The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense

Can you believe we're here celebrating the third anniversary of February's The Shortening? That means I've been devoting one month to movies about vertically challenged villains for the same amount of time that Arrested Development aired, that I'm just one year short of essentially being as important and hard-working as a U.S. president. Crazy, isn't it?

For those new to winter at the Doll's House, the theme is simple: February is a short month. Though U.S. holiday customs have declared otherwise, here at this petite blog (run by a woman not shy about having to wear capris as standard-length pants), we dedicate these 28 days to movies that focus on the little ones. Dolls. Trolls. Children. Shrinking men. Insects. Promiscuous blood gnomes. Angry spirits of aborted children turned into small freaks with homicidal tendencies. Manitous.

You get the point.

This year will be no different. Coming up this month, you'll see posts on everything from fuzzy tarantulas to killer cats, living lawn ornaments to overaccessorized bratz, Italian man-puppets to dolls made from cursed burlap sacks. You might have a guess as to what all those hints refer to, and I invite all readers and bloggers to indulge in the spirit of The Shortening. If you have your own website and plan on hemming some pants, be sure to share it to my email (deadlydollshouse at gmail.com) so I can include you in my weekly link roundup.

We little people must stick together. Because as a certain great movie once taught us, when the going gets tough, it's the size of your heart that counts.

And the fact that you've cast Gary Olman as a little person. But that’s just gravy.

Troll and I have a complicated history, primarily because as a child, the box cover art terrified the living pigtails out of me.

I know, I know. This is the same person who was left unimpressed by The Exorcist.

In fourth grade.

I grew up with horror, and yet for some reason, that steely eyed gaze of a mucus dripping goblin thing wrapping his fingers around a rainbow bouncing ball did something to little old me. It probably owes most to the fact that as a child, I (rather understandably) found kids-in-peril to be a tad, you know, SCARY. Because at the time, I was a kid. And didn't want to be in peril.

Childhood psychology aside, it's February so let's talk Troll!

And when you're finished here, check out Pearce's Horror Movie Reviews for another take.

Quick Plot: That wacky Michael Moriarty plays Harry Potter, father to Harry Potter Jr.

Should we talk about this?

Nah, why linger in legal issues when we've got Michael Moriarty lip synching to classic rock!

The Potters are busy moving into a new apartment building in San Francisco. Young daughter Wendy decides to take a tour of her new home's basement. The good news is the building has laundry! The bad news is it also has trolls.

Trolls, in this universe, aren't the House Party-haired good luck charms they came to be in the '90s. This being 1986, trolls are nasty little creatures that can possess humans (in this case, innocent Wendy) to impersonate them and transform an apartment building into their magical forest realm. Along with this, they wear magic mood rings that trollify humans, be they the kind little person Phil Fondacaro (doubling as the troll), a pre-Elaine Benes Julia Louis Dreyfuss, or a self-proclaimed ladies' man swinger Sonny Bono.

Oh yeah. THAT Sonny Bono.

Thankfully there's a witch on hand to help Harry Potter Jr. (go with it) save his sister and battle the wizard-turned-troll. Witch in question is played by June Lockhart (and in a younger incarnation, by her own daughter) as a no-nonsense crone with a mild potty mouth.

Sadly, unlike Lockhart's rival, this witch does not speak jive.

Truthfully though, I wouldn't be surprised if Lockheart DID break out into a jive monologue because Troll, you see, is a strange film. Directed by John Carl Buechler (Ghoulies 3 and Friday the 13th Part VII: The Carrie One) with a script from Dolls' Ed Naha, Troll falls into the Venn diagram meeting quadrant of fantasy, horror, and comedy, not too big a surprise considering it was produced by Full Moon's Charles Band. It's a style that you don't see often today, both for better (because when it ain't done right, it hurts) and worse (because when it's done right, it's weirdly joyful).

Troll is done right. I think. There's the possibility that it's just such an odd, one-of-a-kind sort of film that there's just nothing out there to really compare it to. I dare YOU to name another '80s genre movie with middle age pop star cameos, elaborate puppetry, lip synching Michael Moriarty, and references to the epic poem that I wrote a paper on in college, The Faerie Queen. Nay, I double DOG dare you.

Buechler's tone is all over the place, and that's kind of special in itself. Watching Troll as an adult, I can still understand why it gave me nightmares, just as I can easily see why other viewers would find it laughable. This is the movie that taught Elaine how to dance! This is the movie that has an innocent little girl being possessed by a disgusting and murderous troll! THIS IS THE MOVIE WHERE SONNY BONO TALKS DIRTY!

This is something special.

High Points
The sheer weirdness of Troll makes it, in its own way, far more memorable than its infamous name-only sequel

Low Points
Others could argue that Troll has no idea what it is or who it's trying to appeal to. A PG audience filled with elementary school students? Necking teenagers ready for jumps? Sonny Bono fans? Eh, let's have a drink and call it a unifier!

The Winning Line(s)
So many to choose from, all spoken by The Neverending Story's Noah Hathaway. Let us count down:
Mom: Keep an eye on your sister
Atreyu: I’d rather watch Star Trek!

Atreyu: Have you been playing with dead cats?

Atreyu: Can I come in? I think I’m gonna throw up.

Lessons Learned
Being trolled will cause one to eat Fantastic Mr. Fox style

Trolls are super good at spear throwing

Beauty generally fades with age, though acting ability apparently fades with age reversal

Rent/Bury/Buy
At barely 80 minutes, Troll is a breezy little oddity well worth revisiting if it's been, like me, a few decades. The DVD is floating around at a pretty bargain price, often paired with its goblin-filled followup. Give it a whirl. If nothing else, there's this:

Jack Clayton's The Innocents might well be one of cinema's most overlooked and outstanding ghost stories put to screen. It's quiet and subtle, but also wonderfully creepy and deceptively disturbing. It would make perfect sense then for Clayton to return to the genre he so excelled in, especially if being paired with novelist Ray Bradbury.

It would make sense, right? Now let's toss in the name "Walt Disney" and see logic ride a train out of town.

Quick Plot: In the scenic Illinois hamlet of Greentown, young Will and Jim are about to settle into a typically quiet October when, as the title hints, something wicked does indeed come.

This particular breed of evil arrives in the form of an unseasonal carnival, run by a steely eyed and magnificently creepy Jonathon Pryce as the not at all ominously named Mr. Dark. At first, the boys and their fellow townspeople are happy to ride a ferris wheel before the nips of November set in, but when a few unhappy locals disappear (and none too coincidentally, the carnival's staff seems to double) Will, Jim, and Will's self-doubting father Charles (played by a supremely wonderful Jason Robards) are forced to confront the unseemly fact that Mr. Dark's circus is not operating on the good side of morality.

Produced by Disney Studios and based on a Bradbury novel (which he himself adapted here), Something Wicked This Way comes is one of those 'children's' films of the '80s that is anything but. Though it is primarily seen through the young eyes of Will, this is a dark story, one that walks a slippery tightrope between nostalgia, mortality, and all-out fear. While it wears the scars of studio interference, confused rewrites, and a messy ending, it's also the kind of oddity that I found truly special.

The basis rolls off Bradbury's page as he smoothly translates his language to the screen. The opening narration--an apparent post-process addition--introduces us to a sleepy town and its quirky residents with careful skill. I imagine that the novel went into rich detail about the plainness of a schoolteacher spinster, but the screenwriter in Bradbury is smart enough to know that saying "You would never believe it, but she was once the most beautiful woman in town" is more than sufficient to tell us what we need to know. Though the younger actors aren't necessarily the most skilled at delivering some of the dialogue, for the most part, Bradbury's script has a strong ear that gives good actors an audio feast. When the stage-trained Pryce launches into maniacally evil poetry to seduce his latest victim or the rock solid Robards waxes on about the time he failed his son, Something Wicked This Way Comes hits its true stride. Much like the criminally underrated The Exorcist III, this is a film written by a novelist who understands how his words play on the camera and makes the most out of them.

That is not to say that Something Wicked This Comes isn't something of a mess. Certain scare sequences feel a tad forced in terms of story, even if it does give us the kind of tarantula mob scene fit for nightmares. The ending, whatever it is, doesn't make a lick of sense that I can taste. Robards reads some local mythology about how an evil carnival comes to town in October every couple of decades only to leave with the next big storm, but that still never provides any logical explanation of a) why Greentown b) why now c) what Mr. Dark's endgame is or most importantly, d) what the heck a storm has to do with it. It's clear from some library journals that a storm always marks the carnival's disappearance, but that doesn't make the surprisingly gruesome finale mean anything in terms of stakes, if it was bound to happen anyway. Also of note, and this is a MAJOR SPOILER

Do we ever learn what became of the few unlucky citizens to buy into the devil's promises? I imagined that the Disney portion of this film would show itself in a sugary coda, but instead, we just get a happy father/son moment. No word on the barber-turned-bearded lady, the youthful but blind teacher, the fully limbed former amputee or the greedy cigar shop owner. I wouldn't have a problem knowing that they DIDN'T join in the happy ending, but it's frustrating not to know.

SPOILERS OVER

All this aside, I found Something Wicked This Way Comes exceedingly fun in a youthfully macabre manner. This is a twisted little movie that seems primed to poke its intended young audience right where they're vulnerable, be that the threat of giant spiders or the fear of losing your parents. It doesn't work as seamlessly as it could, but when it does, it does so with committed and cruel energy that makes it hard to look away.

Oh, and in case you were wondering why this title appears during February's Attack of the Shorties, allow me to demonstrate with Exhibit A, a little person clown parade!

And more notably, Exhibit B, wherein Dark's business associate is transformed (via magical carousel, natch) into a pre-Problem Child problem child, right down to the ginger 'do and bowtie

High Notes
Jason Robards brings such brilliant weight to his character, a 50something year old librarian with heart problems and a constant sense of inadequacy stemming from his age in relation to fatherhood. Charles Holloway is a fascinating and wonderfully written man in the hands of Bradbury, and Robards adds such solid presence and skill that it almost hurts

Similarly, few actors could deliver threats like "we butter our bread with delicious pain" with the same seductive musicality as Jonathon Pryce

Low Notes
The not so grand, yet very confusing finale

Middle Note
James Horner's busy musical score (an apparent post-production change that Clayton was displeased with) is extremely conspicuous and occasionally distracting, but it's also a very clear product of its time (see the similarly toned Lady In White for support). I kind of love its blaring enthusiasm, but I can see how it might break the mood for some viewers

Stray Note
The Ewok Movie 2: Caravan of Courage fan in me finds it near impossible to not write the title of this film as Something Wicket This Way Comes

Lessons Learned
With heart problems, limit nightly activities to one drink and one cigar

Pillows make for surprisingly effective tarantula fighting weapons

Some folks draw lightning to them as a cat sucks in a baby's breath

Lessons Cribbed By An Actor From Another Movie
If Jim Nightshade looked familiar, it may have been because you recognized him from the very different (or maybe not different at all) slasher The Funhouse, where young Shawn Carson played the final girl's younger brother. In that Tobe Hooper film, Carson watches big sis hide out in a dark ride in order to stay inside after closing hours...the very same plan he and Will use to catch some extra glimpses of Dark's Carnival. Looks like someone was taking notes

Look! It's...
Royal Dano, playing yet another old hillbilly kook encountering some nefarious electricity at a circus with bad intentions

And hold the phone Foxy: Pam Grier as the silent but bewitching assistant to Mr. Dark

Rent/Bury/Buy
I found Something Wicked This Way Comes to be a wonderfully unusual treat from a bygone era, but I also went into the film knowing nary a detail about it. With that in mind, random sights like Pam Grier in a wedding gown or Royal Dano getting the electric chair were bound to keep me shocked, while the genuinely strong stuff--Robards hefty performance, Pryce's lyrical villain, Bradbury's intricate language--kept me glued to the screen. The film does indeed have a lot of problems in terms of its tone and story, making it even more shameful that the DVD release is so bare bones. This is a film that begs for some behind the camera discussion or deleted scenes. Without those, this is a definite recommend for a rental. It's simply too strange to not see.

The 1940s are easily my biggest blind spot when it comes to cinema, particularly of the genre persuasion. Save for a few Val Lewton gems, I've seen virtually nothing from those years, so any chance to expand upon that is welcome. But I'll be honest about something:

I didn't know Dead of Night had a ventriloquist's dummy.

And I am not happy about that one bit.

Quick Plot: An architect drives out to a country home for a weekend design job only to immediately realize the bevy of socialites gathered there have been appearing regularly in his nightmares, despite the fact that he hasn't met a single one. Through cigarette smoke and '40s style chatter, the sextet begins to share their own personal stories of the supernatural.

That's right folks: it's an anthology!

Here's what we've got:

-Story 1 is the traditional "room for one more" tale as an injured racecar driver constantly sees a hearse driver with an ominous message
-Next up is a good old fashioned child ghost yarn set in a spooky but crowded house at a festive Christmas party
-Story 3 follows a wealthy woman's poor decision in buying her beloved a haunted wall mirror that once witnessed a violent crime. This story is the best thing in the world for two reasons:

1. It gives us such wonderfully aristocratic dialogue as "What do you want to do tonight? Dress up? Spend a lot of money?"

and

2. The lead wears a different headpiece in EVERY SINGLE SCENE. I know, I know. You're thinking "but it's one segment in an anthology, how many scenes can there be?" Well, as many scenes as there were fabulous headpieces in the costume shop's trunk.

-In the fourth tale, a pair of cheekily competitive golfers makes a friendly wager that involves the loser surrendering his lady love and drowning himself in a nearby lake, only to return to happily haunt the victorious (and cheating) newlywed. It's a strange blend of light-hearted comedy and, you know, the tale of suicide and ghostings.

-Finally, we get to The Worst Thing In the World: Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist with a misbehaving dummy named Hugo.

I don't want to talk about it, even if this IS February's Attack of the Shorties.

In my 31 years on this planet, there a few lessons I've picked up. Perhaps the most life-saving ones are thus:

There are only two things in this world to fear: ventriloquist's dummies and caterpillars.

The sight of both instantly shrivel me into the fetal position, leaking a steady stream of urine and tears in what can only qualify as an exceedingly slippery floor environment.

You'd think Dead of Night being made in 1945 would help diminish that fear a tad. Hugo may speak like a helium-high scoundrel, but, well, he's just a typical black and white wooden doll whose movements can only be manipulated so much! you say, as if you have ANY understanding of the ancient evil arts.

Ventriloquist's dummies are never, without pretty much any exception ever, not evil. Even Pee-Wee Hermann knew this!

Back on the impossible track that is resisting the urge to lock myself in a closet and instead discuss the movie: it's good. Perhaps because my 1940s film experience is so bare, even the fast-paced dialogue and highly mannered speaking feels fresh and different. None of the stories go on too long, and if they threaten to, such a crime is easily excused because LOOK AT THOSE FABULOUS HATS!

But the movie also features a dummy. A high-pitched voice dummy that does terrible things.

It's hard to forgive something like that.

High Points
HATS!

Low Points

DUMMIES!

Lessons learned
It’s jolly unpleasant when you find yourself smack up against the supernatural

Because a chap becomes a ghost surely doesn’t mean he’s no longer a gentleman

If you're wealthy, 'curious' and 'tragic' essentially mean the same thing

Rent/Bury/Buy
Long out of print, Dead of Night is well worth watching both for its pedigree as an early anthology and because it's simply a good movie. Even though it has a dummy. A dummy that is probably plotting in his little soprano voice an elaborate routine to torture me, singing and making vaudvillian puns throughout the process.

I am not happy about this.

A horror movie heavily touting its use of burlap-made voodoo dolls, just SITTING on the shelf at a Kentucky used DVD shop, the same used DVD shop that held a clean and shiny copy of Tiptoes?

HOW COULD I SAY NO?

Quick Plot: A goth-y looking dude (bearing an uncanny resemblance to Face Off judge Glenn Henntrick) sews himself an adorable little voodoo doll as its human representation takes a very naked bath elsewhere. Jerky Goth Guy then drowns his new toy, as elsewhere, our naked brunette does the same to herself.

SINISTER!

On yet another side of town, a spacey career woman named Emily (typical) begins experiencing strange dreams primarily involving bugs and/or a very rotted corpse slowly being pushed towards her. Her slacker (yet surprisingly resourceful) brother Sam shows up to help, only to eventually discover these scares are the result of a fender bender with aforementioned Goth Guy, who the DMV reports to be a displaced New Orleans witch doctor.

Note to self: displaced New Orleans witch doctors are REALLY sensitive when it comes to car insurance.

That’s really all you need to know about Sinister, which consists of approximately 15 minutes of scattered dialogue and 80 more of instrumental music following characters as they walk, sometimes through ominous situations but more often through situations that are made to seem ominous through instrumental music. Writer/director Steve Sessions triple duties by composing the film’s score, a similar trifecta he accomplished with the more effective (but still 7/8th music) Dead Clowns. Sessions is clearly working with a next-to-nothing budget, and it’s certainly admirable that he’s found a way to focus on his filmmaking strengths and downplay some of his limitations. Unfortunately, It doesn’t quite translate into a compelling watch.

High Points

Sessions’ abilities as a composer are definitely the highlight of the film, even if he’s well-aware of that and therefore fills nearly the entire running time showing it off

Low Points

It says something about a movie when I forget the main character’s name...especially when it’s the same as mine

Lessons Learned

A herpatologist treats herpes, so if you don’t have ‘em, you don’t need one

When really weird things come your way, the best reaction you can have is to just stand there and stare

Psychics and witch doctors have something in common: they’re both kind of jerks

Rent/Bury/Buy

For the $1.99 I spent on Sinister knowing it was a shot-on-video cheapie, I’m not complaining. This is micro-budget indie horror filmmaking, and when you compare it to its peers (i.e., the painful Feeders or hilariously painful Deadly Little Christmas) it certainly looks fine. On the other hand, I have no desire to ever see it again, and if this music = atmosphere style is Sessions’ only real trick, I don’t imagine myself seeking out more of his canon. Horror fans with an appreciation for low budget auteurs might find it worth a watch. I just wish it had more burlap doll thingies.

Next to Paula Abdul, I am fairly certain that I, Emily Elizabeth Intravia, have invested more time and energy in Bratz: The Movie than any other mere mortal who has not gone on to receive a reward from it, monetary or otherwise. It all began when the first Netflix disc arrived with the radius drawn out as one giant crack. Bad luck, I thought, perhaps to be blamed on a careless mailman. I immediately requested a replacement, for it wasn’t the Bratz’s (Bratz’? Bratz’z? they never taught that sort of punctuation in college) fault that DVDs are a flimsy invention, and I had already vowed to watch the adventures of the live action version of a lawsuit-pending Barbie knockoff product line for The Shortening. True, the movie has nothing to actually do with dolls or the vertically challenged, but considering its inspiration—a multimillion dollar fashion toy empire coveted by children and hated by adults—it seemed like a good February fit.

The gods of film did not agree.

Disc 2 arrived. As I removed it from its sleeve, I was reminded of any teenage character in a film with a penchant for self-mutilation. The DVD surface resembled a horribly scarred stab victim, crisscrossed with what I imagine were key marks or fingernail imprints. Somebody did not want me to watch this movie.

Here’s what I learned about myself from my Bratz experience: if I ever end up in a haunted house filled with a helpful ghost who tries, night after night, to convince me to leave before my soul is taken, I am as good as damned. I heed no warnings. I do not back away from evil. I listen to no one.

I requested a third disc. And it arrived. Unscathed.

Now armed with the knowledge that DVDs of Bratz: The Movie are an endangered species with a 33% survival rate, I decided it was my duty to thoroughly explore this special edition for future generations. Hence, rather than approach the film as one typically would, I turned on the director commentary track—yes, there is a director commentary track for the Bratz movie—and dove in.

Quick Plot: It’s the first day of high school for four over-accessorized clear-skinned teenagers who instantly vow to be friends forever, even though their interests in extracurricular activities don’t match. See, Cloe (answer you’re seeking: I don’t know if she’s aware that she spells her name wrong) is blond and a soccer star. Sasha is a black cheerleader. Jade is Asian and therefore, pressured by her mother to be the top Mathlete, violinist, and chemistry student. Then there’s Yasmin, whose thing is sometimes journalism, sometimes music, and when at home, being Spanish.

Oh, because you’re wondering, this is Yasmin:

Dios mio, amiright chicas?

At Carry Nation High, the class president/token blond villain Meredith enforces a rigid code of socialization, where jocks only play with jocks, Mathletes only math with other Mathletes, and Kids Who Dress Like Dinosaurs only dress like dinosaurs with Kids Who Dress Like Dinosaurs. It’s a cruel system akin to centuries of racial segregation, and when our perky freshmen heroines threaten the status quo, a movie plot is born.

I knew I was in for something terribly special/specially terrible when I chose to watch a movie based on a product that makes Barbie look Gertrude Stein. I knew this even more when the opening credits rolled with three magical words, the likes of which I haven’t seen since a certain Briard showed off his martial arts skills:

“And Jon Voight”

Midnight Cowboy. Coming Home. Deliverance. Bratz: The Movie.

The beauty of the American right to free choice is not lost on this man.

Voight plays a filthy rich high school principal constantly berated by his spoiled daughter Meredith and probably very uncomfortable in facial and ear prosthetics. Why does Jon Voight wear a fake nose and set of ears? Director Sean McNamara does not explain this (and yes, we can all probably figure it out on our own), although he does praise the Oscar winner for bringing his own ideas to his character and rewrites to the script. I don’t know about you, but this bit of trivia puts me in a confusing place: on one hand, it’s nice to know Voight doesn’t phone in performances, even when, you know, PLAYING A SUPPORTING ROLE IN THE BRATZ MOVIE. On the other, it’s almost sadder to know that someone with the talent of Jon Voight actually cared about this film. It takes the easy excuse of ‘he just needed a paycheck’ or ‘he was high on goofballs’ or ‘the director was dangling a Butterfinger just out of his reach’ out of the equation, making Jon Voight a true enigma for our time to ponder.

Less mysterious, but still noteworthy are a few other faces that stop by. Olympic silver medalist figure skater Sasha Cohen plays an unmemorable cheerleader. Tom Hanks’ Twitter star son Chet does, according to the director, his very own kung fu moves as a science nerd. Future Glee star Kevin McHale performs some slick boyband moves. Kadeem Hardison plays a divorced dad, Lanie Kazan is a Spanish/Jewish bubbie, and an elephant steals the show playing an elephant.

I am too good a person to insult any of the young actresses shouting “BFF!” over, and over, and over and over and over and over (and over) again. As pretty teenagers wearing tacky jewelry go, the girls are on par with any Babysitters Club caliber performance. A DVD extra includes a behind-the-scenes look at casting, where one producer notes “We were looking for girls who are not terribly defined.” I imagine this translates into “not TOO ethnic,” leaving us with one sorta Asian, a green eyed African American, and a hilariously strawberry blond Latina who confirms her background by knowing all the words to La Cucaracha and living in the kind of household that has a mariachi band stationed in the kitchen on a weekday morning.

No, I’m serious. Estoy seriouso!

“A lot of shoes were worn in this movie,” director McNamara notes on his solo commentary track. This comes only twenty minutes or so after he compares one of his shots to Hitchcock with a stunningly sincere sense of enthusiasm. A longtime Disney and Nickelodeon employee, McNamara has nothing but glowing compliments for his movie and cast, and by the end of the film, it’s almost hard to resist his Corky St. Claire confidence.

High Notes

In perfect honesty, there are some positive messages to glean from Bratz: The Movie. The young actresses are thankfully less scantily clad than their doll namesakes (because to be otherwise is illegal at their age), and the characters do make valiant efforts to maintain good relationships with their friends and family. So while the results are laughable, I won’t fault the heart of the film. Just its skill.

Low Notes

Any film that features product placement for MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen has a hot seat reserved in hell

In a perfect world, and I say this knowing there’s a full-size recliner for me reserved in hell, the actresses playing Bratz would have gone through extensive head implants to better match their plastic counterparts

Lessons Learned

Real friends cancel their ski trips when their pals need a hand

Juggling is not talent show worthy

Divorce isn’t that bad, so long as you have two incredibly wealthy parents

Words that rhyme with brattitude include platitude, latitude, gratitude, and attitude

As Glee already taught me, high school is different today than in the late ‘90s when I was there: for the 21st century youth, it is no longer acceptable to participate in more than one extracurricular activity. Consider it the new 1-Child Act

Rent/Bury/Buy

Did Bratz: The Movie live up to my expectations? Certainly, but I never said I had good taste. This is as ridiculous as any entertainment based on skanky dolls ever was, made all the more so when you turn on Sean McNamara’s earnest commentary track. The DVD is embarrassingly rich in special features, with mini-specials on casting the leads, choreographing the music, and giving tips on how you—yes, YOU!—can dress just like your favorite Brat(z). Those with a soft spot for just-how-bad-can-this-be? will find plenty to enjoy here. Those with standards need not apply.

Like many a horror fan whose genre life was crafted in the 1980s, I have an automatic affection for the anthology. Hence, when my pal and Fozzie Bare (he of the fine Walking Dead/True Blood/Other Stuff podcast Fozzie & Tina) recommended one that I’d NEVER HEARD OF streaming on Netflix Instant, I was there before you could say ‘killer doll segment.’

And then, Christmas repeated itself in January when I learned that not only does Screamtime include a violent puppet chapter, it ALSO boasts a KILLER GARDEN GNOME STORY.

Yes, I played the lotto that day.

Quick Plot: Like most anthologies, we begin with a wraparound. Unlike most anthologies, this one is superior to almost everything that’s ever happened in the world as we know it.

A pair of New Yawkahs slips into a video store. Despite the VERY tempting poster for The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, the fellas instead swipe a trio of VHS tapes, hop on the R train, and barge into one of their gal pal’s apartment’s because “we just wanna watch some mooovies!”

So they do.

The first segment follows a British puppeteer with an unsupportive wife and delinquent stepson. As you can probably guess, his Punch doll takes matters into his own tiny wooden hands with a giant wooden paddle. It’s both adorable and slightly creepy, especially since Punch makes some strange chomping giggle noises as he beats his enemies to death.

Story 2 is surprisingly eerie, as a young married couple get torn apart by the wife’s strange visions of a bloody massacre. To say more begins to spoil the twist (a typical trope of any anthology segment), but the segment has some decently staged jump scares, as well as some kickass oversized glasses and a wonderfully mod Twister-like comforter that kept me distracted any time our characters were under the covers.

The final tale is about a down on his luck young man who takes a gardening job with a pair of wealthy but kooky old ladies. Just as the story begins to drag, The Greatest Thing Ever takes place: our villainous thief of a main character gets attacked by a little person dressed like a garden gnome.

At this point, I obviously did what any rightminded movie-lover would do: paused Screamtime to rate it 5 stars on Netflix, and then resumed to watch the conclusion of the brilliantly out of place wraparound. I was not disappointed.

Screamtime is surprisingly mysterious when it comes to research. The film is credited to director “Al Beresford,” though IMDB lists its makers as Stanley A. Long and Michael Mark of the Devil Armstrong. I don’t know who handled which story, but there’s clearly a divide between the fairly professional feeling segments (all British) and the wonderfully hilarious New Yawk framing device. It’s possible that the segments were abbreviated full-length films or aborted television pilots, and it’s probable that the wraparound was smacked on the finished project during someone’s lunch break. The result is uneven (particularly following the well-executed second story) but overall, more enjoyable than a whole lot of straight to video purgatory genre films made during the ‘80s.

I don’t JUST say that because stuff like this happens:

Okay, *maybe* that has SOMETHING to do with my possibly unreasonable love for this film, but what can a doll-fearing, anthology loving, shortie-embracing blogger say?

High Points

I do mean it when I say that the second story is GENUINELY a good little horror story

Low Points

It ultimately doesn’t matter because it has GARDEN GNOMES COMING TO LIFE IN THE FORM OF AN ANGRY LITTLE PERSON IN A POINTY HAT, but for some time, the third story drags

Lessons Learned

British bystanders are the least helpful

You can tell a movie is British by the way they talk (or tawk)

Nervous breakdowns are very sad

Random Burst of Meta Commentary

A radio program playing during one of the stories makes a passing reference to Mary Whitehouse, that uninformed beacon of misplaced good intentions who foolishly crusaded against the Video Nasties of the 1980s

Rent/Bury/Buy

I’m not quite sure I’d never heard of Screamtime, but darnit am I glad I did now! The film is currently streaming on Instant Watch, and at just 90 minutes long, it’s a pretty fun way to buzz through an evening. Especially when you consider the tragic rarity of garden gnome horror movies.

Before it became a treasure chest of cleverly themed Law & Order: SVU marathons, the USA Network was a haven of sorts for random genre films. Chief among that rotation was today's short-astic AND Shat-astic creature feature, Kingdom of the Spiders.

Quick Plot: A quiet farm town in Arizona struggled through 50 weeks of the calendar in order to reap the benefits of the fortnight long country fair. Nothing can possibly stop this national attraction from bringing wealth to everyone, right?

Oh you silly post-Jaws movie characters. Haven't you learned anything?

As a local farmer's prized calf falls victim to mysteriously deadly spider venom, a no-nonsense entymologist is brought in to diagnose the problem. Keeping her comfortable is the town stud/veterinarian Rack, played by William Shatner as if he were trying to convince viewers that he is indeed William Shatner. The Shat is in his ladies' man prime here, giving us the kind of southwestern charm that would melt any female scientist's icy heart. Seriously, what woman could resist a line like "You're kind of pretty for a girl?"

Apparently, negative amounts of women. Shat is so Shat that he has not one but TWO women pining for his affections, one being the aforementioned city gal scientist and the other, the wife of his late little brother. This leads to all sorts of weird sexual innuendos about how Shat would like to milk his brother's widow, though she only wants him to do so with war hands, but ACTUALLY he wants nothing sexy of her because she's his little brother's widow. I realize this sounds confusing, but I offer no apologies: how do you think I felt watching it?

Anyway, Shat gets a girl (or two) as the mysteriously venomous spiders start building terrifyingly giant hills and biting locals, be they the long-suffering farmers or a cocky crop-dusting pilot with the greatest girl scream in cinema history. At a certain point, the mayor doesn't even bother showing up to remind us that the film is retreading Jaws territory because EVERYONE IS BEING EATEN BY TARANTULAS.

It's kind of a thing of beauty.

For a girl.

Kingdom of the Spiders is one of the better known titles from that wonderfully rich subgenre of Nature Strikes Back. Like so many of those films, it crams in some social commentary about man's disruption of the animal world through pollution. The adorable thing about Kingdom of the Spiders, however, is just how quickly it abandons that theme when the spider action hits. A heated debate about spraying DDT ensues, but once the pilot administering it is (hilariously) killed, it's straight on to tarantula porn from that point on. Shat and his scientist girlfriend never offer any reasonable action towards eliminating the threat of man-eating tarantulas, and our final act is left to an alternatively funny/creepy siege as the arachnids pound on glass windows to eat our last heroes.

You think I'm kidding, but among the other things Kingdom of the Spiders taught me is the fact that a bunch of tarantulas sticking to a glass window will eventually cause it to shatter. My dream MythBusters experiment to test this theory would of course be to find as many of those suction cap handed Garfields as possible and see how long before they come to life, morph into one all-powerful Critters 2-like being, and eat people.

That might be testing a different theory.

High Points
Look, only the freakishly brave/possibly cyborg people are not disturbed by the fuzzy grandeur of tarantulas, and Kingdom of the Spiders utilizes this life fact to pretty skin-crawling degree

Low Points
Sadly, much of this was accomplished in the kind of pre-90s manner that killed a good deal of the stunt spiders used in filming

Lessons Learned
Shooting your hand off doesn’t hurt too much

In some parts of the country, a dog that is visibly breathing is considered dead

If it ain’t Arizona, it’s all the same

Just because it only takes a handful of abnormally venomous tarantulas to take down a cow does not mean it takes five times that amount to take down the Shat

It is impossible to dodge tarantulas without looking as though you are skipping down the Yellow Brick Road

This wouldn’t be the first horror film to teach it, but reinforcement is always educational: if planning on ever being stuck in your location as human-eating zombies/demons/spiders abound, always be sure to stock up on wooden furniture

Fun Fact
Ve Neill, best known to modern day audiences as the kickass judge of SyFy’s Face Off (and my dream aunt to drink mimosas with at family reunions) worked as a makeup artist for the film

Rent/Bury/Buy
Kingdom of the Spiders is a worthy cult classic that should certainly be seen by any genre fan. The recent special edition DVD release is loaded with goodies, including a commentary track and terrifying hands-on demonstration with a famed spider wrangler who knows no fear. So throw down a few bucks and get your own copy. Where else can you find so many musical cues borrowed directly from the Twilight Zone library? Where else can you find William Shatner heroically hurling his toddler niece only the hard wooden floor covered by toddler-eating tarantulas? What other films end on such glorious matte paintings? All of these things and more make Kingdom of the Spiders something truly special.

There are two ways to instantly convince me to bump any movie up my Netflix queue: remind me that it costars Terence Stamp or that its titular character is an orangutang butler. The two are equally appealing in my eyes. Toss in the fact that an orangutang butler qualifies for The Shortening and why WOULDN'T I be watching 1986's Link?

Quick Plot: A plucky zoology major named Jane talks her way into being the assistant for a leading animal researcher Dr. Philip, offering to clean his gorgeously secluded country manor while he studies a trio of chimpanzees. Or orangutangs. Or orangutangs dyed to look like chimpanzees.

It's all very confusing, in much the same way that Rob Marshall cast Chinese actresses to play Japanese women speaking broken English in Memoirs of a Geisha.

Back to the orangutang butler--

Wait, I didn't even TELL you about the orangutang butler? Where are my manners! Remind me to hire a butler that can school me on such things.

At Dr. Philip's castle, Jane grows close to the simian charges, particularly the titular 45-year-old Link, probably because even It Girls of the '80s couldn't resist a monkey in a tuxedo. It's a timeless look on any species.

Dr. Philip, on the other hand, CAN resist a monkey in a tuxedo and plans on unloading Link, dead or alive, to the most convenient bidder. Before he has a chance to get an estimate, his caged charges ominously surround him as the film cuts away, leaving Jane wondering where her boss went. The rest of the film is essentially a cat and mouse game as Jane discovers the lovable house servant might have crossed over into eviiiiiiiiiil territory. She's helped out in this endeavor by a more lovable oranutanzee named Imp and an intensely electric late '80s era musical score by Jerry Goldsmith.

Link is one of those titles that randomly pops up on cult movie lists, and while it's ultimately somewhat dull, I can also see why film fans would want to talk about it. Shue was in her post-Karate Kid glory and just one year away from landing some extraordinary Adventures In Babysitting, while intelligent monkeys were charming human society by talking to kittens. Add in the almost Labyrinth-ian music and you have the kind of film with its date all but watermarked under every reel.

As an artifact of a certain time, Link is certainly unique. Directed by Patrick's Richard Franklin, the film overcomes the seemingly impossible task of making trapped in a beautiful countryside manor with a tuxedo-wearing monkey a frightening affair. Unfortunately, it's also rather boring. Shue makes a sympathetic stalkee, but 45 minutes of her eluding a silent chimpazangutang isn't the most compelling viewing. Yes, even with an awkward shower scene that has a presumably naked (but not for the audience, sorry boys) Shue staring into Link's expressively wandering eyes, Link is just kind of a snore.

But it goes without saying that it earns a million bonus points for heavily featuring a monkey in a tuxedo.

High Points
Did I mention that the monkey wears a tuxedo?

Low Points
Zzzzzzzz

Lessons Learned
Monkeys can’t smoke cigars!

Being female gives one a genetic aptitude towards cooking and cleaning

Don’t cook phones. Seriously, don't COOK PHONES

Stray Emily Fantasy Alert
I find Terence Stamp to be incredibly sexy. The same can be said for Michael Crazy Is As Crazy Does Shannon. Do I just have some weird fetish for men chosen to play General Zod, or is this a common female condition?

Rent/Bury/Buy
Link is a strange film, but it's also too slight to really be any good. After the initial thrill of watching a well-dressed orangutang carry Elizabeth Shue's luggage up to her room wears off, there's really not enough to keep you intrigued. Formal wear animal completists will want to take a peak, but the rest of you can probably get everything they need out of this image:

We came so close.

Following years of Blood Dolls and Dangerous Worry Dolls and Doll Graveyard, it seemed like 2013's Shortening was finally going to bypass the endless ouvre of Charles Band. As much as the man has had his name as producer on some of cinema's greatest vertically challenged hits (Dolls, Troll), his full-out directorial efforts generally leave something to be desired, primarily, the very idea OF effort.

Hey, if I could make a killer doll movie with the same amount of work it takes to cook a burrito, I'd have 35 credited to my name too.

Goobers came my way via my esteemed colleague and pal, T.L. Bugg, the keeper of the splendiforous blog, The Lightning Bug's Lair. Considering this is the man I once made watch The Nutcracker In 3D, it's only fair that he eventually pay me back with the kind of cheapie kids movie that feels akin to a flea bite.

Quick Plot: A boy named Tommy starts a new job working on a children's show about a wacky sea captain and his band of ugly puppets. Little does he know, the ugly puppets (seriously: they're hideous) are actually alien slaves to a cruel alien queen named Mara (one name, "like Roseanne") who's returning to earth to claim them. Meanwhile, Tommy decides to investigate the ugly puppet mystery while his female costar chides him for being unprofessional.

Let's get one thing out of the way: the puppets are positively disgusting.

There's Squigby, whose name sounds like what you'd call the geeky dirty kid at summer camp

Esmerelda, who constantly moans as if dubbing a softcore porn

And Blop, whose name and appearance suggests the thing that happens when you sit on a toilet

It all makes perfect sense for a kids movie, right?

Ever buy a Barbie wannabe from a dollar store? They're dolls that hold a vague resemblance to Mattel's famous blond, except the construction seems to be made from the kind of plastic packaging that holds Barbies in place in boxes. Their legs are hollow, arms only move up and down, and faces seems as if they were made by photocopying the blueprints for a more expensive toy, then morphing it over a bouncy ball and adding a nose. The point is, they’re cheap and ugly...much like everything about Goobers.

This is not to say the movie is completely without fun. As Queen Mara and her evil henchman, Caroline Ambrose and Sam Zeller make a campy pair who have no shame going for the broad humor. The younger actors are passable, even when they’re stuck interacting with some of the ugliest art projects ever assembled for the camera. For whatever reason, there’s a subplot involving Tommy’s dad having a baseball card collecting addiction, which seems strange even for 1997, but if it helps Band achieve a 75 minute running length, I guess that’s all that really matters.

High Points

While none give Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards-level performances, the young cast is sufficiently tolerable with material that isn’t always up to par

Low Points

Much like the similarly cluelessKazaam, Goobers seems to have no idea what kind of stories kids actually want to watch. Whereas Shaquille O’Neal’s genie had to battle evil concert bootleggers, the major climax of Goobers relies on reading the fine print of contract negotiations

Lessons Learned

For a child actor, nothing is more horrifying than the Big P

Chekhov’s Law of Baseball Cards: If you feature a rare one, you best have an ugly poop-looking puppet destroy it

Superior beings fart a lot

Rent/Bury/Buy

Goobers (aka Mystery Monsters) is streaming on Netflix, which is the only way you should watch it. Fans of Charles Band’s style (i.e., cheap production values, grotesque little things, and scant running length) will find this a minor dose of something new, as he uses his quick tricks for a so-called kids film.

It just happens to involve a dose of torture.

And LOTS of farting.

I'm in a bit of a bind here, and it's a sad, sad place to be. Ever since I spent a chilly December night watching a chirpy voiced CGI nutcracker battle John Turturo dressed as a cross between Andy Warhol and an SS officer, in a world where big songs ended with a shark being electrocuted and Nathan Lane sang a song about the theory of relativity (because he was playing Albert Einstein).

Yes, you might say The Nutcracker In 3D kind of ruined me from ever experiencing anything as batship insane again.

Still, the Oscar winner's big budget Italian production (with a chunk of that change going to paying big-name salaries for the English dubbing) was so infamous a flop that it just had to land here in February's Salute Your Shorties, even though part of the film's biggest problem is that the title character is actually a full-grown man of average height.

Quick Plot: In a world where animals speak and children look like grownups but grownups act like children--

Yes, I'm already lost right there with you. Why do children look like grownups? Well obviously, because Roberto Benigni is hellbent on pulling a Paul Reubens and decided to give his audience a disclaimer in terms of its logistics within the universe. No, it doesn't make sense, nor does the etherealish conversation between an old man and the Blue Fairy about how, and I quote, "time doesn't exist, but now it's time to go since it's getting late."

But...but...if time doesn't exist, how can you run out of it?

I need Nathan Lane in here with a physics lesson, stat!

Anyway, prologue aside, one day in this magical land built on a soundstage, a magical butterfly tips over a magical log and a magical carpenter makes a magical boy out of it.

Magical!

The only problem is that the boy is, to be frank, an asshole. I'd use harsher words, but I'm a lady, even if my cat toys say otherwise.

Available made-to-order here!

But he's just a kid! A MAGICAL kid, you say in Pinocchio's defense. Allow me then to describe this MAGICAL KID's first course of action upon animation:

-Pinocchio trashes his kind but poor father's workshop, doing his best to break everything in sight

-Pinocchio runs to the streets to knock over fruit and vegetable peddlers' crates of goods

-Pinocchio steals the cane from a crippled old man

-Pinocchio uses the cane he stole from a crippled old man to chase a cat

-Pinocchio picks up the lids of garbage pails and clangs them together loudly

-Pinocchio tears down a clothes line

-Pinocchio scares a horse

-Pinocchio shakes a tree full of birds

-Pinocchio destroys a carton of wine. OF WINE

-Pinocchio shoots JFK

Fine, I'll admit I made up the last one, but I'm sure that was next on his list. My point is that Begnini's Pinocchio is a worthless, mean, destructive character who seems to try his hardest to make the audience wish for his death, only to then have the film tease us time and time again by putting him in scenario after scenario where he could and SHOULD die, then cruelly twisting the knife by giving him a second and third and ninetieth chance at a life he doesn't deserve.

I hated this thing.

Pinocchio has always been a tricky yet fascinating story because the very nature of its titular hero is to be naughty and make the wrong decisions. It's this boyish lack of compassion that sends the character down the rabbit hole of street crime, donkey transformations, and whale digestion, only to eventually overcome it all by learning to love and respect the father who had sacrificed so much for him. Yes, all that does indeed happen in Benigni's version, but does it have to be so insufferable?

Take, for example, Pinocchio s relationship with a talking cricket, voiced here by John Cleese. As soon as it starts talking, Pinocchio tries with all his might to crush the darn thing with his hands. In other words, Pinocchio TRIES TO MURDER THE CRICKET. That's bad, but you know what's worse? The fact that the Breckin Meyer voiced Pinocchio then asks Mr. Cleese "Has anyone ever told you your voice is REALLY annoying?"

At this point, what can a blogger do but sit back and sigh?

Pinocchio is a rather joyless film about a rather awful character, one who acknowledges that everything would be, and I quote, "a million times better if I were dead." And yet, SPOILER ALERT, he doesn't die. Not after he cons the Blue Fairy into giving him candy. Not after he ends up in prison and forms a weirdly homoerotic bond between a young lollipop fetishist. Not when he's dangled before a puppeteer giant with a hearty appetite for sort-of-puppet-boys. Not when he ends up in Funforeverland (seriously) and gets turned into a donkey later exploited at a circus by a ringmaster voiced by Regis Philbman.Now when he's thrown into the water to drown or forced into hard labor on a farm. He just...keeps...going.

This is a trying film, one that challenges its viewers--who in fairness, were supposed to be under the age of 10--to a game of endurance. I am one of those film nonsnobs who finds Life Is Beautiful a rather sweet and touching endeavor despite historiographical rewrites by contemporary society. I went into Pinocchio knowing that it had an ugly reputation, but not quite knowing why. 5 minutes into the film, that was cleared up.

There's something inherently sweet about how Benigni makes a film, always utilizing his wife and attacking his subject matter with his full heart. The problem with Pinocchio is that the film is nowhere near as charming as Benigni thinks it (or himself) is. The fantasy world is flat and ugly. The dialogue is rarely clever. Sure, the English dubbing feels (most likely) far more awkward and clunky than the original Italian, but that doesn't fix a script. Some sequences are too dark for kids, yet the entire tone feels shouted out as if aimed at a romper room. But what really dooms Pinocchio is Benigni himself, his natural innocence weirdly obscured by his decision to play a man-child. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING lovable (or likable, or mildly tolerable) about his Pinocchio He's selfish, mean, uncaring, lying, and until the last 3 minutes of the film, simply a terrible human being. I don't know about you, but typically those kinds of characters do not endear me to their films.

High Points

I appreciate any film made in modern times that has the courage to go for something whimsical. Fantasies are not an easy sell, so just taking that chance is something

Low Points

Except when the something is Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio

Lessons Learned

The best way to get an unruly child to take his medicine is to call in creepy bunny children pallbearers

When giants get emotional, they tend to sneeze

Tangerine lollipops are the best

Randomly Creepy Scene If Left To Analysis

We all know that the Little Boy Playland (or Funforeverland, which I kind of want to visit on the name alone) is a trickster little village where young males are transformed into donkeys. What Pinocchio does, however, is include a beyond creepy sequence where a band of wealthy middle-age men come to tour its sale items, evaluating the sleeping boys mid-donkeyization with leering comments like “look at that pretty little muzzle!” and “this one looks built for hard labor.”

White slavery never looked so adorable.

Rent/Bury/Buy

Bad movie enthusiasts certainly owe it to themselves to tackle this Razzie darling. While the film is rather obnoxious, it's never really dull, meaning a masochist could certainly do worse things with his or her time. Netflix defaults to sending you the English language version, though the Italian original is also available. I doubt THAT disc includes the bonus feature where celebrities like Cheech Marin and Kevin James discuss the act of dubbing, so perhaps you want to choose wisely...especially for the brilliant cut of a baggy-eyed Breckin Meyer explaining how this was the hardest gig he'd ever had, immediately followed by John Cleese asserting how he essentially recorded his audio while doing his taxes because it was that easy.

Even the world's most ironically well-known secret agent can't escape a good shortening here at the Deadly Doll's House. Best of all, today's 007-centric theme just can't be contained. Over at From The Depths of DVD Hell, the one and only Elwood Jones has dug up Indonesia's most valued cultural export: 2'9 Weng Weng in the ingeniously titled For Your Height Only.

I know! I almost can't believe it either! This is a wonderful world indeed.

But before you go digging into the underworld for Elwood's thoughts, let's start with the classy swagger of the always politically correct original Bond in The Man With the Golden Gun.

Quick Plot: Lounging comfortably on a private island with his lady, little person assistant, golden gun, and third nipple close by, the world's most expensive assassin aims his sights on the world's most sexually transmitted disease-riddled secret agent.

Lord Summerile, meet Bond...James Bond.

The Man Who Would Be Count Dooku plays Scaramanga, the titular bad guy with a hunger for some mechanical doohickey that will produce expensive solar powered energy. Or something, I really never understand the actual details involved in the Bond villains' plans. The general gist is typically the same: colorful villain wants to increase personal power and/or income with dastardly plan involving high-tech gadget. Bond tries to stop this from happening while maintaining a healthy sex life and cramming in two sips of martinis a day. An exciting car/foot/plane/carplane chase goes on a few minutes too long. Villain captures Bond and sets up an elaborate yet easily foiled death plan. Bond shags whatever female is closest by and credits send us a titular hint about what wacky adventure he'll end up in next.

I don't mean to sound critical, because though I've only begun experiencing it this year, I rather enjoy Bond cinema. Knowing the formula is half of the fun, especially to see how the zeitgeist of whatever time period the film was made would (and still does) help to fill in the recipe (blacksploitation in Live and Let Die, martial arts here, for example). In this past year, I've watched my first five Bond films and while none are inching their way up my best-of list, all have given me a highly enjoyable time...even if every single one went on 10 minutes too long.

(I'm guessing most of Bond's audience doesn't mind part of the running length)

I come at Bond less intrigued by the machines than by the camp, which explains why I would have such fun with The Man With the Golden Gun. Often considered one of the worst Bond films, The Man With the Golden Gun makes a few unforgivable errors--saddling Lee with a dull takeover plan even he doesn't seem to understand or having the usually charming Moore channel Sean Connery's more misogynist leanings, to name a few--but...but...well, there's no easy way to say this:

Herve Villechaize IS dressed to kill.

Yes, I'm elated to be able to cover a Bond film for The Shortening, but I'm also just excited to have such a ridiculous character to enjoy. As Oddjob and later, Jaws have taught us, it's often the henchman who make a good (or memorable) Bond film. Director Guy Hamilton doesn't necessarily get the most out of the superb-on-paper pairing of the majestically towering Christopher Lee and the petite-but-plotting Villechaize, but both actors seem to be having fun, and for me at least, it translated well.

Not ‘well’ as in ‘good movie.’ Pff. You came to the wrong place if that’s what you expect from a film that makes me giggle. For some Bond fans, the word "carplane" is akin to a bruise. For someone like me, it's as delicious as a cheddar and monterey jack coated nacho.

High Points

Christopher Lee is in this movie. Now even when he's introduced with a closeup displaying a fake third nipple, the mere fact that CHRISTOPHER LEE IS IN THIS MOVIE will always qualify it as a high point

Low Points

The nature of Bond films is that there will always be certain tropes that age out of taste. Naturally, The Man With the Golden Gun is full of them, from Moore uncomfortably slapping a woman for information to the racist sheriff from Live and Let Die tossing out the term 'pointy brownheads' with more ease than Bond at a speed-dating event

Lessons Learned

In some cultures, a third nipple is a sign of sexual prowess

Never make a bargain with a wealthy white British man in a boat

Golden bullets make lucky belly rings

Much like a baseball playing monkey's farts, cars that can make 360º turns mid-air sound an awful lot like a good old-fashioned slide whistle

The Short Facts of Life

According to Herve Villechaize.'s IMDB trivia page, the actor once "shared a room" with Matthew Bright. Yes, THE Matthew Bright who directed the dwarfs-have-big-hearts cult classic Tiptoes.

Mind =

Rent/Bury/Buy

Bond fans probably dislike The Man With the Golden Gun because, you know, it's not that good. People like me, on the other hand, who generally measure Bond cinema by how many people get eaten by sharks might find themselves having a surprisingly good time. No, people are sadly NOT eaten by sharks in this outing, but we are treated to Christopher Lee speaking, carplanes flying, and Asian schoolgirls asskicking. Make no mistake: this is lower tier Bond to be sure, but sometimes, fun things come in small suitcases.

Just ask Matthew Bright's former roommate.

We did get to give an official goodbye to The Shortening, but it will return next year with an even more vertically challenged vengeance. Until then, let's go big!

There's nothing like a good, pardon the expression, WTF movie. What, you of a clean mouth ask, is a WTF movie? The Emily answer is the kind of film that cannot be watched without its audience constantly mouthing the PG-13-rated question with a look of utter confusion in their eyes. Obviously something as bizarrely conceived as The Nutcracker In 3D qualifies, but so do smaller scale ventures like the 75% stock footage Hybrid or the what-exactly-are-they-going-for confusion of Grizzly Park. These are movies that enjoy tossing strange touches where you least expect them, like casting Albert Einstein in a children's fairy tale or ending on a breast implant joke.

Blood Surf is a minor WTF movie. On one hand, it's no worse than your average made-for-SyFy original, yet it makes two choices that instantly put it into this elite category:

1. It features blatantly brain-dead, rarely clothed characters starting the film with questions like "What was the name of that shark movie?" (the answer, as another brain-dead character says unsurprisingly, is "Jaws")

2. It occasionally acts like a good movie

When you combine these things, you get W + T + F

Quick Plot: A pair of 'blood surfers' (dudes who use the word 'dude' and surf in shark-infested waters) head to a tropical paradise with their sexy Australian documentation and her sleazy producer boyfriend in order to score some ace footage in a remote area that even the locals fear. Thankfully, there's a nice native couple with a slutty daughter who are happy to take them to certain death, even though the mysteriously grizzled Aussie and his even sluttier girlfriend refuse to travel to that side of the island.

You might think I'm being a little harsh on the women in this movie, but I'm working with I got here. The young native Lemmya seduces one of the surfers before he can get an honest answer about her age. Aussie's girlfriend appears in three different shirts during the course of the film, none of which reach her waist. She's also prone to flashing her small chest with the same regularity as Judy Greer on Arrested Development, even if the looker in question is a crocodile (thus leading us to her positively RuPaulian pun, "Now THAT'S what I call croc-teasing!").

Worst of the three is Cecily, the token lead who seems to be dating the comically reprehensible producer only to rather quickly get over his (spoiler for something that you know is coming) death by moving on to the OTHER surfer who's name is Bog.

No, I'm serious.

I haven't even mentioned the rapey pirates, Shark Attack 3: Megladon-esque death, or Sean William Scott impressions. All of these things are as strange as they are entertaining, for despite a good 45 minute tease before its inevitably disappointing monster reveal, Blood Surf is a pretty darn entertaining time. The movie has a certain Anaconda charm right down to its almost adorable special effects. We're talking about the kind of movie that has a 17-year-old having softcore water sex with a surfer as her parents get eaten by a giant monster crocodile. We're talking about the kind of movie that later has the same giant monster crocodile save our plucky heroine from pirate rape.

Blood Surf's most important death scene is somehow played simultaneously for scares, tears, AND laughs and I don't know which of the three was intentional. It's as if this movie exists in its own wonderful dimension where the world is what you make of it.

High Points
I know you think I'm joking, but seriously: the slow reveal of the gigantic crocodile monster is actually executed with skill by Children of the Corn III director James D.R. Hickox

Low Points
Look, I didn't say the gigantic crocodile LOOKED good. I just said it was TEASED well

Croc-teased well

Lessons Learned
Just because you're about to rape an Australian is no reason to forget about the deadly booby traps you previously prepared

If you want your boyfriend to take a group of white people to shark-infested waters, the best way to convince him is to turn up the stereo in a local bar and dance as if you’re auditioning to be a fully clothed stripper

It's usually the ones you don't like that you end up with (especially 10 minutes after your boyfriend is eaten)

Rent/Bury/Buy
Blood Surf was streaming on Instant Watch for some time, and that's certainly the best way to watch it. Unfortunately, it recently moved out of that queue and the good person in me can't ACTUALLY recommend you put any real effort in seeking it out. This is an enjoyable goofy monster movie about pretty people getting hilariously eaten by a giant crocodile. If it comes your way, chomp down as fast as you can. Or just sit there with your giant tooth-filled mouth open with the knowledge that a sleazy chicken producer is about to grab a surfboard and float straight into your jugular. It's both the second big kill of the film AND a great way to eat your lunch.

For many a proud American, the beauty of this fairly young nation is its freedom, best summed up in that oft-cited first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It's a wonderful right that I am millions of others are thankful to enjoy, the idea that if we have something to say, we may say it. If there is art we want to make, we make it. Sure, an elephant dung Hail Mary won't escape controversy when hung on museum walls, but that doesn't mean it can't created and displayed.

I bring up this matter because the low budget 2008 horror film I'm about to discuss had every right to be made by young filmmakers Lars Jacobson and Amardeep Kaleka. The problem is they made it at the wrong time in their (I assume) new careers.

Anybody who reads this blog knows that I'm not easily offended. Hey, look at my cat!

Mookie, by the way, claims Pet Sematary as his favorite film of all time. It is his dream to meet the cat who played Church and take a picture next to him while giving the thumbs up. As a result, he has continually asked me for a thumb transplant every Christmas since his 2006 adoption.

I can argue the merits of A Serbian Film and defend I Spit On Your Grave until my cat grows thumbs. And yet watching Baby Blues, a film about a harried mother of four whose post-partum depression leads her on a violent killing spree, made me want to hop in a DeLorean, cruise over to the home of Jacobson & Kaleka, and gently say "Not yet."

It's not that Baby Blues is a terrible movie. If it WAS a terrible movie, we'd be waist-deep in good-natured Lessons Learned at this point. Unfortunately, Baby Blues is something of a lower end to mediocre slasher cursed by the tease of genuine filmmaking potential. Jacobson and Kaleka have good eyes for staging some Night of the Hunter-esque chases, but their command of dialogue and actors is woefully inexperienced. Had this film tackled any other subject matter (say, a bagheaded mad man slaying teenagers, for example) this would be fairly par for the course in any new genre filmmaker's resume. But Baby Blues, loosely based on the tabloid suffocating actions of Andrea Yates, is a graphic horror movie about an unstable mother violently murdering her young children (and whatever innocent looking farm animal she meets along the way).

If you're willing to tackle such a subject, you really should know how to do so.

Quick Plot: A young family struggles to make ends meet on a desolate farm, where dad's job as a trucker keeps him away days at a time and mom's stress over raising four young children on her own is starting to spin out of control. Only Jimmy, the eldest son, realizes how serious the issue is becoming...especially when he finds his baby brother laying lifeless on the bed as mom ominously fills up the bathtub.

From there, the story becomes akin to any slasher, minus the sex but with plenty of puns. Yes, puns. Because when your postpartem depression drives you to stabbing your second son with the back of an antique mirror, your Buffy the Vampire Slayer language skills are positively on FIRE.

I can understand why the Yates case might have inspired Jacobson and Kaleka to make Baby Blues. The questions that crime asked are truly fascinating and could certainly be discussed through any art form, be it a bestselling novel or no holds barred horror movie. The problem, though, as I hope I've explained, is that Jaconbson and Kaleka just aren't disciplined enough (yet?) to handle such material. As a result, poor Colleen Porch is stuck running around with more blood on her than Carrie White, spouting off horrid one-liners as she hunts her spawn with all the depth of Michael Myers.

There is a fascinating film to be made out of the plot of Baby Blues. But when handled so messily by amateurs, the result comes off as either laughable ("I made your favorite dinner. Fried CHICKEN!" teases a blood-soaked Mom as she snaps a poor hen's neck), cliched (observe the token 'fall down the stairs' trick used in 80% of slasher films) or highly exploitative. This is a movie whose climax involves a mother wrestling with her child. It would almost be funny, except for the fact that one hour earlier, we watched her pitchfork her toddler to death.

High Points

It's always a pleasure when a child actor nails it, and young Ridge Canipe makes a sympathetic and believably smart hero in overalls. It doesn't hurt that a previous acting credit was on the Best Episode of Angel ever, Smile Time

Low Points

You know, the whole "We don't quite know how to make a movie yet, so let's tell the most offensive story we can" thing

Lessons Learned

When choosing your matchbook, always consider your psychotic wife's feelings

Time don’t change an animal’s instinct

Never take parenting advice from a scarecrow

Rent/Bury/Buy

Baby Blues did not dissuade me from keeping an eye on this filmmaking team. They clearly have guts when it comes to attacking their material, and their skills behind the camera do show some potential. Sadly, this is simply a film they weren't ready to make.

Back in high school and college (oh fine: and last week), my gal pals and I would periodically revise our very detailed, very organized lists of prospective famous boyfriends that we would like to have. Categories were specific: Olympic Athlete (figure skater Elvis Stoijko), American Athlete (former utility Met Joe McEwing), Silver Fox (Steve Martin now that Leslie Nielsen moved into the category of Dead Crush), and so on. One of the most contested labels was The Guilty Pleasure, not to be confused with the Conventionally Unattractive (Jon Lovitz continues to hold that spot). The Guilty Pleasure, you see, might have the body of an Adonis and face of a Pitt, but admitting that you would like to sleep with him is not something you're comfortable with wearing across a t-shirt.

For most of the late 90s into early 21st century, my guilty pleasure was Alec Baldwin.

Multiple Emmy award winner Alec Baldwin? Jack Donaghy himself? The man who launched a supremely awesome Geico commercial? What's there to be guilty about that, you ask.

Ah, youth. Travel with me to a different time, one when cell phones were mocked for being more than Q-tip sized and Temptation Island was positively scintillating. This is a world where people associated Alec Baldwin with his steely-eyed overhamming in The Juror and other similarly forced sexytime thrillers. Young women in 2002 didn’t have crushes on Alec Baldwin.

Well, SOME did, and I was one. But to say that now means nothing. He’s JACK DONAGHY. An SNL treasure!

I don’t know what the point of this intro was, other to say that I liked Alec Baldwin before it was cool to do so.

Now about Malice...

Quick Plot: Well, 'quick' is sometimes an impossible thing. Without spoiling anything, let's just say that Malice is about a married couple (Bill Pullman's nerdy college dean Andy and Nicole Kidman's baby-coveting and but uterus-hurting Tracey) whose lives change forever after they rent the third floor of their fixer-upper colonial house to Alec Baldwin's Jed, a hotshot surgeon with a high tolerance for bourbon and high opinion of himself. Meanwhile, a serial rapist is attacking some of Andy's female students, including a dirty blond post-Hook pre-Brad Pitt Gwyneth Paltrow.

Maybe these storylines are connected. Maybe they are not. Maybe there's a reason why a well-respected heart surgeon can't afford to rent his own place. Maybe every New England college has its own rapist. Maybe there was some sort of bonus for any actor in the film who attempted a New England accent and Bebe Neuwirth as the fairly incompetent police detective was the only taker.

Or maybe, just maybe, every film needs an extended Anne Bancroft cameo.

You might think I’m dancing around synopsizing Malice. You might be right.

Oh, that time I didn’t need the maybe. You are indeed more than right.

Malice is essentially a film built on misdirection, so to go into any detail risks not just a few spoilers, but also ruining the very effect of the film. Depending on your mood, you might find some of its tricks to be forced or unnecessarily complicated, but there’s also something truly exciting in catching twists that you never thought to expect. Sure, seven Saw films have taught us to perk up our sensors when Tobin Bell strolls into a scene, but that doesn’t mean we know what his subplot has to do with our main characters. Seriously, I almost guarantee that.

High Notes

Aforementioned extended Anne Bancroft cameo. Seriously, after a rough night of prayer to the porcelain god, I’d thought I'd sworn off drinking scotch for good but I would give up my beloved beer forever if it meant I got to share a bottle of single malt with that dame

Low Notes

The more you think about certain details involved in the secrets of Malice--the history of a certain marriage, a double life that doesn’t seem logistically possible, the fact that a major crime may have only existed in the screenplay to incidentally reveal a key character detail--the harder it is to accept a lot of the story. So like most difficult things in life, just don’t think about it

Lessons Learned

If you play with plastic bags, Nicole Kidman will tie you up and feed you to the kid monster

Nothing turns Bill Pullman on like eating Chinese food in bed

Office supply rooms for college administration offices generally resemble medieval dungeons

Chekhov’s Rule of Creepy Dummies Employed by the Police Department

Aside from being extremely creepy looking, never rule them out from the action until the last reel is rolled

Rent/Bury/Buy

Malice harkens back to that early ‘90s era of mainstream thrillers advertised with attractive floating heads and insured by Alec Baldwin’s night forest of chest hair. With a script co-written by Aaron Sorkin, it’s a film that tries a little too hard but dangit if it doesn’t have fun making the effort! So long as you go into the film with little to no knowledge of the plot, I think you’ll find it as rewarding an experience as I did. And not ONLY as a reminder that Alec Baldwin was once a worthy guilty pleasure.

It's rare that a game show horror film slips under my all-encompassing radar, but that seems to be the case with 2002's My Little Eye. Thankfully, the wonderful Christine Hadden of Fascination With Fear recently highlighted this little indie for a winter horror special. My completist tendencies paired with the convenience of Instant Watch? Just try and stop me!

Quick Plot: Five twentysomethings are chosen to participate in a 6 month long Internet reality show akin to Big Brother, where they're isolated in a country home with the reward of $1 million...providing all five remain on the property for the program's duration. This being a horror movie, you can bet your Survivor torch that our fame-hungry contestants are going to run into some roadblocks 5 months, 3 weeks, and 6 days after signing their release forms.

Filmed, I assume, on a microbudget, My Little Eye is not a good-looking or perfectly made film. The visual graininess and cheap sound cues are tolerable due to the nature of the film's webcam basis, but the overall effect ends up being rather ugly to look at. Thankfully, My Little Eye makes up for its style with genuinely unnerving and surprisingly fresh substance.

Released in 2002, My Little Eye must have been made in the cultural fervor of early 21st century reality boom. Remember Halloween: Resurrection, where Tyra Banks and Bustah Rhymes produced a Michael Myers-infused web series? Same year. The American version of Survivor was just a toddler at 2, while Big Brother was beginning its world domination plan, making MTV stalwart The Real World feel strangely long in the tooth. Reality TV was no longer a passive activity in which we watched lives get lived; it was a competitive event, one that demanded winners triumph and losers suffer. The Real World might have given prized screentime to its sexy young people's romantic exploits, but Who Wants To Marry a Millionaire?'s sponsors demanded a glitzy wedding and legally binding marriage (that naturally ended in an annulment quicker than a Kardashian affair).

Though nowhere near as sharp (or funny) as the still-underrated Series 7: The Contenders, My Little Eye is a surprisingly strong entry into the game show horror subgenre. The mostly unknown cast (save for a pre-ubiquitous Bradley Cooper and one of the ill-fated roller coaster survivors in Final Destination 3) manage to pull off the not-so-easy feat of being believable human beings who would put themselves in this kind of situation. The script..... packs some neat twists, toying with the idea of the producers-behind-the-curtain being creative sadists who deliver bricks and a loaded gun in place of food. There's even a slightly new spin on the tried and true prank-gone-bad trope so common in '80s slashers.

Does My Little Eye surpass the satiric chill of Series 7 or the full blasted awesomeness of The Running Man? Not a chance, but this is a fine entry into a subgenre that has yet to grow old (at least in my I-actually-watch-Love-In-The-Wild obsessive opinion). My Little Eye offers quite a few interesting twists on its straightforward concept, and while the budgetary restraints do keep it far form greatness, this is a strong, intelligent little film that's well worth your time.

High Notes

I love a film that actually challenges its characters to define their sense of morality, and My Little Eye approaches such a quandary with plenty of juice

Low Notes

Pity the financially challenged sound man who has to resort to slow motion deep voice antics. Pity the audience who has to wince through them

Lessons Learned

The Internet = The World Wide Web

You can learn a lot of shit at computer club

Statistically speaking, strangers rarely kill strangers

Rent/Bury/Buy

My Little Eye is a tad constrained by its budget (it looks and sounds like it was made on a teenager's 1990s-era allowance) but so long as you can put aside some polishing standards, this is quite a treat. While I watched it on Instant Watch, word on the Internet Super Highway tells me the DVD includes alternate commentary tracks with actors discussing the 'show' in character. That in itself is groovy enough for me to say buy.

Cannibals! Felicity! Genital Feasts!

It would take a lot for this movie not to work, right?

Quick Plot: A grad student named Kate (a straight-haired, monotone speaking Keri Russell) has moved to Germany to write her thesis on the infamous cannibal murder of Oliver and Simon (based on the bizarre real-life case of Armin Meiwes). As Kate investigates what led these two men to such extremes, we watch flashbacks of, well, what led these two men to such extremes. Just like Kate investigates. And then we watch. Her investigate.

For a movie about sexy thrill-seeking cannibals, Grimm Love sure is a drag. The film gets to a terribly drab start with Russell's Valium-induced voiceover, a rambling soliloquy about loneliness and the desire to find someone who can see inside of you. If the content didn't seem dull enough, perhaps the fact that Russell's enthusiasm makes Harrison Ford's Blade Runner exposition sound like Robin Williams' Aladdin Genie should clue you in.

Directed by Martin Weisz (he of the recent Hills Have Eyes 2, and yes, that's the one with more rape and less dog flashbacks than Wes Craven's original), Grimm Love is indeed a grim tale. I don't mean that as a compliment. Weighted down in dark eyeshadow and raccoon liner, Keri Russell is woefully miscast, though the character of Kate is even more woefully underdeveloped. IMDB trivia explains that a lot of scenes were eliminated from the final cut, which on one hand, explains the incompleteness, but on the other, is horrifying in itself. The Netflix streaming edition ran at 94 minutes, and while I've had had dental work that lasted longer, I swear it felt like a breeze compared to what must have been the LONGEST 94 MINUTE MOVIE OF ALL TIME.

This was a slog.

The idea is certainly ripe for a film adaptation. Why WOULD a man willfully submit himself to be eaten (penis-first) by a stranger, and what kind of stranger has such a particular appetite? It's almost as if Grimm Love figured out all too late that such questions are truly fascinating when explored, not when we watch them be explored by a third party. As Kate tracks down news articles and breaks into abandoned homes, we get flashbacks that follow both men through their child and adult years. Early scenes are even (rather annoyingly) portrayed as if they were grainy 8MM projections, a trick that might work in a better movie but here felt like a last-ditch effort to bring something visually interesting to the otherwise drab palette.

I never thought I'd be so bored by a film that includes a scene where a man--not just any man, but Karate Dog's Thomas Kretschmann, for pete's sake--made an anatomically correct male figure out of butter and ate the phallus as if it were the last Twinkie on the shelf. Maybe it was the fact that the previous scene featured his soon-to-be meal begging a hooker to, and I quote, "Bite my thing off!" that killed the element of surprise. Maybe my standards are insanely high when it comes to anatomically correct butter men and Karate Dog alumni.

Or maybe Grimm Love is just a boring movie.

High Notes
Look, I'm not arguing with the IDEA behind Grimm Love, right down to its exploration of two gay men with mother issues and insecurities. THAT'S practically golden. But when you chop it up and let a dull grad student shoot it out with the energy of a sloth, you end up with--

Low Notes
This movie

Stray Observations
At 31, I'm at an age where I and my peers could indeed decide to complete our college education with a masters degree or doctorate. And yet, of all my friends and acquaintances, I think I know two currently enrolled. So why, I ask, is approximately 83% of all horror film protagonists grad students? Do they just make better movie prey, or do I just hang out with the uneducated?

Lessons Learned
A bedroom says a lot about a person

One should always find the right balance between cannibalism and sunshine

People taste like pork

Rent/Bury/Buy
Unless your number one sexual fantasy is watching a pseudo-goth grrrrl Felicity surf the internet, I suggest you give Grimm Love a pass. Sure, it's more competently made than a good deal of the grad-student-based horror films currently streaming on Instant Watch, but if the price of decent product values is anything interesting onscreen, then you can give me my shot-on-video boom mike falls any day.

A rock star of the post post-modernist movement in literature, author Robert Coover wrote some pretty nifty short stories for his 1969 anthology Pricksongs and Descants. From a fairy tale told by objects to the rambling un-punctuated fury of Noah's forgotten brother, these are experimental tales that are sometimes tedious, sometimes fascinating, and more often than not, fairly horrifying. The most famous of these stories is probably "The Babysitter," a dark suburban saga that follows a group of loosely connected everyday characters (the titular babysitter, her pre-teen charges, horny boyfriend, hornier clients, and so on) through their repressed fantasies that sprawl over one fateful (or maybe very ordinary) night. The story itself is separated by different third person omniscient perspectives seen from different characters as they lust for a different life.

Though it probably made the biggest splash, I personally found "The Babysitter" to be one of Coover's lesser stories. Once you see what he's doing with points of view, the actual reading becomes rather dull. Sure, the shock of a dead baby or gang rape or bathtub drowning isn't easily brushed away, but since everything is ultimately fantasy, it becomes harder and harder to care as the pages continue to turn. Nevertheless, the thrill of a nubile young lady being leered over by everyone from a middle aged drunk to the town bad boy is easily ripe for a Lifetime-ish film adaption, hence Guy Furland's 1995's take.

Quick Plot: An unnamed (until the end, when the reveal of her rather ordinary name isn't actually that special) babysitter heads to her night job at the Tucker residence, where dad's already three bourbons in and mom needs a hand squeezing herself into a not-so-little black dress for a house party. Meanwhile, The Babysitter's on-the-outs boyfriend (one of the Londons, and I continue my pledge to never be able to tell them apart) bumps into an old pal who's taken a turn for the wrong side of the tracks. Old Pal is played by one of my major late '90s to early 2000s crushes, Nicky Katt, who aside from appearing in virtually every movie made between 1995 and 2002, also struck my heart as a rebellious teacher stranded on the miserable Boston Public. I harp on this casting because aside from riling up some of my younger days, Nicky Katt is also costumed and styled to be the spitting image of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Spike: leather duster, dangling cigarette, and hair slightly too high on his head. Bleach it blond and the resemblance is downright scary.

I know, I know: it's only 1995. Sarah Michelle Gellar was still winning junior daytime Emmy Awards and Kristy Swanson hadn't even DONNED a pair of ice skates yet. Stay on track Emily!

Anyway, The Babysitter's style of storytelling is as such:

-a character encounters The Babysitter
-a character suddenly acts extremely inappropriately with the underage The Babysitter
-extremely inappropriate action leads to dire consequence

-camera cuts back to reveal extremely inappropriate action with underage The Babysitter was a micro-fantasy

Surprisingly, Furland's film is an extremely faithful adaptation of a 20 or so page story. But that doesn't really make it any fun. Furland (now a veteran of directing for television, including credits for The Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy) plays very carefully with his tone, assigning overly aggressive musical scores to blatantly show us what kind of mood the fantasy should generate (sexy saxophone for dad's porn 101 vision, playful piano for his son's naughty PG peeping, etc.). He's also not afraid to surrender to all-out sleaze, at least within the parameters of whatever rating system his film gets. The actual content is about as risque as an episode of Gossip Girl, strange when you add in uncensored use of the F word.

And smoking. LOTS of badass delinquent smoking.

As a child of the '80s and a teenager of the '90s, I have plenty of affectionate nostalgia for this era. Though cinesnobs are often eager to discount the '90s as worthless save for the occasional Pulp Fiction, I think there are plenty of gems to be found, even if they generally, well, don't LOOK good. Take, for example, Michael Tolkin's fantastically challenging moral tale The Rapture, which goes for some of the gutsiest filmmaking I've ever seen, yet visually, never seems to have a speck of ambition. I'm not versed enough in media studies to diagnose the issue, but for whatever reason, '90s films just aren't that, well, pretty.

Despite starring Alicia Silverstone in between her Crush and Clueless years, The Babysitter is also not a pretty movie. Sometimes, this feels smartly intentional, even if it becomes insufferably grotesque. Poor Lee Garlington is saddled with the horrid character of a plump, insecure housewife whose idea of sexy is having her neighbor George Segal pour champagne down the side of her mouth. There's girdle humor/horror, which somehow always feels misogynistic when executed in front of your eyes. Indeed, watching a middle aged suburban mom humiliate herself at an insufferable cocktail party is horrifically uncomfortably, as is seeing a seedy J.T. Walsh leer over an extremely young Silverstone. Aside from Dolly, everyone's fantasy seems to be the same: have sex with Cher. And yes, that includes her 10-or-so-year-old babysitting charge, who sneaks in the sorta R-rated nudity via a girlie magazine.

When I heard that a film had been made based on Coover's story, I assumed it merely lifted the concept of a cute teen babysitter lighting the libidos of every male who came across her path. That IS the case, but Furland should certainly be credited with trying to maintain what made the original tale so memorable in the first place, namely, the multiple points of view. The problem, however, with such a concept on film is that we as an audience can't possibly care about anyone. We're never given enough time with any individual characters to form any sort of connection, although the simple fact that all are horrible people with dull rape fantasies would make that impossible anyway.

High Points

As I mentioned earlier, the blatantly stereotyped use of music does a deceptively good job of mirroring a character's point of view

Low Points
The fact that everyone in this movie is neither interesting nor likable

Lessons Learned
A small ice cream stain on one's dress generally calls for a luxurious bubble bath

People in the suburbs are really turned on by the idea of soaping one's back

In the '90s, cool kids always toasted with lit cigarettes

No woman has ever mastered the art of flipping her hair with more skill than Cher Horrowitz

Rent/Bury/Buy
As both a token of its time and ambitious attempt to adapt a literary experiment, The Babysitter certainly has some merit for those looking for something different. Its somewhat experimental approach will probably surprise anyone looking at the shadowy cover art and reading the premise. Perhaps if this movie was made during a grittier era, the risk would have paid off. Instead, we're left with a rather ugly tale about ugly people.

The Abomindable Dr. Phibes is one of those cult classics that seems to inspire a whole lot of passion from the not necessarily huge component of film lovers who have seen it.

I am now proud to be one of them.

Quick Plot: A Phantom-esque mystery man conducts his own personal house band made up of man-sized wind-up instrumentalists in kooky zip-up masks.

Within the opening two minutes, I have already dubbed this to be The Greatest Movie of All Time.

Some might say I like to leap to big sweeping superlatives when it comes to cinema, but ladies and gentlemen, some are often wrong.

Very. Wrong.

Meet Dr. Anton Phibes, a concert organist/super genius doctor (of something or another) played with magnificence by a fully in-the-moment Vincent Price. Dr. Phibes, we learn, is working on an elaborate (and awesome) plan of vengeance using the fabled ten plagues of the Old Testament as inspiration to murder the team of surgeons and nurses responsible for the death of his beloved wife some years earlier.

Here's what this means for us:

-We watch a kickass masquerade where a dude dons a giant frog head mask and gets masked to death

-We witness an adorable horde of bats bat a man to death

-A man is stabbed, Cabin In the Woods style, by the unicorn horn of a brass statue catapulted into action

I haven't even mentioned the locust face-eating, outstandingly elaborate hat-wearing, or old timey snake porn-watching.

Directed by Robert Fuest (he of the wonderfully restrained And Soon the Darkness and amazingly awful The Devil's Rain), 1971's The Abominable Dr. Phibes is one of those fantastically 'alive' films that seems compelled to be something unlike anything you've ever quite seen. From the colorful visual style to the fact that Vincent Price is romantically speaking through a hole in his throat, this is a special movie.

We've got recurring word jokes, bumbling detectives...

creepy dolls that do nothing but appear creepy,

Vincent Price drinking champagne through a hole in the back of this throat, and a credit sequence set to Somewhere Over the Rainbow that lists its cast in terms of "The Protagonists" and so on. There's both absurdity and heart, and the combination makes for a truly unique cinematic experience.

High Points
Did I mention HATS?

NOTE THAT THERE ARE PLURAL HATS!

Did I mention DEATH BY CATAPULTED UNICORN HORN?

Did I mention that the band, Dr. Phibes' Clockwork Wizards, is the greatest assembly of musicians ever put on a bizarro art deco soundstage dream theater?

DID MENTION THIS MOVIE KICKS ASS?

Lessons Learned
Even when they're eating someone's face off, bats in closeup are pretty darn adorable

Never put down the brandy

No one holds a grude with quite the same dedication as a super genius concert pianist doctor

Rent/Bury/Buy
I was lucky enough to find a double disc of this and its sequel through the Midnight Movies release at the famed Kim's Video in downtown Manhattan. Now on Instant Watch, this is a truly wonderful watch, the kind of strange genre treat that somehow manages to be funny, scary, sweet, gorgeous, and ridiculous all at the same time. See it.

Martyn Burke’s The Clown Murders is one of those titles that gets tossed around horror movie discussions for two reasons:

-It features a killer dressed like a clown

-It costars a young Canadian named John Candy

Both of these reasons would be valid motivation for seeking out a film. And yet...

Quick Plot: After an extended game of polo, a group of wealthy men with a complicated history (or not? I DON’T KNOW) come up with a dastardly plan for Halloween night. Philip, a work-obsessed lawyer with a bad back, Rosie, a silver spoon-fed jerk with a girl’s name, and Ollie, a John Candy with a sandwich glued to his hands, conspire to dress like circus clowns and help world traveler Charlie kidnap his ex-girlfriend Allison just long enough so she can’t help her entrepreneurial new husband sign some time-sensitive papers at midnight to sell her farm to greedy land developers.

Or maybe that didn’t happen. I mean, what business deal takes place at midnight? And not a minute after? As if there’s a slim window before the harvest moon experiences a lunar eclipse when any signature is rendered obsolete? It doesn’t make sense, you know? And truth be told, characters mumble in this film with less clarity than Liv Tyler in a library, so for all I know, the actual plot involved a chess tournament or creating the perfect recipe for tiramisu.

Mmmm...tiramisu

Assuming that the movie is indeed about the detected plot, it still makes zero logical sense. After the men HILARIOUSLY kidnap Allison and beat up her husband, it doesn’t take more than one newscast to reveal the authorities are, shockingly enough, taking this quite seriously. Rather than go to the police to say “Hey, we played a realllllllly stupid joke and are sorry,” (even though their ‘victim’ is the one who suggests it) the men decide to suspiciously retreat to Allison’s secluded farmhouse and build tension amongst themselves for the rest of the night, occasionally pausing to satisfy monstrous little trick-or-treaters, have super confusing flashbacks in Barbara Walters’ fog filter, or make a fat joke at John Candy’s expense.

Oh, and also, at about 90 minutes into the running time, to elude the level 1 Boy Scout traps of a crazed clown killer whose identity is adorably foreshadowed earlier by a bombastic score and the fact that said suspect is constantly shown cutting the heads off of chickens.

There’s also an Irish leprechaun playing the part of the farmer’s very Irish caretaker.

And did I mention John Candy likes to eat?

Seriously, the last point cannot be ignored. I do not exaggerate when I say that every single line said by or directed at Ollie involves food, be it croissants, doughnuts, peanuts, or a giant ham sub. The only exception? When Ollie sees a light in the distance. That’s not food related at all! Except when Rosie points out that Ollie is probably just spotting a refrigerator door that is opened, and you know what’s inside refrigerators? FOOD THAT FAT OLLIE CAN EAT!

Yup, this is a strange film. And a fairly terrible one, at least based on what dialogue I could make out. Even looking past the film’s lack of technical quality, we’re still stuck with a meandering storyline that spins its rusty wheels until it randomly decides to do something about its horror movie classification. It doesn’t do it well, but at least something actually happens.

Eventually.

High Points

You know, men dressed like clowns is always KIND of creepy, even when the men are stupid and the clowns set traps that Franklin Delano Roosevelt could probably elude

Low Points

Oh goodness. The fact that this is a terrible movie. That’s about it

Lessons Learned

Cars are not picnic tables (though they’ll work in a pinch)

Nothing ruins a party quite like an unexpected kidnapping

In Canada, cops trust the men they arrest to just seat themselves in the backseat of police cars

John Candy REALLY likes to eat

The Winning Line

“I can’t figure out what’s going on,” says a befuddled police chief upon The Clown Murders’ finale. Was ever a more meta line of dialog spoken? I think not

Rent/Bury/Buy

Gluttons for punishment will find plenty to enjoy in The Clown Murders, be it horrifically unlikable characters in extreme closeup, barely audible dialogue, a plot that a toddler could probably rewrite more sensibly, or a gloriously WTF ending that solves nothing. This is a terrible film, one that seems to wander around dumb character decisions until it gets more bored than its audience and decides, ‘hey, I’ll just be a horror movie! It’s not too late!’

It’s not too late, it’s just still bad.

Let The 3rd Annual Shortening Begin!

I'm a Troll Man

It's Coming, & It's Really Wicked

Nope, I Can't Escape February Without A Dummy Attack

Needs More Burlap Sack Doll Thingies

So I Finally Saw the Bratz Movie

My Valentine? A Horror Anthology of Course!

Kingdom of the Shatner

Monkey Butler!

Icky & Gross, Just Like a Goober

Horrible Non-Horror! Pinocchio

Dee Carplane! Dee Carplane, Boss!

Duuuuuuuuuuude

Baby Baby Baby Oh!

Jigsaw Cleaning, Kidman Weeping, & Baldwin Malicing

What Happens When People Stop Being Polite...& Start Getting Dead

Once Upon a Time, The World Was Very Boring

You're a Virgin Who Can't Babysit

Unicorns & Hats & Masquerades, Oh My!

Oh, Canada