Latest batch of goodies.

So, Amazon has a shitload of great little indie flicks for a buck-fitty and under, probably due to Blu-Ray taking over, so, I went to town, and here's the result.
Some nice recommendations for y'all.



The Man From Earth

Written by Jerome Bixby, who wrote the "Twilight Zone", where Billy Mumy is an evil little kid who wishes people into the cornfield, and the Mirror Universe one on Star Trek, and "Requiem For Methuselah", with the immortal, Flint.

This one, is set in modern day,  and is about  a college professor, who at his goodbye party, claims to be a 14,000 year old caveman.

No special effects, or spaceships, or explosions, it's all people just talking, and it's an order of magnitude better than most of the drek in the multiplexes.

Brainy sci-fi at last, enjoy.


Super

See here.

Yeah, Ellen Page is awesome, I gotta collect all her movies now...


Hard Candy

Speaking of Ellen Page being awesome...

So, it's Boltie vs. Night Owl as a pedophile.

That's all you need to know, and all I needed to know to grab this.

Fuckin' awesome.

"The Man From Earth", and "Hard Candy", would both easily adapt into stage plays.


He Was A Quiet Man

Christian Slater plays a twitchy misfit who works in a cubicle who dreams of shooting up the place, but one day, another guy shoots up the place, and he (Slater) shoots him, and becomes a hero.

Pretty damned good.

Gotta mention, an asshole Amazon reviewer kinda-almost-spoiled the ending for me.
I thought he did, but it wasn't exactly how he said.
His version of the ending was more like one of the alternate endings.
Fuck you, shitty Amazon reviewer.
Why don't they delete spoilery ones?
Thought they had review cops for that...

Whelp, no more one star reviews for me...


Zombieland

See here.

Yeah, finally got around to getting this one.


Hot Fuzz

Ditto the above.

Can't believe it took me this long to get this to go with my Shaun Of The Dead.

Simon Pegg is going to finally complete this trilogy ("The Cornetto Trilogy') with "The World's End", sometime next year.


High Tension

This is one that pretty much pivots on its twist ending, so, I can't say too much about it...

Okay, two girls go to a secluded country house of the parents of one of the girls, then a maniac shows up, and bad stuff starts to happen.
The girl on the cover is a lesbian.
The flick is French, and it's about damned time France put out a decent horror flick.
Italy, Japan, China, America, all the cool kids are doing it...

Oh, and don't read any fucking Amazon reviews, those sunzabitches love to spoil shit.


Bitter Feast

Saw a trailer for this in...I think "Hard Candy", and just had to have it.

Finally, the horror flick for foodies!

So, a chef gets a bad blog review, at the same time his cooking show is hanging by a thread, and his show gets cancelled, his restraunt fires him, and his cookware line goes kaput.

So, he snaps, and kidnaps the critic (played by "Josh", from Blair Witch) and subjects him to wacky tortures.

Naturally, things get out of hand...

Mario Batali from Food Network has a cameo role.
And, he's pretty cool.
Gets to swear his head off, and you can tell he loves it.


The People Under The Stairs

This came in a cheap 3 pack along with "Shocker", and "The Serpent And The Rainbow".

I needed to upgrade "Shocker", and hey, you get the others for free.

Well, less than that, given the whole set was two and some change.

This is the best of the lot.
Craven's most blatantly political allegory.

The psychopaths are clearly supposed to be Republicans, and white-bread America in general, the basement folks are meant to be everyone else, and individually, the guy is Reagan, and the wife is a redhead Joan Crawford.

I found it to be a knee-slapper, gore and all.
Love subversive shit like this.


The Serpent And The Rainbow

Eh, it's interesting, I'll give it that.

Probably the best Voodoo movie you'll ever see.
Every other movie that has Voodoo has some bullshit they call Voodoo, but it ain't.

At least this one's somewhat culturally authentic.

And...someone had to do the Voodoo movie, because Voodoo is the source of zombies.
You could do a lot worse than Wes Craven.

So..yeah, if we're gonna have this whole zombie genre, y'know, what better thing than to discuss real zombies?

Anyway, Bill Pullman (Spaceballs) goes down to Haiti to get a sample of the zombie drug for study by a big pharma company, and....hi-jinks ensue.


Shocker

So, Wes Craven signed away all his rights to "A Nightmare On Elm Street", to get it made, and naturally, he felt fucked over when it exploded forth into the whole franchise monster it became in the late 80's, so...he tried to make his own franchise-guy in Horace Pinker, to compete with, and even possibly beat Freddy.

Obviously, that didn't pan out...

It's a fun little film, I like it mostly out of childhood nostalgia.

The end bit where Horace and the hero travel through TV programs is the best bit, and what it all builds up to. There should have been more of it.

Well, there could have been with sequels, but...

Um...if you're going to make "the next Freddy", he needs a gimmick.
I mean, Freddy had the dreams, and Horace had electricity, and TV, but...Freddy also had the glove.

What did Horace have?
The electric chair burns on his head?
The hunting knife?
No...he replaced that with a Nazi knife from a WWII movie.
So, he didn't even have a trademark weapon.
Well...he had the "no more Mr. Nice Guy", catchphrase...

Nahh....there needed to be something more.
Also, I sense the MPAA neutered the violence some...

But, it's got the trademark Craven philosophizing, here, flipping off television.
No one listened, it's worse than it ever was.


DeadGirl

Well, here's a zombie flick with a twist we haven't seen yet....

And...it's actually surprising it took to the late 00's for someone to do it....

All right, so, these two teenage boys find and explore this abandoned hospital, and they find this naked zombie girl strapped down in the deepest bowels of the place, and the creepier of the two friends decides to use her as a sex toy, and invites his creepy pals down to join in on the fun.

The good kid struggles morally between what he feels is right, and keeping his only friends in this shitty podunk town.

Strangely,...despite it's unsettling theme of zombie necrophilia...it plays more like a dark coming of age teen drama.

I mean, shit, I KNEW little bastards like this.
You'll probably recognize people you knew too.

Good performances, interesting arty little film, if you can let yourself get past the surface stuff.


Feast

If you like "Evil Dead 2", and "From Dusk 'Til Dawn", I can't see you not liking this one.

Features Clu Gulager (from "A Nightmare On Elm Street 2", and "Return Of The Living Dead"), and directed by his son, John Gulager.

This could have been schlock in less competent hands, but, it's a fun little ride.

Gore hounds will delight and rejoice.
Recommended.

I got this literally for a dime, and...I see why, the disk came (used) in a lousy case, and scratched all to hell.
I have a spare player that has a crappy everything else, but better scratch correction than my PS2, so, I was just able to watch it.

I'm thinking of pitching it in favor of a decent package of the whole trilogy.


Hatchet

This one was really late delivery wise, and I'd given up, and started writing this review yesterday, but lo and behold, roundabout when I was typing out the chunk for "High Tension", the mailman rolls by, and drops it off.
So, I spent the rest of last night digesting the flick, and all the bonuses.

Anyhoo, it's pretty good, but part II is way better, and they're both better together.

This is an homage to 80's slasher horror, especially the Jasons.

Adam Green made this character/story up when he was 8 years old, so...hey, that gives me hope with Harry...

Kane Hodder stars as Victor Crowley, and...fuck it, Victor is way better than Jason, and Hatchet the duology is way better than all fucking eleven of the Jason flicks.

So, hooray for Kane Hodder, he's finally involved with something good!

Robert Englund is in this for like, a couple minutes at the beginning, as is Tony Todd (Candyman, The Man From Earth) , Richard Riehle (The Man From Earth, various Trek appearances), and Joel Murray (God Bless America).


Hatchet II

Like I said, way better than 1.

There's a 5 year gap in between the release of these, and Green's improved experience shows.

Tony Todd's role is expanded in this one, and the survivor girl from the last one is recast as Danielle Harris (the little girl from Halloween 5 grown up), and she's so much better than the other chick, it ain't funny.

Other horror stars include Tom Holland (director of Fright Night), R.A. Mihailoff (Leatherface in part 3), John Carl Buechler (effects man, and director of  Jason 7), and a quickie cameo by Lloyd Kaufman (the Toxic Avenger series, and also cameos in "Super")

Oh, and remember, this series crosses over with Hack/Slash.

It also links to "Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon", since a character throws in a reference to the town of Glenn Echo, and the legend of Leslie Vernon.

So, that puts the Hatchets and the Leslies (there will be a sequel) in continuity with each other, and with the other slashers they're a callback to.

Fun little duology, much moreso than (again) the Jasons.

Freddy's still the best though. ;)

But, between Victor, and Leslie, old-school horror is in pretty good hands.
Yay!


Aaah! Zombies!

 The first zom-com from the zombie's point of view.

A group of friends accidentally ingest toxic waste from a secret military experiment (in the form of soft-serve ice cream), and unbeknownst to them, die, and immediately come back as zombies.

Unbeknownst, because, they see and hear themselves, and each other, as regular human beings, and everyone else as operating at super speed, while normal humans see them as lumbering grunting zombies.

Along the way, everything strange that's a hint toward them being zombies gets rationalized away.

It's pretty much the premise played out for 90 minutes, no twists or turns, really.
It's a cute little flick, and the premise is interesting enough to check it out.

No real bonuses on the disk, that's a bummer.

It's no "Shaun Of The Dead", but...how many of 'em are?


The Gingerdead Man, and
Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion Of The Crust.

Well, it's a Full Moon Studios pic, so right off the bat, you know what you're getting into...

(See my prior rants on "Dark Angel: The Ascent", and "Shrunken Heads")

Well, the first one is a bit slow, but, you've got Gary fucking Busey as the guy who gets turned into the talking killer cookie, so...there you go, what more do you need?

The second one, there's no Busey, and it's really barely about Gingerdead man, the core plot is a self-parody of Full Moon, and Charles Band, and...it's a fucking riot.
I enjoyed this the most of the two.

They (Full Moon) seem to kind of know they suck...but...on the other hand, the Charlie Band parody character gives an enchanting uplifting speech justifying their existence that'll appeal to all us struggling underdogs out there.

It's....interesting.
A must-watch if you grew up on Full Moon flicks, for sure.

Oh, yeah, and the imaginary flick they're filming during Gingerdead's rampage is "Tiny Terrors 9", a parody of the "Puppetmaster", series, and that there are 8 of the suckers.

The parody puppets are Treasure Chest (a pirate with tits), Hemorrhoid (I couldn't make out the visual pun to this one), Knob Goblin (a wizard with a lawn gnome hat, a beard, fangs, and a bloody mouth), Percolator (a coffee pot robot with laser gun arms), Shit-for-brains (a kewbpie doll in overalls with a turd on its head), and Haunted Dildo (yep, exactly what it sounds like).

The summoning scene for these characters alone made me crack up, and was worth the price of the disk.

The villain in this is actually not Gingerdead, so much as an evil blog reviewer.
Well...I'll try not to take it personally, Charlie....


InKubus

Wyeehhll...I got it to be a Robert Englund fanboy...but...not worth it.

So, his lucky streak is broken, and it's a damn shame.
(See "Uncle Robert Saves The Day")

Oh, he's great in it, he's Robert fucking Englund, after all.

Just...everything else, including the plot, is pretty lame....

Well...at least there's "Moleman Of Belmont Avenue", still to be released, and a Leslie Vernon sequel up the pike for him.

So, yeah, I went from best to worst on the order with these.
You can see how I ranked 'em.

Aaand, that's all those...

Oh, yeah, also upgraded my copies of "American Psycho", and the first two "Tales From The Crypt", movies.
That's just something that needed doing...

So, yeah, check some of those out.
That's a fresh list for ya, kiddies.