Friday, June 30, 2017

Pineapple Express is the greatest movie of all time

Easily the best stoner movie of all time.  It makes Half Baked and Cheech and Chong look like snicklefritz. This movie should be universally beloved. Critics, however, aren't too keen on the stoner bromedy sub-genre, so the movie gets mixed reviews from the writers that make the big bucks. You have to be in the right mind for this one, I guess.

This Judd Apatow produced, David Gordon Green directed action-comedy flick follows a stoner process server (Seth Rogen) who witnesses a gangland, drug related murder, and his drug dealer (James Franco) as they elude hitmen, gang leaders, and crooked cops. It's so fucking good.

Pros: Casting is insane. So fucking funny. Solid violence. Every moment with Danny McBride. The brief scene with Bill Hader.

Cons: This movie is flawless.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Both funny and scatter shot, this loose-knit action/buddy/stoner comedy bridges genres and keeps a steady tempo of low ball laughs.

Notes: Let's start with the fucking sick cast. We've got Rogen and Franco, always dope, but it's McBride who provides the most laughs and is the most quotable from the flick. Had a friend who went to Japan that picked me up a yukata. Every time I wear it I inevitably say, much to my female companion's irritation, "You're more chill than me? Look what I'm wearing. Kimono, dog. What're you wearing?" She fucking loves it. We've also got Ed Begley Jr., Kevin Corrigan (the skinny Christopher Walken looking dude), Amber Heard, Rosie Perez, Craig Robinson (the black dude from Hot Tub Time Machine), Lumbergh from Office Space, Hader, Dexter's dad, Boyle from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the Asian dude from MADtv, and an early Chang (Ken Jeong) appearance.

While Rogen and Franco are fucking dope, it's those other guys that really make the movie. Hader, for example, opens the film which starts in 1937, as a military dude being used in an experiment that tests the effects of marijuana on the mind of a soldier. Turns out it makes soldiers hilarious, disrespectful to authority, and pacifistic. Thus the drug is deemed illegal.


A lot of the other humor revolves around Rogen and his high school girl friend played by Heard. First we have him meet her at school where Boyle, a teacher here, acts incredulous that he is there to hang out with his young GF. He comes off as super fucking creepy and way too into some kid's platonic relationship with her prompting Rogen to tell him to fuck off. Then we have Rogen meeting Heard and her family for dinner whilst being chased by hitmen. Rogen starts out trying to play it cool but freaks out and unloads the story on them. The dad, Begley, and the mom surmise that he is insanely high and Begley tries to shoot him. This shit right here is insane. This leads to a later scene when Rogen and Heard break up but then when Rogen wants to get back together with Heard, he calls her via payphone and tells her that he is sorry and in love with her. She then tells him that she wants to spend her life with him and get married. He then realizes he has made a huge mistake. If she wants to marry him, he explains, then she is way too immature to be in a serious relationship.

And finally, there is Danny McBride as Red. Dude is fucking nuts. He is the same as he always is. Might as well be Kenny Powers. Most quotable lines include: "I'm trying to decide how stoned I am and just how on the verge of death am I right now. Like, am I seeing shit because I'm stone or because I have no blood left in my body" whilst hanging out at a diner after being shot seven times which he appears to be dealing with holistically, "You just got killed by a Daewoo Lanos, motherfucker!" after running over Robinson and blowing the foot off his corpse with a shotgun, and "I'm just up here, tryin' to get a motherfuckin' scholarship!" which can be quoted ironically while doing any athletic activity, really.

"You just got killed by a Daewoo, motherfucker!" Classic

My favorite exchange is when Rogen (Dale Denton) is trying to get Red to help him take on the drug dealers to save Franco. It goes thus:
Red: Man, I'm just into Buddhism, and I'm at peace with the fact that me, as this person, probably gonna not be around. Think about a hermit crab, okay? And it's a shell. It's like, they go from one shell to the next. And that's what I am. I'm just a hermit crab changin' shells. Dale: Except if you're a dick your whole life, your next shell will be made of shit, okay? If you're an asshole, you're gonna come back as a cockroach or a worm or a fuckin' anal bead, okay? If you're a man and you act heroic, you'll come back as an eagle. You'll come back as a dragon. You'll come back as Jude Law, okay? Which would you rather be?
Red: Maybe the anal bead, depending on who it belongs to.
Dale: Belongs to me.
Red: Then the dragon.

This is a flawless movie. If you haven't, you should totally watch it. That is all.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Ghostbusters (2016) is the greatest movie of all time

I didn't see this in the theater in part because people kept saying it was trash. Those people don't know what the fuck they are talking about because Ghostbusters is the greatest movie of all time. I feel if you didn't like this fun ass movie, then you are a fucking hater and should be murdered. Female companion says this is coming on a little strong. I think she is coming on a little strong. Murdered I say!

Anyway, when compared to the 1984 Ghostbusters this probably isn't quite as good we are all binary here, baby, and this new one, as of this writing, is the greatest, I tell you. We pretty much know the storyline: sort of the same as the original (ish) with ladies instead of dudes and a vastly different villain as well as ending. I'm not exactly sure if the four women (Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Kristen Wiig) line up with their male counterparts (Dan Aykroyd as Ray, Ernie Hudson as Winston, Bill Murray as Peter Venkman, and Harold Ramis as Egon), but if I had to I'd say Wiig is the straight man Akroid type, McCarthy is the Peter Venkman, McKinnon as the goofball in glasses one, and Jones as the black one (the early hate on her in this I'd guess has turned around). And Chris Hemsworth is in it and totally ridiculous. 
 
Ridiculous


The worst
Pros: Hilarious. Casting is flawless. Cameos are fucking solid. Storyline is decent. 

Cons: So much fucking CGI. Some really shitty jokes mixed in there. Slimer is terrible. 

Notes: Some stuff I liked in no particular order. The ladies make a bunch of references to the YouTube hate they got when they dropped the first trailer to show, “hey, we are in on it. We are meta and postmodern.” It's not particularly clever but it's there. In the movie they read the comments related to their ghost videos and they aren't kind. They keep saying stuff like, “you can't pay attention to what crazies say on YouTube,” wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Sort of overdone but it gets a pass because I am being generous and my eyes having been rolling enough as it is. 

This guy
The guy that plays Sam Adams in Making History is just too weird to live, man. He plays this creep named Rowan North. He is the antagonist in the film. His thing is that he wants to usher in the apocalypse for whatever reason. Find out it's the old “garbage that needs to be cleaned” motive. He really comes on the scene when he plants some ghost summoning device at a concert and all hell breaks loose in probably the coolest scene of the movie. The Ghostbusters luckily capture the apparition and it goes viral. This brings about the best cameo as Bill Murray comes in as a paranormal debunker. He is such a dick and talks the ladies into releasing the ghost from its trap. It flies out and immediately kills him by throwing him out the window. The death was laugh out loud funny.

The most cringe-worthy joke comes when we get the “guilty as charged” bit which I apparently hated enough to jot down without any context. When I Googled the phase and “Ghostbusters” I got a lot of people also hating that line which was featured in the trailer. I am only guessing here, I actually watched this weeks ago but I'm a backed up on writing about all this shit, but I think it was something like “if it's crime being sexy, then guilty as charged.” Die.

Other than the little nitpicky things I just listed, the giant Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons that show up out of nowhere which goes unexplained, and the CGI heavy corny-ass fight scene at the end, this was a solid movie with lots going for it.

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is the greatest movie of all time

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning--the second in the Tommy Jarvis trilogy--makes more or less no sense, doesn't feature the "real" Jason, and came out just a year after the one that was supposed to end the franchise, but is nonetheless a totally awesome movie. Definitely of the kitsch persuasion, the film isn't good but is highly enjoyable/memorable. 

Part of my effinity for this movie comes with it being the first one in the series that I saw when I was six or sevenish. Spoiler: This is the Scooby Doo one. where Jason isn't the killer. It's some guy dressed up as Jason. I thought they were all like this with some guy trying to make everyone think he was this dead psycho killer, like keeping the memory of that alive or something. Needless to say, this is indeed the only one like this.

Pros: Lots of over-the-top killing, some spectacular nudity, and kung fu. The first movie in the franchise with a little diversity (there are four black people in the film, one of which even lives). Best kill is the greaser with a road flare.

Cons: The hillbillies are incredibly irritating. The movie in no way varies from the formula and then throws out a twist. Most of the active is SO bad.

The pretty, blonde waitress lady
Notes: Character list includes an older Tommy, an attractive blonde psychologist lady, the middle aged dude running the camp, a fat, low self-esteem idiot, a variety of troubled youths that constantly sneak off to do it, a mother/son duo of hill-jack bikers, a couple greasers, a black kid named Reggie and most of the rest of his family including his brother who lives in a van, some hot chick that works at a diner that shows up for no reason other than to show off her breasts and die, and some skeezy dude who is into her. 

Fuck, man
The movie opens with little Tommy, Corey Feldman, dreaming about Jason coming back from the grave. When he wakes up he is a 30-yeard old man who is playing a high school kid. To torture him, I guess, the cops are taking him to Camp Crystal Lake which is now a group home situation for wayward teens. Right after the cops leave we get to meet this chunky idiot with chocolate on his face and hands. He walks over and starts talking to these attractive 80s girls doing laundry who want nothing to do with him. They treat him like shit and send him off. He then goes over to this guy Vick who is chopping wood like a maniac. The fat idiot offers him a candy bar. He chops it. The idiot tells him he is "out of line" and Vick fucking kills him with the ax. Talk about overreacting, man. This comes out of fucking nowhere. It stands out as the second most brutal in a movie full of brutal fucking kills. Kill that isn't even done by Jason. Fuck, that was dark and sad. So cops come back and we also get these ambulance drivers. One is a raging asshole, calls everyone a “bunch of pussies” because they are crying about having just witnessed a brutal murder, while the other one is sort of walking around, looking weird. They keep focusing on the weird one inexplicably. SPOILER: Remembering that the killer was some dude dressed as Jason, when they kept zooming in on this medic, I knew he must be the killer. That night Jason kills a couple of greasers. It's whatever. We are 15 minutes in and we already have five deaths. None are impressive.

Don't fuck with Tommy
Some stuff about this incarnation of Tommy. Dude is unexpectedly jacked and totally unhinged. So we keep seeing him slowly losing it. The way they illustrate this is the best. Some raging asshole comes down in Tommy's wolfman mask, yeah, he is still making those masks, and just acts like a huge asshole. He jumps around like, "booga booga" and makes Tommy jump in front of the group. They are laughing and he starts sort of halfway punching Tommy repeatedly in the chest in an extremely irritating way until Tommy like slips him around his shoulders and slams into this table. It is fucking insane.

Here's a pretty lady
Now on to the most memorable kills. We get this mustachioed guy who works at the hospital as an orderly who picks up a chick way out of his league at a diner. She goes and gets naked in the bathroom just because. Pops her tits out saying “it's showtime” for no reason other than to insert some nudity into the film. While this is going on, Stache gets axed in the head. The girl gets it in her chest. More fantastic, gratuitous nudity. This couple smokes weed while doing. It's some random dumb girl with great tits and the idiot that got slammed by Tommy. The girl gets garden sheers to the eyes while the dude gets a belt tightened around his face and a tree. It's sort of a weird one but is cool.


Here's some more deaths. The kid Reggie, his brother shows up and is the black dude from Return of the Living Dead. He is homeless and living with his girl in a van near the camp. He meets up with Reggie and the doctor lady before elegantly mentioning to his girl that he has to take a shit because of the enchiladas her ate earlier. His girl dies off screen while he gets it on the can because of said enchiladas. Jason stabs wildly through the outhouse walls with some pointy, spear thing. Dude does what you shouldn't do when someone is stabbing wildly through the wall and plants himself against that wall. He gets the pipe thing right square in the chest and dies. Now it's on to the Geek and his mom, which thank fuck, these two, yeesh. It starts when the Geek comes at Tommy like an aggressive asshole. He basically picks a fight with Tommy who Chuck Norris's his ass. After taking that L, the Geek is freaking out, riding his motorcycle around screaming like a lunatic about getting his ass kicked. Finally, after this goes on for way too long, Jason lops off his head with a machete before he meatclevers the mom's face. From there it is the kids who get it. A dude that looks like Jon Cryer gets a clever to the face, this redhead who just turned down Cryer gets naked, sees Cryer dead in her bed, and then gets the standard under the bed stab. And finally we get some chick combining “the robot” with miming, which is an embarrassing way to go for sure, who dies somehow but you don't really notice because you just want the dancing to stop. 

Tommy Chuck Norrising a hillock
Still not as bad as Crispin Glover in The Final Chapter
Eh? See it? No? Ok then.
It's here that we get the usual discovery of all the bodies scene. It's the black kid who finds them all dead. Doctor lady shows up and like berates him. “What is it? What's wrong? What's the matter? What's wrong? What is it? What is it?” This while shaking him. That is not an exaggeration. They take off. Kid's grandpa gets hurled through the window. His eyes are cut out too. This Jason likes stealing people's eye holes, I guess. I've been thinking that this kid looks familiar. Realize he is Carl Lewis as he is sprinting away, possibly genuinely terrified.  They go outside. It's raining. The doctor is wearing a white shirt bra-less. She also falls a lot. Tries to crawl away for 20 seconds. Jason is like 80 yards away. Just stand up and walk briskly away. She is determined to make crawling work. Jason eventually walks up on her. About to bring the machete the fuck down when the kid shows back up flying around in a bulldozer which he hits Jason with. Takes a lot of damage but bounces back. The doctor now fights Jason with a chainsaw. Machete vs. chainsaw, chainsaw always wins. Obviously. Cuts his arm with it. But it runs out of gas. Bummer. 

Are you fucking kidding me?
Just before the doctor lady gets kilt, Tommy shows back up after being missing for half the movie. Him and Jason stare each other down for a long time while everyone yells at Tommy to do something. What he does is stab Jason in the femoral. Should bleed out. But doesn't. Sort of falls and is hanging on to the side of the barn where there are spikes underneath him for no reason. He is still coming at them so Tommy chops off his hand and he lands in bunch of spikes. The old Scooby Doo ending. It's not the mythic Jason but just some enthusiast with some ability to make masks. He's another mask savant, basically. His son was the kid that got axed at the beginning. Doesn't kill the guy who killed his kid though. This ending is stupid and doesn't make sense. But wait, there's more. Cut to the hospital, Tommy has all Jason's shit. He dreams he puts all that shit on and kills the doc. Wakes up. It was a dream, to his relief. Then he maybe does it for real. Roll credits. Glad that was cleared up. Yeah, it's whatever but I would still watch this movie over almost every Nightmare on Elm Street


MonsterVision


Let's check back in with good old Joe Bob Briggs. See what he has to say about this Part 5 of the franchise. 


Monday, June 19, 2017

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is the greatest movie of all time

Overall the movie is pretty okay. More of what the people want except maybe it's a little too much of a good thing. Highest kill count for the series so far with 13 fatalities, they start pretty much immediately and significantly cut down on the time between murders. There is also so much more gratuitous nudity in this flick than those that came before it. It also stars Corey Feldman as Tommy and Crispin Glover as more or less himself.

When you watch these things back-to-back, like I've pretty much done every time I've watched these as TNT and USA used to have a Friday the 13th marathon from sun down to sun up every single Friday the 13th, the thing that really sticks out is how fucking insane the timeline for these movies are. Part 2 takes place entirely on Friday the 13th. Part III, which takes off right where Part 2 ends, starts with Jason on the loose the night that all the killing takes place and spans one full day. For The Final Chapter we have kids still going to the fucking lake after multiple days of Jason massacring people. There are at least two days that pass in this film with the majority of the flick taking place on Monday the 16th. In this time Jason's appearance has drastically changed and a Jason expert/hunter whose sister died in this universe technically on that Friday (she was the one that was speared during sex in Part 2). In Part 2 Jason looks like a hairy elephant man, in III he is completely hairless and has a pit bull face, while in this one his face is sort of melting off. Not meant to be thought too hard about I would imagine.

The Jason expert though, his shit really falls apart in this timeline. So his sister just fucking died on Friday. This dude would have started his Jason research immediately upon hearing of her demise on Saturday, wrapped that up and gotten into the woods by Sunday, and then have his showdown (which doesn't end well) on Monday. While that is possible, it is heavily implied that he has been out in the woods on quest for vengeance has been a long time coming with newspaper clippings and supplies and all that.

Pros: Up the kills. Tom Savini is back so they are fucking sick too. Up the breasts. Feldman is fucking cool.

Cons: Cripsin Glover is too fucking weird to live, man, and is seriously freaky. The ending makes no sense. Much of the movie makes no sense (but I guess it doesn't really matter). Some of the acting is bad.

Notes: Started this one with the female companion. Won her over with Tom Savini, Crispin Glover, and Corey Feldman. “See, it's almost a legitimate movie,” I said. She didn't last long. We get started with the standard recap of the three movies that came before. She says something along the lines of “What the fuck is this a highlight reel?” and she was out. So here we are, now at Sunday the 15th or whatever. And the police are still just letting people come to the lake to get slaughtered. They don't know for sure who did what or if this person had an accomplice. But by all means. Camp on at the murder lake. But I digress.

So following the goings on of Part 3, the paramedics take Jason to the morgue and just put him on ice. Like, “oh, no big, just a guy that has mastered this whole not dying thing, eh, he's probably dead now though.” With this coming in you'd also think the coroner would be on high alert. Not this morgue attendant, or whatever his official title is. Axel, as he is called, gets incredibly rapey instead. He freely talks about doing one of the corpses and sexually harasses a nurse to boot. His final sin comes when he taunts Jason, winning over the nurse, apparently, as she is now into it. But then Jason's hand pops out touches her and she is once again turned off. Long story short, they both die horribly.

Grrr
We start meeting the people we are going to start watching die. Starts with the family. Mother, daughter (a pretty lady), son (Tommy played by Corey Feldman). The ladies we see running if you can call it that. With Tommy we get his weird masks. He “made” them. Obviously Tom Savini's efforts as they are fucking works of art making Tommy some sort of savant. This also comes up later when he fixes the sister's car despite no training or anything and being 12.

Now on to the campers heading to the house next door. A girl, a heartthrob, a horrible couple, a high computer guy, and Crispin Glover. They mock this fat hitchhiker chick on the side of the road. She is just there to die, basically. Pad the kill count a little bit while she holds a banana she mashes as she dies. Whatever. When we cut back to the high computer guy with his vagina lips he tells Crispin Glover that his computer says that he is a “dead fuck” because no one knows how computers work in the mid 80s. But yeah. He totally is. He's a fucking train wreck in this movie.This dude's weirdness, which has been addressed ad nausea, is on full display here. I feel like he isn't really acting. Like when he does this dance which is beyond belief. This thing is out of control. He is flailing about aggressively in a way that is fucking indescribable. All the actors are like trying not to stare or laugh. It is pretty hilarious.


Once they all get to the lake they go skinny dip just to give the people what they want, I guess. Feldman and his sister show up. Feldman lose his little mind. He gets exposed to naked breasts repeatedly throughout the movie. The sister is like, “uh, let's move it along” and they head back. On the way they pick up a hitchhiker because insanity. There's a murderer on the loose who is slaughtering the shit out of everyone in your area and these two pick up a hitchhiker, bring him into their home, and take him up to the boy's room. They need to call the police. My dad would have already been waving his gun around. He is fine though. He seems homeless but ends up being a Jason expert. Jason is a fictional creature at this point on a three day killing-spree yet here we have an expert.

Eventually get to it here. These twin chicks, who they picked up in town or something, are there coming on a little strong with all the dudes except the high one with the vagina lips. One of them straight up steals one chick's boyfriend. The way the girl friend deals with is to go skinny dipping because that happens. It might've been like a last ditch effort to save the relationship. Swims to a little inflatable boat alone. Jason jumps out of the water and stabs her through the bottom of it. Not the best kill. Her boyfriend grows a conscience inside and comes out to look for her. Takes off his shirt. Little Jean shorts he's wearing go up to his nipples. Sees the dead chick. Swims back to the dock where Jason stabs him with a harpoon in the dick. Back in the cabin, Glover improbably gets laid by one of the twins, must have won her over with his dance moves. Other twin decides to bike home. See her shadow get stabbed with a spear again. Post sex, Glover asks the girl if he is a dead fuck. Aggressively kisses the girls when she says it was excellent. He's going to celebrate with a bottle of wine but can't find the corkscrew. Jason stabs it into his hand in the meat cleaver is his face. Eventually the rest of the redshirts get killed off. Some of them are okay but I won't go into detail.

Here are some things... The dog hasn't been in the movie since long before Jason showed up but suddenly and for no reason jumps out the window. Like through the glass and everything. Was that a suicide? Completely random and totally insane. Does not get addressed. Also, the mom is missing, she was walking around outside and screamed or something, but that goes unexplained. Sister is out looking for her while Feldman walks about the house like an idiot. She comes to the expert's camp. The homeless guy freaks out she is in his tent which he machetes like an idiot. Once the sister comes back to the house, the one that the kids are staying in, with the Jason expert, the maniac instantly attacks him. He just stands there and takes all these lashes while yelling, “he's killing me! He's killing me!” I shit you negative, he was fucking screaming that. So he obviously dies. But the sister does the thing where she sort of runs, gets just out of sight, stops, then runs back to check on the guy that is clearly dead. This is standard Friday the 13th survivor girl behavior but she makes it out. Jason has blocked each entrance with the body of one of his victims. She jumps out the window and runs home at maximum effort. She is flying. Jason comes out. Sees the dude he has crucified the railing of the side door. Just pulls him off with the nail through the guy's hands pealing flesh away. It is a nice little touch. 

She goes back to the house and finds Feldman. Jason busts through a window while she is telling him about it and grabs Feldman. The sister goes fucking apeshit on Jason with a hammer. This girl is all out. She deserves to live, damnit. She is tough as shit though not the smartest. Jason is just exploding through front doors at this point. They lock themselves in a bedroom and just wait for him to bust in. Nail him with a TV. She gets cornered and dives out of the second story window. They show the landing and all that. It is fucking brutal. Feldman was supposed to leave. She comes back. He is there cutting his hair. It is fucking weird. She is like, “WTF, man?” She machetes Jason's hand. It's a nice effect. Meanwhile, Feldman is Bicing his long ass hair with a disposable. Yeah, unlikely. If this were real life, either Feldman would have bled to death from self-inflicted razor wounds or he'd want to die that would be so painful. Sister is fighting Jason, she is beating the shit out him. This actress is really just going at it. Feldman distracts him by looking so weird. This gives the sister enough time to whack him, knocking off his mask. See his face. Again, completely different. Now Feldman picks up the machete and gives Jason a chop to the head. He falls. His face slides down the blade. It's a pretty cool effect. 


No way Jason comes back from that! Yeah, he twitches. Feldman sees it and is not fucking around and goes on to machete him for a solid 20 seconds. Sister is screaming for him to stop, but why? So that's it. Jason is dead(ish) and Feldman is looking like he is going to become the next killer. Sort of a letdown of an ending for a supposedly last movie for the franchise. It was otherwise solid though and we all know there are a crap-ton more of these that get made over the next couple of years. 

MonsterVision


Let's check in to see what MonsterVision host Joe Bob Briggs has to say... Yeah, didn't have the rights. 

Friday, June 16, 2017

Friday the 13th Part 3 is the greatest movie of all time

Two for two after the original Friday the 13th, which was trash, with Part 3 not quite living up to Part 2 but not bad on the whole. The movie is the same movie as Part 2 with a hockey mask instead of a sack of potatoes, the biggest loser in all of film, a brunette only cast, urban thugs, and some implied rape. It is what it is: more dumb kids getting killed in creative ways (but with less nudity).

Pros: Decent kills. Some of them you can tell were shot just for the 3D (like the harpoon to the eye and the POV kills) but are still pretty good, especially the guy walking on his hands. 

Cons: Basically just redo the second movie but not as well. Less of what we want in terms of killing and boning and what not. 

Notes: Starts with the standard recap. We get the “you've done your job well; mommy is pleased” bit from Part 2. Like the first 15 minutes of the movie are the last 15 minutes of the previous movie. I already saw this shit. Get to the credits, finally. Sort of a nice intro. Decent, weird song. Coming at you lettering. Obviously was in 3-D. Also, directed by Steve Miner who is maybe a bit overrated but this film is indeed solid.

"It's me, Haroldo"
Starts with with this guy Harold, some pretty cool looking mustachioed Camp Crystal Lake convenience store proprietor, walking around outside his store. His bitch of a wife goes off on him. She is watching the news which features the Jason murders which just happened. She thinks she sees Harold walking about outside among the clothes she has hung to dry. It is obviously J. Back to Harold in the store, eating fish food. Has a bunny in the produce. Animal lover. He also samples all of these packaged items in the store. Wifey catches him and bitches at him some more. Goes out to put the bunny up. A snake has killed the rest of them. He runs out and goes and takes a shit, leaving the rabbit there. It is the weirdest thing. I like this guy. He'll probably make it. Starts to go outside. Rethinks it. Turns the light on. Now goes outside. Immediately takes a clever to the gut and dies. Bitchy wife dies not long after.

"We should go do it!" "Yeah."
Now it's the next day. So this is Saturday the 14th, technically. More campers. Already talking about boning. One of the girls had something happen to her at the lake and now she is going back as the fifth wheel in a double-date situation. Go pick up the fifth girl who is actually the weird guy's date. He sulks around talking about how ugly he is. The girl they pick up is like, “are you my date.” He apologizes. This guy. All three of the girls look exactly the same. They think the van is on fire so they run back. Turns out the hippies are just toking, man. Yet another brunette. The dude is a Tommy Chong ripoff. One of them is preggers. What? They get pulled over. With weed in 1982, I can only assume they'll get consecutive life terms. But the cops just roll on by. Dealing with mass murder and all. I guess Paul and Amy Steel are dead. Probably Muffy, the dog, too.

Every damn movie
Come up on an insane old person in the road. Why is this shit necessary? They pick him up. He starts right in with the crazy. “You are indeed, all of you, kind and generous young people,” he says. “Look what his grace has bestowed upon me,” and whips out an eyeball. “I found this today. There were other parts of the body but he said he wanted me to have this. We wanted me to warn you. Look upon this omen. Go back from whence ye came. I have warned thee.” Yeah, the kids are fucking ghost. I can't believe how much more annoying this guy is than Ralph who was insanely irritating in his own right. 
They get to the camp which should so be shut the fuck down. The one chick who had the issue speaks about being back there in the vaguest way possible. "I've been emotionally scared by years of unspoken verbal abuse by my father... It's not what he said; it's what he didn't say." Her BF, Rick, shows up. He is extremely unpleasant. Basically everything he says to Chris, the final girl, is pressuring her into sex. Talks about how he can't take anymore cold showers and tells her she is getting fat. She is like, “oh, you, stop.” Back to the van. The door is open. She is like, “huh, I thought I closed that,” implying Jason opened it. But then the kid with no self-esteem, Shelly, is in there. Huh? She is like “why aren't you at the lake.” He is like, “everyone went skinny dipping and I'm not skinny enough.” Whant Wah. This dude is a walking advertisement for abortion. I can't think of a bigger buzzkill than this idiot. He is like Debbie Downer without the irony. The next time we hear from him he is screaming. They go look for him and he has made himself up to look like he has an ax in his head. Fuck this asshole. This guy better die soon, for real.

"Sorry you're in the car with such a loser cuck."
Shelly and the brunette he is into go to a convenient store. It is insane. First, the chick behind the register tells the camper chick, who hasn't pulled out a wallet or anything, that they “don't accept no food stamps.” She is like, “oh, I guess I need money.” The one idiot, Shelly, is looking at porn magazines. He tosses her his wallet and this urban street gang shows up out of nowhere and strong-arms it. The lady in the group pulls out a condom from it and mocks everyone with it as well as other threatening gestures. They leave and the black dude comes out. Nervous Shelly puts the car in reverse and smashes into their motorcycles. "Like I've ever drove before." The black dude smashes windows of Rick's car with a chain. Shelly is pissed and has a car which he weaponizes and runs over their bikes, again. Biker shakes his fist and swears he'll get his revenge.

Shelly shows up with the smashed car that he borrowed from Rick and trashed. He shows no remorse for this. He may be a borderline personality. Rick has had enough. Wants to leave. Chris wants him to stay but he sees no point as his dick wasn't at that moment wet. Chris dooms him by convincing him to stay. 

Bikers show up to get their revenge. Just end up stealing their gas. Seems a pretty reasonable, nonviolent way of get back at the kids who trashed their rides. For this they get killed horrible. (Later see the black dude is still holding on).

Get a bunch filler stuff for the next half hour. The super horny guy, not Chris's dude but the other one, just starts walking on his hands for no reason and does this for the rest of the movie. Shelly tries to score with the brunette he is there with. Her vagina recoils in horror. She isn't brutal about turning him down though. When she is out of earshot he calls her a “bitch.” End this guy already. Chris keeps being vague. Reminded me of the girl in Futurama, hence the above quote, until we find out that Jason may have sexually assaulted her. We Jason's face for the first time since the very beginning of the movie which was actually from the last movie. Here he looks completely fucking different. That shit happened yesterday in this universe.

And even more dicking around with no killing. Tommy Chong and the stoner chick go into the barn where Jason has set up camp. They leave and it is uneventful. Chong also goes to the outhouse where he takes a shit and smokes a doob. They really need to cut some of this shit. Shelly scares the one girl he was trying to score with by grabbing her foot that she is toeing in the water from the dock. He is wearing the infamous hockey mask and has a harpoon gun for some reason. He is like, “haha, you need to relax, stop being an uptight bitch.” Fucking kill this guy already. 
 
And now we get to it


After more real-time walking around and checking shit out we finally get some kills and they just keep coming. The chick Shelly wants to do gets a harpoon to the eye. The one dude walking around on his hands gets a machete chop upside down to the crotch. We see him later and it is gnarly. His lovely GF takes a post coital shower and then does some light reading of a Fangoria mag. Article about Tom Savini, the legendary makeup guy from 1 and 4, also Sexmachine from From Dusk Till Dawn. Blood trickles down on it. Looks up, sees her dude chopped from stem to sternum. Jason stabs her from under the hammock. Jason then kills the stoner by throwing him into a fuse box. Stoner chick, who is just the worst actress, gets stabbed with a hot poker. Dickhead sexual predator dude's head gets crushed. His eye pops out. 



Chris eventually sees all the carnage. Jason chases her about. Stabs him in the hand. Comes at him like a fucking maniac. Bashes him with a giant log. Gets in the van. Tries to run him down. Out of gas. The punks stole it. Stuck on the bridge. Jason's hands get stuck in the window of her car. She bolts. Falls multiple times. She heads to Jason's body barn. Bonks him with a shovel and hangs him. He looks dead. He is not. 


Get the full frontal Jason. Totally different guy from 2. Black biker shows back up to save the day. I mean die. Gets his arm immediately chopped off and macheted to overkill. Chris comes at Jason and gives him an ax to the head. Reaches out like a freak. She doesn't realize he is a supernatural being. He is bleeding after all. But the old "if it bleeds we can kill it" rule of thumb does not apply. She gets in a canoe so we can have that standard Jason pulling the girl down into the lake from behind scene. Get like 30 jump scares. Jason sees her from upstairs in the house. Sprints at her with maximum effort. And it is the rotting mother that pulls her down. What the hell?


She is now a lunatic. The cops just leave Jason's body there to chill. Sweet Jason music to end it. Also, obviously room there for a sequel. And here we go.

Monday, June 12, 2017

Friday the 13th: Part 2 is the greatest movie of all time

After the garbage that was the original Friday the13th, I was expecting total trash. To my surprise, this was actually watchable. Again, the movie doesn't really add anything to the slasher genre, but it was a much more fun than I was expecting. Pretty ladies, gratuitous nudity, and nasty kills make for a pretty enjoyable fright.

Kirsten Baker, a pretty lady
In this one, directed by Steve Miner, we pick up five years after the original. Here Jason stalks and kills camp counselors who fail to live up to the horror genre survivor rules like no drug or sex. All I remembered about it was that it was the first actual Jason as the killer movie, there is no hockey mask involved, and the final girl form the original gets killed in the first scene of the movie. I had no idea that the survivor girl in this movie was Amy Steel who was also the final girl in another solid flick in April Fool's Day. She is great. It's weird she didn't become more famous.

Pros: It is not The Godfather but it is everything I want from a cheesy horror movie. Awesome kills, beautiful ladies, gratuitous nudity.

Cons: Other than it being like a million other slashers and Jason not wearing a hockey mask, this flick was flawless.

Sack of Potatoes Jason
Notes: First 15 minutes of the movie is reliving the last half of the first one. This is standard for the remaining sequels. Now at present. In real-time we get the survivor girl from the first one talking to her parents on the phone and getting ready for bed. It looks like she is making David Bowie drawings for a living. After another 10 minutes a cat jumps in her apartment. She goes to the fridge to grab the kitty some food and sees Jason's momma's decomposing head in the fridge. She freaks out, Jason comes up from behind her and screw drivers her head. It's a pretty decent kill.

Butt cheek
See the new group of kids going to the newly reopened Camp Crystal Lake. Same old guy, Ralph, comes up to them talking his crazy nonsense about them being doomed. Once they get there we meet the counselors. The ladies are really pretty. One of the dude's is in a wheelchair, setting up one of the more memorable kills from the franchise. We get a gratuitous butt cheek shot as the one in the Mickey Mouse midriff is barely wearing clothes. This idiot Paul, the main camp guy—blonde, hunky—greets his staff. Drones on about fun and work and so forth. Amy Steel shows up in a sweet VW bug. He gives her shit for being late. They later go off alone and make out. That night Paul tells the campfire tale of Jason at the same camp where everyone died just a few years ago. Though the movie came out less than a year after the first one, we hear in the dude's telling that it all went down five years before.

This fucking guy, again
Amy Steel and Paul make out in his cabin. Ralph shows up and peeps on them and does some gross shit which means we are approaching the first kill at the camp. This is a pretty gnarly one, too. Gets garroted with barbed wire.

Jason's amateur carpentry
Everything is pretty normal that next day. Butt Cheeks's dog Muffin gets killed I guess. We see this adventurous couple find dog pieces in the woods. The cops catch them and take them back but no one, except the cop, who dies brutally in Jason's impressively constructed shanty, cares that they were trespassing. We also see Amy Steel's ability to use a chainsaw which plays no part in the movie whatsoever. That evening we get the groups breaking off. Most of the camp goes to the bar in town and is never seen again. Amy Steel, Paul, and this nerdy goofball are the only of these that matter. The goofball gets wasted and manages to pick up a lady at the bar. He is never seen again. As for the six folks that stay behind, all with the intention of getting it on, they all die.

The deaths here are all spectacular. Setting it up is Butt Cheeks going for a little naked swim because why not. The nudity couldn't be more gratuitous or appreciated. This Scott asshole, the one that slingshotted her infamous ass earlier, steals the naked girl's clothes. She chases after him while he rounds around giggling like an idiot. He eventually gets caught in one of those step in the loop traps things that hang you upside down that people in movies always get caught in but no one has ever been caught in IRL. She gets her shirt back and threatens to leave him there. While she is looking for a knife Jason slits his throat. She is then killed off screen much to everyone's disappointment. But then we get a pair of awesome kills. In the first, the kid in the wheelchair gets a machete to the face and falls down 50 stairs. Then the couple that was trespassing gets shish kebabed during sex. And the last girl gets it when she checks on the couple killed while boning when Jason jumps out of the bed with the chick and comes at her with a knife.


Meanwhile, the rest were getting wasted in town. They have a Jason related conversation. Here it goes from Jason being a complete folklore myth to him definitely being real to him definitely being alive out there and growing up alone and scared in the woods. This is now fact in their minds and it is taken as such for the remainder of the franchise. It's bananas.

Paul and Amy Steel come back. The rest are god knows where. They have their "where is everyone" moment. Jason attacks them. Paul just fights him.
He has obviously lost that fight as when Amy Steel was watching and ran away, Jason was on top of Paul, choking him out. But when she hears nothing she comes back and calls for Paul. Jason pops up to no one's surprise and she beats Jason down multiple times before running off. Jason chases her to his shanty in the woods, which, again, is pretty impressive assuming he built it, where he keeps all his bodies. He also has a shrine built for his dead mom. The centerpiece, her head. There is also the sweater she was wearing when the girl in the first one lops off her dome. This gives Amy Steele the idea to try the old dress as the mother trick. It sort of works, she is all "mother is pleased, no more killing," but then he sees the head and they go at it again. She is boned. But Paul comes out of nowhere and they machete him in the neck and shoulder. He appears dead so they take off his sack. They think he is gross but we don't see it.

Baby Ruth!!!
They go back to the cabin. Hear something at the door. It's Muffin, the dog. Yay! Happily ever after... Nope. Jason bursts through the window looking like the Elephant Man and pulls her out, presumably to kill her and set up Part 3.

MonsterVision: Here is Joe Bob Briggs's commentary from his Friday the 13th marathon on Halloween night in 1998. Fucking loved this shit. 

Friday, June 9, 2017

Friday The 13th is the worst movie of all time

Did not fucking like. Out of the big four horror franchises that began in the 10 years ranging from 1974-1984, this one is easily the weakest. While it does have some excellent kills, it is not a very interesting movie. My plan is to watch all of the movies in the franchise... So if this is how the series begins, I can't wait to see the rest of them!

Pretty sweet
Pros: A few of the kills are pretty good. Ditto on Tom Savini's make-up effects.

Cons: Extremely unoriginal. It adds nothing to the movies it rips off—The Town that Dreaded Sundown, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre—all of which I'd rather have watched. The pacing is shit. Long scenes where nothing happens that go nowhere.

Notes: The movie starts out in 1958. Counselors telling ghost stories about a kid that just fucking died. The follow that up with a little coitus. Get the “ch, ch, ch, ha, ha, ha.” And they are kilt.

This fucking idiot
Fast-forward to present day (so 1980). Chick shows up in a gas station/diner thing looking for Camp Crystal Lake. One of the locals, I guess, starts taking her part of the way there when some bumpkin named Ralph comes up saying “oh, you're going to 'camp blood,' the murder camp, not coming back from there. You're doomed. You're all fucking doomed.” Stop being such a drama queen. She hitchhikes, again. First ride is OK Second not so much. Jeep doesn't stop. She jumps out. Hurts her leg and gets chased down and murdered.

Meet the counselors. One is Kevin Bacon. They go for group lake swim. One asshole faked drowning so he can get mouth-to-mouth. Snake gets into the cabin, they brutally kill it for being harmless. Motorcycle cop comes to check things out for no reason. Accuses them of smoking weed. Looking for wild man Ralph. Gets called away on the radio. Immediately Ralph shows up. “I am a messenger of God. You're damned if you stay here. This place is cursed. Cursed. It's got a death curse.” They are like, “yeah, that was probably Ralph.”

Yes!
Now they start to get picked off one by one. Kevin Bacon's death is the coolest and probably jumpstarted his career. He gets arrowed from underneath the bed in the throat. This makes up for nothing.

One of the glaring faults of the movie is the lack of editing that happens. We see one girl getting ready for bed in real time. Just when she is about to nod off she hears what sounds like a child calling for help and she goes out in the pouring rain, in a night gown, mind you. I mean, she just had a slicker on like one minute before. If there were an award for most inappropriate attire imaginable, this chick wins it. But that is not a thing and she ends up getting killed at the archery range instead.

Once they get down to two is when things really start to drag. So much just like waiting around. There is still 35 minutes left and it all happens in real time. Building suspense, I guess, but feels like just watching people go about their evenings since they never really feel like anything is going down. Here they haven't noticed anyone was missing. They finally realize something is up when they find a bloody ax in someone's bed.

They separate somehow. At some point she is finally like, “huh, haven't seen that other guy for a while,” and goes out looking for him. Eventually finds him when she opens a door and he is hanging from it via an arrow in his eye. Freaks out and runs back to her cabin. Barricades it. Body comes through the window. The killer is just on the outside of the cabin. She sees a jeep show up which the killer is totally driving (she must be able to teleport). She lifted it off the new camp owner or whatever. Seeing the familiar jeep, the survivor girl unbarricades the door, runs out, and runs right to Mrs. Vorhees. She is like, “who are you? Thank god! Halp!”

Put it out of its misery
She goes into the cabin with her to check things out. The craziness escalates and it becomes obvious that Mrs. Vorhees is unhinged. Survivor girl goes on the offensive, a bold move, and beats Ms. Vorhees down. She then runs off but keeps running into bodies and freaking out. Meanwhile Ms. Vorhees is completely losing her shit. Talking to herself in Jason's voice, “don't let her live mommy” and so forth. They fight again. Survivor girl cunt punches her. For the next like 10 minutes we get the survivor girl beating down Mrs. Vorhees repeatedly only to have her come back yet again. Survivor girl finally has to chop her head off with a machete to end it once and for all in an infamous scene where we see some stand-in's hairy, meaty hands doubling for Mrs. Vorhees's. Movie is over now except for the final scare when Jason pulls the survivor girl down out of the canoe she is floating around on. You probably know this scene because it happens in every fucking one of these movies thereafter. At that point it might have been a dream or something but the 10 or so sequels that follow suggest that no, he was really there and really pulled her down. He is still a little kid here, though. By the next movie he is like 6'3”. From there he just keeps growing until he is like professional wrestling huge. 

Get used to seeing a lot of this action

Jesus, this movie was indeed shite. There was, however, the consolation prize of this gem of a MonsterVision episode. This was the first part in a 1998 Halloween night marathon, a great night of high school shenanigans which ended with TNT. During the course of the night Joe Bob Briggs is stalked by a would be killer that he discovers to be Ted Turner in the end. I can see why the show didn't last much longer. But man was it worth it. Part 1 of the show below. I post the rest as I watch the films.