The Ghost and Mrs. Demur

After her seven-year-old son drowns, mystery novelist Rachel Carson (played by perennial hottie Demi Moore) can’t write successful novels anymore. So her husband and real estate best friend tell her to go to a cottage cliff rental in the Scottish Highlands where everyone talks like Scotty from Star Trek and smells like sheep clippings. It’s hoped this R&R will help her reconcile her grief and start making money again for spending purposes.

Once situated in Scotland, unusual events occur: The refrigerator magnet letters form messages from her dead son and there are brief flashes of ghostly figures and sheep poop everywhere you step. While staying in the stink village of Ingonish Cove, Rachel notices a light coming from the abandoned lighthouse within small dingy rowing distance across the wind-battered inlet.

So without a life vest, she rows there, meets a young man named Angus (isn’t everyone in Scotland named Angus, even the women?) and the two start hanging out ’n stuff. But wait just a Scooby Doo moment — the other villagers tell Rachel that Angus died years ago and that no one lives at the lighthouse, every since the bulb burnt out and no one wanted to change it. 

This, of course, appeals to her mystery-seeking nature. So she has sex with the guy to prove everyone wrong. But those messages from her dead son keep showing up as if to warn her of…something. She calls her girlfriend who flies to Scotland to have a girl’s night out with wine, fashion tips and comparing notes about doing it with ghost lighthouse keepers. 

Something isn’t quite adding up, though, so she digs a little more and with the help of her dead son’s communiques, stumbles across the truth: Angus isn’t a ghost at all, the big phony. He was hired by Demi’s husband and girlfriend (who are having a bare naked affair) to drive her mad so that they could control all of her spending money. Even real ghosts wouldn’t be that conniving.

Rachel/Demi is bagpipe hot and while she has sex and doesn’t show her fun parts, you’ll still like looking at her for hours at a time. As for Half Light (2006), I probably won’t be looking at it for anymore hours at a time. I wanted rot-faced ghosts and international intrigue, but all I got was a tepid mystery. (Given the movie’s location, it’s practically an insult to not factor in the Loch Ness Monster, if even for a cameo.) I still heart Scotland, though.

Demonic Booze ’n Smoke Monster

It sucks when you die and then wake up on a deserted beach, cold gray weather, a lighthouse with beams that give you mega migraines, no 7-Elevens™ within sight, and satanic black smoke exploding with a bang all around you. To top it off, there’s a shack-y house nearby with three girls and one lucky guy. They’re dead, too, but don’t care as they’re having sex with their clothes on (is that even legal?), drinking gallons of vodka from an endless supply of bottles, and blasting dumb rave music while they do all of the above. Oh, and there’s a giant sorta electric bubble all around the house and its getting smaller. Time for more vodka!

Doesn’t take long for one of ‘em to figure out they’re dead and in Hell’s waiting room. But why, oh why are they there? Connecting long-shot dots, all of five people were at an over-capacity nightclub, dancing like idiots, when the roof caved in. All washed up on the beach and took over the abandoned house to party, drink massive amounts of refreshing adult beverages and have clothed sex.

While this is going on, one girl keeps disappearing and reappearing. Wish I could do that. Then the smartest girl figures out they each did something not cool, which put them in this predicament. Arguments ensure and the one guy yells and curses and ends up on the beach, where the demonic smoke monster has non-consensual relations with the back side of his swim suit area. The girls all think this is funny. It actually kinda is as he’s a loudmouth punk.

They end up killing holler boy and manage to catch the demon smoke monster in a wooden crate. In order to get it to answer their questions, they douse it with booze. Pffft! — I do the same thing all the time. They discover they’re all screwed and that the sorta electric bubble is gonna put a stop to all their groaning and moaning.

AfterDeath (2015) is an interesting but kinda confusing horror movie in that you really don’t know what’s going on during the grand finale. Had something to do with one of ‘em needing to go to Heaven before the bubble bursts their bubble, and one going to that…other place. So yeah, you do get to know why the main character is there (I really want to spoil this for you, but I’m feeling charitable today), and while the movie does end rather abruptly, it left one blazing question unanswered: where can one get the crate that never runs out of booze?

20,000 Fathoms of Fun

Atomic bomb tests in the Arctic Circle defrosts a gigantic reptile creature-o-saurus (official name: Rhedosaurus). This monster is nearly 100-feet long, walks on all fours, has buzz-saw sharp things on his back, is several stories tall, and judging by his diet — shark, octopus, lighthouse, diving bell, roller coaster tracks, humans — is not a picky eater.

Hibernating in ice for 100 million years, the thawed beast travels towards Manhattan, stopping off in Nova Scotia to eat a lighthouse as though it were a sugar cookie. Once in the city, Rhedosaurus wanders Times Square and takes a hole to the neck via a good ’ol United States Army bazooka. (Way to treat tourists, New York.)

Red’s blood emits a virulent germ that contaminates the very streets where people used to live, litter, and now die. Rhedosaurus scorecard: 180 dead, 1,500 injured, $3,000,000 in collateral damage. Scientists determine that if a radioactive isotope can be fired into the monster’s open neck hickey, that might stop him from racking up more kill points.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) is THE monster movie that inspired Godzilla (1954), coming out a full year before Japan copied the hell out of us. Good thing Godzilla was so cool, or else we’d be armed with more than an isotope, if you catch my drift.

Ghost Shark: Bites From Beyond

2013’s Ghost Shark is memorable for a number of reasons, sub-budget special effects/dialogue/acting notwithstanding. But first you have to ignore the plot, which gives Ghost Shark its rai·son d’ê·tre.

After being fed a hand grenade thrown from a fishing boat by redneck a-holes, Ghost Shark’s corpse floats into a half-submerged cave where early settlers performed satanic rituals. (Okay, what?) It is here Dead Shark is converted into a glowing, transparent kill-beast able to trans-morph out of any body of water, be it a fire hydrant, bath tub, swimming pool, mud puddle and even a bottled water drinking fountain. And this is exactly what makes Ghost Shark’s 84 minutes of dumbassery entertaining.

GS crashes a pool party and devours teenagers. GS opens wide and swallows little kids on a Slip ’n Slide™, an unsuspecting youngster shooting down the shark’s throat as if a human oyster on the half shell. A mayor’s assistant pouring himself a cool and refreshing paper cup of thirst quenching death after GS leaves the bottled water container and is delivered to the assistant’s insides, where it splits the guy in half during the chewing out. (This scene alone is worth an Academy Award.)

Time wasters until Ghost Shark straps on the feedbag: a drunk lighthouse keeper, savaged by guilt for killing his wife in said satanic cave years ago who seeks revenge on GS. Not sure how that works. The smack-talking mayor going on a Jaws-driven balance-of-justice boat ride. (His crunchy death – being sucked down a watery toilet – as a true feel-good moment.) Tthen there’s the never-ending parade of young girls in bikinis and a really, really fat guy riding a jet ski that looked like it might get permanently lodged into FG’s ass crack on the next wave.

Back to the bikinis: Most horror films feature young gals in their 20s, probably still in community college or of X-rated movie age. Not so with Ghost Shark; The girls running around in kite string swimsuits are barely (heh) in high school. I felt somewhat dirty watching Ghost Shark make fish bait out of jail bait. I would’ve showered my shame away afterward, but hey – Ghost Shark possibly coming through the nozzle.

P.S. Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws (pending 2015) is not a sequel or related to Ghost Shark. It’s an indie movie (i.e., made with two New Zealand guys and a Best Buy™ video camera) that was supposed to have come out in 2010. Time to put down the Foster’s mates, and show us some of your Down Under horror. Okay, that didn’t come out right.

Getting Head From Monsters

There’s a prehistoric biped sea creature that’s terrorizing the “nothing ever happens here” Piedras Blanchas coastal town with not one Spanish person living there. The monster may look like a man in a rubber suit, but that’s probably because you take drugs.

Deducing the beast “came from the bottom of the ocean,” a handsome young educated dude, who’s been mackin’ on the hot young daughter of the grizzled lighthouse keeper whose been feeding the monster, is leading the charge to capture the anomaly for scientific and/or profit purposes.

When the free food stops, the monster has no choice but to venture further into town and decapitate whoever looks like food, which is EVERYONE.

You never see the beheadings (heck, most the time the creature is just casting shadows and making hungry stomach noises). But the movie’s best – and most infamous – moment comes when the thing wanders through town holding a fresh, butcher cut noggin.

The Monster of Piedras Blanchas (1959) has more talk than action, which is still more exciting than the showdown at the lighthouse. (Three enter, two leave – over the side.) Still, for your drug-induced entertainment, a man in a rubber suit!