Piranha 3DD is the worst movie of all time

Piranha 3DD. Jesus. This ins bad in a charmless, fuck-man-I-just-watched-this way. Piranha 3D was fine for what it was. Just a dumb B-movie that was fun and over-the-top but was taken seriously. I enjoyed it. 3DD feels like a cash grab that no one took seriously. Genuinely one of the worst, least enjoyable movies I've ever seen. Did definitely learn to spell piranha though. Piranha. Look at that shit.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: It strains to up the gore and self-awareness of it predecessor, and -- despite some game celebrity cameos -- the result is a dispiriting echo of 2010's horror-comedy.

And away we go... Gist of the movie is that an ancient school of man-eating piranhas hyper-evolve in weird ways for no apparent reason and go from the lake in the first one to a new waterpark in the second. There is a whole subplot about the ownership of the waterpark with characters played by Danielle Panabaker who is apparently in Grey's Anatomy and The Flash among other things I've never watched and David Koechner who will always be Champ from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy to me. The Koechner character turns the place into an all nude place, more or less, though they still allow in children and shit like that. Others in the movie that I recognize are
crazy hot Katrina Bowden who was the intern chick on 30 Rock and was stellar in the flick Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Gary Busey with whom I share a birthday, the Clu Gulager who every time he shows up I remind everyone that he is awesome (his son, John Gulager who also did the movie Feast, is the director) has an extended cameo at the start of the movie (when reality goes out the window), David Hasselhoff who is leathery as fuck who is maybe the only thing I sort of like about the movie, Christopher Lloyd of Back to the Future, Doc Brown fame, Ving Rhames who was known for his role as Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction but now is just the Arby's guy, and Paul Scheer from Hell Baby and all the podcasts that I listen to.

Sigh. Where to begin. I'm not what you would call a stickler for movie logic but holy shit. I mean, I was fine with the piranhas living isolated in a cave below a lake for millions of years, feeding off of each other. That is insane. Did I complain. No. But for this movie that features piranhas that that inhabit and grow inside a woman's vagina after she inhaled fertilized piranha eggs (yeah, I have no idea) which bites a guy's dick off, of course, and are able to walk on land by the end of the movie, I have issues.

I was surprised when Rhames and Sheer show up, reprising their roles from the original. This was unnecessary and sad. Rhames completely phones it in. Sheer is pro though and seems like he at least wants to be there. In the first one, he falls off a boat into a piranha infested lake but other shit is going on and we don't see what happens to him though it is assumed he is dead. But then here he is, none worse for wear. Rhames, however, now has metal legs, which come in handy when pulling people out of shallow water. But, yeah, by the time they show up, at the waterpark for some sort of therapy session, I am way checked out. There are some unanswered questions here. Like how are these two hanging out in this universe? Sure, Rhames may have lived there since he was a cop there before his disability. But Sheer was a sleazy PA for a Girls Gone Wild type outfit. Why would he stick around? Also, why would they try to break their fear of water at an adult themed waterpark? Seems like an appropriate place for this to happen, I guess. Baby steps into the kiddie pool filled with naked women.

This movie was originally released in theaters, that part is crazy enough, in 3D, which is just insane. Might be the crappiest 3D movie in terms of everything. It's worse than Jaws 3D by a landslide. Mostly, this is just crappy looking fish and girls with giant 3D boobs running around. No one wins with a movie like this.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is seriously the greatest movie of all time

Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood. Oh my fucking gawd ya'll. Two lines from the movie sum up my reactions to the movie, "That was the best acting I've ever seen in my whole life" and "You're real, right?" Or something like that. Sort of Tarantino's way of telling you what he thinks about the film. Like when Aldo at the end of Inglourious Bastards says, "I think this just might be my masterpiece." At least the first one, any way. Lot of chicken mole, amigos. Rotten Tomato score is 85% Fresh. This is a travesty. In no frame of mind to definitively say this, but after one viewing, it is my favorite Taratino movie. At least on this night.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Thrillingly unrestrained yet solidly crafted, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood tempers Tarantino's provocative impulses with the clarity of a mature filmmaker's vision.

Gist of the movie is that a "has been" actor (who lives next door to Sharon Tate), one Rick Dalton played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his stunt double, Cliff Booth played by Brad Pitt, who is more than a brother and not quite a wife go about and hang around, doing their things in L.A. in 1969, building up to the violence that you know is coming at the hands of the Manson Family. The trailer makes it look like a Manson flick mostly dealing with the murder of Sharon Tate, played wonderfully by Margot Robbie, but it is really a buddy hangout movie. Great one at that. Minimal violence for a Tarantino movie and then we get what we were waiting for.

The Tate family, notably sister Debra, was originally pissed that Tarantino and company were making this movie that they planned on being released on the 50th anniversary of Sharon and company's murder. Then the director met with her and she gave the film her blessing. Now she come down firmly in Tarantino's defense, saying that the movie made her cry and how touched she was by Robbie's performance. She has even gone as far to say that she wished he would make a movie completely dedicated to her and what not. So really came around on that one. After seeing, you can totally see why.

Some of the bullet points. Leo and Pitt. These two together are the perfect duo and their performances are amazing. They should both be nominated for Best Actor.

First, Pitt. Cliff is one of the great Tarantino characters. Little bit of Aldo in him from GB. Also some shades of Rusty Ryan and Tyler Durden. He and Tarantino both independently saw the character as a Billy Jack type which he totes is. If you haven't seen that, it is basically about an extremely masculine but cool dude who can kick some fucking ass. We find out maybe halfway through the movie that he has done some shit that makes him a bastard. But he is such a great dude otherwise and is so fucking cool, you don't care. A personal fave scene with him is the one where he ends up at the Spahn Ranch, taking one Pussycat back to her people. It is tense as fuck as Manson Family members come out of the woodwork and ominously stare him down. You feel that he is in real danger and there are red flags popping up everywhere but he is a coffin nail, this guy. When he kicks the shit out of Steve "Clem" Grogan for slashing his tire, this is the guy who in real life was recommended to die after the Manson Family trial but then sentenced to life (he would get out on parole in 1985, incredibly) because as Judge James Kolts said during the sentencing, "Grogan was too stupid and too hopped on drugs to decide anything on his own," for slashing his tires when one of the hippy chicks runs off to get Tex Watson (the kid that plays Tex is one Austin Butler who was also in The Dead Don't Die whom I had never seen before a month ago and is now everywhere) who hauls ass back to the scene. The way he moves and the crazed look he has about him, you know shit was really about to go down. Plus, all this echos what happened to the real life stuntman Donald Shea at the hands of the MF. Shea was checking on George Spahn just as Cliff does in the film and calls the police on them. After the cops raided the ranch, Manson and company murdered the guy, burying his body near the property. Anyway, yeah, if you know about this shit it is even more ominous and you are even more freaked out. Also, him being a guy who never was in shit sort of follows an alternative path for the actor. Like if he was just a guy who played little roles like the one he had in True Romance.

Now Leo. Dude wins the film. Pitt was fucking sick. It is almost unbelievable, these two together, acting the shit out of this movie. A cool ass actor doing good ass work. That's Leo and his character, Rick fucking Dalton, in the film. Best when is sort of losing his shit. His is career is basically over with the arrival of New Hollywood (also called the "American New Wave") ushered in in 1967 with Bonnie and Clyde. No more Rick Dalton as a leading man, he is now relegated to television, playing a big that gets his ass kicked by the next big thing that comes along. The show that his character is acting in with the movie, Lancer, was a real show that ran from 1968-70. In the movie Lancer looks amazing.  I tried to watch an episode, "Blue Skies for Willie Sharpe," and it was fucking terrible. Production wise it was like watching someones home movie or something. I was expecting Howard Hawks. I think it was Tarantino joke. Having Dalton telling himself in the mirror that if he doesn't get his lines right, he was going to go home and blow his brains out, taking this shit so goddamned seriously for a show that was meh. That's his best scene in the movie. Might be saying it is a job and this guy fucking takes it seriously. In any case, love all the acting stuff with character. This is where he really shines, Leo that is. So many layers there. Pretending to be a good actor doing a shitty job and then freaking out. Then acting as this guy acting and fucking killing it. It was mind blowing how good that stuff was. So much so that they address it in the film.

Finally, there is Robbie as Tate. Her portrayal is so bubbly and likable, you feel protective of her. She is almost larger than life at first. Hanging out with Mama Cass and Michelle Phillips at the Playboy Mansion. Driving around LA with Roman Polanski. She is New Hollywood and very cool. But then were see her out and about. Stopping at a theater to watch a movie that she is in. No one knows her. It is sort of humbling but she is just excited to be there and hear people's reactions to her work. She isn't famous at this point, but this isn't something she seems to really care about. More just happy to be a part of it. She doesn't say a lot but she does such a good job and it is all done so delicately, you really get a sense of who she is and what she was like. You want her to live and you think of what she could have become. It feels like this is a woman picked for stardom for a new era, she just hasn't gotten there yet. Plus, Robbie is so pretty and that 1969 look is good for her. I don't mean to objectify her because she is so talented. But she is like painfully beautiful in this movie. Some critics have made a big deal of her character's lack of lines and shit. This is bullshit and sort of demeans her performance. She doesn't need to say a lot to knock it out of the park, which she does.

Some other things that really stand out include the cool as shit 1960s world that Tarantino builds, (getting into spoilerish territory here) the crazy ass ending, and the fucking insane cast. Not sure there has ever been a cast like this. There are three above. Fucking sick, right? Then there are the other people that kill in the couple of minutes where they are on screen. Folks that play historical figures like Bruce Dern as George Spahn, Emile Hirsch as Jay Sebring, and Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen. Random industry people some of which are real and others not like Zoë Bell and Kurt Russell play a stunt coordinating couple, Nicholas Hammond as Sam Wanamaker, Timothy Olyphant of the TV western Lancer James Stacy, and Al Pacino as a film producer. Various recognizable faces in the Manson clan, like Butler as Tex, Lena Dunham, Dakota Fanning as the notorious Squeaky Fromme, Danielle Harris from Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, and Margaret Qualley was sort of the biggest standout from the Family as Pussycat. A few kids of famous people like Kevin Smith's daughter Harley Quinn Smith (still sour on him after he was an asshole at a comedy club appearance in town) who was a random Manson Girl--whom I found out is a vegan, so totally in my cool book--and Rumer Willis, the spawn of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, who played Joanna Pettet. A couple of 1990s people that were tapped for stardom that never came, in this camp were Rebecca Gayheart (Urban Legends star/Noxzema Girl from the 1990s) as the wife Cliff kills and Luke Perry as Wayne Maunder who shows up as an actor on Lancer. Then there are a lot of people that would maybe get second billing in a lesser movie, guys like Clifton Collins Jr. and Michael Madsen and James Remar, for example, that are basically just extras in this flick. Hell, even Clu Gulager makes a cameo as the bookstore owner.

Also, Tarantino doesn't seem to like Bruce Lee (portrayed in the film by one  Mike Moh). The character is sort of a prick and overall looks ridiculous. Plus, Pitt's character makes him look like a loudmouth who can't really even fight. That is a fantastic scene by the way. Everyone in the theater I watched it with was losing their minds when Lee challenges Cliff to a fight and has a random guy hold his jacket and the guy tells him that Cliff has a rep for being crazy. "What did he do?" "Killed his wife and got away with it." Lee looks at him like WTF. Fucking great. Apparently, Lee's surviving family is pissed.

A personal aside I think is relevant on how good I felt the movie was. So I am definitively an ex smoker. However, I allow myself one a year which I've not partaken in for some time. So, yeah, great Tarantino movie, second to last, supposedly. So I had my first cigarette since 2013 to commemorate it. I smoked about half of it and tried to really enjoy it which I sort of did. Could go for one of those acid dipped ones though. That I'll tell you.

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka is the greatest movie of all time

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. Man oh man. Remembered this being like the funniest movie of all time in when I saw it in 1990. Also remembered it surprisingly well but was thinking that there was no way it was going to live up to what my memory of it was. Shit, main, this was every bit as funny as it was when I was eight. Funny shit, I tell you. The same shit that was funny to me 30 years ago. Yeah, that shit is still funny. That is the lesson here. Totally revisit your favorite things from childhood. They totally hold up, I'm sure.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: I'm Gonna Git You Sucka puts a satirical spin on '70s nostalgia with a comedy whose somewhat scattershot laughs are often offset by pure energetic silliness.

Gist of the movie is that Jack Spade, played by Keenen Ivory Wayans, investigates the OG, over gold (as in wearing too much gold), death of his bro with the help of neighborhood hero John Slade, played by one Bernie Casey, and his crime-fighting buddies which include Jim Brown and Isaac Hayes. The movie is a total Naked Gun esque spoof of blaxploitation films from the 1970s.

Some many great scenes that had me going. There was Isaac Hayes strapping on like 50 guns, saying "you can never have too many," and then falling and them all going off. Still funny. The chick that wants "12 inches" from Spade who later confesses that he ain't got nearly that much and she makes some confessions of her own. And, my personal favorite, the militant black dude, played by Clarence Williams III whom you might know as the undertaker in Tales from the Hood, who is married to the blonde haired, blue eyed actress who was Jan Brady, Eve Plumb, raising her kids, one is Ariana Richards aka the teenage girl from Jurassic Park, when the boy decides to read him his report on Abraham Lincoln.

It goes thus:

"Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Illinois. This po’ white trash went on to become President of the United States. Once in office, this white capitalist swine manipulated the freedom of the black man for his own political career. Then another piece of po’ white trash shot him in the head. The End."

A+. The way he says "po’ white trash" is what really make it. "Then another piece of po’ white trash shot him in the head," is the best line of this and maybe any movie. Also when his sister interjects, "preach, brotha!"

Hard to say who wins this movie. Probably star Keenen Ivory Wayans as Jack Spade. Or maybe Bernie Case as his maybe dad John Slade. Damon Wayans is alright, too, as a henchman. Most memorable heat check though is Chris Rock who comes in asking a BBQ restaurant owner "how much for one rib?"  And Clu Gulager makes a cameo. He is this absurd actor who shows up in a bunch of my type of movies like Return of the Living Dead and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (more like Montezuma's Revenge, amiright?).

Feast is the greatest movie of all time

Feast is some great comedy horror. The monster flick was featured on season three of Project Greenlight—I never watched so some of the details might be a bit fuzzy here—which was a documentary series on HBO and later Bravo where Ben Afflect and Matt Damon (with the help of, ahem, Harvey Weinstein) would pluck first-time directors out of obscurity and fund their idea for a feature film. So the movie had that going for it and apparently the making of the low-budget film made for low-budget film. I may have to check it out as this is the greatest movie of all time. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Director Gulager makes the most of what he's given; the resulting Feast offers up some surprisingly tasty -- if far from nourishing – morsels. 

D-Listers Rollins and Wade

Pros: Original, made me laugh out loud at least once, was super disgusting, and features a solid list of Hollywood D-Listers. The monsters look surprisingly dope in a 1990s cheesy sort of way. 

Cons: Little too much shaky cam. Drags on (towards the end especially).

Feast was made by one John Gulager (son of Clu who is one of my faves and plays the bartender in this movie) and is about a ragtag group of barflies in a country tavern who are forced to fight for their lives against a family of alien, demon things hell bent on eating them. The movie spawned two sequels, Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds and Feast III: The Happy Finish that came out in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

Wade... Ger

Lot to like about this flick. Doesn't fuck around early when it gives us everything you need to know about each of the characters in these three-second backstory cards with each of their nicknames, job/fun fact, and life expectancy. For example, the old pickled drunk lady who goes by “Grandma” has the following pop up on the screen when she shows up for the first time: “Fun Fact: Blew Mick Jagger ... recently. Life Expectancy: Maybe dead already.” Lot of info in no time. Love that shit.

As for the D-Listers, we get Krista Allen who was the enfamous Billie Reed on Days of Our Lives, rapper Anthony 'Treach' Criss from Naughty by Nature, Judah Friedlander who was Frank Rossitano / Streak in 30 Rock, Balthazar Getty who was the lead in Lost Highway and David Foster Wallace called out as a huge piece of shit in one of my favorite essays on David Lynch, Gulager's father Clu Gulager as Bartender who is a great character guy with some real horror chops having played amazing roles in two of the most ridiculous movies of all time having played the dad in A Nightmare on ElmStreet 2: Freddy’s Revenge and the iconic Burt in The Return of the Living Dead, Jason Mewes who is Jay in all the Jay and Silent Bob movies (he plays himself), one of my all-time favorite people Henry Rollins and I go crazy for whenever I see him in anything as Coach, Jenny Wade who plays Honey Pie and is the hot one (you might recognize her from American Horror Story, The Good Guys, Grimm, or Mad Men), and Duane Whitaker who was the fat rapist in Pulp Fiction as the Boss Man.

Like so

The first thing we get after the little intros, spoiler, is “Hero”, played by one Eric Dane, popping in saying stuff like “listen and do everything I say if you want to live,” and then immediately getting decapitated by a monster. It was a great little twist. For the next few minutes it is just pure chaos which is exactly how it would happen IRL when some shit hits the fan like that. During that time we get a bunch of carnage with several characters dying off early including Treach and Jason Mewes who gets his face ripped off. Also during that time Boss Man gets his foot blown off as he bones Tuffy upstairs when Hero’s head is getting bitten off. Tuffy, who has a young child, has her kid hide in the closet. We are then introduced to Heroine who yells that everyone needs to stay downstairs. Tuffy freaks out and runs to where her kid was. He ain’t there. But then they find him. Aw. Tuffy is all, “I want let anything happen to you, ever, I promise,” at the exact moment she finishes, one of the monsters busts in and eats the kid in like two gulps. It is in-fucking-sane and darkly hilarious.

Lots of other funny shit in there like using Rollins’s head as a battering ram, you sort of have to be there, monster-on-moster sex, and later cutting off its dick and balls via door slam, its pretty gross, and a great line at a slower part of the movie with “It has been a long time since someone has been horribly killed; seems like an opportune time for someone to get offed,” when they are trying to get people to do some shit that is dangerous. Check this shit out. It’s comedy/horror gold.

DFW on Getty in the essay "David Lynch Keeps His Head." What a guy. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge is the worst movie of all time

What the hell, bro?

The gay one, as it is known. It's not great but was fun and apparently has a cult following among homosexuals, which I dig. Maybe a little less so after I started researching the production. So in the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy about the Nightmare franchise, pretty much everyone denies that the homoerotic subtext was intentional. Bob fucking Shaye was like, "we had no idea, what the hell, it was just a normal movie," which is typical. So were a bunch of the actors. But the writer, David Chaskin, that guy, he was like, "oh, yeah, it was totally intentional." Why all the secrecy I am not sure but speculate that most of the people involved didn't want to be culpable in more or less type casting actor Mark Patton, the movie's "final girl" who was closeted publicly but privately open meaning that the filmmakers knew his preference and decided to exploit it. The year before the movie came out, Patton stared in a movie overtly about homosexuality called Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean which I am unlikely to see and know next to nothing about. Patton, who comes off as unpleasant in the Never Sleep Again doc, has since blamed the film for ruining his career as an actor. When talking about Chaskin, though, you really feel for the guy: "Nobody ever affected my confidence—the boys that threw rocks at me, nobody—but this man did," and he also claimed that Chaskin told him he played the part "too gay" for his tastes. That's fucked up, main. But feel free to rock out to this infamous dance number from the first act...

But much has already been made of the movie's gayness. That stuff is something I'm on the fence about because of how Patton, the only openly gay person in the film, feels about it. Therefore, I will focus on my big gripe with the movie. Basically that they changed the rules for this movie and it's stupid. What made the original NOES fucking scary was that he existed on another ethereal plain. He wasn't human and didn't need a physical presence to murder you. In this movie, they shitcan that mess. Now, in order to commit murder, as Freddy does, he now has to possess someone and murder through them in the real world. What. The. Fuck.

Oh, cool

This shit has Shaye's stink all over it. Supposedly a lot the trouble from this film was the deadline. New Line had no money and needed to crank the picture out to piggyback on the success of the first one. Yeah, you can fucking tell. With fucking Shaye micromanaging everything and threatening to fire director Jack Sholder over every disagreement, there wasn't a lot of reflection. Plus, Shaye really liked this one liner, "You've got the body; I've got the brains," which led to Freddy exposing some brain. That became the fucking movie. And it's a fucking shit departure. It's all over the place, the acting is just weird, it's not scary, it's only mildly unintentional funny, and it departs from the original so much that it doesn't work as part of the NOES universe as anything goes as that is. This movie is trash.

Pros: The homosexual "subtext" is sort of cool in retrospect. Clu Gulager.

Cons: Shits on that world's rules. Not scary. Clunky. Characters are so flat they barely need names.

Notes: Freddy as normal guy is the bus driver. Three of them kids on the bus. Freddy goes rogue. Drives them into the desert. The ground falls away. Freddy is coming to the back of the bus. This is supposedly not Robert Englund. They didn't think he was the star and weren't planning on building the franchise around him, which seems insane. Anyway, dude wakes up fucking screaming and sweaty. He is so goddamn sweaty for the rest of the movie. Fam is downstairs. Sister is like, “he is doing it again.” Her serial is so racist. “Fu-man Chews” with plastic nails as a prize. Then a ring at the door. And there is... Meryl Streep. It's not her but looks exactly like her. Pretty sure this lady, one Kim Myers, can't fart into a paper bag and earn an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

Spitting image of talent

Off to gym class. Playing baseball. This aggressive jock, New Line loves an aggressive jock, nails one right at Jesse here and knocks him to the ground. Everyone runs to dude like, “fuck, man, are you okay?” This dick jock is fucking still running the bases. Coach is like, “don't be a fucking loser” to Jesse. Eventually he is up and playing again. Then after the next hit, dude gets the jock kid out and he de-pants Jesse and then fights him for no reason. Coach comes over. “Assume the position!” They do pushups forever which happens multiple times throughout the movie. Coach apparently is into S&M and young boys. Also, the house is the connection to the first movie. Was where Nancy lives. Is lame.

The stupid fucking line comes that night in his dreams. “You've got the body; I've got the brain,” basically the first thing Freddy says to Jesse. Shaye's infamous line that they built the movie around. He rips off his head's skin to reveal his brain like in the above gif. It's lame as well. One of those, oh, cool, I guess, moments. This is where we start getting this, “I need to become you,” shit. Jesse lets out this scream that is fucking incredibly girly. Jesse and Freddy's dynamic is sort of like that of the rapist and the prison bitch. They have some weird shit going on.

This happens

Next day in class he is passes out. Looks like shit, per use. Thought we'd get the NOES obligatory Freddy in school scene but it doesn't happen in this one. Wakes up when a snake comes out of its cage and wraps around his neck. Goes home. Going to meet his Meryl but his dad wants him to unpack his room. This all happens so that he has an excuse to go upstairs and gay out. It is fucking absurd. Meryl shows up which is something I haven't thought about for a while. That people used to call on a land line. Say “I'm coming over.” Then if you didn't show up within a reasonable time, then that person would show up and be like, “hey, what the fuck?” Anyway, they find Nancy's diary. She is the chick from the original NOES. They act like this was 20 years ago. This movie came out just a year later.

That night he goes to the basement. Sees Freddy. Finds the glove. Freddy wants him to try it on. Starting to become more Freddy like. Next day we have more locker room shit. At this HS they basically have gym and snake class, apparently. Now Jesse and the jock are homies. Talk shit about coach Snyder's “stick up his ass,” and he is standing right there. More assuming the position. Goes home. Bird goes insane and spontaneously combusts, randomly. It's weird. Don't dwell on it. Dad claims he rigged the bird.

That night, the enfamous 80's blue lightning comes in and destroys the dishes. He goes to an S&M bar. Fucking Bob Shaye is the goddamn bartender. In leather. Looks like an asshole. Coach is there. Of course. Makes Jesse go to the HS and run laps. Pretty sure this is not ok. While Jesse showers, coach, still in leather, is in the equipment room. The equipment like attacks him. He doesn't look phased despite obvious supernatural shit going down. Still chewing his gum and looking stupid. Jump ropes drag him to the shower. Clothes are ripped off. Towel whips his ass for a while then sliced up with the Freddy glove. He is wearing said glove now. Screams again. Most ridiculous fucking thing I've ever seen.

So Snider is dead. I assume physical evidence is everywhere but no one suspects Jesse. Police pick him up on the street, naked. Dad is like, “what are you on... and where can I get some?” This dad is easily my favorite character. He is such an over the top moron. Appliance catches fire in the kitchen; he is like, “huh, it's not even plugged in,” well what do you know? It took me the whole movie to realize he is Burt from The Return of the Living Dead actor Clu Gulager. Love when this guy shows up in movies.  Actually, I like the hotdog chef at the pool party better. It's best to just that scene.

Meryl is having a pool rager at her house. Jesse and her start to mess around. His tongue comes out all weird and gross. He leaves, goes to the meathead dude's house. She is crying. Not making his case for a hetero male. Jock even mentions this. Says Freddy wants inside him. Wants dude to watch him sleep. He goes to sleep immediately. They both wake up. Freddy like busts out of him slowly and painfully out of his stomach. Freddy sort of looks like Snoop. His dad is Ferris Bueler's dad, I think. He dead. Jesse's really amassing a mountain of evidence against himself. Shows back up at the party with blood all over him. Tells Meryl about the killing he's been doing. Some serious overacting going on from Jesse at this point.

Jesse turns into Freddy and starts massacring everyone. He goes on a fucking rampage. Bites a chunk out of Meryl's leg. Oh, the Freddy knives are coming out of his hands, I notice. He doesn't have a glove. Meryl half asses an attempt at self-defense. He starts killing the kids in the pool area. Some idiot tries to reason with Freddy. He kills him. Then Freddy just leaves. Goes to this boiler room place. Has these stupid dogs with human baby faces. Other weird animals keep popping up and eating each other. It's weird. Now Meryl and Freddy have their showdown which is basically the end of the movie. She basically makes out with Freddy. This lowers his control over Jesse for some reason. Then he catches fire, incases him in a stone Freddy, and he turns back into Jesse, sort of like in Ghost Busters. It sucks. Unless you have a high threshold for shit, which I am blessed with, don't watch it.  

Return of the Living Dead is the greatest movie of all time

Return of the Living Dead, another god tier movie from my youth, is indeed fucking awesome. The movie features two medical supply warehouse employees who unintentionally release a toxic military gas into the atmosphere that brings the dead to life and eventually turns them into zombies. These two, the owner of the warehouse, the mortician across the way, and the punks chilling in the nearby graveyard all must deal with the living dead who fight the pain of death by eating human brains.

I love me some comedy horror. It is easily my favorite genre when done right. Army of Darkness, Evil Dead II, and Night of the Creeps were all up there for me as a child but this was my first and what made me love it. 

The punks, clothed, in happier times

A horror podcast I recently discovered called The Horror Show (which is fucking fantastic) also just did an episode on this movie in the last week (much of our notes were the same making me think, “ah, I can do this”) and detailed some of the history of the movie which is interesting and was previously unknown to me. It all started when George A. Romero and John Russo parted ways after the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead, the film which started it all. A decade after the movie, Russo wrote a novel called Return of the Living Dead (ROTLD) after the pair agreed that Romero would retain the first part of the title that he could build sequels around, which was weird but worked out for everyone in the end, while Russo kept the rights to any titles featuring “Living Dead.”

Also adding to the weirdness, Tobe Hooper, of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame, was supposed to direct, which would not have been good, but he backed out to make this space vampire movie called Lifeforce (which sounds like it is worth a viddy). The screenwriter for ROTLD, who also strangely wrote Lifeforce, was then promoted to director. He then veered significantly from the previous film, making it way more comical with lots of really dark humor and punk rockers. Believe it or not, it was definitely for the better...

Plus, Clu Gulager is in it. This guy is one of my favorite dudes that shows up in these types of movies. Shit like A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, for example.

Pros: Funny as shit. Some really touching moments. People have common fucking sense. A couple good scares. Gave us zombies eating brains. Punk as fuck. Killer soundtrack. The scene after they burn the corpse and the gas gets into the cemetery is so fucking good. 

A cinematic first

Cons: This movie is fucking flawless. 

Disclaimer: My notes pretty much always contain some spoilers but I rarely give away the ending.

Notes: Opens with a disclaimer saying that all the events and names in the movie are real and that they really happened, which is ridiculous. First scene is at a medical supply company in Louisville, Kentucky. Here we meet three of the main characters, the warehouse owner, Burt, and his two employees, Frank and Freddy. It's Freddy's first day on the job. Burt leaves, ready for the Fourth of July weekend, leaving the other two there to explore. Freddy is impressed by all the weird shit they have there--split dogs, skeletons, cadavers, so forth--and wants to know the weirdest shit they have. Well, Frank does not disappoint. Asks if Freddy had seen Night of the Living Dead. Yop. Frank tells him it was actually real and that they have a military drum from the failed experiment that was sent to them by mistake. I love that they mention that shit here and also use the Z word instead of acting like they have no idea what is going on when shit hits the fan. So they go check it out. Freddy is like, "shouldn't we be careful." Frank is like, "nah, it'll be fine, this was made by the army corp of engineers," and it immediately leaks a yellow gas, knocking them unconscious and bringing all the dead things to life. 

This is that first scene which is so fucking great. It give me chills. The music is fucking great too. Like the second they play it (when they burn the cadaver and the smoke rolls over the graveyard) even better.

Typed in both of their names and this came up. I have no
idea which one is which or if it's the same person.

(Sidenote: Freddy I thought for sure was the guy in American Ninja but he is not. They look so much like the same goddamn person that it is insane.)

They wake up and Frank basically screams like an idiot for the rest of the time he is alive. There we see the split dogs are reanimated, as are the butterflies pinned to the wall and the cadaver in the freezer. That last one is pissed. So instead of calling the military number on the barrel, we see the guy manning that line who is a real peach, they call up Burt. Burt gets there and is like, "what the fuck, you ruined my business." He decides they have to deal with this themselves and they are going to kill the cadaver like in the movie, by piercing the brain. So Frank grabs a pickax, Freddy unlocks the walk-in, and Burt hangs back giving direction. As soon as the lock comes off, yellow zombie bursts through the door and goes right at Burt. They pull him off, Frank is screaming and Burt is yelling at him to be a man. He then hits the yellow bastard in the head with the pickax which does nothing. They are freaking out. End up sawing the head off. The body is then up and running around. It's insane and pretty hilarious.

While all that is going on, Freddy's punk friends show up and break into the locked graveyard next door. They basically are just there fucking shit up and partying. The group, consisting of Casey, Chuck Scuz, Spider, Suicide, and Trash, along with Freddy's GF, Tina, wait to take him home. Very unpunk thing to do. Getting a job. While they wait out, Trash, the short, orange haired one, asks Spider if he ever fantasizes about dying in the worst way possible. He is like, "no, of course not," and she talks about getting ripped apart by old men, which later happens, and tears all of her clothes off. The nudity is so gratuitous here. The punks are like, "hey, everybody, she's doing it again," and she is naked for the rest of the movie.

Back to the trio in the warehouse, after subduing the thing and chopping it up still wriggling around, they decide to take the thing in pieces to the mortuary across the way and have Ernie cremate it, saying they are rabid weasels. He is like, "um, no, rabid or no, I am not burning animals alive." Now they have to show him. Pull out an arm and it grabs him by the leg. He's sure as shit on board now and they burn the severed parts. That's when the contaminated gas spews out of the mortuary and acid rain starts brining it back to earth, covering the dead, reanimating them in the process.

And that's when the movie really starts. Just fucking watch it. It is so fucking amazing. If you haven’t seen this, you must immediately buy and watch it.