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:

Red Christmas (2016) 1h 22m

Uggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh.  I think that this might be the first movie that caused me to say "this movie sucks" out loud to an empty room.  It wasn't even a quiet comment.  It was an exclamation of dismay at the fact that I had resigned to sit and watch this movie.  It was my acquiescence to being the vehicle of my own of my own torment.  I know now what lead a samurai to commit seppuku in order to pay for his own sins so that he may hopefully redeem himself upon death.

Red Christmas is an Australian slasher flick where my suspension of disbelief went out the window from the start.  Opening on an abortion clinic where a someone set a bomb, we have a bucket slapped with a biohazard sticker contains a living baby... somehow.  I don't know what Australian abortion laws were 20 years ago, but I'm pretty sure third trimester abortions were not a voluntary option.  The bomber finds the bucket baby and leaves.  Twenty years later we get a family celebrating Christmas when a man wrapped in bandages and wearing a cloak shows up on their front step.  I wish it was Darkman because I would much rather watch Darkman.  It ends up being the aborted child of the family's matriarch.  Her choice for the abortion was because they already had a child with Down Syndrom and this baby was going to born with it as well.  On top of that, her husband was diagnosed with cancer (I think) and she couldn't handle the situation.  Not Darkman starts killing everyone because he isn't loved by his real mom.

This film was the hottest trash.  I felt like the entire thing was set up to be this big "Look at her!  She's the real bad guy because of her want of an abortion!"  We do get a view of the killer without his hood and bandages and I almost flipped a fucking table because they made him this horribly deformed creature.  I'm surprised the actor that legitimately had Down Syndrome didn't turn to the director and just go "are you fucking kidding me?" when it was revealed.  I couldn't handle this entire mess.  I actually have the note "fuck this entire film!"

The only shining light of Red Christmas comes from the kills.  We get a one-and-done axe blow that splits a woman in half, an amazing bear trap on the head kill, and a priest's rubber head shooting blood out of the eyes.  Look up a kill montage on YouTube or something and avoid the shit out of this film.

I give Red Christmas 1 copy of Darkman out of 5, only because of those kills:

13 Days of Christmas Day 5: Silent Night Deadly Night (1984) 1h 19m

One of the quintessential holiday horror films, along with Black Christmas and a few others I'm going to cover on here, Silent Night Deadly Night seems to be the most remembered.  Since Thanksgiving has passed, images of this film have been plastered all over my social media feeds.  My own personal aversion to Christmas kept me from watching this previously but no longer!  I have joined the SNDN cult!

Silent Night Deadly Night focuses on a boy named Billy.  His family visits his grandfather in a mental hospital where the grandfather secretly tells Billy that Santa will punish the boy for not being good all year.  On their drive home the parents stop to help a man dressed as Santa on the side of the road.  This Santa is some sort of lunatic criminal that kills the father and then rips open the shirt of the mother before he cuts her throat.  Billy hides but sees all of this and becomes ultra traumatized toward Santa Claus.  He and his baby brother are then taken to an orphanage run by nuns where the Mother Superior has incredibly old-fashioned (even for the time) views of child psychology and corporal punishment.  As if Billy weren't fucked up enough, she just makes it worse.  Finally, in the "present day" of the film, Billy has a job at a toy store where he ends up playing the store Santa.  After a few drinks at the holiday party and walking into an attempted rape by one of his co-workers, Billy has a flashback and then just goes on a murderous rampage.

I'm sure that when this film was being written they were just looking for plot reasons to have Billy snap.  The thing that floored me with Silent Night Deadly Night was the fact that from a psychological point of view everything makes sense.  The initial trauma toward Santa based on real life events, the fear of punishment for being "naughty," the aversion to sex and the association of violence with it and the baring of the female body, these are all relevant reasons for Billy's emotional response.  Granted, this is an extreme expression of it, but the inclusion of alcohol (which he had no previous experience with) would lead to a lowering of inhibitions.  The only thing is once he started, he just didn't stop.

With that analysis out of the way, I liked Silent Night Deadly Night.  It's dated, but for someone like me it felt nostalgic.  Seeing He-Man toys on a shelf or the weird inflatable bunny that everyone had for Easter let me go back to the 80's without an issue.  I found myself only caring about Billy as far as the characters go.  Though, with a holiday slasher, everyone is pretty much expendable.  This movie also spawned a few sequels which I may watch at some point.  However, if I take anything away from this movie, it's going to be just shouting "NAUGHTY!" at the cats when they misbehave.

I give Silent Night Deadly Night 4 ripped Santas out of 5:

13 Days of Christmas Day 1: Black Christmas (a.k.a. Silent Night, Evil Night, a.k.a Stranger in the House)(1974) 1h 38m

I figured we could start the 13 Days of Christmas with a true holiday classic.  So light up the tree, spike your egg nog extra strong, and make sure your lawn is booby trapped to keep those damn carolers away.  Let's get into Black Christmas.

One of the innovators of the slasher genre, Black Christmas is the ultimate "the call is coming from inside the house" film.  A sorority house has been receiving obscene phone calls from a man that switches between weird baby noises and violent sexual comments, sometimes doing two voices at once which is a real fucking talent.  After the house lush, Barb, tells the caller off, the sisters seem to settle into getting ready for everyone to leave for Christmas break.  While packing, Clare hears the house cat making strange noises at something in her closet.  Rather than getting help, or even a weapon, she just keeps saying "who's there" while going to check out the closet.  Her murder by dry cleaning bag is what sets off the chain of events that make up this movie.  Her corpse is also the poster art, complete with plastic wrapped head.

I first became aware of this film when the loose remake of 2006 was being made.  People lost their shit over the remake being released on Christmas, as if it was spitting in the eye of god.  The original has a much better plot structure though in the sense that it doesn't attempt to explain who the murderer is, how they got there, or why they're doing this.  I think that for an effective slasher you don't always need a set motive or backstory aside from "Oh shit, that person is going to wreck everyone."

I will say that this film is entirely dated and displays some of the most inept authority figures ever.  From the front desk cop that can't be bothered to do his job properly, to the sorority mother that has more hidden booze than a 20's-era speakeasy, to the cops that don't check the attic to find a three-day-old rotting corpse and psycho killer, everything is a mess.  We do get some interesting kills thanks to things like large crystal unicorn decorations.  Also, I have to bring up Barb again because she spends most of the movie being some sort of strange booze magician with her pulling cans of beer out of everything and then making guests feel uncomfortable while she talks about wanting to get fucked for three days like a turtle does.  She's the kind of girl that you go to a party with friends and somehow get stuck on a couch with her while she babbles about everything until she cries about something and you're stuck watching the car crash in slow motion.

I give Black Christmas 3 ripped Santas out of 5:

Sweet Home (2015) 1h 20m

I don't know how, but there has been an obvious trope in both horror films and video games that I've been overlooking until now.  It may already have a name, but for this blog I'm going to refer to it as the Boss Fight trope.  Basically the viewer/player is given a standard bad guy.  You see them as being the primary evil that the protagonist(s) have to overcome.  Suddenly a much larger bad guy is revealed and his introduction is spent quickly destroying the already established bad guys just to show how fucking evil this one really is.  There are no loyalties except to chaos or destruction brought by itself... and now you're fucked!

That's too good of a set up for what Sweet Home really is.  It's a home invasion movie where it isn't even the protagonists' home. They're in a mostly abandoned building where they thought it would be okay to celebrate one of their birthdays there.  We're given a quick introduction of text explaining that in Spain, real estate progress causes people to leave their home by choice, force, or a more sinister third option.  It's murder.  I'm spoiling that for you right now.  I wish it was something like demonic possession but it's literally just murder.

Our protagonist couple get stuck in this building when three people come to murder an old man that's holding out.  The couple take two of the three out and trap the third.  This is when we get introduced to the Boss Fight and their "back-up" comes and cuts up the third guy while he's trapped.  Then he freezes the bodies with liquid nitrogen and crushes them with a hammer.  Finally he sweeps them into garbage bags.  Shit is pro.  It's so pro that it's created its own tier, it's godlike.  The rest of the film is the couple trying to survive and escape.

This film really wasn't that great.  The major bad guy was interesting in how methodical his work was.  It was precise and emotionless.  He's just shy of being considered a "slasher" because, in the end, he was still just human.  Everything else here was just flat.  Stare out as the highway goes into the horizon flat...

I give Sweet Home 1 gingerbread house out of 5:

The Windmill (2016) 1h 25m

"This isn't Hell, this is Holland" is an actual quote in this movie, but I'll explain this later.  Every so often you get stuck with a really slow slog of a film just to have a three second moment make up for it.  A great example of that is in the film The Rite.  Anthony Hopkins plays a priest that is becoming possessed (if I'm remembering it right, it's been a while).  There's a scene where he is standing and looking at a body of water and there's a small girl next to him.  The girl asks if he'll bless her doll and then Anthony Hopkins just fucking backhands that kid and the scene is pretty much done.  There's also that moment in Hot Fuzz where Simon Pegg goes back to the town and is ready for a fight and one of the first things he does is dropkick an old woman.  Hot Fuzz isn't a slog, but that scene and the previous scene always make me laugh my ass off.  The Windmill gave me one of those moments where the movie has like two minutes left and a fucking Hellraiser hook just shoots out and straight into the middle of a woman's face and almost passed out laughing.  It looked good but it was so unexpected and hilarious.

I wish I could end the review right there.  Actually, if you just watch the last five minutes of this then that would be a five-star moment and review.  Unfortunately for me, the Windmill was a really good plot set in the dumbest of concepts.  A tour bus leaves Amsterdam with a group of what we learn are individuals with heavy sins.  The only exception to this is a teenage boy that is also a hemophiliac and has the most unnecessary character detail in this film.

They get stuck at a spooky windmill where a huge Jason-esq (circa Part 2) slasher begins killing them by making them relive their sin prior to death.  The only person to face and escape him is the Japanese man that felt legitimate remorse for his actions.  He also survives to explain our plot.  The mill is a gateway to hell that is guarded by a miller that made a deal with the devil at one point.  After the town murdered him, the devil was so fond of the miller that the devil let him walk the earth at that windmill to collect the souls of the damned.  Now that shit sounds fucking rad!  Everything except for the windmill/miller part could have been put somewhere else with another occupation and been way more exciting... but it wasn't.

The remainders think that burning down the windmill will end everything but it doesn't.  You can't fuck with the devil.  He rebuilt that shit instantly.  He's the fucking devil!  Although I assume the innocent kid died.  We didn't really get closure on him.  For all I know he's running naked through the wilderness of Amsterdam like some sort of streaking and bleeding Don Quixote.

I really wish this film would've been put somewhere else.  The plot concept was strong at its core but the execution was just a big fat shrug.  Maybe it's based on some sort of actual superstition and that's why they kept with it.   That limited it to be more of a colloquial concept as opposed letting it have a worldly grasp though.  Whatever.  The sinful actions were at least interesting and the deaths were gory.  I think that the face hook is the only thing that helped The Windmill by the end.

I give The Windmill 1.5 out of 5:

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Most Likely to Die (2015) 1h 30m

I ended up going to see Wonder Woman before coming home and watching this.  That was a mistake.  Not seeing Wonder Woman.  That movie was awesome. But you can't have a steak and then be served bologna and expect it to be the same.

Most Likely to Die is a C-grade movie with D-list actors.  Seriously, Jake Busey?  Perez Hilton?  Get the fuck out with this shit.  The plot is that a bunch of old friends get together for their own celebration before their 10-year reunion.  I don't know what school they went to because the yearbook had all of the seniors listed as a "most likely too..."  We didn't have that.  I also went to a school in the fucking mountains.  I still don't know what kind of school they went to... but I digress... though not really.

Everyone starts dying based on what their "most likely" thing was.  Apparently everyone was a scumbag rich kid asshole and then continued to not quite measure up as an adult.  A murderer dressed in a cap and gown with a paper maché mask is your killer.  The only good thing about this guy is that the mortar board had some razors along the edge which made it like Oddjob's hat.  Between a sweet headbutt/throat slash and a Kung Lao fatality, that cap was the best thing in this film.  The killer was the class clown guy but more out of some psychotic personal guilt thing in relation to the person they bullied all through school.  Then after he's dead a mysterious person dressed in the same outfit steps up and takes the mask from joker's corpse and puts it on.

I hope there isn't a fucking sequel to this.  I would rather watch the Chipmunk movie sequels than another one of these films.  At least those have Jason Lee in them.  Fuckin' Jake Busey... all he does is creep around for like 10 minutes and then gets strangled!

I give Most Likely to Die 1 graduation cap out of 5 only because of the sweet graduation cap kills:

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Day 6: 31 (2016) 1h 42m

So I'm pulling an audible for today's film.  If you happened to watch my Halloween special post (you can see it here) you know that I'm a fan of Rob Zombie films.  Luckily for me, 31 came out on DVD just before XXX-mas and it was gifted to me from my fiancé.  So rather than roll for a film for this post I decided to pop 31 in and watch it.  Let's see what you've got, Mr. and Mrs. Zombie!

31 revolves around a group of carnie folk that get attacked and kidnapped.  They find themselves thrust into a game of "31" (which I assume is called that because it happens on Halloween).  The object of the game is simple: survive 12 hours inside of some sort of basement labyrinth while psychos dressed as clowns attempt to kill them.  While all of this is going on, Malcolm McDowell and two women are dressed in powdered faces, wigs, and old French noble clothes while they watch and listen in on the whole scene.

This film had two other versions that existed at some point.  The MPAA gave those versions NC-17 ratings until this final cut had an R rating.  The MPAA is a group of random shit sacks.  I don't mean just a bag full of feces, I mean actual scrotums full of feces that lead to some imaginary dick to fire shitty loads.  Censor that assholes!

I can't say that 31 was better in its original form as I haven't seen that.  I will say that it feels like Rob Zombie is running out of tricks when it comes to his directing.  A lot of the shots were similar to those that existed in his prior films.  They feel less like a signature for him and more along the lines of a madlib that he keeps writing the same thing in for every space.  I liked the acting in it and everyone interacted well with each other.  Malcolm McDowell steals the show every time he is on screen and I really wish I knew more of the back story of his group.

I think my biggest complaint though is that I had a lot of moments where I would become suddenly invested in the characters or scene only to have the scene become drawn out or the next shot slow the pace too a crawl.  It was a bell curve of being a bit bored, then getting really into 31, then bored again, repeat.  That isn't to say that I didn't like 31 though.

There were some great kill shots.  One of the guys falls on top of a chainsaw that is running (I'm not sure how without someone holding the trigger) for a long ass kill scene.  In addition to that, the first killer is a Spanish speaking little person with nazi body paint and a room devoted to Hitler... which, honestly, the killers' personalities were great, but this one was one of those things where he should've pulled back just a bit.  I think it's Tim Gunn that said that while you are accessorizing you should always remove the last thing you put on because it was probably overkill.  Then there's Doom-head who is such a weird sleazebag and I hate/love his character, all in a good way.

So I think that this isn't Rob Zombie's best film.  It's not a bad film, but I just don't know who this film was really made for.  It makes me want to watch Battle Royal, or The Running Man, or Slashers (the 2001 film) because it's kind of the same premise.  I will end this saying that there is a great nod to the Rocky Horror Picture Show in this film.  At least I hope it was a nod...

I give 31 2 ceramic ass clowns out of 5:

Day 2: Curse of Chucky (2013) 1h 37m

Normally, when you reach the 6th film in a horror series you're expecting it to be awful.  Truthfully, the only terrible thing about Curse of Chucky is that it was a straight-to-DVD release.  Sure, the last few films were overly campy and comedic, but Curse of Chucky returned to its horror roots and deserved a shot on the big screen.

At this point everyone should be familiar with the Good Guys doll known as Chucky.  The doll is possessed by the spirit of a serial killer (Charles Lee Ray) that used the Vodou diety Danbala/Damballa to transfer his soul and escape death.  He then spends the movies killing people and attempting to transfer his soul into a child.

Curse of Chucky keeps this overall premise but through the addition of skillful camera work, good acting (even from the child), and the doll being made to have an extra frightening look make this film tower over the rest.  I could go on about how much I loved the new doll design.  The eyes of it looked human, sometimes having veins or dilating pupils.  They also create a total change in the face from when it's just a possessed and from when Chucky is in full control.

The writers of this film also chose to expand the back story of Charles Lee Ray, right up to his soul transfer into the Good Guys doll in the first film.  They also throw in nods to the last five films, acknowledging them as cannon, but not dwelling on them to keep the focus on this film.

I was honestly blown away with how much I liked this film.  I really like the first Child's Play.  I was a kid when it came out and was piss-my-pants scared of the entire concept   Curse of Chucky made me remember why I was scared of that film as a kid.  I'm not saying this is cinema brilliance, but fuck was this a good horror film.

I give Curse of Chucky 4 Good Guys dolls out of 5:

Day 18: Hayride 2 (2015) 1h 32min

So once again I roll a sequel to a film that I hadn't seen the previous installment(s).  Luckily for me it seems like this movie probably came up short in the editing procedure and they spliced in a ton of stuff from the first movie so I got a good idea of what the back story was.

Apparently this town has a legend of a murderer named "Pitckfork," aptly named because his murder weapon of choice is said farming implement.  Pitchfork himself looks like Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th Part 2.  He's an oversized man wearing a burlap sack as a mask and he apparently can not be easily harmed by conventional weapons.  So in short, he's a cliché.

The film picks up right where I assume the first leaves off.  Pitchfork is unconscious in an ambulance, wakes up, killing begins.  The people from the first movie are all at the hospital where Pitchfork ends up (even though the ambulance was a ways away from there).  He kidnaps the one girl, fucks up another dude, kills a bunch of people, and the manhunt begins.

The detective(?) and the brothers in this film track him to his not-so-secret basement, free the girl, and there's a good nod to Nightmare On Elm Street.  One of the brothers that was scared of the legend of Pitchfork tells Pitchfork that he's no longer afraid of him.  It's much like where Freddy looses his power because Nancy says she is not afraid and takes back every bit of power she ever gave him.  At this Pitchfork was shot by the other brother and the house burns down while the heroes escape.

Following the general rules of a slasher movie, we're treated to an ending where everyone thinks everything is okay but Pitchfork steps into the last shot. I don't really care if they make a Hayride 3.  If they pick up the third exactly from that point as it seemed that they did from Hayride 1 to Hayride 2, then it could be interesting.  But I will never know as I won't watch it.

This film started okay and had promise, but once it got to the hospital stuff with Pitchfork it became a drone of forced kills and bad plot.  A majority of this movie is definitely re-recorded and overdubbed dialogue.  It's the same words syncing with the lips, but the audio gives it away.  Pitchfork is pretty much just a redneck Jason.  I was looking at IMDB's page for this movie and apparently owner of the house the pictures are from hid a rebel flag in the background of a shot and the writers decided to make it cannon that Pitchfork was a racist and then ran with it.  So much to the point that our only black man in the film Pitchfork attempts to hang in a lynching style.  It felt unnecessary.  This series feels unnecessary.

I give Hayride 2, 1 weird pitchfork farmer clip art pics out of 5: