The Conjuring Blu-ray Giveaway!

Even though the Pacific Rim contest hasn’t ended just yet, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to participate in a giveaway for the Blu-ray release of James Wan’s The Conjuring. Things are a little different this time around, as there isn’t a trivia quiz or anything of that nature. Instead there are these interactive gifs that you can mess around with, which should offer you about 3 minutes of entertainment. Well, unless you’re on acid, in which case I think they’ll provide you with 3 hours of entertainment.

Anyway, to enter this Blu-ray giveaway, all you have to do is leave a comment below stating what your favorite horror film is so far this year. The deadline to enter is Friday, October 25th, and please be sure to include your email address and any allergies you may have.

The Conjuring 5 Things to know… INTERACTIVE GIFS!

1) The Conjuring is directed by the acclaimed James Wan, the Australian-born director of the fright-fests Insidious and the Saw series. His Twitter handle is @CreepyPuppet. Say no more.

 

2) The Conjuring has been given an “R” rating by the MPAA. Not because of blood, gore, or violence, but simply because it’s just so scary from start to finish!

3) The Conjuring’s cast and crew experienced creepy events during filming. Scratches appeared out of nowhere on Vera Farmiga’s computer soon after she agreed to act in the movie, the crew were routinely woken by something in the “witching hour” between 3 and 4AM, and the real-life Carolyn Perron fell and broke her hip while visiting the set.

4) The Rhode Island farmhouse where The Conjuring is set once belonged to an accused witch, Bathsheba, who tried to sacrifice her children to the devil and killed herself in 1863.

5) Hold your applause! The Conjuring will make you terrified to clap! Whether it’s playing a traditional game of hide-and-seek by following the clapping sounds like the mother and daughter in the movie, or being terrorized by ghostly claps in different rooms of the haunted farmhouse, these claps throughout the movie will give you the creeps!

Goosebumps at 33: It Came from Beneath the Sink

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It Came from Beneath the Sink!

Soon after Kat and her family move into a new home, Kat discovers a living, breathing sponge living underneath the kitchen sink. Making such an odd discovery gives Kat quite the stir, but as you’d expect, no one believes Kat about the existence of this monster sponge. However, soon after the sponges discovery, Kat and her family are hit with a string of terrible luck. For example, the family dog goes missing, Kat’s brother Daniel cuts his foot on a broken glass and Kat takes a nasty tumble when the brakes on her bike suddenly fail. Are all of these occurrences simply a coincidence, or does this have something to do with the sponge? Like that’s a real question.

Kat and her brother decide to bury the sponge, hoping that in doing so their luck will change. Unfortunately, however, the next morning Kat discovers that all the foliage surrounding the sponge is wilted and dead. Clearly this isn’t going to work. So Kat and Daniel dig the sponge up and take it to their science teacher to be analyzed. In the meantime, Kat, Daniel and a friend named Carlos look to The Encyclopedia of Weird for answers, and as it turns out this sponge is actually a ‘Grool‘.

No, not a Grohl but a Grool.

According to The Encyclopedia of Weird, a Grool is a creature that not only creates bad luck for the people around it, it feeds on it, too. How can Kat and her family stop this bad luck charm from destroying their world from the inside out? Furthermore, how well does this sponge perform when it comes to removing caked on grease and grim?! The answers to these maddening question can only be found in one place: at the end of the episode.

Coming from the thirteenth book in the Goosebumps series, It Came from Beneath the Sink is the 14th episode from the 1st season of the ever entertaining TV series. While being an overall solid entry that’s highly enjoyable and features a nice little twist, what might be most notable about It Came from Beneath the Sink is its star, Katharine Isabelle. It’s not a surprise seeing Ginger show up in an episode as she’s Canadian as a mofo, and I think almost every Canadian actor around her age has appeared in at least one episode of Goosebumps. Still, it’s cool to see her on the show, especially in such a solid episode.

Surprisingly, I don’t have a whole lot that I can say about this episode (which doesn’t speak to the quality of it). However, between The Girl Who Cried Monster and It Came from Beneath the Sink, I am off to a fantastic start this Halloween/Chucktober season, and I look forward to what the show has in store for me next.

Until next time, kiddies, keep your night light on and you head under the covers…

Halloween Happenings: Outdoor Halloween Decorations!

We are knee-deep in the haunted marshes of October, and after a frightening amount of rain and a few days of wicked wind, my witch bitch and I were finally able to put up our outdoor Halloween decorations!

Last year was the first Halloween where we started to go all out with our outdoor decorations. Sadly, however, last year was a little rough for us, as a lot of what we had done as far as decorating goes was rocked by the lame weather that comes with living in a wind tunnel (you can read more about that here). But hey, it was a learning experience, and with last year under our proverbial belt, we went into Halloween 2013 armed with the smarts to do things a little different as a way to counteract that loser wind.

Anyway, some things are similar to last Halloween, namely the Rave to the Graveyard being back in full effect. Also, we did get a new Pumpkin Light Cover Guy, which was one of last year’s horrific wind casualties. Outside of that, we do have a few new additions, specifically the two jack-o jerks offs and the skele-whore, both of which we built ourselves. Of course it’s pretty obvious that they’re homemade, but they only cost us about $15-$20 in materials to make all three. Plus they were fun to make, so there’s that, too.

I’ll stop jibber-jabbing and let you get to watching the video. Hope you guys dig our decorations, and be sure to keep your eyes peeled for some of Bolo’s babies!

‘The Last Halloween’ TV Special (1991)

Jeanie and Michael (Sarah Matinek and Will Nipper) are celebrating what very well could be their last Halloween after the town’s lake, which serves as the main source of power for the local candy factory, has run almost completely dry. How could such a horrific event happen you might ask? Well, let’s just say it involves the town meanie, Mrs. Gizbourne (Rhea Perlman), who with the help of her trusty henchman, Hans (Richard Moll), has been using the lake water to create a solution for achieving eternal youth, therefore leaving the lake bone dry and the candy factory’s future as well as the fate of Halloween in danger.

Meanwhile, as Jeanie and Michael are enjoying their last evening of trick or treating, they come across four Martians (?!) who were sent to earth to replenish their planet’s supply of, what else, candy. Jeanie and Michael befriend the Martians and take them trick or treating so they can get together some candy, at which point things take a hysterical turn! Actually, they don’t, but whatever. Anyway, it isn’t long before one of the Martians runs off to the evil Mrs. Gizbourne’s house to find more candy, and this my dear reader is where the shit hits the fan.

Produced by Hanna-Barbera and premiering on CBS on October 28th, 1991, The Last Halloween is a bit of a mixed bag of tricks and treats in terms of entertainment value. First of all, it’s difficult to fathom why one candy factory’s fate could completely end Halloween for an entire town. You know, since there are other candy factories around the county as well as trucks that could easily deliver said candy. I mean, it’s not like they live in the Taiga and have to wait for the yearly helicopter to drop of food. Then again, I suppose this is an instance where suspending disbelief would play into things, especially when we’re talking about a special that’s story takes everything AND the kitchen sink and jams it into a runtime less than 30 minutes.

Regardless of the overblown plot, there are a lot of things to enjoy about The Last Halloween. As convoluted as the story is, it does a good job of quickly building up depth for the two main characters. There are also some awesome visuals strewn throughout the short running time, my favorite being this great looking matte painting used for the villain's castle. For a short Halloween TV special, it’s clear that a lot of effort went into production value, and it shows in the final product. In fact, this resulted in a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects which were, interestingly enough, provided by Industrial Light & Magic and Pacific Data Images.

Something else that’s notable about The Last Halloween is that it features some early CGI, which is how the mostly obnoxious Martian characters are brought to life. I find it interesting to see early CGI use, as CGI was, at least in the early days, something that was kind of cool and exciting; a new tool for filmmakers to bring new worlds to life. Nowadays, however, CGI has completely affected the landscape of cinema, specifically big-budget Hollywood movies, and in a way that I think is now really hurting the power of cinema. An epic film is no longer epic - it’s green screen. But that’s another topic for another day...

The Last Halloween is a remotely entertaining little ride, though a ride that will likely only be enjoyed by people who either really love Halloween (me) or children (me), which is really the perfect audience for this one. One final observation concerning the Martians: if they wanted candy, why didn’t they go to the local Mars Bar?

If you want to check out The Last Halloween for yourself, then you can give it a watch via the YouTube video below:

Bad Trick or Treat Ideas: Toothbrush

I get it. You want to be different and hand out something that you think would actually be beneficial to children. You have no desire to promote bad eating habits or poor dental care, so you say to yourself “I think I’ll pass out toothbrushes this year... all the kids are gonna love and respect me!”

Well, I gotta newsflash for you, buddy! If I’m 6 years old and I waste 3 minutes of my precious Halloween time coming to your house only to have you push your communist agenda on me, then, well, you deserve every single egg I throw at your house when I’m a teenager. And believe you me, I WILL EGG YOUR SHIT!

The only people who should be handing out a toothbrush to a kid is the dentist at the dentist’s office. Otherwise, buy a couple bags of candy. Preferably Snickers.

Pacific Rim Blu-Ray Giveaway!

Pacific Rim is making its way to Blu-ray on October 15th, but why waste your hard-earned drug money buying a copy when you can win one right here?! It’s pretty much the same deal as the other contests: take the SUPERFAN TRIVIA quiz below, then leave a comment with your results as well as an email address, and you will be entered to win yourself a Blu-ray copy of Pacific Rim!

You have until Friday, October 18th to enter, so stop wasting your time reading this, and get to taking that quiz!

The Last Slumber Party (1988): The Doctor is In... SANE!

It’s the last day of high school and Linda, Tracy and Chris (Joann Whitley, Nancy Mayer and Jan Jenson) are looking to kickoff their summer with a bumpin’ slumber party at Linda's house. Complete with alcohol, loud music and a few totally hot guys, surely this is a radical way to begin one’s freedom from the tyranny of high school. However, unbeknownst to the girls, there’s an insane mental patient on the loose. And to make matters worse, it just so happens that Linda’s father is the mental patient’s doctor, making Linda’s home the prime target for this scalpel wielding psychopath.

Directed by Stephen “don’t call me Steven” Tyler, The Last Slumber Party is best described as such: if Halloween and The Slumber Party Massacre had an incestuous baby, and that baby born of incest fell from its crib and hit its head on a nail embedded cinder block every night of its life, then you would have yourself a fairly good idea of what The Last Slumber Party is like.

The comparison to The Slumber Party Massacre is obvious, and certainly not unfamiliar territory for numerous sleepover slasher flicks of the era, but the Halloween influence is a whole other ballgame. To say The Last Slumber Party is inspired by Halloween is like saying that John Carpenter looks a little old, and this is most notable with the film’s three female leads. From the way they talk, act, the specific personality that each girl has, and even the way in which they are filmed, Linda, Tracy and Chris are essentially carbon copies of Laurie, Annie and Lynda from Halloween. Though these carbon copies seem to have spent a little too much time in the sun eating rock salt covered tree bark.  

Outside of the Halloween influences, something else that is immediately obvious about The Last Slumber Party is just how insanely cheap it is as a piece of “cinema.” The acting is awful, and the filmmaking is completely amateurish. Furthermore, the sound design is horrific, with moments that are particularly astounding in their lack of quality. This is most obvious in an early scene where it’s nearly impossible to differentiate between the score, a talking teacher and a group of loud-mouth teenagers. There is also another hysterically inept scene where one of the girls is talking on the phone (in another Halloween-esque moment), and the girl on the other end of the line is clearly talking from just off camera to make it sound as if she’s actually on the phone.

Magnum P.I. photobombing like it’s no one’s business!

The killer (played with brilliance by the film’s director, Stephen “don’t call me Steven” Tyler) also delivers a high level of entertainment in a fashion that is nothing short of ridiculous. Adorned with a pair of doctors scrubs and a surgical mask, this mental madman spends 90% of his screen time making crazy eyes directly at the camera. The kills, which consist of scalpel induced throat slashes and nothing else, are also cheap in their simplicity. Though, in all honesty, I’d rather have cheap throat slashes than a copout off-screen kill.  

Depending on your taste, the lack of quality found in The Last Slumber Party could work for or against it. While I wouldn’t consider it an upper tier B-Movie, it’s an amusing watch that will play perfectly to a crowd of drunken friends or to that specific horror fan who enjoys these types of bad movies. Namely me.