New Podcast on the Horizon!!!

Hiya boils and ghouls...it's been a while since the last post. Life got in the way, but now I'm back and want to announce that a new venture is on the horizon. A horror/sci-fi movies podcast! It will be a weekly podcast where myself and my co-hosts will discuss/dissect some of your favorite (or not so favorite) horror and sci-fi films. There'll be lots of trivia tidbits and stories and I encourage you to check back often to see the progress of this.

The Devil - scary or played out?

In the late 1960's through the end of the 1970's the dominating subject matter in most major-relase horror films seemed to center around subject matter related to the occult and demonic possession, but more specifically - The Devil. By the 1980's, there were still movies featuring the Devil as the main antagonist, but the predominate subject matter had switched to slasher flicks. It can not be denied though that, in the 1970's, Lucifer was king of the box office!

Major classics like "The Exorcist", "The Omen", and "Rosemary's Baby" capitalized on the subject matter and created a public hysteria that still resonates to this day, but it doesn't stop there. The act od devil worship and satanic cults was something that frightened every staunch American Christian and the subject became to the audiences of the 70's what the threat of nuclear war had become to the audiences of the 1950's. Movies like "The Amityville Horror", "The Dunwhich Horror", "Burnt Offerings", "The Omen II", "The Seventh Sign" and "Exorcist: The Heretic" all capitalized on this and the subject matter had the money rolling in for the major studios as petrified Christians flocked to the movie theaters to witness some of their greatest fears on the big screen.

Although the 1990's and even the new millenium have offered up some films for consideration like "End of Days", "The Devils Advocate", "The Ninth Gate", and "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" - none of those films generated even a tenth of the buzz that "The Exorcist" generated in 1974 when it had audience members puking in the lobbies, passing out in the aisles and left with a general sense of extreme fear and paranoia - swearing that they themselves were possessed! So, my question is - does the idea of the Devil even scare audiences like they did 30 years ago? IT certainly can be looked upon as a sign of the times - maybe people are just not as "Dumb" as they were 30 years ago and the idea of "The Devil", a red horned demon with a forked taila nd cloven hooves just seems a bit silly to them now and although the theoretical idea of Hell still scares the bejeezus out of most Christians, the old age symbolism of a red devil presiding over a firey pit of torture and despair may be a bit hokey and VERY unrealistic.

Midnight Movie Reviews - The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Ahhh...now this is a great flick! I remember the first time I saw this. I was 13 and I was staying over at a friends house. We had just gone upstairs late one night to hunt for food and we turned on the TV in the kitchen and watched Return of the Living Dead which was airing on our local Fox affiliate, WDRB-41. It was creepy and funny all at the same time. In the end, we were freaked out at the knowledge that the movie was supposed to take place in our hometown of Louisville, KY. What ensued were several hours of ribs and playful jabs about zombies taking over the town and generally a great time.

Return of the Living Dead was a vehicle of writer/director Dan O'Bannon. This is O'bannon's feature directorial debut, having been known as a screenwriter before then. He was best known at the time for having penned the script to the blockbuster Sci-Fi classic "Alien"(1979) which had earned him a ton of cred in Hollywood circles. The script for ROTLD was based on a script written by James Russo in 1978. Producer Tom Fox purchased the script and gave it to O'Bannon who thought it was too serious and tried too hard to be a sequel to George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead"(1968) and O'bannon set forth to "dumb it down" and make it more of a dark comedy. What they were left with was a very creative spoof of Zombie movies that maintained the balance between horror and comedy perfectly.

The story is simple: two employees at a medical supply warehouse inadvertently unleash gas from a goverment container that had been delivered to the warehouse by mistake several years earlier. What follows is the gas regenerating the bodies of the dead cadavers int he supply warehouse which are chopped up and put into black plastic garbage bags. In a fit of paranoia, the employees and the owners drag the wriggling remains next door to the mortuary where the mortician disposes of the body parts in his crematorium. The pieces that are burned up produce a gas out of the chimney and mixes with the rain clouds above bringing the gas down in the form of an an acid-like rain that eventually gets to the cemetary (which is conveniently just across the street from the supply warehouse) and then all hell breaks loose - literally, as the dead begin to crawl out of their graves and attack anyone in close proximity of them - trying to satisfy their hunger for "brains" . ROTLD is credited with coupling the hunger for human brains with zombies as, before this film, most movie zombies just had cannabilistic tendencies, but never for a specific body part or organ.

ROTLD is a great movie and although severely dated by most of the fashion in the film as well as the lingo, still finds a way to be incredibly fun and entertaining as well as endearing itself to a whole new generation of horror fan. What this film lacks in plot development it more than makes up for in sheer hillarity and horrific goofiness - not to mention full-frontal nudity from b-movie scream queen Linnea Quigley.

4 1/2 out of 5 stars "You need to see this now"

Horrid Macabre Movie Reviews - Quarantine (2008)

Ahh, alas another installment of the shaky-hand cam horror series. Following films like "The Blair Witch Project" and "Cloverfield", we have Quarantine. Although I'm generally not a fan of the "home movie" format when it comes to trying to enstill "realism" into a movie, I found myself enjoying Quarantine quite a bit.

The story surrounds a reporter played by Louisville, KY native Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) who has been assigned to film an expose on a local L.A. firehouse and it's crew. The movie starts out jovial and light-hearted as the reporter has fun with the fire-fighters and seems to be bored by the mundane lives the fire-fighters live outside of fighting fires. Suddenly, the call comes in and they are called out to a situation at a downtown L.A. apartment building. They enter the buildign to find out that a resident is seemingly trapped in her apartment and the crew move in to investigate. What they find is the resident inside her apartment, foaming at the mouth and obviously suffering from some form of psychosis. The policemen at the scene and the firefighters try to reason with the woman, but when she attacks and mortally wounds one of the officers, it becomes clear that something more serious is going on. Just as they try to escort the officer outside to seek medical treatment, they find the exit doors locked. Outside the doors are the CDC with orders to shoot and kill anyone who exits the building. What follows is a shocking roller-coaster ride as more and more people begin getting atacked by infected residents and in the end you are feeling the same anxiety and adrenaline rushes that our characters are feelign as they struggle to survive this nightmare.

Quarantine is a remake of the Spanish film "Rec". Quarantine isn't the best horror film out there, but what it does do is keep you on the edge of your seat for the entire runtime of 89 minutes.

3 out of 5 stars "check it out"

Midnight Movie Reviews! The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

What do you get when you mix a cannabalistic family, a nymphet radio dj, a revenge-minded Texas Ranger, a chili cook-off, the red-river shootout (a.k.a the annual Texas-Oklahoma college football game), the backwoods Sawyer family, a chainsaw, and buckets of blood and gore? A helluva great time!

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is the sequel to the cult classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) directed by the great Tobe Hooper. Hooper reprises his seat in the directors chair for this sequel which borders more on "dark comedy" than "shock horror". The story begins with our favorite, chainsaw weilding maniac cleaving a couple of liquored up frat boys on their way to the festivities of the big OU/TU football game. The splatter-fest is aired and recorded live on a local late-night radio station as the victims had called into the show to heckle the host just before the grisly slaying, a petite country-girl called "stretch", played by Caroline Williams (don't worry, you've never heard of her). Stretch takes the tape of the murder to a Texas Ranger played by Dennis Hopper (who appears incredibly out of place and uncomfortable in this film), in town investigating the crime and who seems to think that the murder is related to the events of the original film some 12 years earlier and is out for revenge against the Sawyer's who have apparently been on the run the entire time. Leatherface and his even nuttier metal-plate headed brother, "chop top" catch wind of the fact that the slaying was captured live on radio and set out to "shush" our lovely little DJ permanently. She turns out to be more than they bargained for as she escapes.

What follows is a twisted story light on logic and heavy on comical gore and mayhem as Stretch ventures into the tunnel's below a closed amusement park where the cannabalistic Sawyer family live. The tunnels are lined with dried out corpeses and freshly mutilated bodies. Stretch uses her looks to charm the child-minded Leatherface and he helps hide her as she tries to survive the horror she had thrust herself into.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is just pure fun. It doesn't fit into any particular category of horror. It's not funny or light-hearted enough to be considered a dark comedy, and it's not gory enought o be considered a splatter-film and not serious or smart enough to be considered pure horror. What it does is harken back to the old days of curling up in the front seat of your car at the drive-in with a tub of popcron and a huge cola watching a goofy, unbelieveable horror flick with hillariously sick and twisted murders and situations wrapped around an absurdly illogical story.

In short, it's just a fun flick. By the way, keep an eye out for John Bloom in a cameo appearance in this film. If you don't know him by that name then you probably know him by the name of his alter-ego, our favorite late-night horror host - Joe Bob Briggs!

3 out of 5 stars - "Check it out!"

Midnight Movie Reviews! Motel Hell (1980)

"It takes all kinds of critters to make farmer Vincent's fritters!"

Has there ever been a movie more well suited for midnight showings by your favorite horror host? Motel Hell has just the right mix of horror, comedy and all out psychadelic weirdness. Not to mention a special cameo appearance by everyones favorite beer-swilling mailman and Pixar animation mainstay, John Ratzenberger.

The late, great Rory Calhoun stars as Vincent Smith, patriarch of the Farmer Vincent's meat company. he's a seemingly peaceful old farmer who sells meats and runs a dilapadaed motel called Motel Hello. The people of the county seem to love his meats and Farmer Vincent obliges them by selling them all they want. Only, Farmer Vincent doesn't divulge that his secret ingredient isn't anything of the bovine or pork persuasion. In the early morning hours, Farmer Vincent prowls the winding country back roads, looking for "sinners" that he can trap and turn into his next batch of "product". Along with his crazy sister Ida, played by Nancy Parsons, we are taken into a world of utter strangeness and all-out weirdness. Farmer Vincent eventually falls for one of his quarry, a beautiful hitchhiker named Terry played by Nina Axelrod. Contrary to Ida's jealousy, Vincent plans on wedding the much younger Terry. Over time Terry uncovers Farmer Vincents brutal secret and with the help of the local sheriff, helps put Farmer Vincent out of business permanently.

If you want a great classic horror movie where you can grab a bag of chips, sit back, and have a good laugh - you could do much, much worse.

4 out of 5 stars - "Don't pass this one up"

Off Topic, well...kinda - Kentucky Basketball

This is a horror blog, and nothing has been more horrific than Billy Gillispies tenure as the head coach of the University of Kentucky's mens basketball team. Billy has taken the winningest basketball program in the history of college basketball and has taken it to lows that it has not experinced in 30 years!

It's not just a question of coaching. No UK fan wants to see UK lose, thats a given. But the worst part of it all has been Billy's blatant disregard for protecting the image of the University and his incredible stubborness when it comes to how he runs his team. He simply refuses to put his players into a position to win - period. Billy would rather adhere to his stubborn pride than to bench a player who is not helping the team on the court, in favor of benching a player that could help just because they don't work as hard in practice. Thats absurd and is ridiculous. That may be the kind of shit that flies at Texas A&M or UTEP, but it doesn't fly in Lexington, KY. You can not recruit at a top level and refuse to play those top level players that come into your program just to make a point. Worst of all is his refusal to make in-game adjustments, or to switch off of his pressure man-to-man defense to help UK win a game. He doesn't even draw up plays to get his best player, Jodie Meeks, open for shots. He is content with letting Meeks run around in endless circles just hoping to lose his man for a split second to get a single shot off. After the season is over, Meeks ought to be conditoned enough for a 20K run with all fo the running he's done during the season. Hell, he ought to go out for the track team, because then he'd definitely win a national championship.

I have rarely seen Billy use a clipboard during timeouts, thats pretty sad. I guess he just spends timeouts yelling at his players and calling them "Fucking Pussies" and telling them they're not "tough enough". Yeah, now thats how you motivate a player! Here's a thought, why not try DRAWING UP A PLAY during timeouts?

There WILL be a mass exodus of players after the season is over if Billy remains the head coach. Lets hope that the Athletic administration does the right thing and moves Billy out the door because his off-the-court antics are getting tiresome, but his on-the-court antics are even worse.