Freddy's Friday Night Dance Party!: All Treat Edition!

Man, am I feeling really down tonight…all the kids at school are nothing but yuppie jerk offs, and because of that dumb jock, Tim Hainy, I got chocolate milk all over my best maroon and white baseball tee. To make things worse, thanks to those idiot football losers, half the girls in the school almost saw my skin-flute and my full - and incredibly white - naked ass today. But the cherry on top of this shit sundae has got to be the greatest rock sta…no, scratch that, the greatest musician of all time, as well as my idol and object of affection, Sammi Curr, died in a fire today. Man, this sucks sooo bad! Sammi was the only person that understood me. He was the only one that could make all of this better.

There is one good thing that came out of today's many un-radical events, and thanks to my buddy, DJ Nuke, I now have in my possession the only existing copy of Sammi Curr's last recording. If anything can lift me out of this funk, it's the sounds of Sammi's voice. He understands where I'm coming from, he knows who I really am deep inside, and together, we can take down all of those stupid jocks. It's just you and me, Sammi, in my bedroom, all alone, and together we will rock this party all night long!!  It's like you always said, Sammi…rock's chosen warriors will rule the apocalypse, so let's rock.

Trick or Treat is the title track for the 1986 horror-METAL!! classic (well, maybe not classic…), Trick or Treat. The entire soundtrack was performed by British heavy metal band, Fastway, who would later release the Trick or Treat OST as their fourth studio album. The music is decent for what it is, I mean, it's certainly dated, but it does capture a time in my life that I will always look back on fondly.

Trick or Treat is a shit fart of a film, but it's super fun and the level of entertainment that is reached with how bad it can be at times is what makes the movie a rewarding watch. However, I do enjoy Trick or Treat a little more than I should for how it does really bring me back to a time of being a rebellious youth who was constantly listening to Heavy METAL!! in my badass basement bedroom covered in Megadeth and Anthrax posters. This was a time when I would sit through 3 hours of The Ball waiting for a decent video. A time when I would pretend my GI Joe Cobra Raven was a guitar, a guitar I rocked like a motha fucka!!! I seriously did. Nevertheless, my love for METAL!!  never resulted in me staring longingly at any male lead singer of any band. Well, maybe Lemmy, but he's like just so dreamy, how could I not?

Goosebumps at 33: Calling All Creeps

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Calling All Creeps!

Taken from the 50th book in the series, Calling All Creeps aired on February 15th, 1997 in the show’s second season. This terrifying time around, the episode's focus is on Ricky Beamer, a stereotypically dorky kid that sees a chance to get revenge on his arch nemesis, Tasha (don't call me John) McClain. You see, Tasha had Ricky kicked off the school newspaper, claiming he's a creep, a nickname that would begin to stick with the rest of Ricky's classmates. This is more than enough to push creep…err, I mean Ricky over the edge and into a world where his mind is plagued by chaotic vengeance.
There are plenty of great ways to ruin someone's life after they have done you wrong. Putting a flaming bag of poop on their front porch, cutting their brake line, drowning their dog, killing their family, but Ricky, oh that Ricky, he goes one-step further. He sneaks into the school after hours and adds a special message to the upcoming edition of the school's paper, a message 'calling all creeps' to give Miss Tasha McLain a phone call after midnight. However, this disturbing act backfires, and the phone number in the message is switched to Ricky's, leaving him with numerous late night phone calls from random creeps.

It's really tough to follow-up the masterwork known as The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight, and while Calling All Creeps is kind of terrible in comparison, it is entertaining in the silliest of ways. The best way to describe this episode is this one is more along the lines of a cheap B-Movie. If you can appreciate a bad film, one that is so corny and filled with hysterical dialogue, amazingly whacky looking creatures and a goofy pod-people inspired premise using cookies, then Calling All Creeps is worth the twenty minutes of time it wastes. 

Where this episode shines the strongest in the "I cannot believe I'm watching this, but I'm so glad I am" department, are some of the characters and the dialogue that comes along with them. While pretty much everyone in the school picks on Ricky, there are three main bullies - apart from Tasha McLain - that give that poor creep the hardest of times. It just so turns out that these three bullies (one of them played by Matthew Lemche, brother of Kris, who stared in The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight!) actually moonlight as real creeps, but their day job is clearly one that consists of delivering incredible dialogue and fierce punishment to turds like Ricky, and all of it in under thirty minutes. Battle cries are sung, such as "Creeps rule! Creeps WILL rule!!" and "Humans are the past, creeps are the future!" Preach on, brother, preach on!
Still, the best part with the bullies comes early on when one of them instructs the onion chomping other one to - "breath on him, Wart!" which almost knocks poor Ricky unconscious. I mean, the guy's name is Wart, so that has got to be some serious  stank coming from his onion hole. To top things off, they really push the boundaries of decency and force Ricky to sing a song. Oh, but not just any song, mind you, this is a tune that is so terrible, that it can do no less than ruin lives. That song is, Mary Had A Little Lamb. Are you starting to see where this show is going yet?

Tasha McLain isn't much better, but it isn't her dialogue that is impressive so much as it's the pure fact that she has the balls to make fun of anyone when she's looking like she just ate a handful of rickets and screws. She truly brings the pain with her looks, that's for sure. With all that said, there is an important lesson to be learned with this episode, but I unfortunately missed it, so I won't be playing the sage for anyone tonight. The only higher thought I have now is…
"What's in store for me in the next episode of Goosebumps?"

and

"How do I end this review now without anyone noticing?"
*Looks away and pretends to see another review over yonder…walks off awkwardly but with style*  

Intruder (1989): Instant Circumcision

1989's Intruder is a somewhat under-known Slasher film that indirectly had a major impact on horror cinema (and the genre in general) at the time it was released. To ensure an R rating, Intruder was unleashed on home video with a whopping five minutes of footage cut from the film, something of which was done without director Scott Spiegel's knowledge. All of the footage removed from the film consisted of incredibly graphic gore effects done by KNB, essentially leaving Intruder a shell of a film; a Slasher with no slash, if you will. This was an era when Horror VS the MPAA was a major battle, and censorship of the genre in general was at its worst.

Intruder would make another censorship splash with its gory set pieces, but this time in a much different way and certainly in a fashion that would be much bigger than the film ever was. [The real] Goerzone magazine came out with their March issue (issue number 6, to be exact), and what would follow would greatly hinder the presence that both Gorezone and parent magazine, Fangoria, would have on store shelves. Issue 6 featured a publicity shot from Intruder; a shot that came from the film's best and goriest death scene: a man's face cut in half with a meat cutter. To say it is one of the raddest cover's of a genre magazine ever is an understatement, but parents and ultraconservative do-gooders certainly didn't feel the same way when they saw this face looking them in the face at convenience stores:

Numerous complaints quickly resulted in Gorezone being banned from the shelves of all Circle K stores, and with the chain being the second biggest convenience store in the country at the time, this meant a circulation drop of several thousand copies for the magazine. Gorezone editor Tony Timpone was told by the publisher that the future covers needed to be less violent, and if they were to be violent, they should involve monsters and creatures, not humans. It's like the old adage that when a horror film's blood is green or black you can get away with murder, as opposed to if it were actually red. We all know that red blood equals real, and it's the realism that frightens and harms our children, turning them into the future serial killers of America. Thankfully censorship and fear mongering keeps all of this from coming to fruition.

At the time this was all happening, I was the spry age of twelve and read about all the controversy through the pages of Goerzone and Fango. I was young, and I yearned for the gruesome stuff, as at that ripe age during that period in horror, it was all about the gore. I had to see Intruder, and I cannot recall exactly how long it was before I finally did see it (though it wasn't too long afterwards), but even if the film was hacked to bits, I still thought it would be worth the time and there would have to be some trace of gore in the film. Well, as it turned out, there was hardly a gut to be seen, and when I did watch the movie, I was gravely disappointed in it.

At the time I didn't notice the cheesiness of most films, so that wasn't a factor, but I did find it to be somewhat boring, and the lack of great kills are exactly what would hurt this film for me. All that lead up only to have nothing more than a bad edit happen isn't any way to see any film. Sometime after seeing the edited version, I somehow came across the directors cut, but to be totally honest, I have no idea how that happened as coming across shit at a pretty young age in the tape trading days wasn't all too easy. Regardless, I watched the full Monty version of Intruder, and I certainly enjoyed it so much more than when I saw it sans the awesome death scenes. The film suddenly lived up to what was promised and more, and it was those five minutes of graphic slashing and slaying that made the film one that is worth a spot on any Slasher fan's list of must sees.

I will always have a strong sense of nostalgia for Intruder with what it represented for horror at the time. It certainly had a slight influence on the rebel that I would grow to become as the years went on. The censorship of Intruder and that specific issue of Gorezone are greatly reflective of that time period, and while it seems like these aren't issues that we need to worry about as much nowadays, something like what happened with Hatchet 2 comes along and reminds us that we will never get what we want when it comes to entertainment. There will always be someone there trying to tell us what we should and shouldn't watch, and it's our job to tell them to go fuck themselves and do it anyways.

Power to the people.

Honor-a-bowl

Adam Green and co. have just unleashed the 12th annual ArieScope Halloween short film, Honor Bowl, staring Mr. Freeze himself, Adam Green, Wrong Turn 2 director, Joe Lynch and a special surprise guest for all you ghoulies out there to enjoy.

The Horror Hangover

Halloween is rapidly approaching us, and I sure as heck know that this slow build-up has me in the spirit for some spirits, if you get my draft. The weather is simply perfect for a nice beverage or two, in fact, it's almost too nice, which can result in too many, which can equal a downfall where you loose all sense of direction and find yourself in some nasty person's bed the next morning. Seriously though, there are worse things, like that nasty person being in YOUR bed, in which case the hangover is simply intensified by at least four. Maybe even five depending on if any of your parts have a strange tingle afterwards.

Well, if you have fallen into the trap of overindulgence, then you came to the right place to recuperate, The Horror Hangover. With it being Chucktober and all, I thought I would try and add some flavor to your bitter bear face by bringing in a few Halloween/Horror non-film treats for you. Unfortunately, this only resulted in one find, Ghostly Encounters, which is on Biography at 11:30. It's called Ghostly Encounters, so I will assume that it has something to do with ghosts, maybe? The info for the show said the episode deals with generational spirits, meaning, it will about folks with ghostly visits from their ancestors. I'm sure it will be captivating.  

Okay, now we can all pack up and head over to SyFy for an 11:00 showing of, Death Tunnel. Now, chances are if you're a guy (or possibly a girl) that spends a lot of time at dive bars, then there is a good chance that you have run into a few Death Tunnels yourself, resulting in a call to the doctors office about your malfunctioning train. However, that is not the Death Tunnel we're talking about today, instead, Death Tunnel is the movie that has this for a poster…

It's all you.

Don't go too far, as our next film, Intermedio, is on SyFy at 1:00. I was thinking this one sounded familiar, then I saw that Cerina Vincent is in it and I then remembered that it was just featured on a recent Hangover. So yeah, it probably won't be very good, sure, but as I said, it does have some Cerina Vincent, which is a lot better than what can often be found in a SyFy film. 

Now, even if you're not into sex-pots like Vincent - or you prefer your meat to have an outie instead of an innie - then SyFy is showing Ghost Voyage at 3:00. And no, despite the title, Ghost Voyage isn't a sequel to Ghost Ship but it does star Antonio Sabato Jr., who is best known for his roles in…uhhh…errr…ehhh….oh, he was in an episode of Charmed! I knew I recognized him from somewhere.

Well, with the way this Hangover has gone so far, sleeping in may not be a bad idea, but at least TCM is nice enough to show us what it's made of with a 12:30 showing of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. The title tells you everything, though, I wonder if Harryhausen was inspired by Antonio's fat nipples for his flying saucer designs?

 

That's all for now, kiddies…hope to bring you some better quality cinema with next week's films, but for now, hang and hang hard.

Freddy's Friday Night Dance Party!: Where'd She Just Put That Lipstick? Edition!

"Angela is having a party, Jason and Freddy are too scared to come. But You'll have a hell of a time." Oh, really? Freddy is too scared to come, huh? Well, Angela, you may be throwing the party, missy, but this party is being held in the city's sickest club, Freddy's Friday Night Dance Party! With a reputation for some of the bloodiest hot body contests, the deadliest DJs and cocktails that'll straight kill your sobriety, I think it might be Angela that should be scared here, not Freddy. Regardless, Angela is in the (Hull) house and she has her boom box ready to boom-boom the room into a frenzy, and we are more than happy to have her, because the Night belongs to Demons! Kick it Ang! 

First off, I love how this clip starts with super Italian Sal and the line: "Hey Ang, what the fuck are you doing over there?!" It's so great! Go ahead, watch it again…see! Anyway, tonight's rocking clip comes to us from Kevin Tenney's Night of the Demons, with the song, Stigmata Martyr, by Bauhaus. Even though I grew up a huge fan of Punk music, I never got into Bauhaus, but for no other reason than their music never made its way to me, I suppose. Still, the music of theirs that I have heard has been in horror movies, and the music is so perfectly fitted to the films with the specific sound they have. In fact, I would even say the music might even drive scenes like this one - or the opening to The Hunger - and make them more than what they would have been with another artist. 

This entire Angela possession/dance scene really stands out as a whole due to the way the strobe light is used, Angela's crazy dancing and the music. Of course, the second Stooge shows up, Night of the Demons gets right back to business as a wicked cheese-fest. I constantly watched the movie growing up, and boy did I loved it so. For a young horror dude, it had all that I wanted in a horror film. Bewbs, an awesome haunted house setting, sexy girls, it's set on Halloween, it had cool FX, Linnea Quigley and her wonderful film introduction, and of course, bewbs. To watch it through adult eyes, I see how really corny it is as well as how long it takes for the goods to get going, but I still will always have a soft (or hard) spot for Night of the Demons.

Goosebumps at 33: The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight

 

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The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight!

Our first Goosebumps at 33 review comes in the form of The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight, which aired on November 9th, 1996 during the show's second season. The story focuses of Mark and Jodie, a brother and sister who are spending the summer at their grandparents farm. Something that every kid must dream about…spending time with old people on a farm with no wifi or cable. At least the grandparents are nice and sweet, not bitter, senile and wearing a diaper filled with feces. You know, like our grandparents are.

Almost immediately, there is a clue that something is off when the not-all-there farm hand, Stanley, warns the kids about their plans to catch frogs later on in the day. In fact, Stanley's warning is a fierce one as he tells the kids: "I like frogs. You shouldn't catch them…cause if you do, the scarecrow just might end up catching you!" Oh yeah, Stanley? Great story, guy.
It isn't just the warning that Stanley so rudely spewed out that rubs the young visitors as strange, but grandma and grandpa are a little off too, and I don't think it's because they aren't  getting enough fiber. For breakfast, instead of grandma's famous pancakes (famous where? On the farm?), she serves up a bowl of boring old corn flakes. Barfola. To make things worse, later on in the evening the kids get to have some of grandma's yummy apple pie! YAY! Unfortunately for these selfish brats, grandma has decided to go with cherry pie this time around. I actually don't blame them for being disappointed. Cherry pie sucks.
You know what's funny about this whole cherry pie and corn flake situation, though? Well, it just so happens that Stanley (you know, the one that likes frogs) loves cherry pie AND corn flakes. He also likes making threats about scarecrows, so with there being an inordinate amount of scarecrows in the corn field and the episode being titled The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight, I think Jodie and Mark might be in for some serious trouble. And I'm not talking about having to change grandma's colostomy bag type of trouble either. That would be way worse.



In the end, The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight is an episode of Goosebumps, meaning, it's very much geared towards children of a very young age. Still, after watching this first episode, I do not take any issue with that as it delivers the starter horror in a serious enough way (for the age), showing a respect for the genre by keeping it simple, scary and most importantly, fun. The acting is all decent enough for the type of show it is and there was actually a familiar face to be found with a youthful Kris Lemche, who is probably best known (or, only known) as the Goth kid, Ian McKinley, in Final Destination 3.
I had a good time with this episode - which has a fantastic and totally satisfying ending, I might add - and it certainly gives me promise that I will not be spending this Chucktober with the lights off at nighttime.