31 Days of Horror: Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary.  The soil of a man’s heart is stonier.  Creepy Indian burial grounds, cats, Herman Munster, and spinal meningitis.  This combination makes for one incredible movie.  This movie is full of people and animals rising from the dead, incredibly disturbing sister-monsters, and people getting hit by trucks while they are jogging.  Still the most disturbing part of this movie is when the cat dies.  It gets me every time.  Did they just kill the cat for the movie? Either they killed the cat or they got the Tom Hanks of cats because he is one heck of an actor. This movie does a good job of showing you that children will make you lose your mind. But no matter how crazy you are, you will never get along with the dead unless you are dead too. The best part of this movie is when the baby boy shows how much he wants to be like his father by playing doctor with the neighbor.  Like father like son. It truly is heart warming.  Because of Gage’s last second attempt at being a playful kid, I give this movie respectable 7 out of 10 stars. I want to leave you with one last word of advice. Remember, sometimes dead is better.

31 Days of Horror: Black Swan

Black Swan.  I initially wasn’t planning on allowing this to be one of the 31 days of horror, however, after I started watching it I realized that this has all of the classic traits of a horror film.  It’s got it all; mystery, suspense, disturbing images, and a girl turning into a swan.  Not to mention guys in tights.  Wasn’t it weird when Natalie Portman’s legs turn into bird legs?  That’s when I knew this movie was a horror movie.  I like how this movie answers the thousand-year-old question.  What do you have to do to take your ballet skills to the next level? You have to lose yourself and go completely crazy.  Seriously, nothing can make any sense.  It makes me wonder if I can take whatever I do to the next level if I lose my mind.  Maybe some day we will all find out.  This movie also proves once and for that no matter what you do backstage, ballet is still going to be just awful. Although the ballet was boring, the movie was actually quite interesting. I give this move a 7.9 out of 10.

31 Days of Horror: Scream 4

Scream 4.  The one where Mr. and Mrs. ex-Cox-Arquette struggle to act like their marriage is struggling on set while at home their marriage really was struggling.  I can see why a guy would use a knife to murder all of those people.  No one can shoot the broad side of a barn in Hollywood except Tom Selleck in Quigley Down Under.  Why is it that no one can shoot a person from 20 feet away if their life or the life of the person who is getting stabbed to death depended on it?  The thing that bothered me the most, however, was that Hayden Panettiere didn’t die in the first scene of the movie.  What was with her?  She is supposed to be a girl in high school and yet she always looks like she is on her way to the courtroom.  Her weird t-shirt/pant suit combinations along with her reverse mullet make her look like another 40-year-old Courtney Cox.  This movie was interesting in the way that it made fun of something just like the Scream series and yet it tried to make it serious at the same time.  I can’t say that it was good.  So I decided to give this film a 3.4 out of 10 stars.

31 Days of Horror: The Thing

The Thing.  The movie where Kurt Russell looks macho.  How about that one alien who can take over an entire human race?  That is pretty unbelievable.  But what is more unbelievable is Dr. Blair’s computer that predicted that an alien could take over the entire world population in 27,000 hours.  It’s hard to believe that they had anything back then that our app store doesn’t have now. I’m not claiming that Kurt Russell couldn’t have predicted that, but no computer would have had the balls to say something like that.  But I digress.  Do you remember when that guys stomach turned into a big mouth and then bit the Doc’s arms off?  And then that guys head turned into a giant head spider that almost sneaks out unnoticed.  Those are the types of things that make John Carpenter stand out.  Only a guy who really knew what good cinema was would think of making a guys stomach turn into a mouth that then bites off a guys arms.  I don’t exactly know what The Thing was, but I know that it was one crazy monster that could bite your arms off.   I think the scariest part of this show is the unknown.  The only thing we know about The Thing is it can replicate any living thing and it can bite your arms off.  I think I would rather have it bite my head off then my arms.  If I didn’t have any arms I would just die. But again, I digress.  This movie kept me on the edge of my seat.  It makes you think.  Because it was so much fun to watch, I give The Thing a rating of 7.6 out of 10 stars.

31 Days of Horror: A Nightmare on Elm Street

A Nightmare on Elm Street.  The one where it makes Freddy look like a pedophile instead of the cool “in your face,” in your dreams, down to earth kind of killer.  I never really knew the story behind Freddy Krueger.  So I was pleased when I heard this one could lay all of the question to rest.  The only problem with this is now I find myself rooting for the snot nosed brats that he is terrorizing.  I’m only joking, the only person who I take more pleasure in seeing terrorize his enemies is Vin Diesel as Dom from the Fast and the Furious saga. That part where he makes that jerk in the diner cut his own throat with a steak knife is epic. Even more epic then that time Vin Diesel wheelied that car in the quarter mile against Paul Walker at the end of The Fast and The Furious. Not to mention the part where Freddy kills that skinny wiener in the jail cell, and his cellmate gets really scared, that part sends chills up my spine.  Kind of like when Vin Diesel made an appearance at the end of The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. This movie was so good I would almost put it on the level that Fury put the Ninja Turtles on.  I give this movie an even 8 out of 10 stars. 

31 Days of Horror: Sleeping Beauty

You guessed it, Rage is at class again so I have chosen to write about a not so typical horror film, Sleeping Beauty.  The difference between this post and my previous post on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is that I believe Sleeping Beauty can legitimately be classified as a horror movie, or at least a very scary movie, especially for kids.  I base that statement entirely on one character: Maleficent.  I propose that there is no more frightening villain in all of Disney animated moviedom.  She has a cold, calculating voice that she calmly uses to send chills down the spine.  If she makes a threat, no matter how extravagant, you better believe she is going to follow through with it, big time.  And the icing on the cake?  She can turn into a dragon!  Not a lame cartoony dragon that you could make fun of (a la Jafar turning into a snake in Aladdin), a terrifying dragon that could haunt your dreams if you were ten years old (or even thirty, I don’t think that dragon ever gets entirely non-frightening).  What other villains could compete?  We’ve already discussed Jafar (who comes off the fool at the end of the movie, tricked into becoming a genie?  What a chump), Scar (coward), Hades (hilarious, but not scary)?  The only villains who come close to Maleficent are her fellow villainesses Ursula from The Little Mermaid and the Queen from Snow White.  Why is it that the earlier Disney movies produced the most terrifying villains?  And why were these villains all women?  I am not going to get into that, because I don’t know.  But while I’m here I might as well spit out a few ideas.  Maybe because girls are way more scary than guys.  Maybe because girls are much smarter than guys when it comes to devious planning.  Maybe back in the day children weren’t coddled like they are today, and they were allowed to be properly terrified by children’s movies.  Do you think parents could scare their kids into eating their vegetables by threatening that the computer from Wall-E is gonna come get them?  Not a chance!  Have them watch Sleeping Beauty, and they’d be doing the dishes, washing the car, and mowing the lawn just to avoid a visit from Maleficent.  In my humble opinion, based on the comedy provided by the fairy god mothers, the lovely music, the romance, and especially the terrifying villainess, I give this movie 7.4 out of 10 stars.

31 Days of Horror: The Strangers

The Strangers.  The creepy movie where Dennis from Always Sunny In Philadelphia gets shot in the face.  While our other posts have been about movies that were either too cheesy to be scary or made in the 80’s and just came up a bit short with the scare factor, this movie is for real.  Not only does the suspense keep you on the edge of your seat like a 13 year old girl watching Bend it Like Beckham, but it was based on a true story so the terror goes way beyond the screen.  In this movie, a guy and his heartless girlfriend decided to go on a trip.  They decide to stay the night at his family’s summerhouse.  What a terrible idea that turns out to be.  Not only does this guy not know how to use a shotgun, but when he finally does figure it out he doesn’t seem to want to use it except to kill his friends.  This movie is much like any other successful scary movie.  It is full of two of more people making all the wrong decisions and getting themselves into more and more trouble with every decision they make.  Remember, you can’t make a good horror movie unless at one point you split up.  It is unwise to try to take on three people any other way but on your own. Granted, if they were smarter and just got in the car right when they realized people were in the house they would have gotten out alive. And what kind of a movie would that be?  I don’t know, probably a boring chick-flick where the police get involved.  But in all honesty this movie was better than most.  Since it has a true scare factor, I give this move a 7.1 out of 10 stars.

31 Days of Horror: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie – An excerpt by Fury

First off, there is something you should know about me, I don’t like horror movies.  That is Rage’s cup of tea.  Horror movies are just to g darn scary for me.  I like having a peaceful night sleep, not one haunted by Freddy Kruegar and the hockey goalie from the Detroit Red Wings.  I mean hockey gives me nightmares as it is, why would you put a hockey mask on a deranged killer and give me ANOTHER reason not to want to watch winter sports?  Thanks, Hollywood, for making me feel less patriotic every four years…  Long story short, Rage has a late class two nights per week.  Translation: I will be writing about non-horror movies two nights per week.  This week’s movie is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie.

Every guy who grew up in the late 80s/early 90s remembers the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons.  It was only logical that a movie would be made.  However, unlike the cartoon and the subsequent sequels, I still thoroughly enjoy the original TMNT movie to this day.  It’s actually a well thought out movie, and much darker than you might think.  I mean, if four ninja turtles lived in New York and battled with a Japanese crime lord in real life, it wouldn’t be all fun and games like a cartoon.  The defining characteristics that make this film enjoyable are simple: violence and swearing.  It sounds barbaric and unintelligent, but would The Departed have been as great of a movie if they shook hands and squirted each other with water guns the whole time?  The cursing and serious consequences of the fighting give it a sense of reality (as much reality as a movie with four crime fighting turtles can have), which in turn causes the audience to emotionally connect with the film.  When Rafael gets thrown through the glass roof and spends the next several days in a coma, we understand that people can really get hurt in this world.  In the cartoon and even in the sequels, the fighting is more of a game with no consequences than a reality.  In my opinion this is a good thing, better for young, impressionable minds to see what violence is really about rather than providing a false sense of fun-and-games where it doesn’t belong.

In summary, this non-horror flick is a great one to watch with the kids or a guy of any age.  From hilarious lines (“Wise man say: Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza”) to action, to emotions, to life lessons (as taught by Splinter), this movie has it all.  In my unbiased rating system, it receives 9.7 stars out of 10.

31 Days of Horror: The Shining

The Shining.  You get to see a young, charming Jack Torrance turn into a sadistic nutcase with one thing on his mind, redrum.  There is nothing like being cooped up in a hotel with nobody but your family and a typewriter to keep you company for five months.  An amazing performance by Jack Nicholson coupled with an eerie soundtrack will keep you interested (sort of) and guessing (sort of).  Shelly Duvall’s gigantic horse teeth and enormous bulging eyes will have you wondering if the co-star is an actress or Mr. Ed.  But in all fairness, she does seem to have a good heart (as witnessed by how hard she tries to prevent her husband from killing their son with an ax).  I think that she studied crying in actor-college, because she spends the better part of the last half of the movie crying, and she never seems to get tired of it.  And do you remember the part where Shelly Duvall is trying to find her son in the hotel and she sees this guy in a bear suit with his butt hanging out having relations with another guy in a suit?  What the deuce was that all about?  And do Shelly Duvall’s eyes seem to get bigger and wider as the end scene plays out?  I mean it’s seriously like a cartoon.  All in all, for the reasons laid out previously, we have decided to give this movie an 8.1 out of 10 stars.  

31 Days of Horror: Freddy vs. Jason

Freddy vs. Jason.  The burn victim vs. the hockey goalie.  Will they team up and kill Scooby Doo’s mystery team? Or will their competitive nature end the teamship before it can really begin?  Spoiler alert… They do both.  In this epic masterpiece, they combine a plethora of action scenes mixed with horror and they tie it all together with arguably the best soundtrack and most innovative fight scenes since Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.  I give this movie a respectable 4.9/10 stars.  However, the majority of its points come from the final battle scene, which ends with limbs being torn from their sockets and lakeside explosions.