Friday's Choice Cuts: Horror in Pro Wrestling

WCW's The Yeti... not really a Yeti, more of a TP monster

Let's all be honest here.  If you're a horror fan then odds are you're also a pro-wrestling fan.  I don't know of many people that don't have that cross-over.  "Sports entertainment" has evolved from just the standard heel/face battles into developed characters with costumes.  I still remember being a kid and The Undertaker coming out with Paul Bearer.  We had Paul's spooky high pitched voice talking about the dead man returning from the grave with the Undertaker rolling his eyes back.  It was creepy.

There's Kevin Sullivan who embodied the role of a satanist at a time when that was unheard of.  Stables like the Dungeon of Doom, the Brood (existing because White Wolf worked with WWE to create the wrestler Gangrel to go with their LARP game), and the Disciples (which crucified the owner's daughter by the titontron) created an ominous presence.

 

In modern times we have Bray Wyatt speaking of supernatural powers, a spirit known as Sister Abigail, and practically crab-walking around  the ring.  He also was the reason we had the amazing "House of Horrors" match which involved the shittiest Halloween haunted house and a KO-by-refrigerator.  I wish every gimmick match was as awesomely bad as that.

Speaking of gimmick matches, sometimes you don't even need the characters to keep things evil.  Barbed wire, cage matches, hardcore matches, backyard wrestling, Japanese Death Matches, "C4" matches, all things that push the limits.  While WWE has pretty much banned any blade-ing (when a wrestler uses a concealed razor blade to cut their forehead during a match), there are still matches in other federations where you can catch some insanely bloody scenes.

Before I forget, there's Lucha Underground which is essentially everything you could want with wrestling and strange story lines.  Mil Muerte was introduced as having the souls of 1000 dead men inside of him.  Their plots blur the lines of reality in a way that we haven't seen since the late 80's/early 90's.  We also have New Japan Wrestling which literally has a character that is just named Evil and comes out holding a scythe and a stable of crazies.

I could go on and on.  I was going to post the video of Sandman vs. The Zombie from ECW (when they got picked up by the Syfy channel) because it's hilarious, but Hulk Hogan meets the Dungeon of Doom is so much funnier.  Plus it's a tiny B-movie in its own.

The Midnight After (2014) 2h 4m

It's been a while since we've had any C-Horror on this blog.  Come to think of it, it's been a while since I've had any horror from Japan, Korea, or China.  I guess it's just how the dice roll sometimes when it comes to these reviews.

Imagine boarding a full mini-bus and while en route to your destination all signs of humanity vanish.  This is the plot of The Midnight After.  While passing through a tunnel there is a moment where everyone on the bus blinks at the same time and suddenly cars and people everywhere disappear.  In addition to this mystery, some of remainders that still exist begin to die in strange ways, such as their body parts just turning to dust.  Theories come from every angle among those that still live.

This film had a lot going on.  My issue is that some of it didn't seem to go anywhere, leaving me with a lot of questions.  There's a whole section revolving around David Bowie's Space Oddity which leads to a thin thread of something else but the source is never discovered.  The existence of Japanese men in gas masks gets discussed but we don't get a concrete reason as to why they have a presence in Hong Kong.  There's a strange time loss/memory loss section introduced with one of the characters too that is quickly forgotten.

The Midnight After also contains a rape scene which turns into a necro-rape scene after the woman succumbs to whatever is killing people.  This later outs one of the survivors as a scumbag.  I'm pretty sure this whole scene is meant to have a "Lord of the Flies" twinge insomuch as morality and punishment is defined by those alive.

Aside from the confusion and sexual assault scene, The Midnight After was okay.  They did a great job of making you invested with each of the survivors by the end of the film.  The characters were diverse enough to keep each of their dialog interesting and the light comedic elements did break things up.  I will say the character of Fat got on my nerves since he was the defacto leader by sheer jerkitude.

I give The Midnight After 2 Ziggy Stardust era David Bowie's out of 5:

Last Shift (2014) 1h 30m

If your first shift at a new job is guarding a building that after that night they're not going to use anymore then that shit is haunted.  There is no doubt in my mind that it's haunted.  There's no doubt in the ghost's mind that it's haunted.

Last Shift is set in an old police station where Officer Laren is starting her first shift.  All she has to do is watch the building and at some point a clean-up crew is coming through to get some stuff from the evidence room.  What starts where her hearing some strange noises turns into a full-fledged haunting from the spirits of cult members.

I really got into this film.  It reminded me a lot of the Silent Hill video games because there were seemingly two worlds. Officer Laren would blink or turn away and her surroundings would change in that moment.  It made me feel like when you see something out of the corner of your eye, but turn and it's gone.  Last Shift also had some of the most frightening foley I've heard this side of J-Horror.  I haven't cringed from a horror movie in a while but this one made my shoulders tighten up.

My only complaint is that this film was done in 2014 and Officer Laren still had a flip phone.  Honestly, get with the fucking times girl!  No wonder ghosts are calling you, that's like have a Victrola strapped to your hip for your music!

I give Last Shift 3 police shields out of 5:

Meet the Blacks (2016) 1h 34m

Is modern horror white centric?  This is the question that I've come to ask myself.  Now that you're thinking about that question I'm sure Get Out has come to mind but there really hasn't been another film that pops up to fill that number two spot.  The reason I even raise this question is because while I understood the jokes and references, I felt as though I was on the outside looking in with this watch.  This wasn't made for me.  Personally I mean.  I'm not speaking for a group of anyone as I can't represent that.  Even as a horror fan with this blog I can't speak for all horror fans.  Yet I just felt a disconnect.  I'm probably rambling into oblivion with an absence of a point, but I had that step back moment and this is now clawing at my skull.

If you took The Purge films, mixed in some Beverly Hillbillies, and made them into an "urban" horror-comedy then you'd have Meet the Blacks.  Carl Black takes a stash of weed and money from a dealer's house after that dealer goes to jail.  He moves his entire family from Chicago to Beverly Hills to live a rich life.  Carl assumes that the purge (it's literally called "the purge" in this movie) won't effect them in their rich neighborhood.  His presumption is wrong and everyone from the drug dealer he stole from, to racist neighbors, black klansman, the Visa company, etc. come after him.  It's literally a revolving door of "Who are you?" "You owe me money for xxxx" or "I don't like black people."

As I mentioned, I was on the outside looking in here.  The regular jokes were not as funny to me as the obvious ad lib jokes were.  The presence of some major stars like Paul Mooney, Charlie Murphy (RIP), and Mike Tyson kept it interesting but some duds like George Lopez (as President El Bama) and Perez Hilton (as the Visa man) really took away from what humor I did like.  They would also set up running gags which got stale quickly.  How many times are you going to kill someone and then forget it's purge night and freak out about the cops?  Apparently three or four times if my count is correct.

This isn't really a bad film.  The acting was decent, even from the kids, and the Rza did the score so you can't go wrong there.  It's also not that great.  I can say I felt disconnected from it as much as I want but I can tell when something is still good or bad and this was just short of middle of the road.

I give Meet the Blacks 1 copy of Friday out of 5:

The Poltergeist of Borley Forest (a.k.a. American Poltergeist 2; a.k.a. You Will Love Me) (2013)

Fun fact:  American Poltergeist 1 came out in 2015, two years after this film was released.  If nothing else then this should give you an idea of what we're in for.  The joy of Hollywood is that they'll sometimes put out films that already exist under another moniker in hopes that being related to something else will help them sell.  A great example of this are some of the later Hellraiser films where they were completed scripts without any of the Cenobites or Hellraiser related items.  The studio said they needed to add those things to the script and then they'd make the movie because it was already a bad movie which they knew they couldn't sell.  There's also Dark Harvest 2: The Maize which was a film made by Bill Cowell because I had just bought a new camera and wanted to test it out.  He wrote a shitty script and had his family and friends act in it and for some reason Lion's Gate got a copy of it and said they'd give him money for it and put it out as DH2.  I've seen it, it is awful.

Back to the matter at hand though, American Poltergeist 2 is about a 17 year-old girl that parties in the wrong woods and finds a tree with the remains of a lynching rope still hanging from it.  She touches the rope and then begins to see and sometimes be attacked by a spirit.  After seeking out a professor in paranormal studies, and the girl's family experiences a violent encounter, they have to find the tree again to defeat the spirit.

Over the last few reviews I've mentioned things being "trash," but this transcends trash and becomes a new form of disgusting waste.  It's raw sewage, filled with the stench of poo poo and pee pee!  Using adult words to describe this film is too good for it!  The camera shots lack any dynamic.  It's either straight on or slightly off to the side so a character can look forward and not stare into the camera.  The audio engineer was fucking terrible as well.  If a scene was in public then it sounded like they recorded without a wind screen on the mic and pushed the EQ so it was all high end.  There was a scene of the girl walking outside with one of her friends which was almost inaudible.  It sounded like when you hit your head really hard and voices sound distant despite being right next to you.

The ending of this film tried to pull a "We killed the wrong ghost twin!" thing as a surprise reveal but you saw it coming from the other side of town.  Crap plot, crap acting, crap sound, crap camera... all crap!  Also, if you do watch this, look for the bright orange extension cord running through the grass to the light rig after the one character realizes their car batter is totally dead.  It was in the fucking shot the whole time!  You could see it under his arm!  Fuck you American Poltergeist 2, or whatever your real name is!

I give the movie with many titles 0 extension cords out of 5:

Antibirth (2016) 1h 34m

What the fuck did I just watch?  For real,  what the fuck is this film?  I spent so much time trying not to fall asleep and then just... fuck it.  Let's get into it.

Antibirth takes one of the girls from Orange is the New Black and fucks her up on all of the drugs.  After a night out at a party she wakes up and begins to show signs of being pregnant.  She doesn't remember much from the party but is pretty sure she didn't have sex with anyone.  The pregnancy has weird side effects like skin peeling or lactating blood or the grossest blister drain scene I've seen in a while.  The final payoff in this film consisted of me yelling "what the fuck is that?!" or "what the fuck is going on?!" at the screen multiple times.

I've complained of slow burns before but this was like a fuse that never let.  Most of the film's story is told while people are getting high and then faux artsy drug induced shots of TVs or scenery.  A lot of the music was baby's first Casio pre-programmed drum beats with mumble lyrics and effects pedals over it.  There was one song that sounded like it was a Brian Jonestown Massacre song but it could just have been a rip off.

Then the ending, Jesus barebacking Christ, the fucking ending.  If you ever wondered what it'd look like if Bigfoot fucked the Creature from the Black Lagoon then look up the last 10 minutes of this movie.  Don't watch the rest, just watch the ending because the rest of the movie does not fucking warn you!  I can't handle this.  I'm done.  Fuck this movie!

I give Antibirth 0 boys wearing an "I'm preggers" shirt out of 5:

Friday's Choice Cuts: The Splatterhouse Video Game Series (Namco/Namco Bandai)

That magazine ad started it all.  I was on the cusp of turning 10 and flipping through a Gamepro magazine when I saw it: Splatterhouse.  The lower left screen shot had the main protagonist (Rick) shooting a shotgun at a guy with chainsaws for arms and a bag on his head.  I thought that was the coolest looking thing ever.

Unfortunately, my local arcade never got a cabinet of Splatterhouse, and the only person in my town with a Turbografx 16 had the game but they were older than me and the few times I asked if I could try Splatterhouse he always said he didn't want anyone playing his Turbografx.  It didn't help that the system was fucking insanely expensive.

Luckily I had a Genesis and they eventually made Splatterhouse 2 and 3 for that system.  When I became an adult and learned of emulators I was able to play the arcade and the Turbografx port.  Then I even tracked down a Famicom rom with its chibi art style.  In 2010 (20 years after the original port) a reboot was put released and as you completed the game it unlocked the arcade game as well as 2 and 3.  If nothing else it's worth the money for that.

Now that I've dragged you on my nostalgia journey, what is Splatterhouse?  It's a horror game where your girlfriend Jennifer is kidnapped (a lot) and Rick dons something known as the Terror Mask which grants him intense strength to fight everything from poltergeists to severed heads controlled by an inverted cross (or tombstone if it's the TG port).  You get all the typical weapons such as a 2x4, a shotgun, a giant meat cleaver, etc.  I think the only thing that's missing is getting your own chainsaw.  All of these, with the exception of the reboot, are side-scrollers.  You do have moments where you interact with some background elements depending on the level.

If you're into horror and video games then I definitely recommend seeking these out.  I know the Namco collection on the Nintendo e-store has the original port but if you e-Bay a copy of the 2010 game for PS3 then I recommend that.  I paid something like $5 for mine but in truth, it'll be priceless to me because I finally get to play all of the Splatterhouse (no thanks to you, Billy!  Fuck your Turbografx!)