Expelled Grey Matter

I understand why many fans of the Friday the 13th series hate Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan .  A big problem, and the one I have with it, is that it's Jason on a boat and largely taking Toronto instead of Manhattan, even though there is a good scene in Times Square.  By this time they had already gone through about every idea they had: Jason's mother is the killer, Jason is alive after all, is Tommy Jarvis the next Jason, the humorous route with zombie Jason and a fight with a psychic girl.  The rumor was that Paramount was trying to churn out 13 of these, even though Sean S. Cunningham meant the original to be one and done.  At the end of number eight Jason is trapped in the sewers of New York during the nightly release of toxic waste.  Instead of turning into a C.H.U.D. he melts away and once again becomes a child before dying.  Most people didn't care, with word of mouth getting around about the misleading title.  Paramount decided to turn the series o

I had heard about Hatchet being a throwback to the slashers of old.  When I saw it in the last year, though, I found that other than some good makeup on Kane Hodder as Victor Crowley and a few bloody and inventive kills that I just didn't get it.  It was made in 2006 and had so much of what I hated about horror in the 2000s, right down to characters that were awful and did little more than annoy.  From what I understand the meat of the series are the second and third entries, which I will get to.  However, for reasons of watching certain releases, at this point I ended up skipping to the fourth movie, Victor Crowley . 10 years after the events of the first three films Andrew Yong (Parry Shen), the lone known survivor of a massacre in Honey Island Swamp, is on a book tour.  No one really believes that he and the others were attacked by a resurrected Victor Crowley, a deformed boy turned vengeful spirit who was killed in his house in the swamp in the 1950s, was responsible.  Instead

As popular as the John Wick series has become it was no surprise that at the end of what was supposed to be the trilogy - John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum - there was no actual ending.  Like the movies before it the third part expanded on Wick's universe, introducing an Adjudicator, giving more lore behind the string of Continentals that provide safe refuge to assassins and introducing the closest thing we've come so far to actually meeting the High Table.  This was a man called the Elder that held out some hope to Wick (Keanu Reeves), hope that he eventually decided to toss away so he could do what he thought was right. For that he was shot by Winston (Ian MacShane), manager of the New York Continental and supposedly an ally, and fell off a roof.  In typical John Wick fashion he managed to somehow stumble away, while at the time he was thought to be dead.  The beginning of the final chapter - so far - finds him having taken refuge with the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) an

Slashers have an unfair reputation of being brutally violent.  The sad truth is they often were made brutally violent, but a large part of the makeup effects and gags were never seen by an audience.  The original My Bloody Valentine is the perfect example of what was supposed to be a bloody good time turned into an anemic release in the theaters.  The real crime is that much of this footage was lost over the years or what did exist was in such bad condition that attempts to insert it back in is too noticeable.  Happy Birthday to Me is one of those movies and, like My Bloody Valentine , was made in Canada for U.S. distribution.  Supposedly director J. Lee Thompson literally painted the walls red but, save one scene, this is hardly noticeable.  What is noticeable is the censorship, where kill scenes were blurred, chopped or removed all together.  Despite that the movie poster still tried to sell the movie on its violent content in an attempt to compete with the other slashers, almost al

The Slumber Party Massacre is not really a good movie.  That can be said for many slasher films, particular the first batch that tried to stick strictly to formula in order to milk the success of Friday the 13th and Halloween .  What they did do to differentiate themselves from others is try to have some sort of hook, like another holiday or, in the case of the original 1982 film, some feminist gravitas.  The original script was written by Rita Mae Brown, a feminist and lesbian rights activist, as a parody of the genre.  The most telling part was the killer did his deed with a large drill that, toward the end of the movie, gets cut in half. It was in no way subtle, but subtlety is not something slashers are known for anyway.  The feminist aspect was not lost on critics but despite any agenda that may have been behind the original script it was still largely breasts and blood like all of its contemporaries.  It also made a fair amount of money on a small budget, which made producer Ro

Recently it has seemed like the Marvel Cinematic Universe is on its last legs.  A couple of good films graced us for Phase 4, but it was populated largely by mediocre fare like Black Widow and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania .  The latter was the most recent prior to the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 , and was so bad that it seemed like it was written by AI.  Not a good thing as it was released just before the latest writers' strike, giving ammunition to those that would wonder why good money should be paid to people who do just as bad a job of concocting a movie as a computer program.  Then came Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 , a return to one of the most surprising MCU franchises.  I thought that Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 stumbled horribly.  It had its moments, like Yondu's (Michael Rooker) sacrifice for Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), but where the original had balanced some of the sillier moments with making what appeared to be a ridiculous idea gel with th

The year that A Boy and His Dog is supposed to take place in - 2024 - is plastered all over the poster.  I believe that Harlan Ellison, who wrote the original, set the events a little further down the line, but as 2024 looms on the horizon it's as good a time as any to revisit this story.  It is also important to keep in mind that, although not made quite so clear in the movie, A Boy and His Dog exists in a different timeline than ours, one in which the assassination of John F. Kennedy failed and the Cold War eventually evolved into World War III.  As the prologue lets us know, however, that isn't what destroyed the world.  It was World War IV.  Vic (Don Johnson) is a "solo," a lone wanderer born in Phoenix, Arizona in 2006, one year before World War IV.  He is accompanied by Blood (Tiger, voiced by Tim McIntire), a telepathic dog who helps keep Vic alert of danger as well as helping him find women to rape.  In exchange Vic helps find sources of food for the both of t

Wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper is known in cinematic circles for one particular movie: They Live , a classic John Carpenter film in which he co-starred with Keith David and helped save the world from alien yuppies.  That same year, however, he made his actual acting debut in a low-budget parody of apocalyptic road movies.  That particular film is Hell Comes to Frogtown .  Sam Hellman (Piper), also known as Sam Hell, is arrested after getting Capt. Devlin's (William Smith) daughter pregnant.  It turns out Hellman has become a bit of a legend, both for his prowess and the fact that he is one of the few fertile men that still exist after a nuclear war a decade before.  When transferred to Med-Tech, a scientific wing of the New Provisional Government, he is found to have the highest sperm count of any man so far.  Problem is, fertile women are also few and far between, and a group of them have just been captured by Commander Toty (Brian Frank), the leader of a mutant settlement

At the time that Stephen King was still largely considered a horror writer it is not surprising that the more well-known directors of the genre brought his creations to the screen.  Tobe Hooper directed the television adaptation of Salem's Lot while George Romero cowrote Creepshow with King, going so far as to give him a starring role in one of the segments.  1983 even saw David Cronenberg crossing over into mainstream U.S. cinema with his version of The Dead Zone .  It was only a matter of time before another big name, John Carpenter, joined in.  At the time King had become a hot enough property that Christine 's movie rights were up for bid before the novel was on the shelves.  Producer Richard Kobritz, who had been responsible for helping bring Salem's Lot to television, passed on Cujo in order to get Christine , and Bill Phillips provided a screenplay that, although it changed a number of events in the book, pretty much provided a simplified version of the story for

There are only a handful of authors I can think of that successfully made the transition to directing, even if it was their own material.  Michael Crichton managed to make that transition with a number of critically acclaimed and memorable films, including Westworld and The Great Train Robbery .  Stephen King tried with Maximum Overdrive , which is a guilty pleasure of mine, but wisely has kept away from the director's chair sense.  Clive Barker, though, had some natural talent. Unfortunately, Hollywood didn't see it that way.  I don't blame Barker for giving up directing as it seemed that any movie he made resulted in both a fight for budgets and to even release the film he created.  Hellraiser was the one he seemed to have the most control over despite it being his first, while Nightbreed eventually resulted in Barker having to release the version he intended after it was heavily cut and re-edited.  Things didn't get much better for Lord of Illusions , his final fi

Although he had staged a number of plays Clive Barker had no movie directing experience when he made Hellraiser , the 1987 adaptation of his novella The Hellbound Heart .  New World Pictures had faith in the film, giving Barker some extra money to do a rather impressive sequence where a man begins to become reassembled after coming in contact with his brother's blood.  They also had enough faith to agree to do a sequel before the movie was even released.  Despite its low budget Hellraiser had impressive makeup and effects work, even if it was obvious it was a bit stretched by the time it reached its finale.  Although not in the movie for much time the Cenobites, led by Doug Bradley as the Hell Priest - who came to be nicknamed Pinhead, despite Barker's distaste for the name - became the face of the film.  This was despite the fact that an evil stepmother named Julia (Clare Higgins) was supposed to be the main villain.  The pale, tall figure with nails driven into his head dress

I have to give credit to Christopher Nolan.  He was given the task of reviving a movie series that had all but been destroyed by studio meddling and poor directing and story choices.  While not perfect Batman Begins did just that and did it while using some elements that were left over from the unmade fifth film from the original series.  On top of that he managed to make an entire movie that was an origin story without it feeling like it was treading old ground.  At the end of Batman Begins it is hinted that the next film will include the one villain everyone wants from a Batman series: the Joker.  The role was not cast at the time, and neither was it set in stone that there would even be another Batman film.  When it was announced that Heath Ledger would take the role there was some doubt about if he was right for the part, but that was soon overshadowed by news of his death shortly before The Dark Knight premiered.  It wouldn't be the first, or worst, of tragedies surrounding t

At the time this came out there was a ton of hype, particularly from the website Bloody Disgusting.  That's not surprising as the site's owner, Brad Miska, is one of the producers on this and responsible for the concept.  It was the first found-footage horror anthology, and he was able to get directors like Ti West and Adam Wingard attached to it, giving the whole thing some credibility.  Although I quite enjoyed it at the time I understand why many critics, and horror fans, had some major issues with this movie.  Part of it is why I can barely watch 2013's Evil Dead : I hate most of the characters.  From segment to segment we are introduced to a bevy of unlikable people, many of whom are guys with a frat mentality as well as the group from the wraparound segment that straight up sexually assault a woman to get views to their site.  This type of behavior, unfortunately, was rife at the time that V/H/S  was released, although it was usually teenagers doing a lot of it.  The