I'm Not There

*Heavy Breathing* I was going to be cool and talk about the mirror shots they use din 2018 in homage to the original but they mention them in the special features.  I did get this Blu Ray set from Target, even though I already had a Blu Ray of the original Halloween . When this was first announced I knew I had to have it. It would be the next best thing next to seeing this as  a double feature at the drive in with somebody.  I saw some friends went to a double feature at a regular theater and that's cool too but it's not as magical as the drive in.  Anyway, watching these two films consecutively is a must, otherwise why buy this?  I remember seeing the reboot/sequel in the theater and liking it but thinking Michael could have been more brutal. Hopefully they will make him darker in the next two sequels.  Until then, mark off a couple hours at home, eat/drink junk and enjoy the magic that is Halloween .  This was a nice way to close this year's festival.  I enjoyed it,

You're a fool, Ed Harley. Allright so really quick, I've been running on very small amounts of sleep so this will be fast.  Even while watching this I was passing out, not because it was a bad movie but because I have been stretching myself thin dealing with issues while trying to do fun Halloween stuff.  This was an interesting story with great special effects, better than I thought they would be for 1988. Stan Winston, you're the man.  Apparently Blossom was in this too, I don't remember.Watch it, it's good. Zzzz.

Creature ate my Twinkie. After more than ten years, I finally sat down and watched this fine film while making Halloween cupcakes.   It was also special because it was the baby's first time watching it.  I explained it as a source where Stranger Things  got their influence from.  This movie is clearly a love letter to the old Universal Monsters and that makes my heart happy.  This movie had heart, comedy and slight fright just like the OG's.  In true form, Dracula is an a-hole and like in   Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein,   he knew more about what was going on than the rest of the monsters.  Also interesting that Uncle Rico plays the Wolfman but I have yet to see an interview of him talking about this film. This is a great film t watch for the Halloween season so go do it before I write the reboot.   Also, all you IG "horror" girls wearing the shirt, now you know where it's from.

How would you like to see your own body and know you're dead? Since it's a full moon tonight, I thought it would be a good idea to watch Edward James Olmos play a wolf, butt naked.  Just kidding, I'd never seen this film before tonight but am glad I finally did.  Surprisingly, it's not so much about werewolves but Native American shape sifters which is a nice change of pace for this genre of horror film.  Besides   Skinwalkers , no other shape shifting film comes to mind. Seeing this for the first time, I had no idea the cast of this film consisted of Albert Finney, Gregory Hines, Edward James Olmosand in a supporting role, a very bearded, cussing Reginald VelJohnson.  That;s right, one of the greatest TV characters of all time, Carl Winslow.  To see him with a beard and saying naughty words is enough to make me watch any film.  In this case, the reason for the Wolfen is to keep the balance with the rapidly changing technological and gentrified world of the 80'

What... is real?  Are you certain you know what reality is?   What the hell did I just watch?I first saw   The Wizard of Gore  about 7 years ago and remember not understanding it very much.  After watching it again, I recognize it was gory for it's time (1970) and see it as a cult classic "bad movie."  Other than these two points, I don't get why so many people like this movie.  Apologies to Herschell Gordon Lewis but  this movie was pretty dull and didn't make much sense. Spoilers ahead. A magician named Montag seemingly cuts and dismembers women graphically on stage only to have them walk away in a transe but otherwise fine.  Hours later the women die from their respective "tricks" they went up for.  A talk show host and her fiance figure out how these "mysterious" murders keep happening.  Turns out, Montag who looks like John Carradine's Dracula hypnotized them somehow and goes on live TV and manages to hypnotize everyone watching

You bastard Survival of the Dead , wow.  This will be a short one. This is.... not the best film,probably the worst in the series.  It hurts my heart to say this, I had a hard time not being distracted by TMZ while watching this.  Basically, this is a zombie western with a lot of CGI and sometimes over the top acting. The plot is pretty simple, military people (again) stumble upon two feuding old men, one wants to kill the undead and the other wants to keep them chained up and alive. Vida Guerra gets kidnapped and a shootout ensues and almost everyone dies.  I realize I may have dated myself with a Vida Guerra reference. . The positives of the film, it is revealed that the military characters in this film are the same a-holes who stole from the kids in Diary of the Dead. Also, towards the end,the zombies evolve to eat animals instead of people, proving the villain of the film right in the end.  We see a zombie biting a horse and then a horde of them tearing a horse apart. Makes

Don't bury dead.  First shoot in head.   So far, all of Romero's zombie movies have been enjoyable but I think I missed the boat on   Diary of the Dead.   I had originally thought this was going to be a sequel to   Land of the Dead  of any of the other films.  Instead, it sees more of a reboot of Night of the Living Dead  with nobody knowing about the panic that just started.   I am not a fan of the found footage horror movie so this was not the film for me.  Granted, the film style preference is a very subjective idea but even taking that aspect out of the picture, it still was not my favorite of the series.  The amount of intentional cuts in the film within a film really took me out of the movie.  Looks like Romero tried to purposefully slow the pace down of the film which did not work for me. The main characters seem one dimensional and interchangeable. What I did like about the film was the new unique kills that we see such as the one pictured above.  I do believe th

Looks like God left the phone off the hook. These damn zombies man, they're slowly getting more intelligent and are starting to develop emotions. Land of the Dead , the fourth installment in the Romeroverse shows us the degradation of humanity amidst ongoing death and chaos.  Somehow one man (Mr. Kaufman) was able to control an entire city while he and a select others lived quietly in penthouses.  People are sick and living on the street below the skyscraper while he and his pals enjoy the finer things in life that are delivered to them.  Unbeknownst to them, the zombies are learning to communicate and use tools.  Granted, the military infiltrated their living space to steal supplies that they were not using (cough Saudi Arabia cough) and these particular zombies or "walkers" are seeking revenge.  Even though we don't see intentional killing (aside from the guy that deserved it), we see how the zombies are starting to understand feelings which will undoubtedly l

A-....a-...alloooooleeeeeeesha! I really enjoyed Day of the Dead  for two main reasons; the characters and the fact that   it shares certain elements with old horror films.  Romero has really upped the ante with all the characters in this third installment.  Rhodes is the biggest a-hole in the entire trilogy, an unnecessarily  misogynist, racist, violent person who happens to be the leader.  His men follow his lead not only because he is in charge but also because they have become so desensitized to the world around them they feel they need to exert power over the rest of the team.  While dissecting them, Dr. Logan mentions that the zombies react out of instinct and are not necessarily evil. To his point, we don't see any zombie in this film act "bad" or "evil" or attack anyone out of malice.  This can be said for the zombie sin the previous films but it is in this one where that fact is outright called out for the viewer to retain throughout the film. 

I realize there are some things worse than death, and one of them is siting here waiting to die. I had never seen Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead  remake or heard much about it.  I definitely knew it existed but purposefully tried to not find out too much about it so I could enjoy it more on the day when I finally got around to watching it.  that day was today, 15 years after it was originally released in theaters, I take my time with things. I saw right away that this is a film where the zombies run.  I'm a zombie purist and like my un-dead like drivers on the 405, slow and dumb.  Still, I didn't let this take away from how I viewed the film. Written by James Gunn, directed by Snyder AND Johnny CASH in the opening credits? Alright, I see you Zack. I dare say this movie is one of the best remakes to ever see the light of day.  It was different enough from the original but still gave several nods to it via cameos, lines, and imagery.  It also showed something we don

When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth.  Admittedly, this film takes a while to pick up but once it does, it's a good ride.  Imagine having an entire mall all to yourself, things would seem awesome despite the chaos and death going on in the outside world.  The people in this film had it so good in the mall that they even started watering plants, ice skating and having fancy dinners while people on the outside were being mauled and eaten alive.  NBD.  That is until a jealousy filled group of assholes on bikes showed up and destroyed what took the main characters so long to build.   They started breaking doors down and looting as if they could go on the outside and pawn jewelry and glassware for supplies. the only redeeming quality about this group of miscreants was that they threw pies in the zombies' faces and that was hilarious.  Overall, this film touche don consumer culture and greed and what idiots humans can be when they're in large

Deadly Friend  was a strange movie that had Kristy Swanson play a Frankenstein type creature and that's the only redeeming horror aspect of the movie save for some death scenes.  It is pretty clear that re shoots were added and the story was changed from what it was supposed to be.  OK I lied, the other horror aspect of this movie is what can happen when a studio has a good director (Wes Craven) and then makes him change the movie and add random scenes because they think it would make the movie better.  It's pretty bad, especially the STUPID STUPID ending.  It preceded Weinstein's giant spider fetish in Wild Wild West by over 10 years.  I want to go play basketball now though.

The Misery Pool "Everybody swims in the misery pool, right Mr. Cat?" Yes, oh yes oh yes, at least once in a lifetime, everybody swims. "Can I try and see what it's like Mr. Cat?" You don't have to but if you wish, just for a bit, go be a fish but obey the sign and stay in the shallow end. The faster you're out the less sad you'll be. "But what about those people already in the deep end?" They disobeyed and chose to stay, far far away. They can't get out unless they swim back, back to the shallow end. "Won't they get sadder, wetter and stuck that far in the deep?" Indeed, that they will my, boy but they believe they won't. For they brought their towels made out of excuses and ripped by low self esteem. "Well that's no good, if they're stuck, can't we help them get on out?" No, no no,  they'll just pull you in and then say you are the one, the one that got them stuck. Then

                                                                        Dan Lacey Recently, I had the misfortune of learning a life lesson that I should have no doubt have realized a long time ago.   You see, being my sweet misanthropic self, I already dislike associating with most people and my default setting for those I don't know is to stay away because I have always found that in general, people are selfish and will only talk to you when they need something and this becomes the basis for that relationship unless one person alters the dynamic.  I've always had this perspective, from a male point of view because despite what you may have heard on Instagram, I was born a male and thus, that is the only viewpoint I have.  Still until recently, I have not thought of what general outlook I would have towards people if I were a woman.  Even then, that's a vague way to look at it since there are so many perspectives that come with being a woman like race, gender, disabili

A Quiet Place: Not Always Great, A Drunk Entry      After  a night out on the town drinking and whatnot, I decided to watch A Quiet Place which I had heard rave reviews about.  To be fair, I did not watch it with sober eyes and that will be reflected in the following.  It was ok.  Groundbreaking in it's use of sound?  Sure, I'll give it that as it used sound and silence effectively to build suspense.  Storywise it is a great concept, creatures that are blind but attack  everything on the basis of sound, then you throw a baby in it and things get interesting.  I mean, it was the quietest newborn baby I have ever seen but still, an interesting concept that may or may not be explored further in the sequel.      From necessity to exploitation, horror has always used sound and silence to aid the storytelling or as in most recent movies, to help with jump scares.  Back in the late 1910's when the Europeans were playing with horror imagery,  they relied on music to help

Monster Vs Monster      It's already Halloween time over here and Universal Halloween Horror Nights  has a;ready announced they're doing a Stranger Things maze again this year, along with a Holidayz in Hell maze.  It's spelled wrong so that means it's gotta be scary.  For 2018 they had a similar scare zone with twisted holiday things as monsters, I thought it was just ok. I hate Easter and I have always hated Uncle Sam, screw that guy I don't have any uncles that look like that.         Today it was announced that they are having a Frankenstein Vs the WolfMan maze and while this is exciting, Universal has let classic horror fans down one too many times, so we are weary. Let's start out with the positive, Frankenstein Vs The Wolfman is a great property to use and this could be a very awesome maze.  This is the first film that featured the horror crossover in an effort to cash in on the monster fever, Universal had these guys fight each other.  Yes,

                                                               "Don't Think Twice It's All Right" Well, it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe Even you don't know by now And it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe It'll never do somehow When your rooster crows at the break of dawn Look out your window, and I'll be gone You're the reason I'm a-traveling on But don't think twice, it's all right And it ain't no use in turning on your light, babe The light I never knowed And it ain't no use in turning on your light, babe I'm on the dark side of the road But I wish there was somethin' you would do or say To try and make me change my mind and stay But we never did too much talking anyway But don't think twice, it's all right So it ain't no use in calling out my name, gal Like you never done before And it ain't no use in calling out my name, gal I can't hear you any more I'm a-

2019,the year of  Pretty Predictable Oscar results. :)