October!

We’re 7 days into the most wonderful time of the year, and I’ve barely addressed the fact that, you know, WE’RE SEVEN DAYS INTO THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR.

Precisely

Here at the Doll’s House, I have nothing overly exciting planned save for the usual weekly dose of genre (or awful, but this month, strictly genre) film reviews. While some exciting pumpkin-related shenanigans could still sprout up, I figured it was far more useful to share some links to a few of my rather talented pals’ far more interesting October projects.

Hitch up your haunted hayride and let’s roll!

-Over at The Lightning Bug’s Lair, good pal Zach (and guest host for our latest Single White Female/Obsessed episode of The Feminine Critique) is don’ting away with 31 days of covering movies with titles that include horror’s favorite contraction. Zach always makes October a truly delightningbugful time of year, and I’m sure this round will be no different.

-This being October, it’s the perfect time for you savvy e-reading bookworms (or e-worms? Is that more or less gross?) to check out a few great picks. First up is R. k. Kombrinck’s short story collection, These Lonely Places. Some of you might know the author as a barrel of laughs and Burger King hatred heard on Night of the Living Podcast, but his fiction is a far more serious matter. From giant spiders to horrifically twisted old people, Kombrinck’s writing is truly creepy, filled with surprising twists and plenty of scares.

-For those of you in need of some quality nonfiction, check out Bryce Wilson’s Son of Danse Macabre. Wilson is also the keeper of the fine blog Things That Don’t Suck (and thankfully, his writing doesn’t) and Son of Danse Macabre reads like a worthy sequel and followup to Stephen King’s 1981 book. Picking up where King left off, Wilson provides superb analysis of the genre (including video games and comics) of the last 30 years. For just $2.99, it’s a journey well worth taking.

-Get Rocked. Get Shocked. Get n’ed. All these things at Worcester’s annual horror (and music, whatever that is) convention. I’ll be taking a ride up there for the weekend of the 19th, so if any of you New Englanders are dropping in, be sure to let me know so we can say hi while wondering if Jordan Ladd would be honored or embarrassed if we asked her about her villainous role in Lifetime’s Murder on the 13th Floor.

-Gear up your ears for ShowShow, one of the Internet’s oldest and still most entertaining podcasts. Every year, the crew assembles for the Spooktacular, where they release one episode a day for the month of October. It’s a hard show to describe until you hear it, but with a bizarre collection of films on this year’s docket (George Kennedy vs. An Alf puppet supercat in The Uninvited, anybody?) and what I’ve been assured is a bottomless supply of alcohol, you can guarantee yourself a good time.

-More entertainment courtesy of the podcasting world: Outside the Cinema’s annual Halloween Throwdown, aka 16 hours of random and rare horror movies streaming live online. It's a surprisingly enjoyable way to kill a Saturday, so if you've long wanted to see films like Fade To Black and Mr. Boogedy, be sure to check it out.

-Plus, plenty of blogs over yonder on my right side blogroll will be doing truly seasonal coverage, from Chuck Norris Ate My Baby’s annual Chucktoberfest to Fascination With Fear’s Guilty Pleasures and Final Girl’s own version of SHOCKtober. 

Good things everywhere. GO GET THEM!

Birthday, Baby Bugg…Birthday!

Though I typically avoid all things ventriloquism due to the art form’s innate sense of PURE EVIL, it felt fitting to bestow some upon my blogging brother in arms, Zach T.L. Bugg Kelly. You see kids, this month marks the five year anniversary of The Lightning Bugg’s Lair, one of the Internet’s most splendifically splendiferous sources for genre movie writing.

And that same Internet tells me one celebrates a five year anniversary with wood.

 

Shudder

Zach is not only a great writer, but also, a true friend. I can assure the world that no man rocks a smoking jacket quite like this southern gentleman, and rarely is there a better movie swapper than the same South Carolina stud. Hence the return of the Deadly DollBugg’s Lair Crossover!, wherein Zach and I assign each other a film to watch and review. This being a celebration, I of course had to dig into Netflix Instant’s top shelf output for what I would deem the very best:

Tony Curtis dressed like a wizard, a muscular little person Native American born through a neck tumor , AND lasers?

All I got for my fifth birthday was a lot of Care Bear stuff.

On my end, Zach also went benevolent with Mario Bava’s 1966 ghost story, Kill, Baby…Kill! Overly punctuated title aside, it’s a good one.

Quick Plot: In the early 20^th century, an Italian village is cursed by the vengeful spirit of a bitter 8-year-old girl who died during a drunken town festival. The spooked locals know that anyone who catches a glance of the eerily blond Melissa Graps will inevitably meet their own bloody end, though visiting out-of-town coroner Paul Eswai brings the typical man-of-science doubts. As bodies begin to pile up, Paul and the lovely Monica Schuftan—a long-lost daughter of the area who’s returned at exactly the wrong time—must defeat or escape the evil haunting.

As stories go, Kill, Baby…Kill! is quite straightforward. There are a few mysteries thrown around the narrative (Monica’s secret past, Mama Graps ambiguous place in the mechanics of the haunting) but very simply, this is the tale of a ghost. A creeeeeeeeepy girl ghost who giggles incessantly, throws her ball around like she’s auditioning for The Changeling kickball team, and telepathically convinces otherwise normal (if extremely anxious) townies to stab themselves or impale their bodies upon strategically placed spiked fences. Throw in a few dizzying spiral staircases and a whole lot of very thick spider webs and you’ve essentially got the perfect ghost story for a dark stormy night.

A film like this requires the proper design and atmosphere, and Bava nails it with his camera. From winding overhead shots of carefully colored stairs to the slow suicidal terror that manifests in an ill-fated tavern girl’s wide eyes, Kill, Baby…Kill! is clearly devoted to being a good old fashioned scary story.

And it succeeds.

High Points

Considering so much of Italian horror can stumble when it comes to handling female characters, it’s incredibly refreshing to see how Bava portrays his women. They’re both the chief instigators of the horror AND the only ones fully equipped to fight it. There’s also some intriguing subtext to how Paul, your typical leading man, can’t seem to quite comprehend some of the power inherent in the good and evil woman around him, and it’s the men in authority that seem to pay the highest price

Also, dolls. Lots of freaky ass dolls

Low Points

There’s a rather glaring plot/character hole regarding the character of Monica, primarily in how the town’s burgomaster assigns her to assist in an autopsy despite her secret past (that only HE knows of) rendering such a move quite dangerous to all concerned

Lessons Learned

Touching the dead is against nature. Also, kind of icky

Poverty and ignorance + superstition = something sorta like the devil 

The best way to expel an evil ghost child is to beat yourself a little with a birch branch, Russian banya style

Rent/Bury/Buy

Kill, Baby…Kill! is streaming on Instant, and at just under 90 minutes, it’s the perfect answer to a quiet night at home. The film has some flaws (dubbing that nibbles at the tone, an oddly paced ending that mishandles its tension) but overall, it’s an outstanding exercise in atmosphere, from the period setting to the grandly conspicuous instrumental score. It may be the Lightning Bugg’s Lair’s birthday, but this was a true gift.

I mean, it didn’t have LASERS, but still…

Icky & Gross, Just Like a Goober

We came so close.

Following years of Blood Dolls and Dangerous Worry Dolls and Doll Graveyard, it seemed like 2013's Shortening was finally going to bypass the endless ouvre of Charles Band. As much as the man has had his name as producer on some of cinema's greatest vertically challenged hits (Dolls, Troll), his full-out directorial efforts generally leave something to be desired, primarily, the very idea OF effort. 

Hey, if I could make a killer doll movie with the same amount of work it takes to cook a burrito, I'd have 35 credited to my name too.

Goobers came my way via my esteemed colleague and pal, T.L. Bugg, the keeper of the splendiforous blog, The Lightning Bug's Lair. Considering this is the man I once made watch The Nutcracker In 3D, it's only fair that he eventually pay me back with the kind of cheapie kids movie that feels akin to a flea bite. 

Quick Plot: A boy named Tommy starts a new job working on a children's show about a wacky sea captain and his band of ugly puppets. Little does he know, the ugly puppets (seriously: they're hideous) are actually alien slaves to a cruel alien queen named Mara (one name, "like Roseanne") who's returning to earth to claim them. Meanwhile, Tommy decides to investigate the ugly puppet mystery while his female costar chides him for being unprofessional.

Let's get one thing out of the way: the puppets are positively disgusting.

There's Squigby, whose name sounds like what you'd call the geeky dirty kid at summer camp

Esmerelda, who constantly moans as if dubbing a softcore porn

And Blop, whose name and appearance suggests the thing that happens when you sit on a toilet

It all makes perfect sense for a kids movie, right?

Ever buy a Barbie wannabe from a dollar store? They're dolls that hold a vague resemblance to Mattel's famous blond, except the construction seems to be made from the kind of plastic packaging that holds Barbies in place in boxes. Their legs are hollow, arms only move up and down, and faces seems as if they were made by photocopying the blueprints for a more expensive toy, then morphing it over a bouncy ball and adding a nose. The point is, they’re cheap and ugly...much like everything about Goobers.

This is not to say the movie is completely without fun. As Queen Mara and her evil henchman, Caroline Ambrose and Sam Zeller make a campy pair who have no shame going for the broad humor. The younger actors are passable, even when they’re stuck interacting with some of the ugliest art projects ever assembled for the camera. For whatever reason, there’s a subplot involving Tommy’s dad having a baseball card collecting addiction, which seems strange even for 1997, but if it helps Band achieve a 75 minute running length, I guess that’s all that really matters.

High Points

While none give Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards-level performances, the young cast is sufficiently tolerable with material that isn’t always up to par

Low Points

Much like the similarly clueless Kazaam, Goobers seems to have no idea what kind of stories kids actually want to watch. Whereas Shaquille O’Neal’s genie had to battle evil concert bootleggers, the major climax of Goobers relies on reading the fine print of contract negotiations

Lessons Learned

For a child actor, nothing is more horrifying than the Big P

Chekhov’s Law of Baseball Cards: If you feature a rare one, you best have an ugly poop-looking puppet destroy it

Superior beings fart a lot

Rent/Bury/Buy

Goobers (aka Mystery Monsters) is streaming on Netflix, which is the only way you should watch it. Fans of Charles Band’s style (i.e., cheap production values, grotesque little things, and scant running length) will find this a minor dose of something new, as he uses his quick tricks for a so-called kids film.

It just happens to involve a dose of torture. 

And LOTS of farting. 

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.

Swapping Scarecrows For Working Wax

I know I haven’t been celebrating the greatest month of all with the usual candy corn fueled fervor I keep in reserve, but times have been busy here in the actual Doll’s House. After apartment hunting with more gusto than Gary Busey bare handing it in Surviving the Game, I’ve since moved on to the act of packing with more reluctance than Paul Rudd cleaning up his breakfast tray in Wet Hot American Summer. Still to come: the part where my fella and I face the first real test of our relationship by battling for poster space, followed by my cats meeting/hopefully not killing their new stepsisters.

You might say I’ve been stressed.

But thankfully, there’s one semi-monthly tradition that always soothes the crazed soul: the Lightning Bugg Doll’s House Swaparoo! In honor of the glory of October, T.L. Bugg and I went the good old fashioned Instant Watch horror route. Over at his Lair, I assigned Zach one of those VHS staples of the ‘80s that always warmed my straw heart: 1988’s Scarecrows.

My assignment? That very same year’s cult horror comedy Waxwork.

It has a little person butler and everything!

Quick Plot: In a sunny college town, a group of spoiled university students stumble upon a ‘hey, how’d that get there overnight?’ wax museum called Waxwork run by none other than genre stalwart David Warner. This is awesome on its own, but get ready to pick up some messy pieces as I make your head explode:

He’s dressed as if he ransacked Willy Wonka’s closet.

As if that wasn’t enough, he also heads a satanic wax museum with the best security system of all time. See, if any of the wanderers dare to cross that oh-so-tempting velvet rope, he or she ends up transported to an alternate dimension where the scene of the waxy display is real. That would be fine if Waxwork focused on happy periods in history, like discovering the cure to polio or the day peanut butter met banana. 

Then again, when was the last time you entered a wax museum and didn’t leave with a nagging sense of the icks? They’re inherently creepy places. Even the purely historical one I visited in Virginia a few years back seemed designed to steal the souls of every patron.

The scenes on display inside Waxwork are more in line with horror fans than history hunters, with vampires, werewolves, mummies, and phantoms luring our snarky teens into grizzly fates. The wealthy brat Mark (played by Face of the 80s Zach Galligan) and hungry virgin Sarah make it through the night, but there’s still another day of battle to wage.

You know how there are some films that other people seem to adore, yet the one time you tried to watch it you just couldn’t keep your eyes on the screen? That was how I always felt about Waxwork, perhaps in part because its first big sequence involves werewolves. As I’ve said before, it’s a monster that just doesn’t do anything for me one way or another. While I can appreciate the metaphorical aspect of man’s darker side (or menstruation metaphor of a female’s redder one), I generally find the execution to be either dull or just plain silly looking.

Such was my initial experience with Waxwork a few months ago, when I sat down to what I had always assumed was an ‘80s horror movie about killer wax mannequins but is, whaddya know? actually a comedy more focused on throwback horror monsters. Writer/director Anthony Hickox (he of the decent Hellraiser III) is clearly having a ball with giving us classic movie villains with an ever so slight twist. It’s not many an ‘80s teen horror film that would feature a fencing duel between its unlikable antihero and a pirate-styled Marquis de Sade, but Waxwork seems intent on being something special.

I see that now.

High Points

There’s a character named China (played by Michelle Johnson) who responds quite smartly to her vampiric dilemma. In a period where even the bravest final girl usually ran through boxes of Kleanex before lucking into victory, it’s nice to see a female character (and one presented as the bitchy slut at that) use her wits when needed

Any final reel that involves wheelchair-bound old dudes battling zombies, vampires, axe-wielders and werewolves can’t be half bad!

Low Points

Due to my intense discomfort with wax figures, I would have liked to see Waxwork utilize that fear factor a little more, rather than focusing so much on some of its Universal tributes

Lessons Learned

Having drinks with the butler leads to anarchy

If you think of completely raw, possibly human meat as steak tartar, it goes down slightly easier

Dictators have the shouting voices and the small mustaches

Stray Confusion

John Rhys-Davies 

Jonathan Rhys Meyers:

Not the same person. One day, I'll understand that.

Rent/Bury/Buy

Now streaming on Instant Watch, Waxwork is good fun so long as you know that’s what you’re getting. I think my initial humbug reaction came from expectation: I wanted a waxy horror film and got an affectionate horror comedy. Thankfully, this time around I wanted a good time and Waxwork is busting with that. 

Thanks as always to my righteous recommender Zach. To see what that southern fried lightning bug thought of Scarecrows (an eerie little dark ride that I’ve always felt deserved more love) then grab some corn on the cob for the ride and head on over!