Jersey Devil vs Carnival Freaks

The Jersey Devil, a red-eyed creature with bat wings, a horse face, hooves, and a spiked tale, was caught and sold to a freak show carnival, where the circus ringmaster plans on exploiting the flesh-hungry beast for monetary gains. I feel this is a good business model.

Meanwhile, the small town Sheriff is warned by the local “fire ’n brimstone” preacher to keep the “Lord’s mistakes” out of their bible-fearing community. That just seems prejudice to me; who could possibly be threatened by a man with two faces or a Leopard Woman with spots all over her body? At least she uses a litter box.

Assured that the mythical beast is sedated and poses no threat to the community or easily-stained clothing, the show goes on. You are simply not gonna believe what happens next. During the performance, the monster gets loose and goes after some teens in the woods. Yeah, I totally didn’t see it coming, either.

Like the Jersey Devil, the pastor is out for blood. He rallies all the gun-toting red necks in town for an outdoor BBQ with the freak show cast being the grilled treats. The pastor manages to kill the flying devil, its “dead” body dragged outside where the locals can have their picture taken with it. Wouldn’t be fun if Jersey just laid there, so it comes back to life and goes back to taking lives.

 

Speaking of, the creature, about the size of a regular devil dog, but with wings and bigger teeth, doesn’t look too digital. This is good, because he has a reputation to live up to. If he doesn’t do his job, then the easily-frightened folks of Pine Barrens will start believing in Bigfoot or some other tourist generating monster. And that’s not good business sense.

Flying around like a bomber seagull, Jersey buzzes the now-flaming carnival and ends up face to face with the preacher. The outcome? Let’s just say the Holy Man is now a “hole-y” man. Heh. In all, Carny (2009) has more blood than originally forecast, with several decent dismemberments and real-time autopsies as performed by JD.

Satan’s Serpent vs. Rap

All it took to summon a snake creature from the butthole of Hell was the Kulev Stick and some incredibly dense teens.

The I.D.Ts driving around in a monster truck plow over some guy’s wife. Insta-widow guy uses the Kulev Stick (a No. 2 lead pencil with mystical properties) to bring forth a bus-long half/snake, half alligator. This “snalligator” is called Vengeance, and puts the squeeze on whoever’s likeness is drawn on special toilet paper.

Taking the framework from Pumpkinhead (1988), LockJaw (aka Carnivorous, Carnivorous DMX and Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent/2008) changes the landscape only slightly by adding a rap guy (DMX) with thug tattoos and a bazooka (!) to do battle with the snalligator.

The only sex scene has the blonde supermodel going to Boner City while wearing her under garments, the movie’s best special effect. The wiggly beast doesn’t have any lines, but manages to kill/eat several people. The bazooka, it should be noted, takes second place to a homemade weapon one of the teens (“with an engineering degree”) builds: a table lamp with kitchenware taped to it.

While it never actually gets used, I bet that thing would’ve caused some serious damage. The only other impairment occurs from watching this painfully bad movie.

Space Termites

After 40 years in hyper sleep during an exploratory space journey, Ivan Hood (played by the immortal Bruce Campbell) can’t wait to see the future.

He envisioned a utopian society and making lots of money pimpin’ out his skills as a chiropractor. But what he and his space mates of two chicks and another guy discover is that the Earth has been appropriated by seven-foot tall termites that have enslaved the human race to work in sawmills, harvesting lumber to ship back to the bug planet as take-out food.

Ivan escapes the insect overlords and encounters longhairs living in the woods outside of the reach of termite tyranny. These pacifists won’t help him overthrow the aliens because they like their lifestyle of hanging out in the forest and drinking potato liquor and listening to some crunchy grooves. Just as I suspected – future hippies.

Through their slacker conversations Ivan finds out the President lives in the Cascade Mountains and will one day lead the revolt against the buggers. So Ivan and a few hippies (including one really hot chick in a leather thong) go to find him. And find him they do, living with the rest of Congress and being nothing more than talking gas bags as they can’t seem to pass a bill banning illegal aliens.

But it’s all too flat as the entire plot of Alien Apocalypse (2005) runs out of space originality after the first ten minutes. If you’re not gonna spend time on head-eating violence, then we need to get back to the other important plot message: the chick in the leather thong.

P.S. Looks like District 9 (2009) borrowed more than a cup of sugar from Alien Apocalypse for their alien’s termite look…

 

The Butcher: Pleased To Meat You

In The Butcher (2007), a horror movie dubbed “too shocking to be released in its own country of Korea,” kidnapped victims are tied up in a dirty warehouse awaiting an explicitly graphic, violent death while a snuff film producer maps out his camera angles. Just another day at the office.

Each victim has a video camera strapped to his/her head so that footage from the dismemberments can be used in the final cut. (Hey, that worked as a pun!) Do the victims get film credits? No. I feel this is entirely unfair.

A killer wearing a real pig’s head over the top of his real head has a chainsaw, hammer and a massively blood-stained apron. I don’t care how many times you wash that thing, you’re not gonna be able to get it 100% clean.

A man and his wife are dragged in for their scene, a hammer to the head to settle them down. Pig Head proceeds to have a less-than-romantic scene with the back of the male victim’s swimsuit area. Love is in the air.

Begging for his wife’s life, the film director tells him if he can come up with fresh ideas for killing his spouse, he can go free. It takes all of two seconds for the guy to sell out his spouse with ridiculously nasty killing suggestions. The director likes where his head is at and frees him, leaving the wife screaming in accompaniment to the musical chainsaw.

Bloodied, his sitting area a little tender for some reason, and with the camera still attached to his head, he stumbles out into the bright sunshine. It’s nice that such a pointless and brutally graphic film can end on such a happy note.

Horror With A Mortgage

A new family (guy marries a chick with kids, like that’s a good idea) moves into the ferociously haunted Amityville horror house, where a mass murder went down a year ago. (Note to whomever: it wasn’t referred to that in the real estate brochures.)

Shortly thereafter, spook ass events happen at 3:15AM every flippin’ night: noises, thumpings, cross turnings… Sounds just like my neighbors. But all this paranormal stuff is making George Lutz, the newly married dad with a step family, seriously gooned out. Especially since he’s the only one who hears the demonic commotion.

Apparently, the house was built atop an ancient Native American burial ground. That’s like putting ketchup on an ice cream sundae. A discovered secret room in the basement reveals the source of all the evil angst and, along with the swarms of flies in the upstairs room, gives the Lutz’ good cause for abandonment.

Other paranormal fun time activities include a flying pig named Jodie (I would’ve named it Hover Pork), a chair that rocks by itself (I do the same thing) and hot and cold running demons. The Amityville Horror (1979) also comes complete with one of the more iconic horror movie soundtracks this side of The Exorcist (1973).

So if you’re gonna be forced from your house by evil spirits, you may as well have a little reconciliation music to go with your self-exploding furniture, basement oil pit and hover porkers.

Blood-Soaked Lingerie

Queen Mara is so hammy she should work in a deli. This over-acting/over-enunciating/over-mascara applying witch leader of a coven (consisting of nearly dressed supermodels) holds drum-accompanied stabbing rituals, yells out her spells and commands demons to do her bidding. I do the same thing while drunk, but don’t wear nearly as much makeup as she does. Except that ONE TIME.

Anyway, Queen Mara is hell-bent on exacting revenge for hundreds of years of witch burnings. She employs voodoo to facilitate said retribution. And she can channel the Indian spirit of Tonka Trucka, or whatever his name is, as well as another entity called Jennifer.

At least that’s what it sounded like; I kept falling asleep as this movie is seriously boring and fails to hold interest due to the She-Devil supermodels failure to discard superfluous clothing during their blood-letting rituals.

Even though the admittedly cool titled Blood Orgy of the She-Devils “cult” movie was made in 1972 and has more cheese than a store that sells cheese, I expected a lot more from Ted V. Mikels, the guy who gave us The Corpse Grinders (1971) and the tremendously flavorful The Worm-Eaters (1977). Sigh.

Journey to the Center of My Mind

Taking a few days off for overt introspection, a little personal grooming and a journey of self-discovery with the aid of alcohol.

Some might call it a “brain recess,” others a “summer vacation.” Those somes would be wrong. It’s more like a sitting in a dive bar for 12 hours, a portal if you will, to access the center of the universe. Only when one is overtly assisted by booze and pees his or someone else’s pants in public will the secrets reveal themselves.

Superman does this all the time.

Death Hugs

All it took was driving a bus school with five kids in it through a toxic chemical plant steam cloud to turn them into adorable death zombies. Where you’d think blue or possible purple smoke would get better results, not so in this case. (Note: the danger smog only works on kids.)

The sheriff and the soon-to-be-roasted townsfolk find out the kids – who look like they used to but with black fingernails – inflict fatal microwave burns on anyone they hug, resulting in yellow smoke shooting out of the victims as well.

For the next 73 minutes it’s evenly-staged death hugs and Sheriff Billy running all over the place in search of the children who have taken up smoking. Point blank rifle blasts only knock the brats down as they get right back up and are ready for a big ’ol hug.

Tedious, even by 1980s’ standard, is the first thing that comes to mind while watching The Children (1980) a sorta lurid and slow-paced cheapo, though it’s rare to see kids taking a direct shotgun blast to the chest. Oddly, I found that to be quite entertaining.

 

The Horror of Being Rich

The Curse of the Living Corpse is social commentary horror movie made in 1964 about spoiled aristocrats in 1893. Spoiled aristocrats is an oxymoron.

After their disgustingly rich father dies, the surviving family members go after the inheritance like me at an all-you-can drink buffet. The millionaires’ sons and daughters are the ultimate Republicans: snobbish, greedy, manipulating and scheming.

But even though he’s dead, dad has the last word. Each relative must perform a task lasting one year, after which they get their money. These tasks are simple and designed as safety measures in case dad needs to come back. (Being buried alive was his greatest fear.) Failing to do the tasks results in each of the ding-dongs being done in by their own worst fears: burning, drowning, having their aristocratic face scarred and disfigured, made to eat Hamburger Helper™…

The playboy, needing cash to pay off his gambling debts, looks like Clark Gable, but not quite as handsome. Kinda like a used car salesman version of Clark Gable. He makes out with the hottie servant (“You would carelessly deny rank its privilege?”) and schemes to speed up the inheritance process. This results in the servant’s head being cut off and served on a dinner platter. Eeww!

Roy Scheider is a full-blown alcoholic playboy and taunts the family members with alcohol-fueled taunts. Soon, each starts dying in the fashion they fear most. (For me it’s being forced to drink Zima™.) The caped figure roaming the mansion and estate grounds suggests dad has come back from the grave and is supremely p*ssed. After 30 minutes you should be able to figure out who’s doing all the burning, cutting, drowning, stabbing. The trick is doing it without falling asleep (guilty as charged).

This was Roy’s first movie. He did others, but the only one that matters is Jaws (no, not Jaws II/1978 because that one sucked hard). Candace Hilligoss plays a terrified crying wallflower. You may remember her from the 1962 horror creeper, Carnival of Souls. You don’t? Then I just now lost all respect for you.

Looking Dead Ahead

After coming out of a five-year coma induced by a car wreck, school teacher Johnny Smith (great name – he’ll fit right in) wakes to find his fiancee has moved on and married and plopped out a kid. He also discovers he has post and pre-cognition, meaning when he makes touchy with you, he knows all about your past, present and future. It wouldn’t be good for either of us if Johnny touched me.

Sure, he helps people with his gift (people rescued from a burning house, kid saved from drowning, helping cops solve a grisly murder mystery), but he’s shunned as though he were a modern day witch. He kinda is.

A chance handshake with a visiting politician reveals the Republican goes on to be elected President of the United States (a fun and relaxing job), and sees him launching a nuclear strike against Russia, thereby bringing on a holocaust of biblically foretold proportions. Good – I don’t like Russia. They don’t know how to spell “soup.” Johnny’s plan is to assassinate the front-runner and stop the future from happening.

The Dead Zone (1983) is one of the better Stephen King adaptations, loaded with face-pinching tenseness and flavorful impending doom. Could Johnny (played by the insanely cool Christopher Walken) tell if a Lottery ticket was a winner by touching it? Man, that’d be seriously way cool. Moreso if he taught me how to do it. That would rock.