Big Things!

As Hurricane Sandy sings her way through New York, I bid you all a safe and spooky All Hallow's Eve's Eve with a nudge towards another blog tearing up the season in gargantuan style. You all know and love T.L. Bugg, he the keeper and swatter of The Lightning Bug's Lair. This October, he's been posting up a storm (or tropical cyclone, however the weather people now choose to classify it) with daily posts on gigantic monsters.

Though such a focus seems to violate my belief that smaller things are scary (see February's annual Attack of the Shorties), I fully endorse the Bugg's seasonal posts, in part because he let me share a few of my own virtually gifted picks. Head on yonder for mack trucks, white worms, underrated sequels, and face punch-ins (because giants are generally really good at it). 

Plus, you get the Bugg's take on one of monster cinema's proudest moments, THEM! 

What more do you want? The power back on? Puh-leaze.

Unless you need it to read our posts. Then I guess you're entitled to that dream.

Cotton Candy Joe

Knowing that Casper Van Dien and Michael Rooker are top billed in a movie might very well be the best possible way to make me watch it. Van Dien, of course, because he’s the star of one of my all-time favorite films (of all time, and no, it ain’t The Dog Who Saved Christmas) and Michael Rooker because he might kill me if I don’t. Add the setting of Appalachia and I’m there before you can say Wrong Turn 2.

Quick Plot: An archeologist is gleefully examining his finds from a newly uncovered Indian burial ground. All is happy and nerdy until a skull-faced figure barges in to behead, de-arm, and axe his way through a batch of characters we will never see again, including a pair of soldiers with a video camera.

Okay, so I lied. We do ‘see’ the deceased soldier via his recording, a frantic message that was sent to a Delta Force headed by none other than Captain Leary (Michael Rooker). The oddly gender balanced team is sent to investigate with a terrifying lack of hair ties.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I simply cannot ever believe a female soldier would venture into the woods on a dangerous mission with her lusciously conditioned locks bouncing around. Can you imagine how much easier it is for a skeleton faced killer to grab said female by the mane? Or for a wild branch to slow her down? We won’t even mention how visibility is greatly impeded when SOMETHING IS BLOCKING YOUR FACE.

Rant over. Review resumed.

Leary’s soldiers eventually come upon a rather hilariously wigged Native American (with an ever so slight resemblance to Steve Carell) who details the story of the Skeleton Man, aka Cottonmouth Joe. Unlike his brother that sparked a catchy dance tune fit for sweet sixteen dance floors, Cottonmouth Joe was a warrior who slaughtered his own tribe and has since been reawakened by the nosy diggings of the late archaeologist. 

(About as PC as Michael Scott at a Thanksgiving pageant)

Suuuuuuure he is, thinks the hard-headed military. Though a few members seem to keep disappearing (including, gasp! Casper Van Dien as the bearded scout) there’s no REAL reason to think anything’s amiss, right?

Skeleton Man was made for the Sci-Fi Channel (yes kids, that’s what we geezers used to call it) and while there are no sharktopuses in sight, it certainly has the feel. This isn’t a horrible thing. As with most of those original films, the production values are more than decent and the ‘name’ actors dragged in seem to be happy enough to turn in passable performances in exchange for room service. The actual monster is cool in his kill methods (scalping!) but rather lame in design. Sure, a mashup of the Phantom of the Opera crossed with the Headless Horseman hunting in Predator territory is interesting, but that doesn’t mean a Halloween-style plastic skull mask is all you need to seal the deal.

Director Johnny Martin has a far longer resume as a stunt coordinator, but his most important credit comes from a little special something known to some as Killer Klowns From Outer Space and to others as One Of The Greatest Things To Ever Happen In My Lifetime. Martin played the famed Joe Lombardo, the first victim to be revealed swaddled in cotton candy. For that, he automatically gets a pass and hence, for that reason and a few others, I just didn’t hate Skeleton Man the way everyone else on the Internet seemed to.

High Points

Between spearings, bow and arrowings, tomahawk beheading and more, the kills are actually quite varied and fun

Low Points

A made-for-Sci-Fi-Channel film will indeed bare some token marks of itself, including, in this case, oddly chosen closeups, flashbacks performed by actors on their sixth hour of a five hour energy drink, and for no genuinely good reason, a random big ‘splosion.

Lessons Learned

When you only get thirty minutes of helicopter time for establishing shots, you will USE those minutes and CELEBRATE that waterfall footage

Rotten flesh smells rather like rotten fruit. Good to know (cleans fridge)

Being stalked kind of makes you feel special...don’t it?

Beans is good. Just heat ‘em up and they’re good to go*

*Ancient Iroquois wisdom 

Rent/Bury/Buy

Skeleton Man is a competent little horror movie that offers more gore than you’d expect from a TV-14 production. It’s perfectly fine for a background movie while you prepare dinner, clip your toenails, brush your cat, or alphabetize your DVD collection. To sit down and focus on it for 90 minutes is a little much to ask, but pop it on your streaming queue if you enjoy a modern B-movie. Or if you see Michael Rooker on the street because seriously, DO NOT mess with that dude.  

Blob It

Even the most loyal genre fan has her film holes. Who amongst us hasn't had to duck for cover when admitting those classics we haven't seen, only to finally seek them out and end up befuddled with the results. We sometimes find that the very genre-defining moments have since been defined with more skill, leaving us appreciating, if not necessarily enjoying the originals.

My love of 1988's underloved The Blob knows no bounds. I think it's a perfect horror film, filled with strong likable characters, an affectionate sense of place, and a kickass monster that remains terrifying 20+ years of technology later. 

(C'mon: TWO mullets in one movie? That can't be done with CGI)

And now allow me to confess: until a few days ago, I had never seen its source material. I had no real interest in doing so. My illicit relationship with Mystery Science Theater 3000 has educated me immensely on '50s monster movies and while I know there are true gems buried in the nuclear dust (Them! cannot be praised highly enough), I also rarely approach them expecting my life to be changed. 

But there’s only so long a gal can go before digging into the archives...

Quick Plot: In a friendly small town--one so good-natured that even the local ruffians agree they've been driving too fast lately--the world's second oldest teenager Steve (McQueen) puts the moves on Janey in his hotrod before almost hitting an old man that has just been partially blobbed before 'partially blobbed' became the universal phrase I hope it one day is. The sole town doctor sends Steve and Janey to Officer Dave while he gets fully blobbed but not too surprisingly, nobody with a badge wants to believe the troublemaking teens. 

As someone born in 1982, my knowledge of the '50s is defined by a combination of my parents' nostalgia and cinematic education. Though there are no poodle skirts or milkshakes to be found in The Blob, the film does encompass just about every other aspect I assumed was present in daily '50s life: dang kids, fast cars, movie house dates and blobs. My older readers can tell me if I'm wrong (which is highly unlikely because c'mon...blobs). 

There is no hesitation on my part to say that The Blob is a fun film. The actual monster is juicy and neat, something that surprisingly still works today. Seeing a town unite remains adorable, and Burt Bacharach’s hit theme song is so amazing even my CAT was entranced by the opening credits.

I can’t say I was ever actually frightened for the gee whiz youngins or concerned townsfolk, but I smiled throughout like someone who had just slurped down a delicious bowl of strawberry jell-o.

High Points

Though I can’t really say The Blob holds up as a frightening film, the effects remain effective (badom bom!) and an early car mechanic death is filled with gooey suspense

Low Points

I don't mean to kick the former 6 year old Kieth (that's how imdb spells it) Almoney in his now sensible 59 year old shoes, but I think his first big scene with big sis Janey might contain some of the worst acting ever attempting by a child performer

Lessons Learned

Just because some kid smacks into your wife on the turnpike doesn't make it a crime to be 17 years old. (On a side note, that’s a dark little character backstory that’s probably thankfully not explored eh?)

Much to the chagrin of eager cleaning ladies, one cannot just dust around fingerprints at a crime scene

Even in all-American towns, you can count on school principals to be stuffy and slightly British

The best way to deal with a global threat is to airdrop it in Antarctica. It's still cold there, right?

Stray Observations

As someone who has watched Killer Klowns From Outer Space more times than Costas Mandylor has done bicep curls, I was shocked to realize just how much that 1986 ball of cotton candy was inspired by The Blob. A few similarities:

-Officer Dave and his dubious fellow cops

-opening the film on a kissing couple’s quest to find the landing of a shooting star

-an ill-fated old farmer and his dog

-and dialogue as close as “He says Doc Hallen is dead. I’ve got to check it out!” in comparison to “They say some people are dead. Let’s hear them out!”

Rent/Bury/Buy

Horror fans owe it to themselves to dive into the gelatinous goop that is The Blob. It’s a piece of film history that represents a very specific era in cinema and while it probably won’t scare you with the same power as Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake, it’s easily entertaining in an aw shucks kind of way. The Criterion release features oodles of extras well worth the dip. Just don’t blame me when you find your head bopping along to theme song...for the rest of your life.

Shorty of the Week: The Little Klown

We never know much about the green-haired, smiley fella that enjoys looting and hanging out inside pizza boxes. Is he a child that won some kind of publicity contest to accompany the national klown military on an intergalactic massacre? A little person (klown) constantly fighting to prove himself, a Ryan Seacrest in a world of Simon Klowns? A neighbor from another planet of shorter red-nosed pranksters sent on an ambassador mission to teach his battle skills to his taller allies?

The beauty is this: it doesn’t matter. He’s adorable.

Also, you have to love a fella that gets the second best kill of the movie, wherein the most non-badass gang of bikers ever gets served. 

So while we can only assume you perished in the genocidal explosion of your big top spaceship, know, Little Klown, that you will always have an admirer here in this sad, Little Klown-less world I call home. 

Stand tall.

Liberty! Equality! Fraternity! Bloggity!

Missed Bastille Day? There’s always alternative ways to celebrate France’s favorite summer holiday, especially when it comes to horror movies.

Prison Breaks

Since the Bastille was primarily used as a high security fortress, it makes perfect sense to kick back with, say, Stuart Gordon’s Fortress. As a bonus, it even stars a pseudo-French Christopher Lambert! Not into early 90s sci-fi horror? Zombies are the universal language for making a stand against society, so why not queue up an internationally friendly undead film set during a prison riot? Of course, I’m speaking of 1987’s John Saxon directed Zombie Death House. It’s the most holiday appropriate viewing since Santa Clause conquered the Martians.

Rich vs. Poor

Without royalty and peasants, there would be no cause for fireworks this 14th. How does horror celebrate the tragic beauty of class division? Generally, with the poor kicking the rich’s ass or better yet, eating them. Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs has a nice ghetto vengeance on oppressive slumlords plot, while George Romero’s still underrated Land of the Dead teaches the wealthy a fine--and final--lesson on oppressing the poor from a glass house. 

I Love a Parade

The French like to honor Bastille Day with a parade and thankfully, so does horror. Scariest parade ever? The coulrophobes among film fans will rightfully cite Killer Klowns From Outer Space, where the full-blown devastation of the titular villain invasion is revealed via ticker tape marching. Alternative watches? I suppose I Know What You Did Last Summer could suffice (especially since it’s so seasonal). Except it doesn’t have cotton candy. And it kind of sucks. 

War...What Is It Good For?

National change, societal fixings, and occasionally, good movies. Sadly I come up empty in identifying official French Revolution-set horror, but its American counterpart The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has a nice flashback colonial touch. Something more current? Choose your battle. Class of 1999 features good old fashioned gang warfare (and psychotic robot teachers, natch). Something more epic? Three films in and those werewolves and vampires still can’t get along in the Underworld series. For a simple wartime setting, there’s always the historical--if still 70 years past the original 1789 anniversary--Dead Birds, an eerie and incredibly well-cast (Michael Shannon, Henry Thomas, Patrick Fugit, plus more) ghost story set during the American Civil War.

National Pride

Perhaps it’s a resurgence of past mentality (this is the birthplace of the Grand Guignol, after all), but something in the Seine is causing France to produce some of the best--and most brutal--horror films of the decade. High Tension, Martyrs, and Inside are easy recommendations but to best capture the political spirit inherent in July 14th, check out Xavier Gens’ Frontier(s). Part torture porn and part backwoods horror, this 2007 film is set in a near future dystopia where a few petty criminals flee a rioting urban French society (get the connection?). Of course, this gory little slice also features evil Nazis, mutants, and slashed Achilles tendons, If that’s not revolutionary, what is?

It should be noted that I have not one drop of French blood in my veins, so if you have any of your own celebrations, add them in the comments section and wave your flag with pride. If it’s any good, I’ll even let you eat cake.

There Will Be Defrosting

At this past spring’s Chiller Theater, events happened that may have forever changed the world I live in for the better. 

1- I met Grant Cramer, the once and forever Mike Tobacco of a little great film called Killer Klowns From Outer Space

2-I learned that there may indeed be a sequel to that little great film premiering in my lifetime

3-I purchased a movie I had previously never known existed, 1991’s VHS only The Refrigerator

Numbers 1 & 2 need no further explanation in terms of importance. Number 3, however, may seem exciting only to the few who happen to know that my line of work (the kind I get paid for) involves household appliances. 45 hours or so a week, I’m immersed inside crispers and condensers, celebrating the easy cleanability of adjustable glass shelves while struggling to find something equally exciting to say about the more common wired. 

And now, let us never talk about that part of my life again.

Quick Plot: Two awfully unattractive people excitedly navigate their trashy Brooklyn apartment to make sweet pigly love on the floor, fuzzy back hair dripping with sweat and (thankfully) clothed anatomy never really aligning in ways that would produce orgasms or babies. Perhaps because it’s just as disgusted as we are, the vintage refrigerator watching over our lovers begins to stir and in the name of evil or eugenics, gulps them down like a Death Bed to a bucket of chicken.

Prologue over, we move to “Somewhere in Ohio” where a pair of bright-eyed newlyweds are excitedly planning a move to the Big Apple. Wife Eileen (Julia McNeal) dreams of being a Broadway star while husband Stephen (Dave Simonds) is eager to climb the corporate ladder. Before they can take the city by a storm, the Batemans need a place to stay which proves to be way easier than it should when a sprawling one bedroom (complete with some familiar antique appliances) is bargained down by the landlord at $200 a month. 

I'd be this happy too!

How great is this quaint little walkup? There’s a complimentary plate of brie smiling inside the fridge! Who WOULDN’T sign this lease?

Because nothing that’s ever too good to be true is, bad things start to happen with fairly obvious sources. Eileen misses an audition when the refrigerator cheekily hides her keyes. Stephen loses some work points when he gets a flat (though any man that would drive to midtown from Brooklyn in rush hour every day deserves some form of punishment). Eileen’s only solace comes from the apartment’s kindly super Juan, a sweet-natured Bolivian flamenco dancer who should totally come with every security deposit.

Naturally, Stephen grows jealous and seems to conclude the best medicine for a failing marriage is sex in front of your refrigerator’s open door.

And that’s not even half the plot of The Refrigerator. I’ve yet to mention the Batemans' psychic neighbor or Eileen’s Debbie Harried banged suicidal mother. 

There’s Stephen’s creepy passive aggressive attempts to start a family and a montage of Eileen taking Manhattan.

Between all these threads, the apartment refrigerator kills (naturally, just by closing back and forth) the super’s assistant and, we learn in a somewhat predictable yet still ironic reveal, that the titular chilly villain is a gateway to hell.

Let me start with fact: The Refrigerator is about 971.333 (repeating decimal) times better than Death Bed: The Bed That Eats . That doesn’t say too much, since that home video of your little brother’s first tuba concert is about 892x better than Death Bed but still: considering The Refrigerator has never had a DVD release, I was surprised at how decent this film turned out to be. With a tone akin to Basket Case,  director Nicholas Jabos creates and a light-hearted and fairly self-aware spirit that meshes well with the rather ridiculous premise of...you know, a refrigerator collecting human souls for something something.

High Points

Though it doesn’t get a payoff, the subplot regarding Eileen’s reluctance to start a family with her eager husband feels true to a young couple struggling with different ideas about their future timeline

Just a small touch but one I loved: the opening credits featuring vintage ads for overly exciting refrigeration

It’s a shame that McNeal and Angel Caban didn’t work more with these kinds of genre films. Both have genuinely likable presences and seem to really click with the quirky tone of The Refrigerator, making us actually care about their characters’ fate

Um. This:

Low Points

No man should ever use “my little kissing fish” as a term of endearment

I shouldn’t really complain about unresolved subplots in a movie about a killer refrigerator, but it would have been nice to learn a little more about (yes, I’m really about to say this) the history and nature of said menacing appliance, plus the result of the Batemans coupling in its frosty glow

Lessons Learned

Making soup that would be ready twenty minutes after you’re scheduled to leave the apartment isn’t the best idea you’re pretty blond head has ever had, is it dear?

Getting something in writing is usually the best way to secure a deal (surprisingly sound advice from Hector the slumlord)

You should know your refrigerator is working for the devil (aka El Diablo) by the mere fact that it’s hanging out next to your stove (a dumb move that decreases the energy efficiency of your unit because higher ambient heat means your refrigerator is constantly working harder to maintain its cold after you open the door and wow I should stop talking about this already)

Rent negotiation was ridiculously easy and wonderful in the early ‘90s

Satanic refrigerators especially hate humans with poor fashion sense in headware (observe the late Paco’s silly pastel cap and Mom’s weird choice in geometric bangage)

Winning Ling

I am the wafflemaker!

SInce a character triumphantly announces this upon waking up, I’m willing to declare The Refrigerator a worthy followup to Dream Warriors for inheriting the title of ‘best nerd self-titling ever.’ This line may very well be more exciting than “In my dreams, I am the wizard master.” Time will tell. 

Rent/Bury/Buy

At this point in time, The Refrigerator (to my knowledge) is only viewable on VHS or fuzzy transfers. Is it worth the price tag? Probably not, but darn it did I have a good time with this film. Putting aside my own bias as an employee of a refrigeration company, The Refrigerator is rather charming. The characters are enjoyable, the plot appropriately ridiculous, and the filmmaking low budget for cuteness yet slick and competent in execution. $10 on a grainy transfer may be a tad steep depending on your taste in goofy, good-natured cheese, but those who enjoy these kinds of films (i.e., me) may be sated and hey: anything to spread the word around the genre community. After all, if Death Bed: The Bed That Eats has its own special edition DVD, surely a cheery lil gem like The Refrigerator at least deserves a warranty.