Expelled Grey Matter

Little Red Riding Hood, in all its iterations, is a warning to young girls about going out on their own.  It is one of the most famous fairy tales long before Jacob Grimm started compiling his versions of the stories.  Although often used as an easy Halloween costume or sexy cosplay gag the relevance of the tale remains. Despite literal wolves posing a threat in medieval Europe there was always the metaphorical wolf hanging about hoping to do with what he, or in some cases she, will with a defenseless young girl when no one else is around. As with most modern retellings of such stories the girl is not as defenseless as she looks.  Grimm, who usually kept the cautionary endings intact, added the part where Red is rescued after cutting open the wolf's stomach as he swallowed her whole, while in the original things don't end so well for her.  In the 1990s it should be no surprise that things wouldn't end up so well for the wolf. Vanessa Lutz (Reese Witherspoon) is a bar...

The idea of dying repeatedly and coming back is a well-worn trope in science fiction.  Usually the way its handled is with a time loop, where everything resets at the end of the day and the person lives their life over and over until either they discover what is causing the loop or satisfy some mystical part of the universe that allows them to then continue.  Often these are quite interesting despite the proliferation of similar stories and movies.  Mickey 17 looks at a different type of situation where the person is labeled an "Expendable", meaning that they are able to be used in dangerous situations or experiments with the understanding that they will have a new body printed and their memories restored after each death.  While it sounds in some ways enticing, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) soon learns the gravity of what he signed up form. Mickey and his friend Timo (Steven Yeun) make a bad business investment using money from loan shark Darius Blank (Ian Hanmor...

Child's Play was a pretty decent hit in 1988, spawning two sequels.  Chucky became a horror icon along with Jason, Freddy and the lot, although by the third movie the story involving Charles Lee Ray constantly trying to switch his soul into Alex had pretty much played out.  Where most franchises at the time would have continued with diminishing returns in the direct-to-video market it appeared that producer and writer Don Mancini did the smart thing and ended with Child's Play 3 .   In 1998 that changed.  Child's Play 2 and Child's Play 3 had increasingly seen Chucky become more of a darkly comic character so, when the character was brought back for Bride of Chucky , the comedic aspects were emphasized.  Mancini didn't make the mistake of trying to change Chucky into a sympathetic character, but found humor by introducing his girlfriend, who sets everything in motion for yet another resurrection. Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) arranges for Chucky's (Brad Dourif...

Probably the best thing I can say about Charles Band is that he was a lower-budget version of Roger Corman.  His business model was about the same.  Churn out movies on the cheap, some of which resembled popular films of the day or were close to certain properties he wished he had, and make money.  While Empire Pictures was able to get films in the theaters it was Full Moon that initially made Band castle-in-Italy money.  He cornered the direct-to-video market with help from a distribution deal with Paramount. That deal went south in the early '90s, pretty much hamstringing Band and Full Moon for over a decade.  The death of David Allen, who did many of the stop-motion effects that made Band's movies look more expensive than they were, didn't help.  Although in recent years he has made a bit of a comeback, largely due to the nostalgia for the classic Full Moon movies, things were never again quite the same.  There were also many low points, and The Gin...

After the success of A Nightmare on Elm Street Wes Craven was feeling the need to step back a bit from the violent horror films he had become known for.  For that reason he began working with screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin on an adaptation of Diana Henstell's novel Friend .  Although the general concept remained the same as the movie we got it was supposed to emphasize the love story between the main characters as well as point up how bad adults could be, effectively making many of them the true villains of the film.  This was conceived as a PG-rated movie that would have some dark sci-fi elements but, for the most part, be family friendly.  Unfortunately, once Warner Bros. realized they had hired the guy who directed A Nightmare on Elm Street , they started demanding a number of changes. Paul (Matthew Labyorteaux) is a teenager skilled in the science of robotics.  He has built his own creation, BB, that has the beginnings of true artificial intelligence, and he...

There was a time when the influence of television on society was a concern.  I have always believed a lot of that concern was from a movie industry that was scared that people would stop coming to theaters to deal with unruly kids, sticky floors and stale popcorn when they could do the same at home for free.  However, from its inception forward there were dire warnings of its deleterious effects on society.  Ray Bradbury wrote short stories and an entire novel about it, there were horror movies like The Twonky that featured a literal killer television and all sorts of criticism throughout the mediums first five decades against parents that left their children to be babysat by the boob tube.  Then along came the internet to take that focus off of television and begin the whole cycle anew.  Every single thing that was said about television was said about the internet.  There are again fears that people will stop going to theaters but that is less the fault of...