
As we go further into the film, it stumbles into the typical pitfalls of a found footage haunting film – phenomena that are largely unseen or unremarkable, sounds in darkness that come off as stagehands banging on the walls of screen or actors simply screaming because it’s in the script. Even when they come up with a clever idea like footprints on the ceiling (and ultimately, where they come from), it’s undermined by immediately transitioning over to the mundane stuff like doors slamming and televisions turning on. They fail to reinforce those things with even creepier images . Moreover, the shaky cam work is haphazard and unfocused – even found footage works better when you storyboard and plan your shots. Someone had the beginnings of an idea here, and there are a couple of fun moments – such as when the mother and wife run off and discover the ghost has followed them, or when we get the revelation of where the footprints come from, there’s even one haunting that where the hits come fast and loud enough to keep you off balance, but not enough for a complete movie – There is a good way of making these kind of films, but this isn’t it.
This film maybe okay if you’re in the mood to do a found footage marathon with a bunch of different indie films or burning through a box set collection like this, but it certainly wouldn’t be the centerpiece and isn’t worth going out of your way for.
White Noise 2
It’s a weird thing, I’m not actually a huge fan of Nathan Fillion or Katie Sakoff, so to see them listed as the cast in white noise two, doesn’t do anything for me.
It kicks things off with a shocking murder, and then Fillion trying to deal with life without his wife and son. After a failed suicide attempt, he starts to see things happening around him – halos and latent images… and those halos tell him when people are about to die.
It seems like a benign enough gift, disturbing but harmless – that is until the dead start to visit him about half an hour in. This inspires him to save the life of the next person he sees about to die – in his mind it gives purpose to his son’s death.
The thing seems to be going alright until Fillion sees some old footage of his wife driving – and the gunmen who killed her just happened to save her life a few days prior. What was previously just a weird movie, has turned into a bona fides mystery, as Fillion discovers the horrifying consequences of his gift and actions.
What we end up with is something that feels like a love child of The Butterfly Effect and the Final Destination movies. It’s all about consequences and changing destiny. It’s Donnie Darko but not as pretentious.
I actually really dig it, and don’t feel like I have to have seen the previous film to know what’s going on – that’s good thing because I haven’t. The religious horror elements that I’m so used to seeing from Patrick Lussier are absent here though he manages to sneak a hint of it in 
here and there – some of the answers hidden in the Bible, just a bit of Revelation thrown in. Still, it feels largely like its own thing.
I wonder a bit though if Nathan Fillion is miscast – his usual affable, likeable self feels wasted when weighted down with grief and tragedy. Katie Sakoff on the other hand is a delight – bubbly and very girly. I have to admit, I tend to enjoy her more in everything that she’s done that isn’t Battlestar Galactica!
Slayed
Slayed starts off with a Santa murdering two girls in a boiler room basement of some sort… and when he pulls up the chainsaw, you know exactly what’s going on with you this is going to be.
We fast forward to five years later.
Back at that same water treatment plant… that’s what it is! A new security guard shows up to take care of things that night. Hes swapping shifts with someone else so the usual guard can you be home with his family for Christmas.
The reception is tells him that he basically has two jobs. Check the perimeter once an hour, and make sure nobody dies. What with the tragedy five years ago, they sometimes get a lot of trespassers. On the other hand, you should also probably steer clear of the creepy groundsman.
Things are complicated when the receptionist husband shows up looking for her. He’s pretty overwhelming, but the guard manages to turn them around 
and get him to head out looking for her. An axe to the gut keeps that search from going on too long.
The problem is common that wasn’t the first killing. Santas been out sliceing and dicing for a while now, and the groundskeeper recognizes the pattern. And they also recognize that Santa is coming there for them.
The abductions and killings go at a nice clip. The pacing is really great here and they use the facility with as much coverage as they can. It’s a great set, and honestly, the entire movie is filmed just because they had access to it. As the film stretches on, the Gore gets a little bit more intense, with a few really good looking kills. We even have a twist at the end that works way better than it should. All of it 
adds up to a reasonably satisfying movie on the low budget end of the spectrum. I got to watch this with some people hosting it and it really is just the perfect movie for a horror host to screen. It needs that little extra ump, But still displays a quality that sets it apart from a lot of the microbudget dreck flooding the streaming landscape.
Mandy (Not the Nicholas Cage one!)
I have seen far more killer doll movies then and I care to admit. There’s certain things you can expect coming in, especially with a low budget entry like Mandy.
Mandy however, despite being designed to capitalize on recent hits like Annabelle or the Chucky reboot, actually manages to give us something a little different.
After kicking off the movie and high gear with a fast and furious bloody prologue, we get introduced to our main characters. The story starts off a little slow and confusing, they’re thieves… Sometimes, it seems like they’ve done this before, but it also seems like our main character is conflicted confused and surprised by it. Like I said confusing. Nevertheless, The main character gets a job babysitting for their elderly, wealthy mark ; an old lady heading out for the night, and wants to make sure that Mandy, in her bedroom upstairs, is taken care of. She wants the babysitter not to let Mandy wake and if Mandy starts to cry, she’ll definitely have to come home. When the babysitter discovers Mandy is a doll, she thinks that she in the thieves are home free… that is, until Mandy wakes up. The doll begins to toy with them, exacting her bloody vengeance, as the plot is revealed.
One of the things that you can expect from a low budget haunted doll movie, is not to see the doll very much. This became a big problem in some of the later Puppet Master movies… At least until they rebooted with the renewed focus on World War II things. It’s also a 
big problem in the Robert movies. Those gradually became more about the toy maker and his book than they were about the puppets, which were rarely on screen… and yet that’s what you really want from a haunted doll movie you want puppet mayhem.
Mandy delivers that. The doll is on screen for a good chunk of the movie, and even when she’s not on screen, she drives the action and her presence is felt. The filmmakers knew their limitations, and instead of trying to work around them, they leaned into them. We see the doll scamper and move, running in her long dress so we don’t necessarily have to see her legs as she runs. She talks, taunting and terrifying victims, but it’s usually through a baby monitor. That gives us the dual effect of making her voice more tinny and hollow, while at the same time not having to see her move her lips. The head turns, and at times she practically teleports from place to place. She constantly inflicts cutting damage, but doesn’t carry a knife or razor. We don’t actually see the attacks themselves, rather just there effects. It’s enough. Mandy stalks them, and the film comes off more as a haunting the slasher.
The movie is a little short, admittedly. That’s not necessarily a bad thing… Its really as long as it needs to be. The problem is that length isn’t necessarily feature 
length. The filmmakers proceeded to pad the movie out with an extended prologue and epilogue that manages to turn on a dime and be surprisingly disturbing. Nevertheless the addition of these two sections makes the movie feel just a bit more like an anthology, with these two completely unrelated stories, sharing nothing but the mythology of the doll. On the other hand, the shorts are full of puppet horror, and really only serve to give us more of what we came for. It’s the thing I’m most impressed about in this film. Haunted doll done on a shoestring budget, that doesn’t skimp on the haunted doll. Mandy is absolutely worth your while, here’s hoping for a sequel.
Doll(s)
Dolls/”puppets” with no articulation
Mostly one location
85% of the cast is under 25
Stock DVD cover (Every doll movie!)
644
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
To All Good A Night
The first thing I noticed about To All Good A Night was David Hess as a director. I met David years ago durning a last house on the left reunion. I found him intelligent with something to actually say about the film industry and directing in general. He’s very much a far cry from the evil character he plays in that sort of exploitation film.
And let’s not make any mistake. this is absolutely an exploitation film. It’s got plenty of nudity and violence to remind us of that. and yet, it’s not over the top with its score the way a movie made in the 80s would be (filmed in 1980 and released in 1981. Still feels very 70’s). Indeed, we’re at an era where the very thought of it being a Christmas horror film is enough to be disturbing. they don’t need to toss a lot of blood on the screen to drive that point home.
We have a couple of girls who have stayed home during this Christmas time weekend, w
aiting for their boyfriends to helicopter in and hang out. However, while they’re on the make, there’s a killer on the loose hacking and slashing their way through Our cast. It’s such a by the numbers plot that you could almost forget this as a Christmas time film. The décor is not quite as in your face or over the top as we’ve gotten used to in modern cinema. However, they definitely remind us every 10 minutes or so when a killer dressed as Santa Claus shows up wielding an ax to remind us of the real reason for the season!
Interestingly enough, the film reminds me a lot of Black Christmas and Friday the 13th. Indeed There’s fokelore that the film was released for a short, theatri
cal run on January 30, 1980- a full three months before the debut of the original Friday the 13th (1980). However, according to FX artist Mark Shostrom, this is incorrect. During an interview on the “Video Junkie” blog, he said he distinctly recalls making the film in December 1980 because he remembers the cast and crew gathering around a TV to hear the new John Lennon had been murdered. There’s certianly an influence, with its ensemble and mysterious killer. It doesn’t come anywhere near to living up to either of those films, but there’s a certain sensibility an
d theme that it shares.
So the real question becomes, is this worth your time? The truth is, you’re not going to miss much by skipping this film. However, it’s also the sort of film that’s not going to be in too many’s film queue… not even when we’re talking about horror people like me. It’s competently enough made and even sports a twist that I was not seeing towards the end (admittedly, that’s because I hadn’t given it enough credit to assume that there even would be one). At the end of the day, if you’re a fan of grindhouse cinema, and you’re looking for something that You haven’t watched and re-watched a hundred times like Christmas Evil or Silent Night Deadly Night, something familiar, This may actually be a good picture throw on and check out.
Sister Krampus
I’ve got to say, the Krampus I that I see lurking in the woods in the opening World War II scene of Sister Krampus is actually pretty nice looking. Apparently this company are bad guys that raped a nun, and someting is after them. The Krampus is on the nun’s side, and hes a pretty brutal monster. We get a couple of really good looking kills right off the bat, And I’m actually pretty excited now for the rest of this movie. Strap in, and it’s going to be at bumpy 75 minutes
Back in the present, we have two women backpacking through Europe while the nun looks on. In the woods, a group dances around a bonfire, not unlike a wicker man ceremony. They’re trying to ward off the demon Krampus. The nun is sister Benedict, The bride of Krampus, wanders the woods looking for souls touched by tragedy to feed off of. Well, these sisters have lost their parents, so there’s plenty of tragedy
Sister Krampus casts a spell to keep one of the girls sick… and to keep her from leaving. The other sister, Judy, heads to the ruins of the convent to investigate. The bride of Krampus is there, waiting for her, along with her minion- An undead soldier she’s cursed. By the time that her sister Mary follows her, all she finds is Judy’s camera. Just to break the monotiny, the directors make the curious choice to do a recap of the origin story we saw in the beginning. But after recapping that exact 
same footage and padding out the running time, it’s time to return to the convent for a final showdown with Sister Krampus.
The biggest problem with what is otherwise a visually beautiful film (for a low budget affair) is that the protagonist Mary is completely unlikeable. Quite frankly, I’m rooting for the monster. Still, of the Polona brothers films I’ve seen, this is one of the better ones, and a definite recommend.
Psycho Santa 2
I’m not sure how to feel about Psycho Santa 2, considering that it starts off with a bunch of Classmates to the original film. On the other have, they appear to just be establishing where the Psycho Santa came from it may be forgivable. And they certainly are trying to get in my good graces again by doing a bunch of establishing shots of Christmas at a mall.
It’s basically just to establish our main character Sean, going home from work. What he discovers in the house is that his psychotic roommate has murdered a date, and tTurns on Sean to keep him from going to the police. hes almost gotten away with it too, until an apparition in a santa costume shows up and Sean black’s out. According to the police, the next morning, there’s pieces of his roommate wrapped neatly under the tree and all throughout the house. Did I mention, Sean’s father once rampaged as a psychotic santa? They’re trying to link this to the 1st one, but it doesn’t sound like the first massacre, so it dosen’t quite land right. It doesn’t help they brought back one of the actresses from the 1st movie for a second round at killing her off. We do get a good shot of the killer santa reflected in a Christmas ball, and the kill itself is a good idea, using a pointy Christmas ornament, but we don’t actually get to see anything. Meanwhile, Sean is having nightmares… seeing the killer santa in his dreams. But not only is santa still alive, it turns out, he has a son… and the killing has got to start all over again.
I like the look better this time. the burnt face under the beard is a good idea, but you really can’t see it enough, the wig and the beard hide at too much. We’ve also got the same problem with filler in this movie. We get a lot of long stretches of nothing, and now we also have flashbacks to pad things with. It’s still a finger on the fast forward button kind of movie. The good thing is, if you watch this one, you’ll pretty much get everything you need from the first one as well, so little save you the time of watching both movies…
On the other hand the smart thing is to just skip this altogether.
Cyborg 3 : The Recycler
The Cyborg trilogy
Cyb
org three starts off with an armored transport truck traveling through rocky wilderness, in a world that looks a great deal more like the one were familiar with from the first cyborg would be rather than the second one. I’m looking forward to Malcolm McDowell (don’t get your hopes up though, it’s a glorified cameo) in this, and seeing that John Carl Buchler created the effects also encourages me. I have no idea what to expect here though. I mean quite frankly, I was shocked to discover there even was a cyborg three! Like a real trilogy?
We are further into the future now, when the last of the great corporations is gone and cyborgs are hunted now for their parts and circuitry.
Dirt bikes and other assorted Megaforce type vehicles charge out of the transport as guys in football padding hunt a lone cyborg trying to escape on foot.
“You’re making a mistake!” He pleads with them, as they prepare to salvage him for parts. “I can’t take you to my friends without my eyes!”
Richard Lynch is a cigar chopping, eyepatched scrapper who declares that it’s getting to be slim pickings now, and is desperate to find a mythical 500 mile free zone where the cyborgs roam free (Cash, the cyborg from the previous film also lives there.). Lynch was a mainstay of TV in the 70’s and I really recognize him from a stint on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as a bad guy running the casino in Vegas in Space. He’s done makeup roles in Star Trek : The Next Generation as well, and it’s that unmistakable vice that immediately tells you it’s him under the latex. His Cyborg sidekick Jocko, Andrew Bryniarski Is actually a pretty familiar face as well (in a hey! I know that guy! sort of way) from roles as a heavy in things like Hudson Hawk, Batman Returns, Renegade, Lois and Clark, Nightman and even Firefly. Despite being A low rent Robert Z’Dar, he will eventually go on to fame as Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre : The Beginning. Lynch sometimes works for Malcolm McDowell who appears to be the last aristocrat left alive.
We follow Lynch’s Llewellyn character as he delivers parts to McDowell and then pops over to the local strip club. We don’t actually get our hero Cash showing up until we’re well into the film, past the 15 minute mark. If you’re hoping for Angelina Jolie to come back by the way, you’re going to be disappointed. She’s always been catty about the end product and declined to come back for the third sequel (by the way, am I allowed to be a little pissed about that? Cyborg two was Jolie’s first starring role ever,. It’s not unusual for your first headlining role to be crap, and for her to dump all over it irritates me to no end) so the role of cash was recast. Also, she’s pregnant. This comes it’s a bit of a shock to us because her husband grew old and died ages ago, and also because… She’s a cyborg!
This distresses her, not only for the usual reasons, but also because the baby is draining her power, and she’d really love to get rid of it, but the people who still know how to work on cyborgs? They have no idea how to do it… And they’re terrified they may destroy her if they try!
After Llewellyn gets done disassembling a robot hooker, he spies Cash leaving the robot OB/GYN. She escapes him, but he follows her… In the meantime there’s another Robo 
OB/GYN (how big an industry is this anyhow?) who makes house calls and tries to talk Cash in to keeping her baby. She rejects him, but her attempt to self terminate results only in a lot of sparks and explosions and computer graphics. None of this explains why both Cash and Robo OB/GYN are both wearing normal casual 90s clothes by the way.
They flee in a souped up megaforce-looking dune buggy to a remote bar and casino in the free zone, where things aren’t quite as free as they seem. Do I mention that William Katt is in this movie? Probably, not because I’d completely forgotten about him since he dosen’t show up until we hit the 42 minuet mark, about halfway into the film. He plays an android with a Max Headroom stutter, and vouchers for Cash and her friend.
In the mean time, Llewellyn has a symbol in army they and their games all arrive on dirt 
bikes and four wheelers, ready to storm the free zone.
Cyborg sidekick Jocko infiltrates the free zone, but Chase hooks up with him and rewrites his programming, convincing him to be a good cyborg! By astonishing coincidence, it turns out, he was originally the sort of robot who would’ve been the ideal candidate for delivering a baby! Still, Bad guys are on their way (on dirt bikes. So many dirt bikes) It’s time for the Robo-OB/GYN to start upgrading all the robots in the free zone as best he can to fight back! (and for some strange reason, it turns into a weird VanDamme style Martial arts Melee at this point… A really weird development in the last 10 minutes of the film!)
What’s really strange, is that while this thing is cheap and dumb… I don’t hate it!. Like part two, it’s only connected to the franchise only in the most tangential of ways, and despite what IMDb says about the budget doubling from the last one… I don’t believe a word of it. I’ll flat out admit, I probably would not have watched this except as part of a franchise, but as part of the series, it’s actually interesting dumb fun and a good excuse to spend some time with Malcolm McDowell and William Katt. It’s hard to recommend it in of itself, but as a capricious entry in a series that has no business being a franchise, it’s an interesting artifact.
641
Posting the best strips from the series, in order from the beginning.
Every Wednesday and Friday
Psycho Santa 2
I’m not sure how to feel about Psycho Santa 2, considering that it starts off with a bunch of Classmates to the original film. On the other have, they appear to just be establishing where the psycho santa came from it may be forgivable. And they certainly are trying to get in my good Graces again bye Doing a bunch of establishing shots of Christmas at a mall. It’s basically just to establish our main character Sean, going home Have to work. What do you discovers in the house is that his psychotic roommate has murdered a date, and Turns on Sean to keep him from going to the police spirit hes almost gotten too, until an apparition in a Santa costume shows up and Sean black’s out. According to the police, the next morning, there’s pieces of his roommate wrapped neatly under the tree and all throughout the house.
Psycho Santa
Psycho Santa starts with a Santa Claus killer stalking a girl and a very bright junkyard. Indeed, it feels much like the junkyard from One of Donald Jackson’s films. It’s a cat and mouse game they’re playing on a camera with an overexposed filter, so everything is white and washed out. The least they could have done, was actually show the kill… instead of just a long shot of the machete before the credits.
On the other end of the credit, we hit a guy watching an old classic public domain Christmas cartoon. Hes waiting on his wife to get ready for a Christmas party. There are you in, so we’ve got a strained marriage To give these characters some depth.
The good news is there’s slutty looking girls at a Christmas cabin getting drunk and telling Christmas stories. This thing is so 80 slasher it almost hurts. (Including the requisite shower scene and man, that thing goes on forever… I feel like it’s a full 3rd of the movie! So is the very long stretch of the girls dancing in nineties in a slightly sapphic manner while Santa breathes heavily outside. Well,, I’m glad the producers got their money’s worth anyhow).
Off to the cabin! Did you know it has a dark history? Because you’re going to know… we’re going to recount it on the drive up there!
Um , it’s 35 minutes in now to an 82 minute film… and we’re still on the recap? I would really like to see more killer Santa Claus please. Why isn’t he slicing and dicing?
It’s probably because they’ve had him locked up in the cellar…. but that’s OK, the burglars are about to release him! By the way, his name is Chris, and that was the night he escaped….. do you think there’s any chance he’ll be making his way back home tonight? All I’m saying is Salvation Army bell ringers beware. Then again, we’re still in the flashback… with the husband telling the wife the story of the psycho santa on the way to the cabin, and we’re well past 50 minutes in. And we’re not done yet. We got another story about a brother and sister duo, not unlike Johnny and Barbara from night of the living dead, only this group is out to go get a Christmas tree when the psycho santa finds them. You wait until they get separated to attack… and that’s when we find ourselves back in the junkyard. We’re back in the opening sequence!
If I’m gonna be honest, this is the sort of movie you have to watch with your finger on the fast forward button. It’s just not a good film… and I’m the sort of guy who likes bad movies. But this, this is no business being a feature. This is a 20 minute short at the best, Has been stretched out with the absolute worst filler. It’s also been annoying that this thing is All told and flashback… they should have set that up at the beginning, and made the whole thing a little bit more tight. There’s an inkling of a good idea here, ( Quite frankly, the way they dispatch the Santa is inspired…. and really the only Great point of the entire film) but it’s just me Andrews and Stretches out too long. The long shots of being stalked in the forest….. the cheapest of all filming locations… Or the long sexy time sequences. There’s very little Novelty any longer in watching a girl take a shower. Indeed, there’s very little novelty in watching a killer in Santa Claus suit for that matter. You’ve got to do something original with it, and this film fails to do that.
Psycho Santa
Psycho Santa starts with a Santa Claus killer stalking a girl and a very bright junkyard. Indeed, it feels much like the junkyard from One of Donald Jackson’s films. It’s a cat and mouse game they’re playing on a camera with an overexposed filter, so everything is white and washed out. The least they could have done, was actually show the kill… instead of just a long shot of the machete before the credits.
On the other end of the credits, we hit a guy watching an old classic public domain Christmas cartoon. Hes waiting on his wife to get ready for a Christmas party. There are you in, so we’ve got a strange marriage To give these characters some depth.
The good news is there’s slutty girls at a Christmas cabin getting drunk and telling Christmas stories. This thing is so 80 slasher it almost hurts. (Including the requisite shower scene… and man, that thing goes on forever… I feel like it’s a full 3rd of the movie! So is the very long stretch of the girls dancing in nineties in a slightly sapphic manner while Santa breathes heavily outside. Well, I’m glad the producers got their money’s worth anyhow).
Off to the cabin! Did you know it has a dark history? Because you’re going to know… we’re going to recount it on the drive up there!
Um , it’s 35 minutes in now to an 82 minute film… and we’re still on the recap? I would really like to see more killer Santa Claus please.
It’s probably because they’ve had him locked up in the cellar…. but that’s OK, the burglars are about to release him! By the way, his name is Chris, and that was the night he escaped….. do you think there’s any chance he’ll be making his way back home tonight? All I’m saying is Salvation Army bell Ringers beware. Then again, we’re still in the flashback… with the husband telling the wife the story of the psycho santa on the way to the cabin, and we’re well past 50 minutes in. And we’re not done yet. We got another story about a brother and sister duo, not unlike Johnny and Barbara from night of the living dead, only this group is out to go get a Christmas tree when the psycho santa finds them. You wait until they get separated to attack… and that’s when we find ourselves back in the junkyard. We’re back in the opening sequence!
If I’m gonna be honest, this is the sort of movie you have to watch with your finger on the fast forward button. It’s just not a good film… and I’m the sort of guy who likes bad movies. But this, this is no business being a feature. This is a 20 minute short at the best, and has been stretched out with the absolute worst filler. It’s also annoying that this thing is all told and flashback… they should have set that up at the beginning, and made the whole thing a little bit more tight. There’s an inkling of a good idea here, ( Quite frankly, the way they dispatch the Santa is inspired…. and really the only great point of the entire film) but it just stretches out too long. The long shots of being stalked in the forest….. the cheapest of all filming locations… Or the long sexy time sequences. There’s very little novelty any longer in watching a girl take a shower. Indeed, there’s very little novelty in watching a killer in Santa Claus suit for that matter. You’ve got to do something original with it, and this film fails to do that.
eXistenZ
Existenz. Dimension films, David Cronenberg and weird science fiction in the year of The Matrix and The 13th Floor. What could possibly go wrong?
will need a bio port installed. But William Dafoe sabotages the installation – whatever it is because Allegra has 5 million bounty on her head. And fries for game controller… and it’s the only one in existence that has the game code in it. She has to go and find some place to fix it. And once fixed, it’s time to test it.
We finally get to see what all the hype is about… this strange virtual reality world that she has created.
enough without the rampant paranoia in the depths of intrigue.Also,props to the cast, they really sell it… And Jennifer Jason Leigh is absolutely adorable. She’s got enthusiasm that really makes this thing work.
I don’t know if I can recommend this or not… Maybe as part of a collection like this, or a retrospective with similar films like The Matrix and The 13th Floor. It serves as an interesting option… Say Cronenberg‘s take on the whole thing (and it is very much a Cronenberg film, every bit as much as Videodrome)Baron and the Kid
There’s a pool table in my Library. i like to put this film on when I play or have people over to shoot pool.
From IMDB:
The Baron and the Kid 1984
Johnny Cash stars as a legendary pool hustler, back in town after a long absence. He encounters a young punk who’s got more swagger than skill at pool, and who turns out to be his son
The film plays itself very straight and doesn’t really earn that kind of serious tone, especially for a TV movie. It’s predictable but what saves it is how much fun it is to watch Johnny Cash chew the scenery. Richard Roundtree shows up and I’m in B movie heaven.
It’s not to hard to find the DVD (and it tends to be inexpensive) and definitely a great movie to put on while you do something else.
No trailer for this by the way, but we do have the music video of the song that inspired the film, and it does a great job of conveying the feel of the movie
Argo City Comics 