Flowers in the Attic

I was going to subtitle this post "Guilty Pleasures" but that really goes without saying.  To girls of a certain age the novels of V.C. Andrews were as important to their development as Seventeen Magazine or the original Degrassi.  Well, maybe just to girls like me.  Andrew's Gothic novels served as a "gateway" for me into proper horror.  I will always hold them in my heart with affection, much like I will the film version of Flowers in the Attic that was released in 1987.

I chanced upon a Video Store going out of business sale.  Most of the good stuff was gone but they did have copy of Flowers available for 5 bucks.  What a joy to watch it again!!  The bad acting, the overacting, the stunt people that look nothing like the actors!  Kristy Swanson!!  Academy Award winner Louise Fletcher as Grandmother!!  Queen Bitch Victoria Tennant (on film, I am sure she is a lovely person) as Mother!! 

The four Dollanganger children, Chris, Cathy, Cory and Carrie are taken to their Grandmother's house after their Father dies in an accident.  Their Mother is going to try to win back her Father's love after royally pissing him off by marrying his Brother (this is V.C. Andrews, this kind of thing happens often.)  The children are locked in a room upstairs.  If Grandfather knows they exist, he will cut their Mother out of the will.  What the children don't know is that Mother has no intention of ever letting them leave that room. 

As I said, I was going to subtitle this "Guilty Pleasures."  But, upon research, the more appropriate subtitle would have been: "What could have been..."  Wes Craven was planning to direct this film, and he wrote a script that was so violent and "incest-laden" that V.C. Andrews herself rejected it.  The Producers ended up giving directing duties to Jeffrey Bloom.  I WANT TO SEE CRAVEN'S VERSION!!!!!!  They remake everything, why not remake this?

Dead Snow

Dead Snow is about Nazi Zombies.  That pretty much says it all.  I am wholly unfamiliar with the Nazi Zombie Genre but I love the fact that it exists.  Nazis are fucking scary.  Zombies are scary.  Put them together and you have two great tastes that taste great together.

But if all Nazi Zombie films are as boring as Dead Snow then I will take a pass.  It is rare that I say this, but this film could have really benefited from some boobs.  It does have one bizarre outhouse sex scene, but beyond that it was boring.  Boobs would have helped.  Message to the Pornographer that loves to post things in Chinese in my comments: Number One, just because I use the words boobs and penis a lot does not make it cool for you to post links to porn in my comment fields.  Number Two: At least please write your comments in English.  I am thinking of compiling them for a book.  I love it when you at least make an attempt to write about my post before you put your link to Mail Order Brides or whatever the hell it is.  I am going to call the book "Nonsensical things this person says about my blog before putting in his link to porn." 

Back to Dead Snow.  I was shocked that my Husband was not interested in watching this with me but he did not find Nazi Zombies that appealing.  My cat left after the outhouse scene.  So I was left alone to count how many films Dead Snow plays "homage" too.  I counted at least 10 with the most obvious ones being Shaun of the Dead and Evil Dead II.  So imagine those films with Norwegians and Nazis and there you go.  Seven friends (all medical students I guess, I wasn't playing close attention) go to a remote cabin in the snow covered mountains of Norway.  They drink beer, play Twister, and have sex in an outhouse.  A creepy Norwegian Mountain Man invades their party to warn them that "evil" exists in the mountains.  They ignore him and continue to listen to Norwegian Metal.  Soon they find a treasure chest of stolen Nazi loot.  Scooby Doo style this raises the Nazi Zombies from their snowy grave.  Hell ensues. 

Dead Snow has some good gore gags and a really interesting avalanche scene which I found fascinating because avalanches, along with Nazis and Zombies, really scare me.  Come to think of it, Norwegian medical students kind of scare me too.  They have sex in outhouses!!  If all the guys had been wearing turtlenecks I might have called this the scariest film I have ever seen. 

Favorite 6 Vincent Price Movies..

I couldn't pick just 5, hard as I tried.  In honor of Vincent Price's recent birthday-here are my top 6 Vincent Price movies.  I actually love just about every film Price has been in, but these are the ones I watch again and again.  (Lack of coffee and total exhaustion make me a very bad poet.)

#6: Witchfinder General aka The Conqueror Worm 1968.  Directed by the awesome and gone to soon Michael Reeves, Witchfinder General is Price at his scariest.  Plus, I covet the hairdo.

#5 The Fall of the House of Usher 1960.  Corman, Price, and Matheson.  Wonderfully goth icky, melodramatic, and beautiful. 

#4 The Abominable Dr. Phibes 1971.  This may be Price's most "camp" performance (Brady Bunch Hawaii episode comes a close second.)  It is still a wonder to behold.  Price is the center of all the Art Deco attention as Dr. Phibes, a grief stricken genius who is a precursor to Jigsaw.  If only the Saw films looked this groovy. 

#3 House on Haunted Hill 1959.  Price plays a charming, eccentric, wealthy wife killer in this classic Directed by William Castle.  One scene in this film made me jump out of my seat, no "Emergo" necessary.

#2 House of Wax 1953.  This was the first Vincent Price film I ever remember seeing, and it started a lifelong fascination not only with Price, but with Wax Museums.  I can't go to one without imagining what may be buried beneath all that wax.

#1: The Last Man on Earth 1964.  Based on my favorite book, "I am Legend" by Richard Matheson, Last Man is Price at his best.  He literally has to carry the entire film on his shoulders.  The film is sad and scary as hell.

I have to include two non-Horror honorable mentions.  Leave her to Heaven from 1945 and Laura from 1944.  Both films star Gene Tierney and feature Price in supporting roles.  Laura, of course, is a Film Noir classic.  Leave her to Heaven features one of the craziest characters in film history.  Tierney's "Ellen" is completely bat-shit crazy and pretty evil.  If you haven't, check out this Technicolor masterpiece!

Why? Martyrs

Welcome to a new segment called "Why?"  The weeks segment is the proposed remake of the excellent French film Martyrs.  To borrow from Seth and Amy: Really?  Check out the article from Brutal as Hell: http://www.brutalashell.com/2010/05/pascal-laugiers-martyrs-to-get-unnecessary-us-remake/

For a recent review of this excellent film, check out The Film Connoisseur: http://filmconnoisseur.blogspot.com/2010/05/martyrs-2008.html

And if I had ever bothered to label my posts back in the day you could check out my review.  It exists somewhere in the Netherlands.  Take my word for it: f'ing good movie.  No need for a remake.

Happy Birthday Price and Lee

Horror fans were blessed when on this day, not one, but two horror legends were born.  Enjoy....





Yes, Christopher Lee just put out a Metal album.

Hellraiser III: Hell on earth

There is a secret song at the center of the world, Joey, and its sound is like razors through flesh.

There are some things in this world I just can't believe, like the fact that Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth was made in 1992.  I actually remember 1992 and I don't recall it being as eighties-rific as this film.  I mean in one scene, Terry Farrell, who plays Investigative Journalist and Final Girl Joey, wears some kind of polka dot shoulder pad/balloon pants combo on an outing and I don't think she was wearing it to be ironic since I don't think her character is capable of irony. 

But I digress.  Let's get to the matter at hand.  Hellraiser III did not totally suck.  Yes, the classic Cenobites (save Pinhead) are MIA, replaced by new ones that kill with CD's and cocktail shakers.  I kid you not.  I guess this was filmed in the nineties, otherwise the CD Cenobite would have been killing people with cassette tapes and 8 track. 

The aforementioned Joey is trying to land a big story. While covering the emergency room beat, she witnesses a young man with chains attached to his body brought in.  He quickly explodes.  Joey, sensing that she might be on to something (smart girl) tracks down the young girl who brought him in.  She is a club girl named Terri and she is in possession of a mysterious box, which she claims is responsible for the young mans death.  The young man stole the box from club owner J.P., played by Kevin Bernhardt who would have had a great career as an eighties uber-villian.  J.P. is the owner of the "Pillar of Souls," a really cool piece of goth art that houses Pinhead and, apparently, some souls.  J.P., who is a class A asshole, unleashes Pinhead and a whirlwind of shit ensues. 

Meanwhile, Joey has shacked up with Terri (I can't tell if they were having a lesbian affair or not, but it is suggested) and she starts having dreams of an Army Officer who looks a lot like Pinhead, minus the pins.  This Oficer tells her that she must send Pinhead back to hell and forget about her career as a journalist because she is really terrible.  We see a lot of Doug Bradley in this film, both as Pinhead and his human self.  This is probably why I liked the film, because of Bradley.  The gore is surprisingly subdued, and as I said the other Cenobites are sorely missed, but compared to some of the other Hellraiser films, this one is not half bad.  The majority of the action takes place in J.P.'s club, The Boiler Room.  This is the coolest club in existence.  Not only does it have awesome goth art and goth kids everywhere, there is a room with a live eighties Metal band, and another room with a sophisticated restaurant with classical music.  Plus, if you go there is a very real chance that you will get slaughtered and/or turned into a deadly CD wielding Cenobite.  Cool beans.  Now enjoy some Legos.

Sorority Row: 5 bucks well spent

It's not often that I will buy a movie I have never seen before, but I am at the magical land that is my parent's house and I needed something to do while they watched "Law & Order" and "Castle." So I bought Sorority Row for 5 bucks at the video store of my youth. I watched it with my parent's cat Sam whom, much like my own cat, has a high tolerance for horror films. He did leave after Rumer Willis screamed for the 50th time, and I can hardly blame him. But, in all, I liked this movie. It kind of has a "Sex and the City" vibe to it, except the girls are in College and there is about 100% more killing and blood.

It is quickly established that these girls are Bitches (with a capital B) and most likely deserve to die.  Luckily, the film obliges and kills a couple of their dick boyfriends along the way.  Main Bitch, Jessica (played by the hysterical Leah Pipes) orchestrates a prank to get back at a guy who had cheated on one of her Sisters (in the Sorority sense.  That's why it is called Sorority Row.  I did not belong to a Sorority in College and hence I never accidentally killed one of my Sisters in a prank gone bad. I did not have the full College experience.)

Yes, so the prank goes bad and one of the Sisters dies. The other Sisters, which include Briana Evigan as Cassidy the good girl and Rumer Willis as Ellie the screamer, dump the body down an old Well and march forward to their futures of becoming Senator's wives and Oxycontin addicts.  Only someone knows their secret, and on the night of their graduation that someone is coming for revenge with a tricked out tire-iron.  Which I want bad.

This film has some wicked one-liners and some oral-fixation type death scenes that are quite inventive.  Leah Pipes, as main Bitch Jessica, steals the show and was the only one I wasn't rooting for to die.  Problems: the way the film is shot.  I mean, some of the camera angles are bizarre and the lighting is horrible. Rather than add to the sense of unease (of which there is none) it only distracts one from the story.  The other problem is when the killer is finally revealed, it makes no fucking sense at all.  It might as well have been some random dude off the street trying to kill everyone. 

This film isn't scary nor is it a particularly good thriller, but it was fun and it beats the hell out of 2 hours of "Law & Order."