The Convergence has begun!

Well..it began about two days ago but STILL!

And the horror began. Right in our living room! We found a great DVD on Netflix instant cue called Cheesy Horror Movie Trailers. Its about an hour long and its nothing but trailers from the 50's up to the 80's. Now it does contain some classic movies such as the original Friday the 13th (I will admit, that trailer is kinda shitty), Blacula, and The Fearless Vampire Killers but the majority of the trailers are really REALLY God awful and insanely laughable. And you don't even have to sit through the whole movie! Just the hilarious parts!

Stac and I made a list of ones we want..nay... NEED to see:

• Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde
• Berserk -staring MS JOAN CRAWFORD! In some sort of circus setting.
• Werewolf Vs The Vampire Woman...where humping someone into submission IS a valid form of self defense.
• Abby -the Blaxplotation version of The Exorcist..nuff said.
• Sugar Hill -Blaxplotation zombie movie with some of the best looking Afros EVAR.
• The Sinful Dwarf...I kid you not. The movie is named The Sinful Dwarf. I repeat....The Sinful DWARF.... I NEED to see a movie called The Sinful Dwarf!! This is my purpose in life, damnit!

Hopefully Stac will Edit this entry to add the ones I'm missing. But those are the ones that stand out in my mind. This is mostly due to the soda I laughed out through my nose while watching them.
Anyways, The Convergence Begins! We will update from time to time with nonsense during the week. Until then, CHEERS!

Edit by Stac: You forgot EQUINOX!, the movie about nothing and everything, apparently, and TERROR! Starring Herve Villachaize as the tiny VooDoo monster, or whatever he was supposed to be. And yes, you DO need to see The Abominable Dr. Phibes, woman!

Ring vs Ringu vs The Ring

I love love love a lot of the Asian horror I've been exposed to. Some is utter crap (Split Mouthed Woman, I'm looking at you, you sucky whore!) Most has been great though, and I'm childish enough (I think I'm in a permanent child-ego state) to like what I like, and I feel no desire to explain it to rude assholes who inform me I'm wrong simply because I disagree with their opinions. Then I probably call them a battery of vile names whilst reading a romance novel, or rereading Twilight for the billionth time. So I can like a remake just as much or more than the original, as I hope to intelligently explain in this entry.

I first saw The Ring, I think on the night it opened, with my friend Malinda. That was so much scary fun, I rode the high for the rest of the night. Malinda and I tend to feed off of each other's fears, so seeing a film together is great. (Except when it's Cabin Fever. I will NEVER forgive her for that one.) I still list The Ring as one of my favorite movies, and have the poster on my bedroom wall.

I saw Ringu, the Japanese original, shortly after it became available in the states. I almost bought it sight unseen, but it was 25$ before tax with no special features, so I reluctantly passed on it. After I saw it that first time I was glad-- I hated it. Sadako was the only scary portion of that movie, and compared the Rachael, Reiko was a pale competitor. I did love the sound track for both, though.

Then, after it was finally translated and available in paper back, I bought Ring, the book that spawned it all, written by Koji Suzuki (who is a very, very fascinating man in his own right).

After recently (in the same night) rewatching The Ring and Ringu, I have decided to compare and contrast all three against one another. How fucking scientific of me. Think Sadako/Samara will decompose in a test tube if exposed to high heat? What will leak out if she does?

The Ring was still awesome-- well acted with some really terrifying effects and timing-- for example, the scene at Katie's funeral when he mother, Ruth, tells Rachael that she was the one who found the dead girl, I looked down, smartly expecting a flash scare, and I was right. Too bad it happened after I looked back up, huh? I think I peed a little when I saw that poor huddled, mangled form in the closet. The kicker was Katie's head falling forward-- Yoinks. (Looking that up on youtube just seriously creeped me out). I also love this movie because I live in Washington state and go to Seattle fairly often. While the area of the state I live in looks nothing like the sections in the movie, I still know it very well, and have lived under the west side's notorious rain cloud at other points in my life.

After rewatching it several years later, Ringu is much better than I remembered. I found myself enjoying it, as well as wanting to throttle Reiko for letting her kindergartner be home by himself. I was also not broken up over the death of her ex-husband. In The Ring I got the impression that Noah, Rachael's ex and the father of her son, Aidan, was a maddening charmer. The kind of guy who could probably persuade his way into your pants; it wouldn't be until afterward that you discovered he also drove you crazy. But the rift between Noah and Rachael played more to me like two stubborn personalities clashing, not that he was an asshole; I was genuinely sad when Noah was killed by Samara.

The same cannot be said of Ryuji, Reiko's ex-husband in Ringu. While a lot of his coldness is explained later in the film-- he is painfully psychic we discover, and I get the impression he has suffered for this in the past, I still find him profoundly arrogant, and an asshole, deadbeat dad who has nothing to do with his own son's life, instead opting to fuck the underaged tail made available to him via his teaching job. I winced when he died, but all of the regret I had was for what Reiko would go through, since for some misbegotten reason she saw something commendable in the cockwhore.

Reiko and Rachael are also interesting characters to contemplate-- I like Rachael because she is a strong, independent woman who will bust through any bullshit to get to what she needs. She's also a loving mother to her eccentric son-- very patient with Aiden, and I get the impression that she reads him better than he realizes. She's also mean, which, hey, I can relate to.

Reiko I strongly disliked when I first saw Ringu. I thought she was weak and ineffectual where Rachael was strong, but on a second viewing I see that I am very, very wrong. She's actually very determined, if subtle character. She's never seen in anything but pants (no skirt, dresses, etc. Sorry to get your hopes up, guys) and blazers, and seems to have a fulfilling career while trying to raise her son to the best of her abilities. She also takes on a bulldog like stubbornness where her son, Koichi, is concerned.

You'll notice here that I haven't mentioned the book at all in these comparisons. The reason is because the set up in the book follows the same basic premise-- death of a high school girl prompts investigation, which uncovers the killer tape, but the characters are very different. The main character in Ring is a married man with a very small (I think 3 years old?) daughter. There's also a strange secondary character who is killed by Sadako. He's a friend of the main character, and he may or may not be a rapist, it's never told for sure what the truth it. There is also a subplot pertaining to smallpox, which takes on a larger role than realized initially. The book is very, very good, and I recommend it, highly-- it builds up some seriously upsetting suspense.

Sadako vs Samara vs Sadako is an interesting view, because all three incarnations are very different. Sadako in Ringu is terrifying. You never see her face, her fingers appear to have too many joints, and her eyes roll horribly in what little of her face you see. But her actual presence in Ringu is very small, and I think the movie suffers a little for that. She's a fascinating character, and I'd personally like to have known more about her other than that her father may not have been human, and she can kill with a thought.

Samara is presented in a slightly different light-- she's cast as an increasingly sympathetic character, a small, strange girl suffering not only under the ministrations of her unbalanced mother and her off-putting, abrasive father, but also castigated by an entire community of superstitious, small-minded fishermen. That was a REALLY long sentence. The fact that she's played very well by a talented child actress (Daveigh Chase, who would also voice Lilo in Lilo and Stitch) adds to her pathos. Sure she's creepy, but she's just a kid. Right?

Right?

I was strangled with an abrupt horror that had previously been sympathy when Aiden awakes to his mother assuring him that she took the little girl out of the dark place. "You helped her?! Why did you do that? You weren't supposed to do that. Don't you understand, Rachael? She never sleeps." That line makes my scalp crawl every time I watch it.

Sadako in Ringu is a terror, and she's open about it. Samara is just as horrible, but she's sneaky about it-- you've helped her before you learn you should not have.

Sadako in Ring is a whole different entity. For starters, she's gorgeous. And she made it to adulthood, unlike her unfortunate film incarnations. She also has a pretty shocking secret, which I won't spill here, since I don't think as many people have read Ring as have seen the movies. She's very much a tragic figure as well as a horrible one, and the cyclical nature of her curse is why the story is named Ring.

All three forms of this story have lived easily side by side, and I have developed at taste for them all. I haven't had a chance to read Spiral or Loop, the book's two sequels, but I hope to once I get an opportunity. I haven't seen The Ring 2, and from what I've heard that's more blessing than curse. I haven't seen any of the Ringu sequels either, either than Ring 0: Happy Birthday, and that was more weird drama with a little bit of horror at the end. I also have yet to read the Ringu manga that's been out for a bit, but I plan on giving that a look, too.

All in all, this is a fascinating story told in three different ways, and I have come to enjoy all three immensely.

Did you make it to the end of my crushing wall of text? If so, give yourself a big hand-- then take some ibuprofen. You probably have eye strain.

Chainsaw Waltz Redux

Last night I FINALLY had time to sit down and watch my DVD of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and it was love at first sight. I had never seen this as I mentioned before, and was initially leery; the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre scared the fuck out of me. I was about twenty, watched the original with Bevin and Malinda at Bevin's dad's house while he was away, and didn't sleep right for about a week. Bevin was so messed up she had to sleep at my apartment for almost the same amount of time.

I was new to horror movies at the time, and was NOT eager to repeat a scare this bad. Now I'm older, more cynical, and definitely more desensitized; buying sight unseen a used copy of TCM2 just seemed natural and right, dangit.

As it turns out, younger me need not have worried; this movie was less scary and far more hilarious. Here we meet another member of the family, Chop Top, the Vietnam vet with an exposed plate in his head, bad teeth, and a penchant for sizzling his head wound with a heated hanger and eating what comes off. Yes; he eats his own scalp.

Seems the Sawyer boys are out and around in more urban areas now, since the eldest brother, Drayton, is an award winning caterer. There's a scene in the beginning when Drayton is given a trophy for best chili in a competition; in the top of his trophy is a bowl, which has been filled with his award winning entry. You can imagine how horrible a bowl of what was probably just Hormel chili looks as everyone licks their lips, trying to taste. I gagged.

Then we have Lefty, as played but what I can only guess was an extremely drunk Dennis Hopper. He didn't have any noticeable signs, but MAN did he ever have a weird light in his eyes this whole movie; he reminded me of several of my former roommates, in fact. Lefty is a man haunted; he is (I think) Sally and Franklin's brother, and a former Texas Ranger who has been searching for the Sawyer clan for some fourteen years. At this point he is the only one who believes Sally's story. In summation he is twitchy as fuck. At one point he goes and loads up on not one, not two, but THREE chainsaws, bought from some old coot with a roadside store. Had I been the toothless codger in question, there is no way in HELL I would have sold anything more dangerous than a soda to Lefty. He never says a word to the man, and then proceeds to chainsaw the living hell out of a tester log, doing his stoic, glassy-eyed version of the crazy Leatherface dance. I really doubt that either chainsaw or log lived to tell the tale.

Finally, we have Stretch and L.G, both employees of a local rock station. They might be the owners, I'm not sure-- I was trying to do part of my Chemistry homework during the beginning of the film. Stretch is young and sassy, and does the deejaying while L.G is the engineer. Two yuppie pricks keep calling in one night, harassing Stretch, and in the process manage to piss off what I assume was Chop Top and Leather Face. Stretch ends up taping the two screaming as they are chainsawed by our boy Bubba, which she then tries to hand over to Lefty.

A few words on the yuppie extermination: that was one of the coolest things I have ever seen, and I think has to go down in personal history as one of my all time favorite scenes. Leather Face puppeting a corpse that has been strapped to his own body, swinging that chainsaw around was like something Jim Henson's doppelganger would have come up with. I am SO going to do something like that one Halloween! All of this is going on atop the roof of a moving pick up truck, and is the coolest thing in the whole of forever right now.

Stretch ends up calling own the wrath of the family, and poor L.G gets killed and taken by Chop Top and Leather Face. I'm sure you can guess what they intend to do with him. This is where we learn that Leather Face does indeed have a libido; sometimes a chainsaw's not just a chainsaw, folks. Stretch is smart enough to parlay Bubba's sexual desire for her into an escape, which leads to some awesome pelvic thrusting while revving the saw, at Stretch. Then Leather Face ran away. Save for most of the blood, it reminded me a lot of grade school.

Amusing to no one but me, I managed to pick out a Cramps song, while Bevin noticed an Oingo Boingo tune. She initially said "Oh! Right! That's Billy and the Boingers." I was bug eyed at her, because I was pretty sure I didn't hear any Bill the Cat in the music in question. Now THAT, dearies, is old.

All of this leads to the most epic of epic battles: a chain saw duel, between Leather Face and Lefty, and frankly, I didn't know who to root for. Dennis Hopper in a ten gallon cowboy hat, singing hymns as he chainsaws the Sawyers' home (an abandoned theme park) down into the ground is truly a striking image, I must say. So is Stretch tenderly putting L.G's face back on him after he saves her. I'm not into recreational drug use, but MAN, I'll bet this is some trippy shit on the right substances. Trippiest of all however, is Leather Face slipping Stretch the tongue. Drayton is NOT pleased that little Bubba's discovered what a hard on's for, and I'm left wondering if they make their own condoms. EGAD.

This was a weird, weird movie, and I am SO glad to have this for my personal collection. I am taking this with me when I go see Cins this summer, and we are going to drink a lot whilst laughing raucously.

Jim Siebold was the only original cast member in this film, playing eldest brother Drayton, though the actor playing L.G was a crew member/ camera man on the original. I'm really glad that they had Drayton-- that was the most foul-mouthed old man I have ever been privileged to hear, and he went off in some truly creative rants, calling his brothers pecker heads and fudge packers, frequently in the same breath. He gets mildly chainsawed in the booty by Lefty, which was deeply funny, but what can I say; the five year old in me still thinks butts are funny.

I recommend this movie, heartily, and I have no idea why this film apparently got shit all over by fans and critics alike. It's way more comedic in tone than its predecessor, but that's not a bad thing. The acting was great, the story was hilarious, and I think this was way more enjoyable than the remake in 2004. (Eventually I'm going to do a contrast and compare between the original TCM and the remake. The original is better.) According to imdb.com, Dennis Hopper lists this as his worst movie ever, which I think is pretty fucking ambitious considering he was in Super Mario Brothers AND Water World.

Give it a watch, drink in the weird! I dunno about you all, but I'm off chili for the next few weeks.

Creeeepy!

I love finding weird, creepy shit on youtube!



TCM 2 review tonight!

Domestication. Like a Black Widow.

I have something to share:

I am knitting a Halloween blanket. For me. On my bed. In January.

That is all.

Sci-Fi Tried to Put It in My Butt.

Triple failure, Sci-Fi Channel. You hear me? TRIPLE FAILURE!

I wasted my Sunday night watching "horror" movies on Sci-Fi, two of them from 2008's 8 Films to Die For Film Festival. As a result I want a time machine so I can have my day back, and a fucking apology.

I watched Lake Dead, Crazy Eights, and The Dark, and I was BETRAYED by all damn three! This REALLY pisses me off because I have notoriously low standards. I mean, rock bottom. I regard the 5$ Bin O' Crap at Halloween to be the source of untapped wonders. I will watch movies like Phantom of the Mall: Erik's Revenge. Over and over. So when you can unleash a stinker that makes even the likes of me recoil from the stank ass waft of your cinematic evil, then RETHINK YOUR FUCKING PROCESS.

Lake Evil: Incest, and lots of it! As a result you get two huge, lumbering inbreds who just really wanna put it in their unknowing blond niece-cousins.

Crazy Eights: really cheesed me off, because it had me until the end, when it existentialled itself to death, credits role. In this one's defense, I might need to watch it again since I got the impression that Sci-Fi made some weird cuts. I'll NetFlix it, but if you cross me again, movie, then I WILL MAKE YOU PAY! It's set in a creepy abandoned hospital/sanitarium setting, which I LOVE, so I'm disappointed as well as sulky.

Third was The Dark, which looked so good initially; it stars Sean "Dear God he's Delicious" Bean and Maria Bello, both actors that I like. It's set in Wales, people speak some Welsh, pretty cool so far! Creepy, sad setting which leads to a creepy, sad event that leads to.. a befuddling, bullshit ending. That of course tried to do a "twist". ANGER.. RISING..!

After it was all said and done and I was grumping off to brush my teeth, the incest story was the best of the lot.

SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE?!

Ghosts? Or Cocaine?

Courtney Love's Album Delayed By 'Paranormal Issues'

Click here for original article.

Courtney Love's Album Delayed By 'Paranormal Issues'
January 5th, 2009 11:49am EST

Courtney Love has pushed back the release of her new album after ghostly
goings-on in the studio delayed the recording.

Nobody's Daughter, the follow-up to 2004's America's Sweetheart, was due
for release through the rocker's website on January 1. But it is now scheduled for next month after "paranormal" events forced the album's producer Michael Beinhorn to abandon the studio.

In a posting on her MySpace.com page, a representative for Love writes, "The studio that Courtney and her band were using to record had some paranormal technical issues and had to be moved from one studio to another studio right around the holidays due to some technical sound issues that Beinhorn, who is a master and a genius, was not happy with.

"The room was a paranormal issue; Courtney and crew could not hear between guitars. Sound and vocal mixings have to be completed still to perfection. If Courtney had it her way she would have the studios sound-checked first but it was originally use (sic) as a hip-hop rap studio so the acoustics were all f--ked up."

VIDEO Courtney Love VIDEO

(This news article provided by World Entertainment News Network)


I have no idea how valid this news source is, but since when is faulty equipment proof of ghostly goings on? I could make the obvious joke about who's doing the haunting here, but I choose not too. Instead I'll call everyone involved in this a dork.

This is What Crazy Feels Like

Just a heads up; I'll be doing most of the posting for a bit, as Cins is having some real life shenanigans that are giving her a hard time. That, or she's drinking again.

I thought for this post I would share a real life experience of mine. I originally posted this on the somethingawful.com forums, in the winter ghost stories thread. This is all true, no fabrications. It scares me to think about now, but in a distant way, like I'd read a book or saw a movie that frightened me.

I need to preface this story with my mental state at the time this event occurred. To put it bluntly, I was not well, emotionally. I was supremely stressed out, to the point that I was manifesting physical symptoms like back pain, and at one point the muscles in my neck tensed up so badly that I couldn't turn my head. I started to have my first ever bouts with insomnia, and was just in a very bad place. I had no money, only one friend really close to me, my boyfriend was smothering me, and I was so poor I could either pay some of my bills for the month or I could eat.

I was twenty four when this happened to me. I'm almost convinced it was all in my mind, but there's still that little seed of terror that wonders if my fear just gave something a way in. I was living on my own for the first time. By alone I mean exactly that: it was just me and my cat, Remington. No roommates for the first time since I'd moved out, and for the most part I'm very glad that I opted to live alone instead of trying to find another person to live with. Part of this decision was due to the fact that I had no one to move in with me, and I couldn't face the thought of living with another complete stranger. I'm the kind of person who must have a "safe" spot, a place I can unwind in. It has to be my home, and I don't feel safe living with someone I didn't know previously.

I'm not sure what started it; maybe just the fact that I'm naturally paranoid. But I started to become very, very afraid of the crawl space in the ceiling of my bedroom closet. At first it was just general unease; I would have to make sure the closet door was closed completely before I could sleep, something that hadn't bothered me before. I would go into the closet to get dressed/whatever, and instead of doing the task I had set for myself, I would instead find myself staring up at the crawl space panel above my head. I would frequently be shocked to discover that I had wasted as much as twenty minutes a pop doing this, which is unusual for me as I am one of those fidgety people who must be doing something at all times. I can't even just sit and watch television: I'm usually drawing/reading/sewing/etc while I watch the boob tube.

I became fixated on this stupid crawl space. I would think about it when I wasn't home, and it was the first thing I inspected when I returned from being out. I had a recurring fantasy of peering up at the panel and seeing it drop slightly back into place. Then my obsession got worse, and I became convinced that there was a strange, ragged, long-haired man hiding up there, waiting to get me. Not convinced as in I called the cops, but convinced that somehow there was a strange show down that had to happen between us, and no one else was or could be involved. He was real, but I knew he was real only to me, if that makes any sense.

I tried several times to work up my courage and just climb on a chair with a flashlight, shove up the panel and see, finally, once and for all, if there was anything up there. The person I am now, and was trying to become then, would have done it. Would have lost patience, grabbed a baseball bat and a light, and had a peek. But I was so tired, and stressed out, and hopeless feeling that I just had no energy to get worked up. And part of the me was half afraid that if I looked, it would have been like Pandora's box; I would have let him out, and he would finally have been made real. It was a strange feeling, but I was convinced that he was trying to be born into the real world from my mind, but wasn't quite strong enough to leave the crawl space.

Then God smiled on me, and I ended up moving out of my apartment, and in with a friend. She lived with her father, who was planning to move closer to his girlfriend, and she and I would take over his mortgage payments in lieu of rent. Another friend of mine who was moving into town from across the country, was going to take over my lease. I was so relieved; I would be paying substantially less per month, I had another friend nearby, stuff was looking much better!

But the man in the crawl space wasn't done with me yet, apparently. The last night I slept there, something strange happened. It was just a little thing, but the effects were pretty potent for me. Most of my stuff was moved out; all that was really left was me, Remington, my bed, and general trash to clean up. There were plastic grocery bags all over the floor because I liked to use those to wrap my more delicate items in, and I has just gotten done with a box of figurines, a snow globe, things of that ilk, moved that afternoon from in my bedroom.

I had dropped off to sleep quickly, hot and tired from moving. I had been sleeping very hard when I woke up for a moment, something I do a lot of. But that night I had been so deeply asleep I hadn't even moved from the original position I had zonked out in; my joints were a little achy from not moving for so long. I was just starting to drop back off, when I heard the rustle of one of the plastic grocery bag. Coming from inside my closet.

It was like someone snapping their fingers; just like that I was wide awake, and my heart was galloping. I didn't move, and strained to listen and my mind sorted frantically through excuses for that noise to be occuring during the blackest part of the night. Remington, my mind latched onto. It was Remington, no doubt sleeping on one of the bags, as he liked to do. He liked to sleep in the closet, and I had been so busy cleaning and packing that I had totally forgotten to close the closet door before I had gone to bed.

I started to relax, my heart still beating hard, but the adrenaline was starting to fade. Goofy cat, I started to think, and then I felt Remington turn over. He was on the bed with me, sleeping cuddled up against the backs of my knees. Then the bag rustled again.

To this day, I have no idea what caused that. I don't know what happened next, because the next thing I knew, it was morning, and everything was once again normal.

What was it? What or who caused that noise? I don't know. I do know two things though: the only living things in my apartment that night were myself and my cat. An I know that I was not dreaming, though at the time I had badly wished I was. I don't know why I abruptly fell back asleep, either.

I also know that whatever fears I had in the apartment, I left there. After I moved out, I wasn't afraid of the man anymore.

Your Mother Doesn't Love You

The time has come to tell a tale, a tale of a mother who probably hates her kids. But first, some family back story! You're welcome!

My older sister is quite a bit older than I am; eleven years. There is the same amount of time between myself and my sister as their is between myself and my sister's oldest daughter, Jessi. Why did I tell you this? Because my oldest nephew (Jessi's brother) made me a fuckin' great aunt, and I'm feeling insecure about my age, dammit! Now, on to the tale.

Jessi is dating a really nice guy named, uh, Tall Boy. Boy is local to the little sparkling edge of Washington state that portion of my family lives in. He grew up on a farm, and as such had one of those bizzarro childhoods where you name the cow and then eat it. For some reason Boy's mom felt it imperative to terrorize her offspring. I've never met this woman but I can't wait to; something tells me she and I are going to get along like a house on fire. That we probably set ourselves. Apparently she once came home from a planning meeting, a touch tipsy, and informed Boy that she adored Jessi, but that she wasn't deaf. You can imagine my niece's delight, yes? Her sons also figured out that they could get out of being grounded if they found a nice juicy cut of gossip for her. Would that my own groundings had been so easy to weasel out of.

Apparently one of her favorite tricks, though, was to send her small children into the basement to get something for her. Being little boys they were of course, terrified of the basement; what little kid isn't? I used to sleep in our basement and I was afraid of it. Once the poor little munchkins had wandered down, she would lock the door and turn off the lights. Now, let me clarify. I work with kids while I'm going through college; I have for most of my life. I have been assured by most of these kids that I am pure evil, and I delight in the suffering of others. They dubbed me The Devil Aunt, and that is complete truth. The point of my little dissertation? Even I would never something like that. I wouldn't even do that to a teenager or an adult, and I have a much lower tolerance for those age groups than I do for kids.

Boy's mother would laugh while her sons pounded against the door and screamed. Making this even more surreal, Boy laughs his hinder off when he tells these tales. I have no idea if this is some form of "hard love" or something, but my suspicions are that she didn't actually want kids. I have told Boy this. He thinks I'm kidding.

The final tale (for now, I'm sure) is the story of the car's break down. Like most kids (myself included), especially those of the right age during a movie release, Boy and his brother were terrified of Freddy Krueger. Most parents would be eager to remind their children that not only did Freddy not exist, he didn't exist a long, long way away from where they were currently located. Not Boy's mom. Oh ho ho noooooo. One day, in the middle of winter, as a storm is heading in, she pretends the car has stalled out and died. They were out in the countryside somewhere, and had come to stop next to a large, dilapidated house, (I think Boy said it was probably abandoned) and informs her children that the car has mysteriously died. Oh, and see that house over there? Yeah, Freddy lives there, so they had better get the car started before he realizes that they are stranded out in his driveway.

The little kids, understandably, Lose. Their. Shit. Mom climbs out, puts up the hood of the car (so now they can't see her, but can still clearly see The House that the Child Killer Built) and pretends to poke at the engine. Miraculously, she "fixes" the problem, and drives triumphantly away. According to Boy, this was so she would be the hero; Mom saved them from Freddy Kruegar!

WHO GIVES FREDDY A PERMANENT ADDRESS IN THE FIRST PLACE?!

Boy thinks this story is hilarious, and laughs uproariously as he tells it. After hearing this for the first time I was forced to inform Boy that his mother either didn't want kids or simply didn't like the ones she got. I seriously can't wait to meet this woman; I'll bet if no one was looking she probably would have simply consumed her children when they were infants.

Home Again Home Again, Jiggity Jig

I'm home, and I have many a post idea. One of them will be about the mother of my oldest niece's boyfriend. I'm pretty sure she didn't want kids, or at the very least didn't like the ones she got.

Stopping your car and telling your five and seven year old that you were are Freddy Kruegar's house? Really?

I also managed to rip open two of my fingers, get the stomach flu, and dream about masturbation, which was fun!

More stuff coming soon, folks, Happy New Year, try not to tie it on TOO tight, huh?

The WiIlies: Stac Does a Movie Review, and it's NOT about Penii.

I love Halloween. From Halloween until Christmas is my favorite time of the the year; I just love sliding from spooky to fuck I ate too much to oh you shouldn't have fuck I ate too much again. Then I generally cap the year off by getting drunk and making a LOT of noise come midnight on the 31st. (Be glad you're not my neighbor; bells and pots and wooden spoons are involved.) Halloween signals the beginning of the season that houses one of my greatest vices: cheap, horrible movies. Cue today's entry from one of the girliest horror fans out there.

The Willies came out in 1991, and was directed and written by Brian Peck. It was the only movie he directed but he's acted in stuff! Oh my yes! He was Scuzz in Return of the Living Dead, for starters. As a result, there are several cast members from both Return and it's first sequel. Sorry boys, no Linnea Quigley butt or Barbie appliance for you.

I got this bad boy for 5$ at the local Fred Meyer's (it's in the Krogers family for those of you on the east coast); in fact, it might even have been a two for 5$ sale, now that I think on it. I can't recall what I got with it, but I'll dig through my DVD mountain soon enough and remember. And then probably review it for this site.

I'm going to warn you: I will spoil the hell out of this movie. So if this is one you've just been DYYYYING to see, I suggest you get busy doing that before you read on. So fair warned ye be!

This was a weird movie, but I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It almost seems like it was a kids movie originally; it's like kiddie Creep Show, basically. For all that it's surprisingly gory; it feels more like it should have come out in the mid to late '80's instead of the early '90's, if that makes any sense. If it doesn't, well.. I don't really care.

We start with three kids, in the dark trying to light their lantern for an adventurous night of backyard camping. The cousins are Mike, Josh, and I think Jake. It doesn't really matter however, as they serve more as narration. They're the bookends to the tales they tell, trying to wig each other out with "true" stories. Hilariously, the older cousin is played (and very well, I might add) by Sean Astin. I was so in love with him in Goonies. I wanted to marry Mikey, and live in his plastic bubble with him! I was even excited when I was diagnosed, about a year later, with asthma. Because I was like Mikey! Then I tried to run, started gasping like an oxygenated fish, and threw up, and then I didn't want to be like Mikey anymore.

We start with the classic urban legend: the ol' Kentucky fried rat story (here it's the "Tennessee Fricassee" chain) . In this version a caricature of a fat woman sits down to eat a whole eighteen piece bucket, and guess the first piece she digs into! I have to give this actress props; she really bites into this thing, and this horrible, clear strand pulls from the rat into her mouth. I'm sure it was latex or something equally toxic, but it reminded me of the nasty tendons you get sometimes when you eat chicken. And that is far nastier in my cookbook, thank you very much.

She freaks, spits it out, we cut back to the boys in the tent. Two things caught my attention here: first, Mike (Sean Astin) says she got an extra crispy recipe rat. That rat was clearly original if it was anything. Second is the best euphemism for yakking that I have ever heard: "The urge to regurge". I am so getting that on a bumper sticker. The sheer WTF? value alone will be astronomical.

Our next story take place in California, at Wacky Land, on the Haunted Estates ride. I'm sure you can make the connection, yes? The urban legend here is the claim that originally the ride was so scary that an old man died of fright on it, they closed the ride, and had to dumb it down lest any other ticket holders kack it in one of the Doom Buggies.

The best part about this, for me, is that I know the Haunted Mansion ride so well I could spot all the parodies. I know the ride-through and Grim Grinning Ghosts by heart; I know I drive Cins nuts because I always have to go on that ride at least twice when we're at the park together. The "Ghost Host" was present, as well as the Doom Buggies (aka "omnimovers"). However, the Haunted Mansion has no live action zombies, nary a Jack the Ripper cutting a tart's throat (which sprayed green blood, weirdly. Perhaps she was a Vulcan tart? My dad will be so proud of me for making that joke. Because he's a NERD.) The hitchhiking ghosts that follow you home from the Haunted Mansion are also far more benign, even Ezra, who is the tall, skinny, grinning one. Here we have hitchers such as "Farmer Hackit, ready to whack it". That's an axe murder joke, not a masturbation reference.

After that entertaining bit is the urban legend I hate the most: the damn poodle in the microwave. I'll admit, I looked away and played with one of my Barbie dolls until the poodle exploded. The explosion bit was actually pretty funny, and apparently this dog was made almost exclusively of pus, since that's what spooged all over Pookums' owner.

Then we get into the first of the two main stories: what happened to Danny Hollister at school one day. But before this story starts there's a great bit; Mike is telling the story (for the final time I will remind you that he's played by Sean Astin), and when he informs his cousins that he's got a great story the older cousin replies "This isn't about the time you and your friends found a pirate ship in a cave, again, is it?" I am a geek. I laughed. Hard.

Danny has bully troubles in the form of a little dickhead named Rudie. Personally, I think the fact that his name was flipping Rudie has a lot to do with his disposition. Rudie and his two goons like to torment poor nerdy Danny; all of them appear to be in about fourth grade.

Danny is released from his fire hose penthouse by the kindly janitor, Mr. Jenkins, played by the awesome James Karen. You might remember him from Return of the Living Dead as well; he played Frank, the older of the duo that learns the hard way the a face full of Trioxin is hell on your.. you. The kindly janitor assures little Danny that someday both Rudie and Miss Titmarsh, Danny's vicious teacher, will probably get what's coming to them. That comeuppance occurs about ten minutes later.

Danny is allowed to go to the bathroom only by classroom vote, and while in there he notices that the janitor's cart is in there, sans janitor. He also notices a large monster in the handicapped stall. The monster is great; a very obvious puppet, which I love. A practical effect always gets a smiley face from me, even if this movie in no way, shape, or form had the budget to afford even the crappiest of CGI effects, not in 1991.

Danny runs back to his classroom, and promptly pisses his pants. His teacher, ever prepared to be a castrating hag, tells him he's disgusting, and makes him go back to bathroom to clean up. He complies, instead of heading for the hills and perhaps deciding that a life of solitude in a cave is best for him. He finds the janitor's body and head, separate of one another, and assumes the monster has killed the janitor. We the audience know that the head is the mask! THE JANITOR IS THE MONSTER! Hope I didn't ruin a seventeen year old movie for ya.

The janitor spares Danny, who is a good boy, and instead eats Miss Titmarsh, who I'm pretty sure I had for English in seventh grade, as well as Rudie, and Rudie's two toadies. One of the toadies is played by Jeremy Miller, who was Ben Seaver on Growing Pains; this becomes pertinent in the second segment.

Danny has had enough, and walks away from the school (after trapping the bullies in the bathroom), shaking his head. The poor kid's had a rough day. An asshole and his two boot lickers shredded his drawing and then strung him up with a firehouse, he peed his pants, and now he's an accessory to murder. I think he needs a glass of Qwik and some Ninja Turtle time. Clu Gulugar pops up here in a cameo as the principle, surveying the ruin of what was once the boys bathroom. And a teacher. And some kids. It was aces.

We then learn, from Mike, that Mr. Jenkins, the janitor, was never caught, and he moves from school to school, killing rotten kids. I would have LOVED Mr. Jenkins when I was in elementary school. But it's cool; I'm sure that all of my tormentors are either crack whores or their pimps now. Life is good.

Our next segment is told by the cousins to Mike, about one Gordy Belcher, which might just be the coolest damn name ever. Gordy is played by Micheal Bower, also known as Donkey Lips on Salute Your Shorts, a show I wasted faaar too many of my teen years watching.

Gordy is a strange boy; he's antagonistic and sullen, and appears to be feuding with old Farmer Spivy, who is constantly running Gordy off of his property. Gordy steals the farmer's secret, special manure to attract and catch flies, which he then torments horribly. This is the part that I found off-putting. Don't get me wrong; I hate flies and squish the little fuckers with glee. But the wings were clearly being torn off of living flies for the sake of this movie, and I think that's more than a bit much. Either kill 'em outright, or leave 'em the hell alone. I don't know how they didn't get grief from the Humane Society over this, but I did notice that the usual "no animals were harmed" schpiel was absent from the closing credits.

Gordy then gasses his little captives, using nail polish remover, and glues them into bizarre dioramas, all whilst sitting, alone, in his basement. I see a burgeoning serial killer on the horizon, folks.

I have no idea if you're supposed to identify with Gordy's isolation or not; all I noticed is that he's effing weird. He puts fly wings in the raisin container in the kitchen, pretends to wash his hands after handling flies AND harsh chemicals, and even bakes dead flies into cookies that he gets his classmate to eat! The hell?! Who does this?! My personal revenge schemes tend to be more direct, I guess. Punch 'em and you're done.

Gordy then has a nice little trip out that night, having a nightmare about farmer Spivy and the flies ganging up on him. This featured a really grotty scene with maggots in his inhaler. That one hit a little close to home. It also had a bizarre bit with Mike and Carol Seaver, again from Growing Pains, and played by Kirk Cameron and Tracy Gold. I assumed initially it was just a clip from an actual episode, but then it's revealed that Mike Seaver is squishing flies.. FOR GORDY BELCHER!

This culminates with farmer Spivy deciding to make amends, and giving Gordy a "special" batch of his secret manure. What is so secret about poop I have no idea, but I'm not a farmer, so there you go. Gordy gets home in time to get grounded by his mom for the cookie stunt, and he is horrified to discover that she has thrown out all of his fly.. art. But she missed a strip of fly paper, and he dumps them in the special manure, and goes to bed.

He wakes to flies SO HUGE that they appear to be short people in silly costumes! THE HORROR! Gordy's parents, which consist of his dishrag of a mother and dickhead of a father, hear a crash and rush upstairs to find their son, sans arms. The flies are each holding one of his severed arms, a tribute to all of the flies whose wings Gordy has torn off. The fact that we could clearly see the actor's arms tucking into his jammie top is NOT IMPORTANT.

We end the scene with a later shot of Gordy, who miraculously survived both blood loss and shock. He is now laying out on a hammock in the yard, with two prosthetic arms that terminate in hooks. He swats uncomfortably at a fly on his face, end scene. How they managed to resist a bout of "and the bloody hook was on the door" is beyond me. I also have no idea how farmer Spivy knew about Gordy's fly lust, or how he and the flies cooked up this plot, but who cares! Fly people! FLY PEOPLE!

The movie then closes out on the cousins each casting doubts on the other's story, and Mike's father comes out to check on the boys. It is then revealed that Uncle Frank is...

MR. JENKINS! THE JANITOR! NOOOOOOOOOOO!

Credits.

This movie was actually a lot of fun; it held my attention, which was more than I expected. The acting from Sean Astin and James Karen was great, and the stories are suitably weird and funny. I'd give it a recommend, personally. It's also hilariously low budget; watch for the "fireflies" that are clearly Christmas lights in a jar. I love stuff like that.

I also have to really commend the sets; actual schools were used, and in the case of the first story, I was feeling some serious nostalgia. Borax hand soap in the dispensers that you pushed the long metal tab up into, old desks with the seats attached and the desktop flipping up to store books, etc. Ahh.. I really hated elementary school.

It's a silly, fun movie, and don't let the fact that Sean Astin looks like a pedo in the cover art (as seen above) dissuade you.

Also, the tent flap the monster is pulling open in that picture? Totally looks like a labia to me.

A Webcomic Reccomendation

Hey all!

I hope those of you who celebrate it are having a nice holiday time, regardless of the name of your festivities, and that those of you who don't celebrate are having a nice winter.

I got my tree today, and currently it has lights, the star, one ornament, and very small black cat who is convinced I have built him a fort.

Apropos of nothing, I have arbitrarily decided to use that above as a segue. I have a web comic to recommend, a really great, weird one. Has anyone here read Scary Go Round, by John Allison? If you're curious the link is in the side bar, and if you're really lazy, there's a link here: Scary Go Round.

John hails from England, so put on your humour caps. The strip feels British, as pretentious as that sounds, but what is so fun about this strip is that it is frequently weird, and nonsensical (especially if Shelley is involved). It also uses some dirty words, so Cins shall not be allowed to read as she is delicate and prone to fits of the vapors.

There is no really concrete story; there is a core groups of friends who frequently engage in some serious shenanigans; everything from clashes with one toothed witches who live in caves to being held captive on a tropical isle by villains who are too cartoony for Bond. Zombification occurs at one point, and little green gnomes have been known to get cheeky; a lot of people die, and it's usually hilariously. The real moral of this strip, if one can be plucked from the nebulous world this group of friends inhabit, is don't fucking live in Little Tackleford, not if you want to continue to breathe.

This strange little tale evolved (vastly) from the writer's previous strip, which I think was originally called Dobbins? Originally it was something about a group of friends who worked at a newspaper, but John Allison changed the story hugely, and just kept the characters. It's not a linear comic at all, and I love it all the more for it! Eventually I want to get some of his book collections, and definitely a few of the awesome t-shirts he's designed!

It's funny, weird, frequently gory, and all around great! Please give it a look, and give John your love-- people with awesome vision and talent need encouragement!