Tag Archives: slasher

REVIEW: Uncle Sam (1996)

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Uncle Sam (1996): C+

The guy who directed Maniac, which I love, and Maniac Cop, which I also enjoy, directs Uncle Sam, a movie about a ruthless “maniac” soldier (named Sam; lolz) who is killed in Desert Storm and then returns from the grave as an evil, murderous Uncle Sam. They could have called the movie “Maniac Soldier,” but I guess they really wanted a guy in an Uncle Sam suit.

Sam’s body is crispier than a sack of tater tots left in a house fire. He looks like Swamp Thing except he’s all black and grey. His corpse is shipped home to his grieving wife and shortly after arriving, Sam wakes up. How? Don’t ask me. The rest of the film is just a lumbering, zombie, Lurch-like, reanimated civil servant villain going on a killing spree and a sub-plot about Sam’s alcoholism/sadism. The “maniac” formula worked to achieve something of a cult following for Maniac Cop but the charm didn’t quite transfer for poor Uncle Sam.

Anyway, Sam’s crispy ass gets a hold of an Uncle Sam outfit and then starts murdering unpatriotic folks during some 4th of July festivities. He puts a little “’Merica” twist on his kills too. The best is the fireworks related death in which an unpatriotic Congressman gets lit the fuck up like a Christmas tree. There’s also some garden shears through eyeballs and an impaling on an American flagpole.

Each kill is pretty well thought out; there are more than simple stabbings and all sorts of goofy shit happens. Isaac Hayes shows up and he’s got a wooden leg. There’s a sack race.  Uncle Sam gets shot with cannon balls.

There is some social commentary more transparent than Angelina Jolie, but I still appreciate it. Snippets of conversations about patriotism/pacifism, draft dodging, and the real purpose of soldiers pepper the film. I like that these things are in there and I’ll give Uncle Sam props for trying to make us think (just a little bit) during what would otherwise be a formulaic slasher flick.

 

REVIEW: Inferno (1980)

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Inferno (1980): B

This is the second movie in Dario Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy, these three movies about witches. The first one is really good, this second one is pretty good, and the third is notoriously shitty.

Evil spirits that take the form of girls from the 1980’s nightclub scene terrorize American dipshit Mark as he walks around Rome (and later New York) with this stupid mustache on his face, partially paralyzed by all the sudden attention he is receiving from spirit women and real women all at once. “Way to go, Mark!” he must be saying to himself at one point, while these incredibly white Paula Abdul back-up dancer looking ladies stare at him like he’s a piece of meat. I mean, look at the image I posted for this review. How is poor Mark going to pay attention in his stupid class when this Bond villain / Cyndi Lauper clone suddenly materializes? Answer: he isn’t. He is pretty alright with it until like a dozen stabbings happen.

He comes to New York to visit his sister Rose who suspects that she is living in a haunted apartment that was once home to an evil witch. Mark narrowly avoids being stabbed in Rome and then comes to New York where he narrowly avoids being stabbed again. Most of the movie involves sniffing around for the truth, sniffing that is punctuated with stabbings and maulings, narrowly avoided stabbings and maulings, and appearances by various female members of the New Kids on the Block fanclub.

Did I mention that there are stabbings? There are. We get multiple knifings to death and cat scratching to death that occur in typical overly-gory Argento fashion. There are some funny underwater dead bodies. Mysterious hooded strangers and a flock of Madonna stunt doubles everywhere.

There is an attempted lethal injection, which I LOVE in horror movies. It’s like when someone is stuck with a hypodermic needle, that gives the filmmakers carte balanche to do any crazy shit they want to them. Veins protrude, people turn different colors, or there is crazy black mouth blood. But, sadly, the needle never meets its mark.

The end is really fun too.

The movie has its downs, I suppose. Acting level: infomercial. The blood is some goofy-ass kool-aid looking shit (like most Argento) but the kill scenes are classic.

Strong recommendation.

REVIEW: Stitches (2012)

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Stitches (2012): B+

This is why I watch bundles of horror movies, to find diamonds in the rough that surprise with a good story, good gore and and at least average acting.

Stitches is an overweight alcoholic clown that despises children and lives in a trailer on the outskirts of Ireland. At Tommy’s 11th birthday party Stitches is being tormented by a group of snotty children who eventually end up killing him when they tie his shoelaces together and he face plants onto a knife. Later that evening Tommy is spying on the graveyard with his telescope and he sees a group of clowns laying stitches to rest. It is here where we learn the great secret: no clown can rest peacefully if he does not finish a party! Flash forward 6 years and Tommy and the rest of the brats are in high school getting ready for a party at Tommy’s house. It is here where Stitches gets his revenge as he hunts down the kids who tormented him one by one.

This movie has everything you could ask for in a low budget horror film. The killer’s motivation makes sense and is not too far fetched. The victims are at a centralized location and there is an abundance of fresh meat. The kills are violent, evenly spaced, and unique. Examples include a guy getting his head soccer kicked off, and a kid getting his brains scooped out with an ice cream scooper. Most importantly however, the movie had a good pace. Most low budget horror films have way too much filler and down time. Stitches kept moving and kept the viewer engrossed throughout the film.

Recommended if your looking for a really good, unique horror film.

REVIEW: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990)

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Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer: A

Apparently, the director of this movie was commissioned to make a run-of-the-mill exploitation slasher flick with a budget of $110K and less than a month for shooting. What he made instead was a profoundly twisted psychological study of the mind of a murderous sociopath. People who watch this movie expecting to see meaningless carnage and boobs are going to be surprised to find that it is an actual movie… with carnage and boobs.

Henry, played by Michael Rooker, whom everyone likes to J-O over since his role on The Walking Dead, is a wandering serial killer who currently lives in a shitty apartment with his prison buddy, Otis and Otis’s sister Becky. Early in the film, we are given clues about how great of a serial killer Henry is. The film opens with a montage of freshly murdered corpses rotting in broad daylight in various locations, suggesting that Henry has been crafty enough to pull off a string of daytime killings in various locales without being caught. Oh, all the corpses are women, by the way.

The film then shows us two sides of Henry; when Henry hangs out with Otis he is an evil fuck. He commits a double murder in front of him which simultaneously worries and fascinates Otis. Henry then begins mentoring Otis as his serial killer understudy and they go on a super-wicked killing spree together. When he is with Otis’s sister however, he is apparently frail and kind. The two bond over childhood traumas and soon grow attached. Lots of tasty daddy/mommy issues here as well as neck-vein inducing tension; we keep remembering the montage of dead girls every time Henry and Becky are alone. Giving us this vulnerable side to Henry and juxtaposing it with his reptilian personality make him a really memorable round character and it creates a lot of suspense in the film.

Otis gets REALLY into murdering. Henry shares with Otis (and the audience) all the tricks to efficient killing and avoiding detection/capture. The most important rules seem to be 1) maintain a nomadic lifestyle and 2) ensure each killing has a different apparent motive / type of victim. The matter-of-fact way in which an efficient method for killing is explained, like the steps to a cake recipe, is chilling. Maybe the most famous / fucked up scene in the film is where Henry and Otis murder a family, film it, and then kick it and watch the footage and react as if they are watching Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, really hammering home the point that the most important “ingredient” for this recipe is a sociopathic inability to feel remorse.

The ending is so fucked up and great. I have no problem ruining shitty movies for you. For example, in Devil, the old lady is the Devil. See? Who cares? In Dark Skies, the older brother was the one whom the aliens had been visiting and intending to abduct. Fuck it. You have to check out Henry, though. I won’t spoil it.

REVIEW: Hotline (1982)

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Hotline D

Wonder Woman works in a bar and gross men hit on her. Then one follows her home and breaks in while she’s sleeping to smell her hair or something, but he doesn’t hurt her. I actually kind of related to this, because I don’t want to hurt anybody, but there’s lot of hair I want to smell all the time all around me everywhere.

So she starts also volunteering at a psychiatric help-line for some reason, and she starts to get stalker calls from this guy whose first pitch is:

“Barber barber, shave a pig, how many hairs to make a wig?”

He wants to kill her and chop off her hair or something, which I also relate to because I really like long black hair and Wonder Woman, she has tons of it.

Once in high school, there was this girl with beautiful black hair on whom I had a big crush. She came to school one day with a short pixie cut, which was pretty sexy as well. But she asked me how I thought it looked, and I said:

“Great. But did you save the old hair?” and she said:

“No. Why?”

“I could’ve made a hand puppet out of it.”

Then I stared at her. And she laughed. She laughed because she thought I was joking. Then we started hanging, and we made out a couple of times and once went skinny dipping at midnight in this Irish guy’s pool in which we weren’t allowed.

And she let me hold her wet body afterwards ‘because it was so cold. I couldn’t close the deal, though.

Maybe I should give her a call.

Anyway, it’s a mystery and he keeps calling and her co-workers start calling him The Barber. He wants her hair and she doesn’t want him to have it so that’s the conflict.

The ending doesn’t make much sense, but it’s still cool because it’s not the guy who is openly obsessed with her for the whole movie who turns out to be The Barber. It’s actually open-obsessed guy’s best friend who hates her for not returning his friend’s love. And he wants make something for his friend out of her luxurious hair. And he’s her boss also.

And Frank Stallone’s in it.

If this was hard R (hard 80’s R) instead of made for TV it might have been good because there could’ve been a lot more detailed hair-fetish stuff and Wonder Woman could have gotten (tastefully) naked.

REVIEW: Hell Night (1981)

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Hell Night: C

This is a fairly entertaining little slasher film with pretty well-done suspense, some great jump-scares, some interesting murders, and Linda Blair dressed in ruffles and velvet. It doesn’t seem to have cost a whole lot, and I suspect that the biggest line item in the budget was Linda Blair’s cocaine.

But it loses at least one entire letter grade because the slasher is named ….Andrew. Andrew. When I think of a guy named Andrew…I just don’t think danger. I think of a Jewish lawyer or some red-headed perv or something.

So Andrew’s backstory goes thusly: He was the youngest son of Raymond Garth, the richest man in The Town That This Is In. Mr. Garth hated all his children, because as the movie describes them, they were “mongoloids” and “cripples”. Andrew had the bad luck to be born a “gork”-a word I’ve never heard, but it seems bad because when Garth killed the whole family and then himself, he punished Andrew by making him watch everyone die and then stay there alone. And he was never found, so he might just be living in the house.

So this Frat/Sorority combo at The College in The Town That This Is In is making 4 new pledges stay in the Garth house ALL NIGHT long after the biggest drunken, date-rapiest frat party of the year. Which is also a costume party.

There are: Slicky-Boy (who is dressed up as Robin Hood), British-Slut-Girl (who costume seems to be “whorish limey who wears underwear, boas, and flapper headbands everywhere”) the Boring Guy (whose costume is “feminine geek who has decided to assert his manhood by dressing like Lord Byron”). Then there’s the good girl, who is Linda Blair in velvet and ruffles.

So they’re locked in, and some things happen. One of those things is that Slicky Boy and the British Slut bang almost immediately, and she keeps calling him “Wes” instead of “Seth”, which is what HE says his name is. Even the last time she sees him. It was a good recurring joke seeing her strip away his identity like that.

As I said before, it’s actually a very solid slasher film with all the necessary tropes covered. It manages to provide some nice jumps and inventive kills. There’s also some subtle foreshadowing and deftly constructed suspense. But…I did see it when I was 10 and then once when my sister gave me the DVD as a joke and I watched it and then sold it to Rasputin’s. So maybe you can get it there.

There ARE some fairly glaring plot holes, but those don’t really matter if you just tell yourself to enjoy it. Don’t ask me why, for instance, if the Frat does this every year, no one’s ever gotten so much as a Wet Willie from…Andrew…all these years. Also don’t ask me who the hell is that other guy who Slicky-Boy blows away by the pool. I didn’t make the movie.

And the guys who did make it don’t care about your questions, and they’re probably laughing at you right now out on some pleasure boat somewhere while they snort blow off the butt cheeks of their Guatemalan slaves.

REVIEW: Psycho 4 (1990)

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Psycho IV: The Beginning: C+

So Norman Bates is not crazy again. He’s been released from the slam and he even has a wife who is…a psychiatric nurse. They live together in the Psycho House because of all the great memories. And memories is what we get. This is a prequel/sequel told mostly through flashbacks.

Norman seems to be doing okay until his wife tells him she’s preggers with his child. Then he starts getting all fussy because he’s afraid his child will inherit the mental illness that he inherited from Mother. He calls a radio talk show. The topic is, luckily, matricide. He says he’s thinking about killing his wife and the baby inside her to protect the world from brutal slayings. And they ask Norman to tell his story. So he does. And the flashbacks begin.

So it’s Anthony Perkins (who many might remember from 1964’s Agent 38-24-36) playing Norman Bates and Eliot from E.T. playing young Norman Bates. Playing Mother is Juliet, who we all know has great natural boobs. Even Norman thinks so and he gets punished for having a boner brush her leg while they’re wrestling. Because sex is bad and shameful, says Juliet. So she makes him dress as a girl as punishment for his boners. And Eliot is pretty traumatized to begin with because his dad died when he was 6 and he also lost his friend E.T.

But then Juliet starts banging Sledge Hammer. Then they build a motel and then all hell breaks loose because Norman can’t stop or stand thinking about his hypocritical, slutty mom and her fickle feelings about boners.

So he wastes them both and becomes like he was in Psycho One.

Then in modern day, he decides not to kill his family and puts the down the knife he had for doing that. Then he burns down Psycho House and says he’s okay now, thank you.

Passable. Pretty good acting, weird sexual tension everywhere and Juliet’s feelings about boners add up to put this in the realm of “Not a Waste of Time, at Least”. Especially if you like these characters. And it’s interesting to note that Joseph Stefano, who wrote the screenplay for Psycho One, is also the writer of this one and most likely had dementia when he wrote it. Because forgot the Juliet nude scene. That’s a senior moment if there ever was one.

REVIEW: Bunnyman (2011)

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Bunnyman: F-

Horror movies with a man in a bunny suit as a killer have an un-illustrious past to say the least with 2004’s Peter Rottentale being the medium’s one and only low light. Bunny Man proudly carries on Rottentale’s tainted legacy by putting on another shameful display of all that is wrong with modern low budget horror.

Basically five idiots are driving down a road when they start getting stalked by Bunny Man who is driving his big tow truck a la Jeepers Creepers. Eventually he steers them off the road where they crash and then they are forced to wander the forest while Bunny Man hunts them down. The group shifts from location to location meeting various local rednecks and having inane conversations with them which cumulatively drives the plot no where. Eventually they meet a girl and her brother who offer them help, but in reality are Bunny Man’s twisted family who are merely bringing them to the cabin to cannibalize them. From there nothing more then a shameless Texas Chainsaw Massacre rip off ensues with some of the worst kills I have ever seen including a car falling on a guy an having gravy leak out of the sides. However most kills are simply blunt force trauma that is covered up, or actualized by throwing blood on a wall.

This movie literally has no plot. None of the characters are given a back story or motivation and none of them are properly introduced or even have generic horror movie roles such as the jock or the bimbo. I think the fuckers who directed this just were like “hey how cool and weird would it be if their was a killer in a bunny suit who lives with a cannibal family” then made a shitty movie around that flawed premise.

Fuck whoever made this and the fact that this shit fest has a sequel already is grounds for a beating.