Slaughter High (1986) 1h 30m

I can't tell how fucking disappointed I am that there isn't a single skeleton in this entire movie!  I used to see this on the shelves at video rental stores as a six-year-old and it would freak me out (I had a big fear of skeletons at the time).  Not one fucking bone man... unless you could the dude that dies by electrocution while having sex.  I don't, he just kind of fell off the woman like he suddenly remembered there was cooler stuff on the floor.

Slaughter High was weird.  Some "hot" girl has convinced the school nerd, Marty, that she is going to have sex with him in the girls locker room.  In truth, it's a trick in which other maybe popular kids set up full AV equipment to film Marty naked.  When everyone gets caught in the act by the coach, all involved are punished except for our nerd.  He's staying after school to work on his chemistry project.  When both he and his project get sabotaged by our group of jags, Marty ends up terribly burned while no one attempts to put the fire out or save him.  Fast forward to five years after graduation and the group all get invites to a reunion at their soon-to-be demolished school.  Death ensues... or does it?!

I know what I watched, but what the hell did I watch?  Let's start with the music.  There is one song you're going to hear a million times which goes between hitting your dick on a synth and shitty butt-rock every twenty seconds.  Then there's a second song which appears which sounds like a bloopy cover of The Tide is High by Blondie but also changes into something else entirely different after a short time.  It's like they wrote four songs but realized they were all too short so they combined them into two songs.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!

There are also strange and confusing plot and scenery choices.  When everyone returns to the school for this "reunion" they all look the same but just in nicer clothes.  When Marty is in the girls shower taking off his clothes there is graffiti on the wall that says "Marty Rantzen Sucks" which he then changes to "Marty Rantzen Fucks."  First, why is that already written in the shower?  Second, the phrase "Marty Rantzen Fucks" breaks my goddamn brain.  Finally, one of the characters says "April Fools stops at noon, so we just have to make it to midnight."  Okay, first, you fucked up that line as those are two totally different times.  Next, you're ascribing a point of logic to this film which isn't true!  Midnight comes and that doesn't stop Marty!  He's not Cinderella!

If you want to destroy my sweater...

Speaking of Marty, I'm going to stick up for him here for a second.  He looks like a younger Rivers Cuomo, his body is actually pretty decent, and when you see his dick in the beginning he's got nothing to be shy about.  Yeah, he's the dorky guy, but some of us like the dorky guys.  Also, it now says on the wall that he "fucks."  "Who's Marty Rantzen?" "I don't know but I heard that he fucks!"


I give Slaughter High 1 doot doot skeleton out of 5:

Stitches (2012) 1h 26m

I don't like clowns.  I'm not afraid of them, I just think that they use their shtick to violate my personal space and it makes me want to punch them.  Y'all mother fuckers can still do the same shit a good two feet away and I'll enjoy it much more then having you creep all up on me like we're in the club.  Like Bozo, he knew not to creep up on people and he gave children prizes for playing with balls... wait a minute...

Stitches is a horror comedy where a terrible clown deals with horrible children at a party, or maybe that's just how kids and clowns are in Ireland.  The kids take their pranks too far and they cause Stitches the Clown to trip and fall on a carving knife... twice.  Well, technically the second time it falls on him.  The birthday boy, Tom, goes to visit the clown's grave and stumbles upon a satanic coven of clowns where he finds out that a clown that doesn't finish a party can never rest.  It's dumb but they need a reason for this clown to come back for revenge six years later.

I have actually watched Stitches previously because my husband has an odd inclination toward clown horror films.  The first time around I wasn't a fan of it.  I expected more and it wasn't what a wanted.  Going into it this time though I knew that while the plot line is something straight out of a B-film, the work here really isn't.  In fact, if you like practical effects with a lot of fake blood then this could be just for you.  There are a ton of blood splatters, decapitations by punt or by explosion, severed arms, ears, genitalia, and just a touch of CGI when things like the umbrella spear wouldn't have worked well live.

The humor is like a low-grade Beetlejuice and the character development is kind of weak.  It's also high school kids so it's mostly tropes or just shitty teenagers.  I can't fault it too much.  I'm not expecting some sort of epic backstory development from a movie about a clown that returns from the dead.  This second watch-through did cause it to rise up a bit in my internal head rating.  I won't have it on my shelf, but it's probably background at a party good.

I give Stitches 2 clown horns out of 5:

Drifter (2016) 1h 26m

There's nothing worse than buckling in for what you think is going to be a wild ride only to have things just jump the tracks.  I sat down, started this up, had some orange juice with me, a cat on my lap, hit play, things started off great.  Then...well... let's get into it.

Drifter follows two brothers as they're attempting to track down the man that killed their father.  They're driving across the desert in hopes that they're on the trail of the murderer.  After a few tough run-ins one of the brothers needs medical attention and they stop at the first town-ish/trailer park thing they come across.  From there everything goes south.

This film has one of my greatest complaints which is unnecessary or unfinished plot points.  You can leave a plot point open ended if done well, but the first quarter to half of this film is focused on the brothers getting revenge.  About 10 minutes into them being in this town that plot line is completely abandoned.  I'm also not sure what the setting for this world is.  Everytime someone comes across them they ask how they have a working car.  Yet the person they're chasing is supposed to be in a car.  So is it just that in this desert region of nothing cars became scarce or is this some form of post apocalyptic world?  Finally, I assume that the one writer/director are a fan of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and House of 1000 Corpses because once the town "family" gets introduced then it's the crazy eccentric cannibals!  It's like you took the Firefly family from ...1000 Corpses and told them to be poorer quality versions of themselves.

The high points of this film are everything up to them arriving in the town and the score.  The score is simple but coated in a sense of pending danger.  It's louder than some scores but it doesn't overpower the scene.  The viewer has an auditory dread of "what's coming" while watching.

As I mentioned earlier, I wish that plot line A (revenge) would have tied into plot line B (the town) better.  Once B is wrapped up we're just left wandering that same wasteland of a desert without a decent sense of accomplishment for the characters or even just us.  It tries to make that jump that ...1000 Corpses does but it's not absurd enough.  They don't have the horror experience that Rob Zombie had at that time, and in the end, it set Drifter into a ditch to die.

I give Drifter 1.5 car pancakes out of 5:

The Tortured (2010) 1h 19m

I've never really been a fan of "torture porn" style horror.  Sure, some of the Hostels were okay, the first one or two Saw movies had their moment, and a few others are definitely watchable but just not my thing.  However, this may be my first foray into what could be considered "revenge porn."

The Tortured begins with a couple dealing with the kidnapping, murder, and subsequent trial of the man that did this to their six year-old son.  After he gets 25-to-life as opposed to life without parole, the couple decide that the kidnapper needs to be punished, tortured, for his crimes.

This film is basically broken into two sections with small bridges in between.  You have the establishment of the agony of losing a child in such a terrible manner and how devastated the couple is.  It's mainly to allow themselves and the viewer to feel that this course of action is justified.  The other revolves around the torture of this man.  There are a combination of introspective moral moments and a questioning of the couple's actions.  We get handed some serious twists here and there, but what this comes down to is do the means justify the ends, vice versa, or, is there any real justice at all?

The saving grace of this film is the ending.  I really don't care about the guy's nipple being burnt with a soldiering iron or any of that other crap.  The couple has an odd catharsis to which only the viewer knows the truth and that made me run back through the film in my head.  So it makes me actually think of it when it's done, but honestly I'll probably forget about it in a month.

I give The Tortured 1 prison jumpsuit costume out of 5: