Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #9 Ready or Not (2019)

On the not-so-much-a-classic side, here's Ready or Not, a horror/comedy from 2019 starring Samara Weaving, Adam Brody and Andie McDowell.  I was going to watch The Empty Man, recommended to me by a work friend, but it's 2+ hours which is not the best idea for midweek watching.  I settled on this 1.5 hour flick instead.

Weaving plays Grace, getting married to Alex.  Alex's family is very rich and snobby, having made their money as the creators and purveyors of board games.  And if you think that sounds a little suspicious, you are not wrong.  Grace doesn't care (at first) because she grew up in foster care and is so excited about being part of a real family.  In the evening after the wedding at the family estate, after all the guests have gone home, the family - Grace, Alex, his brother David (Brody) and his wife, his parents, his aunt, his sister and her husband and two young sons - gather for the family tradition: whenever a new member joins the family, they all play a game together, which is selected by the newbie by drawing a card out of a box.  Usually it's something like Old Maid or Parcheesi.  Poor Grace draws "Hide and Seek" whereby she hides while all the rest of them (except for Alex, who tries to help her escape and gets knocked out for his trouble) hunt her down with weapons, intending to sacrifice her before dawn to ensure their continued prosperity.

And that's about it for story.  Grace runs and hides and fights back.  She gets pretty well effed up in the process but she gives as good as she gets.  Ready or Not is entertaining but lightweight - although hilariously, sloppily bloody at the end and I did enjoy Grace's arc throughout the movie.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #8 Puppetmaster (1989)

Look at me, working my way through all these classics.  And 1989's Puppetmaster (also seen as Puppet Master) is a classic, campy start to a series that has over ten movies (really?!???).  I might check out II but I'm not going to venture too deep into the series because (1) it's ridiculous and (2) I suspect (but do not know for sure) that the newer movies have moved away practical effects.  Since the puppets are the best part, a switch to CGI will be a let-down.

We start in 1939 with a ghastly little puppet POV, running through the huge Bodega Bay Hotel (with the actual Mission Inn in Riverside, California, handling some of the location shots).  The puppet - skull-faced with a hook and an a wicked knife - makes its way to Andre Rulon's room.  Rulon, played by the iconic William Hickey, is the Puppetmaster, who can imbue inanimate objects - like puppets - with life due to some "Egyptian magic."  He tucks his living puppets away safely, hiding them in the walls of hotel, then offs himself just as two men with guns break into his room.  Dunno if those two guys were bad guys, or if Rulon himself was the bad guy.

In "present times" a/k/a 1989, four psychic friends (or, "friends") gather at the hotel.  They've all had disturbing visions compelling them to rejoin their now-dead fifth, Neil.  Alex is a professor at Yale who gets dreams of possible futures; Dana is a "white witch" and carnival huckster to make some cash; and Frank and Carissa are "researchers," most mostly seem interested in the intersection of s3x and psychic ability.  As it turns out, dead Neil found and released the animated puppets and the gang, plus Neil's nubile young wife, must fight for their lives.  SPOILER FOR OLD MOVIE: most of them don't make it.

As I mentioned above, the practical puppets are terrific, mostly filmed in stop-motion.  There's the ghastly skull guy, a pinheaded-strongman, "Drillhead," one whose face spins and, my personal favorite, a pretty girl puppet who vomits murderous leeches.  She's AWESOME.  Puppetmaster does seem a little short on story, and coherence, if I'm honest.  But I can totally see how it has claimed a cult following.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #7 Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)

 I watched the original Sleepaway Camp all the way back in 2008, and even though the snippet I wrote about it is rather flippant, I seem a bit nostalgic for it.  So when I saw Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers pop up on my Prime watchlist, well, why wouldn't I?  I needed a palate cleanser after that awful Creepshow III.  I'm not sure SCII:UC is exactly what I was looking for, but it was certainly better than that.

The original SC was about Camp Arawak and how everyone got murdered by camper named Angela.  This sequel opens with campers at a different camp, sitting around the campfire telling ghost stories.  Someone tells the "true" story of what happened at Camp Arawak but can't remember the killer's name; they say that they heard that she got cured and released from the mental hospital she'd been put in.  At this point, a female counselor marches up to the campfire and demands that the girl camper come back to the bunk with her.  On the way back, the counselor whacks the camper over the head with a log and cuts out her tongue for telling nasty stories.  This counselor's name?  Angela.  As in, the Angela.  With that out of the way, Angela goes on quite the killing spree, ending up with at least nineteen confirmed kills by movie's end.

This flick wasn't terrible, but it wasn't particularly good either.  The kills were inventive but there was absolutely no suspense or tension since we see, plain as day, who the killer is within the first three minutes of movie.  I suppose if you hadn't seen the first Sleepaway Camp, it might have been a little surprising to find out who Counselor Angela is.  But come on - who is seeing this second one who didn't see the first one?  

It's a very 80s movie, with the hair and the high-waisted shorts and the bare boobs and the completely shitty hair band soundtrack and everyone being WAY too old to be at summer camp.  One thing I did find interesting: in the SCII:UC universe, the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies exist, because two campers dress up as Freddy and Jason to try to scare Angela.  For whatever that's worth.  Oh!  And the one good girl camper who Angela likes, Molly, is played by Renee Estevez who is (1) Emilio Estevez's sister and (2) also plays Betty Finn in one of my all-time favorite movies, Heathers.

Fifteenth Annual FMSScarelicious October Movie Series: #6 Creepshow III (2007)

 I will literally never learn.  I love horror anthologies and yet they are so rarely much good.  I know this, and I should have known better than to watch Creepshow III.  And yet.  For clarity's sake, this is "horror-comedy" but it's not that funny and other than some light gore, isn't that horror-y either.  It does work really hard to connect all the stories, so points for that, I guess. COMPLETE SPOILERS AHEAD so you don't actually have to watch this yourself.

"Alice" is the first, very short installment.  Alice is a dissatisfied and mean teen who hates her suburban neighborhood.  When her police detective (this will be important later) dad gets a new universal remote, Alice somehow keeps getting transported to alt-realities and when she does manage to get back to her own, she is horribly mutated.  A neighbor, Professor Dayton (this will be important later), is the culprit, inventing the device.  Alice finally turns into a white rabbit (literary allusion!) and the professor scoops her up and takes her home.

In "The Radio," security guard Jerry, who lives on a super-sketchy block in an apartment building occupied by a lot of hookers, buys a radio from a homeless dude.  He starts hearing voices on the radio - more specifically, one voice - who tells him how to rob the pimp, kill people who get in his way, and escape with the money.  The police detective investigating the recent murders is Alice's police detective dad.

"Call Girl" is about one of the hookers in Jerry's building, Rachel, who is also very stabby with her customers.  Like, serial-killery.  She gets called out to the suburbs, just down the street from Alice's house and the professor's house, and flirts with a couple of doofuses who ogle her.  When she goes in the house, she doesn't notice that the guy she's there for has already killed the actual family who lives there.  When she kills him, it doesn't take because he's some kind of toothy monster.  It doesn't make a lot of sense.  She doesn't survive the encounter.

In "The Professor's Wife," the two doofuses who ogled Rachel have been invited to Prof. Dayton's house.  They think he's going to show them the invention he's been working on for so many years but he really just wants them to meet his bride-to-be.  They think she's the invention - a robot - and try to dismantle her.  This vignette is probably the closest to "funny" that we get.

The last chapter, "Haunted Dog," is about this asshole doctor doing community service.  He ends up accidentally killing a homeless guy, who chokes on the hot dog the doc gave him, and the guy's ghost follows him.  The doc spends a lot of time at a party peopled by toothy-monster guy from "Call Girl" but that just seems super-random.  Anyway, the doc ends up getting scared to death because this movie is SO DUMB.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #5 Maximum Overdrive (1986)

 I didn't go watch the first Prom Night, nor did I watch Vampire Circus and I really wish I had done either of those because what I did watch was Maximum Overdrive.  I've actually been interested in watching this for some time because it's based on a Stephen King short story, "Trucks," which is pretty good.  What I didn't know about Maximum Overdrive is that King adapted the screenplan and directed the movie himself.  What I also didn't know is how much it sucks.  King has apparently "disowned" the movie (however one does that) and has referred to it as "the moron movie" - and after the experience he vowed to never direct again.

The story is that after a weird comet passes by Earth, all the machines go rogue.  This is actually kind of fun: drawbridges go up by themselves; electric knives attack cooks, soda machines fire soda cans at little leaguers, ATMs flash curse words on their screens, lawnmowers - well, you can imagine.  And all the trucks - semis, dumptrucks, steamrollers - are particularly vicious ... but for some reason, passenger cars seem to be unaffected, which seems to be a plot hole.  A bunch of people end up trapped at a truck stop where Emilio Estevez is a short order cook.  There's surviving that needs to be done; they have to pump more gas for the trucks when ordered to do so (via Morse code); some of them manage to escape.  Spoiler.  

The acting is terrible.  The dialogue is terrible.  There's no tension or sense of momentum to the story although it's maybe kind of menacing when the focus is on the machines.  I really expected better from Emilio Estevez, as this flick came out after The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire.  Seriously, the best part of MO is the music, which is all AC/DC, Stephen King's favorite band.  Do yourself a favor and find something else to watch.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #4 Dead and Buried (1981)

 I have decided to let Prime pick my movies from now on: Dead and Buried is what automatically started playing after I finished The Prowler, and I'm perfectly happy with it.  This 1981 sort-of zombie flick stars James Farentino (overacting his little heart out), has tiny roles for Barry Corbin and Robert Englund, and features Stan Winston make-up effects.  Woohoo!

The opening scene is, frankly, the best part of DaB.  An photographer from out of town is taking photographs on the Potter's Bluff beach when a very attractive young local lady starts chatting him up.  He gets duped and then murdered quite horrifically by a mob of townsfolk, all of whom unabashedly take photos while it's happened.  Then they set it up to look like a car accident - and Sheriff Dan (Farentino) , investigating the accident, doesn't seem to be in on it.  A few days later, the photographer's doppelganger is working at the local gas station.  Also, the townspeople manage to snuff out a few more transient types: a drunken sailor and a family of three who gets lost - and their doppelgangers also show up a few days after the fact.

This is a weird little movie, sometimes unsettling, sometimes funny.  It's shot pretty dark and murky, so it's difficult to see what's going on sometimes, as people walk through dark buildings.  There is actually quite a lot of people walking slowly through dark buildings.  There isn't much story but there is a twist ending that I didn't see coming and thus appreciated.  And the Stan Winston make-up effects are AMAZING, as expected.

Dead and Buried was definitely a worthwhile excursion.  Prime wants to queue up Prom Night next - I've already seen Prom Night II ... should I watch the OG now?

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #3 The Prowler (1981)

Okay.  This was good fun, for the most part.  We open in 1945, as the boys have returned home from WWII and there's a graduation dance at a local girls' college.  One of the coeds, Rosemary, wrote her GI a "Dear John" letter and is at the dance with her new fella, a rich townie.  They sneak away from the dance to go neck at a gazebo - where they get pitchforked (not a euphemism) by a masked and uniformed soldier.  In the "present day" (1981), the college is gearing up for its first graduation dance since that ill-fated 1945 one; local opposition had shut down the festivities in the wake of the murders.  While these coeds primp and giggle and feather their hair, getting ready for the dance, an unknown individual also gets ready - in WWII combat gear.

Our heroine is Pam, a good girl who doesn't drink or have sex with her boyfriend(?), Deputy Mark - and his Cillian Murphy-esque cheekbones - who has been left in charge of the town while the sheriff goes on his annual fishing trip.  That's suspicious.  So who will "the prowler" be: the absentee sheriff, the twitchy 40 year old stockboy at the town's general store, the wheelchair-bound millionaire ...?  The dance gets under way and so do the murders.  It is up to Pam and Mark to survive the night.

The Prowler doesn't have a super high body count for an [early] 80s slasher: I counted seven victims.  The kills are really well-done practical effects - the camera does not shy away as the pitchfork and bayonet do their thing.  The pacing could have been improved: it's like they didn't have enough story to fill their ninety minutes so there's quite a lot of Pam and Mark (and his cheekbones) wandering around in dark hallways.  I give this one a big thumbs-up, though - and there's even an exploding head, which is always a good time.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #2 Let the Wrong One In

 For our second movie, I present to you ... Giles!  As a vampire slayer!  Not quite, but Let the Wrong One In, an Irish vampire horror-comedy does feature Anthony Stewart Head (billed as Anthony Head) as a vampire hunter who is rather put upon by the goings-on around him.  And he gets cracked on the noggin a lot.  So - basically Giles.

Dublin has a growing vampire problem, due to a bacholette trip to Transylvania gone wrong.  When Matt learns that his older brother has been turned, he has to decide whether to help him or slay him.  Tony Head plays a railway enthusiast whose fiancee is the now-vampire who is causing all the problems.  That is really all there is to say about this little movie plot-wise.  It ain't complicated.

LtWOI is pretty cute actually.  It isn't at all scary but the practical effects are top-notch and very gory.  There are buckets of blood splashing all over.  There's even a training montage but, let's face it, Matt is no Buffy.  I do wish I'd turned the subtitles on as the Irish accents are really thick, and I'm usually pretty good at accents.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #1 Bodies, Bodies, Bodies

 Wecome back to the Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series, wherein I resurrect this mostly-dead blog to share as many horror movies as I can manage to watch in the month.  I must confess that ever since Netflix did away with its DVD program (RIP), I'm finding it more difficult to find good horror movies that I haven't yet seen.  I've seen a lot and have a preference for monsters/science fiction/80s slashers/practical effects; I don't like torture porn or heavy CGI; and I have a low threshhold for jump scares so haunted houses are tough for me.  As far as my subscriptions go, Netflix and Hulu don't have much to my taste anymore (that I haven't already seen).  Prime has some decent, older stuff.  I'm wondering about doing a month-long Shudder subscription?  I need more movies!

At any rate, the first one of October 2024 is Bodies, Bodies, Bodies.  It's a 2022 horror-comedy about a group of wealthy 20-somethings riding out a hurricane at one of their parents' mansions.  There are past relationships and new relationships in the mix, making for some awkward moments.  When they start playing the murder mystery game of the movie's title, tensions ramp up as the storm kicks into gear.  And then the host's body - real, dead body - is found.  The hurricane knocks out the power, their phones and the road back to town.  And then the bodies really start piling up, although the only mystery is the first one.

It's not super scary but has a few jump scares.  There's a nice little twist at the end.  Parts of BBB are really funny and timely, with the characters' attitudes, rationalizations and complete attachment to their phones, including an eyeball gag that is great.  One character thinks she's poor even though both her parents are college professors: "It's a state school, you guys."  Also, total shout out to Utah State!  [Note: the author of this blog lives in Utah, btw.]  I didn't recognize any of the actors except Pete Davidson and Lee Pace but viewers younger than I might have more mileage.

Oh hello

 Mr. Mouse, the dog and I recently had a week off.  We went to the desert, did desert-y things like hiking, mountain-biking, road cycling and drinking.  I also brought thirteen library books with me.  I didn't read all of them - one I forgot I'd read already, one I got about fifty pages into before deciding I wasn't into it - but I did read a bunch:

• The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill - A quick read, decent murder mystery set in Boston, abrupt ending
• The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey - Science fiction-tinged (clones) domestic thriller
• Normal People by Sally Rooney - An Irish modern relationship novel about a young couple, high school through college (meh) (and I did not know it was a Hulu series)
• Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo - High fantasy series, recent Netflix acquisition that now I'm going to have to go back to because I liked this book quite a bit
• Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - horror-ish about 1990s Mexico City and its film industry, plus sorcerors
• The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill - Decent British murder mystery (I do love a good British murder mystery) although it seems weird that it's the start of the "Simon Serailler series" when Simon himself plays a very small role - maybe he gets more to do in subsequent books?
• How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny - Continuing Canadian murder mystery series starring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and crew
• The Long Way Home by Louise Penny - The next in the Chief Inspector Gamache series, which is just fanastic if you like murder mysteries (great characters, solid mysteries, makes me want to move to a small village in the Quebec woods)