#252 -- 13 Days of Creepmas Day 6: Wind Chill (2007)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Gregory Jacobs

This is another one that really doesn't have anything to do with Christmas. But when I googled "Christmas horror movies," this one was on everyone's list...So I added it to mine. I learned that, not only does it not have anything to do with Christmas, but it doesn't really have anything to do with horror either. Oh, except for the bad ghosts. My bad.

It's not a bad movie in terms of technicalities. It certainly looks good; it just doesn't play out very well. The concept is not new to...well, anyone, really. So the fact that it has absolutely nothing new to offer (which can still be done with scenarios we've seen over and over) is what makes it fail.

It's about a girl and a guy (that's actually what they're credited as; no names) who decide to drive home together for their Christmas break from college. Girl lives in Delaware, and Guy says he does too, but he ends up just being a stalker. Whoops. I spoiled the whole movie. Oh well. Anyways, since Guy doesn't know a damn thing about Delaware, including how to get there, he gets lost. He, for whatever reason (probably because it was the only way the writers could figure out to get them stranded), he decides to take a scenic route. As horror movie enthusiasts, we know automatically that this isn't a good idea. Nevermind the fact that no one even thought to plow this road to get rid of the snow, meaning it's probably not used very often. Which also means--shocker!--no one will drive by to see Girl and Guy when they're run off the road, trapped in their car, and freezing to death. Except for the ghosts of an evil cop, the people he murdered, and the priests that let him die. This is brilliant writing, don't you think?

Even though Guy is a stalker, Girl starts to have feelings for him. Their relationship really could have turned into something, which was my only real hope for the movie. But sadly, that just doesn't happen. There is an interesting bit of foreshadowing, though it leads absolutely nowhere.

The Good

The movie is actually filmed pretty well, showing that it had at least somewhat of a budget. It looked good. But there was really nothing good about the

story itself. Only the shadow of what could have been a great movie.

The Bad

The ghosts were boring. They weren't scary at all; besides the one who coughed up some sort of snake or something. But I'm sure that was just gross, not scary. The relationship between Girl and Guy could have been okay, if he had not been a stalker. He asked around campus to find out where she was from; he read her text messages to find out that she needed a ride home; then he pretended that he was also from Delaware so that she'd agree to ride with him. And she grew to have feelings for this guy? They were pretty smart, though, so I guess that...no, it doesn't make up for it. The pacing was slow. There were no scares. There was no resolution, or at least none that anyone would care about. The characters were impossible to have any real feelings for, and it was just a dull movie.

Okay, I'm going to do something I've been wanting to do for some time now; I've just never really seen a good chance to do so. But I think it's perfect here.

What I think should have happened

Guy shouldn't have been a stalker. They should have made him out to be an all-round good guy who actually was heading in the same direction as Girl. That way, maybe they could have maybe grew into a healthy relationship. And then, when he died (sorry for the spoiler...), it would have actually meant something.

The ghosts definitely should have been scarier. I mean, it's considered a horror movie, right? Well, scare me, dammit! They should have actually been angry and mean. They surely shouldn't have run into the woods anytime they were spotted.

They had a conversation during their drive about the difference between reincarnation and eternal reccurence. The difference is: reincarnation means coming back as a different person, species, etc. EC is returning to live the same life over and over. I think they should have expanded on this idea, and made what felt like foreshadowing into actual foreshadowing. We could have learned at the end that Girl and Guy were simply re-living something they'd already been through. Or Girl could have returned to the beginning of the movie to re-live the scenario. Something that would have made the whole thing worthwhile.

They also found a newspaper article about a couple that was murdered back in the 50s. This should have gone hand in hand with the eternal recurrence thing. Girl and Guy were that couple, re-living 50 years worth of pain and suffering. Not just learning about a whole bunch of accidents that happened on a snow-covered road that hardly anyone used. Big whoop. Shit happens all the time.

So, what do you guys think? Which one sounds like a better movie?

Anyways, even though I'm bashing the hell out of it, it's not the worst movie I've ever seen. It's not even the worst of my Creepmas movies. But I still feel like it could have been a whole hell of a lot better, and that's just downright disappointing. I cannot stand seeing a movie with so much potential that fails to live up to what it could have been.

Day six of Creepmas--meh. It was okay.

#245 -- Dark Wolf (2003)

Rating: 2.5 / 5
Director: Richard Friedman

I didn't really know what to expect from this movie going into it. On the surface (before you watch it, that is) it seems pretty cool. It features my favorite bad guy, Kane Hodder, and it was directed by the same guy who directed the Friday the 13th TV series. It claims to be a sexy and terrifying movie about a werewolf looking for a mate. So it definitely sounds promising. But does it deliver? No, not really.

The story is interesting enough, I guess, but it wasn't executed in a way that made it fun to watch. So, let's take a look at the plot. Apparently there are two different kinds of werewolves, pure bred and hybrid. I couldn't really tell the difference other than that the supposed hybrid looked like a full-on wolf, while the so-called pure blood looked like a half human/half wolf (which seems backwards, if you ask me.) So, the hybrid wolf, or the "dark wolf" needed a mate so that he could get rid of the pure blood race altogether, and then eventually the humans as well. Or something like that. From what I could gather, there was only one purebred left, and that was a cute little waitress named Josie. She's informed by a police officer (who also doubles as a werewolf hunter) that the dark wolf is hunting her, and he makes it his job to protect her (well, actually, her old protector getting killed made it his job). He also tells her that anyone she touches will be hunted down and killed, because the dark wolf will follow her scent. So there's plenty of people getting killed in bloody ways.

I think the only thing people will find appealing about the movie is the nudity. It starts off with boob shots, and there's even a million-year long scene where two naked chicks in body paint make out with each other. I guess that's why it calls itself sexy. And I'm pretty sure that, when the dark wolf finally found Josie, he started humping her. So if you're into wolf on girl

action, then you might like that bit too. But other than that, it's a poorly made movie. Like I said, the story was okay. The gore was pretty decent as well, though too much of the actual killing was hidden, or the kills they showed just lacked the necessary oompf. The werewolf makeup looked cheesy. So cheesy, in fact, that they didn't even want us to see that much of it. It was mostly just close-up shots of its eyes. But I can deal with a cheesy, rubber costume. What got me were the transformation scenes. They were 100% animated, and it looked like it belonged in a bad video game.

So, if you must, watch this movie for the same reason I did--Kane Hodder, and he was great of course. All of the actors actually did a great job with what they had to work with. They weren't the problem. Blame it on bad CGI and dullness.

#233 -- Parents (1989)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Bob Balaban

So, apparently this movie is considered a cult classic, and a lot of people really like it. I am not one of those people. When I found it on Netflix, I thought it would be pretty cool. It was set in the '50s, a decade I've always been particularly fond of. I love the way it's portrayed at least (because I personally don't know if things were really like that). I will say that the movie portrays the decade beautifully. The filming was great and the acting, besides one in my opinion, was wonderful. It was very colorful and aesthetically pleasing; but the problem was that it was extremely boring.

It's about a ten year old boy named Michael. He just moved to a new town (I'm assuming so that his parents could escape suspicion). He made a new little girlfriend who seemed way to sexual for her age. He suspected that his parents were cannibals. I'm  not sure what caused his suspicion, because they never did anything to raise such a suspicion, except for the fact that they ate a lot of meat. But who cares? Some people really love meat. Michael was a boring kid, and he never did much of anything. He was just kind of...there. It might have been better if he'd at least been interesting.

When I paused the movie for a bathroom break, it was at the one-hour mark, and I realized that absolutely nothing had happened for a whole hour. So we followed a boring kid and his seemingly normal parents for an hour while they did nothing. We pretty much watched his parents eat dinner, while Michael refused to do so. He did have a couple of somewhat creepy nightmares, but it wasn't enough to make up for being horrible. Michael drew some awful pictures in school, which got him sent to the school counselor. He told her of his suspicions, and she followed him to his house, where she founds some dead bodies in the basement. Once his parents found out that Michael knew their secret, they tried to kill him. He ended up living with his grandparents, who may or may not have been cannibals as well.

So, nothing happened until there was about twenty minutes left of the movie. I remember wishing that it would just hurry up and end already, and that's never a good sign. It's not good when a movie feels like a chore to watch. So I loved the scenery and the way the movie was filmed, but the movie itself was tiring and hard to watch. It was impossible for me to enjoy.

This is a short review, because there's not much to say about a movie where nothing happens. But like I said, some people really enjoy this movie; maybe you will too. Personally, I hated it. They took an interesting story and dragged it out so much that it became boring and painful. Shame.

#231 -- Don't Look in the Cellar (2008)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Dennis Devine

Ugh, there are so many things wrong with this movie. I'd been putting off on watching it, because from the synopsis, it just didn't seem like something I'd be into. I'm not really sure why, because I'm all for abandoned asylums; but the way it was described made it seem like it would be stupid. I was not wrong.

It was actually a pretty good premise. A bunch of college kids, trying to earn some extra credit for their history class, go to an abandoned asylum to learn the truth of its past. It's your typical group of horror movie folks: the lesbians, the jerk, the nice guy, the nice girl, the whore, the shy girl, and the older sister. Once they get to asylum, people start dying in extremely boring ways. It turns out, a couple of the inmates hid, so that they weren't caught and shipped away. One of them was just some guy who liked to warn people to--shock!--not go into the cellar. And then there was Smiley, the horrendous serial killer. I don't mean horrendous as in scary; I mean he was just plain awful. He wore a burlap sack on his head, and it had a smiley face painted in blood. That could have been pretty creepy, but it just wasn't.

Okay, let's talk about where the movie goes wrong. First of all, the asylum was shut down ten years before the kids showed up. If it happened only ten years before, there's no way they'd be learning about it in a college history class. No way. It all happened on Halloween, and they decided to turn it into a research/Halloween party. I guess they were trying to make us think, "Hey, it's a Halloween party, but they're learning!" They wanted to be different. But it was just stupid, in my opinion. One of the girls' mom had access to the keys into the place, but get this. The doors locked from both the inside and outside, and each lock needed a different key. Sounds strange to me. But that was so that, when she tried to use her key to get out, it didn't work. The so-called "asylum" was obviously just someone's house. I didn't believe for one second that it was actually an asylum. Their "school" also looked like someone's house. I understand it was low-budget, and they weren't able to rent the proper buildings and what-not, but all made the movie so unrealistic.

There was a story about a nurse getting raped by crazy people and giving birth to Smiley, only for him to kill her for leaving him alone there. Then there were a couple of girls who supposedly let all the crazies out, but it was actually Smiley. And two of the girls we're following are very closely connected to him, one of which has a lot in common with him. It's actually an okay story, but the execution was absolutely horrible. The kills were unimaginative and boring; the killer himself was boring. The characters were pretty likable at first, but they became boring after a while too. I will say that the acting was actually pretty good, and I think the best of the bunch was Laura Artolachipi, who played the foreign lesbian girl. She had more emotion and character than all the rest of them combined, and I believe she was wonderful. There was a scene when she was talking to Melissa, the really shy and awkward girl. She was telling her that, when she first moved to the country, she had trouble fitting in, and she thought that her chances of being happy were hopeless. But she wanted Melissa to know that she did find happiness, and that it was possible for Melissa as well. I thought it was beautiful, and she did a good job. I really liked her from then on, but of course...the ones I like never make it.

Overall, I think it was a good idea, but its low budget hindered it, unfortunately. I have nothing against low budget movies, as all of you know. But I've seen a lot of really wonderful low-budget movies, and it's sad, because I know that this one could have been so much better.

And I've got to warn you about the trailer of the movie. It looks pretty interesting, but don't believe it. It shows scenes of women being tied and bound, and has creepy shots of a cellar, but none of that really happens. Sure, there's a cellar, but it doesn't look as good as it does in the trailer. And there are no women being bound and killed; they're just killed quickly. So, if you've seen the trailer and are interested...you have been warned.

#227 -- American Horror House (2012)

Rating: 2.5 / 5
Director: Darin Scott

Ah, another Syfy original movie. I really wasn't expecting much, and I honestly didn't want to watch it. But it was recorded on my DVR, and I really didn't feel like getting a DVD or searching through Netflix or On Demand. So, American Horror House it was. It's a Syfy original, so I knew it wasn't going to be great. But I was surprised to find that, as far as Syfy originals go, it was actually pretty good. That being said, I still didn't love it.

It's about a sorority house where some murders happened a long time ago. A crazy little girl murdered her parents, after cooking the cat for dinner. These days, the sorority mother is crazy and kills everyone in the house, and it's haunted by everyone who has been murdered there. What I liked about this was that the kills were actually pretty cool. There was a girl chopped into tiny little pieces by some violin strings. A girl got saw-blades to her face, and another was stabbed in the eye with a beer bottle. The kills weren't problem.

I liked the story to begin with. We saw the crazy little girl at the beginning, and she was singing Itsy Bitsy Spider sitting in front of her parents' bloody corpses. She was pretty creepy, and her short role was actually the best, in my opinion. Hell week for the sorority pledges happened around Halloween, of course, so everyone thought that everything happening was either a Halloween prank or part of initiation. The house mother, you'll be super surprised to discover, wasn't who she said she was, and she wasn't just a plain 'ol killer. Shocker! It was predictable, but that wasn't the problem either. I can forgive it for that. The problem was that it got boring. I wanted to like it, I really did. But after a while, what I liked about it in the beginning began to get redundant. Sure, there are ghosts. Yeah, they're killing people. Get on with it. It really didn't do much more than that. The surprise ending wasn't surprising at all, and it took too long for any real story line to come along.

Besides all the bad stuff, I will still say that this was pretty good for what it was. I've seen a couple of other Syfy originals, and they're all pretty bad. This one wasn't terrible, but it could have used more of a background story, or at least they could have gotten to it a bit quicker. Morgan Fairchild was pretty good as the killer sorority mother, but she wasn't all that creepy to me. It seemed like she tried to be scary, but it really didn't work. The creepiest moments were the few scenes of her younger self singing Itsy Bitsy Spider.

Overall, it was okay. The last Syfy original movie I watched was Haunted High, and this one was much, much better. It wasn't great; but considering where it came from, I was surprised at how not-terrible it was. Here's what you can expect: good kills, hot girls in bikinis, ghosts that aren't scary, and a bad-ass girl that you can really root for. Other than that, you won't get very much out of it.

#220 -- Nine Lives (2002)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Rodrigo Garcia

I've known about this movie for a long time, but I was never interested in seeing it. I'm not sure why, but it just didn't seem like something I'd enjoy. Now that I have seen it, I definitely understand. It's not a bad story, that part is actually pretty good, the problem was...Well, I'm not really sure what the problem was; I just didn't dig it. I think it was the fact that there was only one character I gave a shit about, and he ended up annoying me in the end anyway. But honestly, it was just kind of boring.

It was about a group of friends who go to a nice, big house in Scotland for a birthday party. One of them found an old book, telling the story of the man who used to own the house. His name was Murray, I think, and he was involved in a war between Scotland and Europe. Europe wanted to steal Scotland's land, or something. During the war, Murray was tortured, and he had his eyes cut out and fed to him. When the book was opened, his soul was unleashed. The guy who opened the book was possessed. His eyes turned black, and he tried to kill the guy that was in the room with him. That guy killed him, though, and then Murray possessed him. So, if someone killed whoever was currently possessed, then that person became possessed. It's an interesting idea, I'll give it that. It made things really hard on the characters. They didn't know who to trust. And when one of their friends tried to kill them, they knew that they'd become possessed afterwards. But they couldn't resist the urge to kill them. Kill or be killed, and let's face it, all of us would do the same thing.

In the end, they figured that, if they killed themselves before the person they killed died, the chain would be broken. Fucking genius. Why didn't anyone think of it sooner? Could've saved a couple of lives, dont'cha think?

The characters were completely forgettable. Notice that the only name I've stated is Murray. That's because I can't really remember the rest of them. I remember Laura, the main character, and Jo (played by Paris Hilton, who thankfully was the first to go). But the rest could be anything from Pedro to Ramma-lamma-ding-dong, for all I know. I do remember that the main character, Laura, got on my nerves. She elected herself leader of the group when people started dying. She bossed everyone around, and they had to do exactly what she said at all times. Personally, I would've taken her out just to shut her up. But anyways, when I can't remember the characters' names, that's a sign to me that the movie wasn't doing its job. I just didn't give a shit, honestly. I wasn't interested, even though the story was good, like I said. There wasn't anything about it scary or remotely creepy. Yeah, when they became possessed, their eyes turned black, but it wasn't anything amazing. The kills were boring, the characters were boring, and I couldn't even give it my full attention. It became background noise while I played the Sims on my Kindle. I was more interested in characters I created than the ones on the screen.

#218 -- Dark Fields (2009)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Douglas Schulze

Dark Fields is about a curse that haunts a farming community. It follows three different generations, and explains next to nothing. It is definitely an interesting premise, but I just didn't understand it. Maybe it's just me, but it didn't make any sense.

Each curse began when a farmer from the community dug up an old top hat, and the curse was ended when the top hat was buried again. I have no clue why the top hat was so special, who it belonged to, or why it was cursed. I do know who began the curse, though. It was an old shaman whose children were killed. So, each time the top hat is found, the people in the community got really sick. And the "illness" was hereditary, so even if someone was out of town, or moved away, they'd still get it. The story follows a college girl who got really nervous when her fingernails fell off and these weird black marks appeared on her skin. So she returned home for answers from her parents. Their answer to the problem was to dance in the rain. Water was the only cure for the illness, and they had ways to make sure that it wold rain when they needed it to.

Remember the shaman I mentioned? The one that lost his children? Well, his answer to that was to make other people kill their own children. So Cari's parents told her the only way to rid herself of the curse was to make it rain, and the only way to make it rain was to kill her little brother. They had already killed her other two brothers, but I guess it didn't rain enough. My question is this: what do a top hat, rain, and killing children have anything to do with each other? Was the shaman trying to get revenge on whoever killed his children? Because that was never fully explained. And if water was the only cure, why not take a fucking bath? I mean, isn't the exact same thing? Certain people would just pour water over their faces to get rid of the sickness, but at the same time they desperately needed that rain. It makes no sense.

Anyways, Cari refused to kill her brother, because she was, obviously, the smartest person in the entire town. Or she was just the only one who wasn't willing to sacrifice an innocent child to save herself. She did kill her father, as he was attempting to kill her brother, and then she and her brother went on the run. Since she couldn't get the job done, the town sent some crazy man after them to kill her brother. He was a zombie, or a vampire, or something. He was present in all three time-periods, and he liked to eat peoples' flesh. I don't know what the deal was with him. He was just a random zombie man in the middle of random stupidity. Oh, and I have another question.

If everyone knew that burying the top hat would end the curse, instead of killing all their children, why wouldn't they just bury the fucking top hat? Why go through all the trouble, all the pain, and all the murder when it could be easily avoided? Because the townspeople were stupid, and the writers were just as dumb. What the characters do makes no sense. If a simple girl like me can figure this shit out, people who've known about the curse since the 1800s should surely be able to learn. But no, they just don't. I have a problem with characters being completely stupid, because it makes the whole movie less realistic to me. Seriously, would any sane person kill their child rather than bury the top hat? I know I'd do anything I possibly could to make sure that my child wasn't hurt, and I'd sure as hell not hurt my child myself. So, if there was such a simple solution, I'd go for that. I think everyone would, except for these dumb shits. It's just not right.

This movie did have a couple of things going for it, but it doesn't make it any more enjoyable. One was David Carradine, who played one of the townspeople back in the 1800s. The effects were also pretty good. When the people were effected by the sickness, the changes looked pretty awesome. And that weird zombie guy looked pretty cool. But all of that was not enough to save it from its own stupidity. In the end, Cari buried the top hat and sent all the children away (because only adults got the illness). Everyone else died. The end, good riddance. I apologize for the spoiler, but you really should be thanking me for saving you from having to watch this mess.

#216 -- Killjoy (2000)

Rating: 2.5 / 5
Director: Craig Ross Jr.

Let me explain to you how I choose the movies I watch, because the fact that I even watched this movie last night is really strange to me. If I watch something on Netflix or On Demand, I sift through the titles for about an hour until I finally decide on a movie. But in my room, I have a stack of DVDs in those little white sleeves. If I watch one of those, I choose it randomly. I don't even look at it before I put it in the DVD player, so I have no idea what I'll be watching until the movie starts. When I reviewed Slip, I mention two horror movies that I found a little bit similar. Those two movies were Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood, and Killjoy. So I find it extremely weird that, for the past two days, I've randomly chosen those two movies. So weird, in fact, that I felt compelled to share it with everyone, even though I know that no one cares. It is a phenomenon that cannot be explained, much like Killjoy himself. Was I excited about it? No, not really. I saw this movie many years ago, and I didn't particularly like it then (even when I was younger and terrified of clowns). I guess you've got to have a certain sense of humor to enjoy this; and I just don't have it.

Killjoy is the story of a boy named Michael. He and his counterparts are supposedly in high school, though they apparently have no parents, and they can live alone with their boyfriends. They don't seem like high school students at all, but that's another story, I guess. Michael had a crush on Jada, a beautiful, sweet, young girl. But Jada was with a guy named Lorenzo, a gun-toting thug who got extremely jealous. Though it was obvious that Lorenzo did not respect Jada at all, he didn't want anyone else even speaking to her. Jada warned Michael; she said that if Lorenzo saw them talking, he would kill Michael. Michael, of course, didn't heed her warning, and instead asked her to their upcoming dance. At just the right moment, Lorenzo showed up. He was angry, and he and his two thug friends beat the stuffing out of Michael.

Michael went home and practiced some black magic. He called forth one of his dolls--a little clown he called Killjoy--to come to life. Nothing happened. Then Lorenzo and his gang tricked Michael outside the safety of his home, kidnapped him, and took him out to the woods. They held a gun to his head, yelled obscenities at him, and scared the daylights out of him. That, supposedly, was their plan. Lorenzo said that the gun was not loaded, and his intentions were only to scare Michael. But, unfortunately for Michael, the gun actually was loaded, and he was shot and killed.

One year later, Michael's black magic started to work. A clown showed up in an ice cream truck outside of Lorenzo's place. Lorenzo had gone to be with his new lady, and his two thug friends were inside getting high. With a serious case of the munchies, that ice cream truck looked extremely inviting. Killjoy told them that he was an undercover drug dealer using the ice cream truck as a disguise. He beckoned them inside to see his merchandise, and they were instantly transported into another dimension, via a rainbow vortex of some sort. They ended up in a warehouse, where Killjoy took them out. One of them was burnt up, while the other was smashed by a car. Nothing too inventive. Killjoy did eventually catch up to Lorenzo, and he took him down as well.

A homeless man caught up with Jada, her friend Monique, and Jada's new boyfriend Jamal. He explained everything about what Michael had done. He'd gone to black magic because all he wanted was for Jada to be his girl. The only way he figure that was possible was to get rid of what stood in his way: Lorenzo. He was trying to make sure there was no one left except the two of them. The only way to get rid of Killjoy was to kill the doll that he had risen from.

Killjoy is interesting, I guess. But killer clowns are supposed to be terrifying; this one was just annoying. Ever since the first time I saw it, Killjoy reminded me of Michael Jackson. So he is what would happen if MJ decided to throw a circus at Neverland Ranch. (fun fact: Killjoy was played by Angel Vargas, who also played Tito Jackson in the Jacksons TV movie)  He was goofy, but not exactly in a good way. We know of other characters who can be silly, funny, and still be scary (most notably Freddy Krueger), but Killjoy is not one of them. He was trying his damndest to be funny, but he only came across as stupid and annoying.


The story is kind of sweet, I guess, but if you think about it...it really isn't. Michael came back from the dead so that he could ask Jada out finally. He did all of this to have a a girl who he wasn't even sure felt the same way. Personally, I'd make sure she loved me before I'd go to all the trouble. I'd make sure she loved me before I got myself killed for her. Because if she didn't feel the same way, then his affections were pointless, and he should not had died in those woods. He shouldn't have even if she did love him, but it at least would have had meaning.

So, did I love Killjoy. No, even though I really wanted to. Everyone knows that, once I got over my fear of clowns, I grew to really love them. I love some killer clowns, when they're done right. I don't love Killjoy, because he, to me, isn't what a killer clown is supposed to be. First of all, he's supposed to be menacing. When you see him, you're supposed to think, "Uh-oh, shit's going down," not, "Oh my, he's fucking retarded." They're supposed to be scary, or at least creepy, or something. They can also be funny, but that should add to their creepiness, not diminish it. The movie itself was silly, and the characters were dumb. To me, Killjoy just wasn't what it should have been and could have been. It was a silly movie that tried to be great.

Apparently, it has an audience somewhere. Somewhere, people responded to it, because it spawned two sequels that I have not yet seen. I can only hope this series took the opposite route of others, and got better as it went along.

#215 -- Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood (2003)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Steven Ayromlooi

Let me explain something to you before I being. It's very simple. Most of these movies (excluding the first, in my opinion) are pretty bad. I actually haven't seen the one where leprechaun went to the hood the first time. But I did see when he went into space, so I can honestly say they're pretty bad. That being said, I still love this little guy. Even though the movies kind of suck, the leprechaun is still awesome.

At the beginning of the movie, Leprechaun was banished by a priest back to Hell. But a year later, a group of urban college-age kids stumbled on his beloved gold. Emily, the main focus of the movie, was warned by a fortune teller that she would come across a great deal of money. The fortune teller explained to her that she must deny the fortune, because it would come at a great price. But did they listen? Of course not. Once they found the gold, they started spending it like crazy. They bought new wardrobes, new cars, fancy gold teeth, and a whole shit ton of  marijuana.

You know that saying, "When in Rome?" Well, apparently even leprechauns believe it. One of his new friends got him high, only for Leprechaun to discover he had some of his gold. He got stabbed in the gut with a bong. Then Leprechaun stumbled around the house looking for something to eat, running into various cabinets along the way. He finally found the refrigerator and got locked inside of it. He didn't find anything to eat, but he did find the situation completely hilarious.

So, why was Leprechaun in the hood? Well, I don't know why he was there to begin with, but I know that when they found his gold, it brought him back from the depths of Hell. I'm not even sure why he ever left Ireland. It did explain, though, why he is so evil. The others might have explained that as well, but it's been so long since I've seen them, I don't remember.

Leprechauns, in mythology, were protectors of fortune. In this one's case, he and a bunch of other leprechauns protected the fortune of their king. They took their job very seriously, as you can probably guess. They had some kind of earthly, magical powers that helped them protect the gold. When their king died, they were all sent back down into the earth. All except one. That one became very evil, and he wold do anything to continue protecting the gold.

This one was just silly. I will admit that it had me laughing out loud, but that didn't make me love the movie. I do love the original, but after that, they just started getting bad. I didn't love this one; I didn't even like it, really. But I didn't hate it. It's definitely worth it to watch just for the laughs. But other than that, it's not good for much else. Still, I love that little guy.

Even if you don't like these movies, even if you hate them; you can't really hate it for being what it is. It's about a killer leprechaun. How can that possibly be anything but silly and stupid? It can't. So, if you go into this expecting it to be anything other than that, then you are terribly mistaken. If you realize what it is, what it's meant to be, then you won't feel that much hatred for it.

#211 -- Cheerleader Camp (1988)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: John Quinn

I know what you're thinking. This is about as bland as it gets. The most cliched horror movies take place at camp, right? It all started at a place called Crystal Lake, and people just can't get enough of stupid campers getting killed. Add to it that they're cheerleaders--about the dumbest kind of campers you can find--and you've got campy, cliche cheese.

So, yeah, they're at a cheerleading camp. And they're all getting killed in such grisly ways. One gets a pair of scissors shoved through the back of her head, and another gets squished between a tree and a van. Others were killed off screen, or the actual kill wasn't shown, so those are the only memorable ones this movie has to offer. The only thing different about this is Allison. She's on medication for who knows what, and she has violent nightmares about getting hurt, and about other people getting killed. The suspicion is placed mostly on her, but there are a few other suspects as well.

One suspect is the creepy handyman, Bob. Another is the creepy cook. Then I started to suspect the fat male cheerleader whose sole purpose in the movie was comic relief. I actually really liked him. Then, after a while, I started to suspect the other male cheerleader (played by former heart-throb Leif Garret), and then the team mascot. So, really, I couldn't tell who it was. I'd actually seen the movie before, and I couldn't remember who was killing these poor cheerleaders. At the end the truth, while not really what I expected, really wasn't all that shocking. There was no big surprise as to why this person was killing them--it all made perfect sense.

Okay, let's see just how campy and cliche this movie was. Was there sex? Sure, but really gross sex between the too peppy camp counselor and the old sheriff (the woman dressed like a cheerleader, and the cop ran around in his boxers with a football...ew). There were some boobies, and a creep who liked to spy on those boobies while dressed like an old lady (who could that have been, besides the fat male cheerleader?) There were stupid girls, of course, and a couple of smart ones thrown into the mixture for good measure. There was a punk rock band who you really wouldn't expect to be playing a cheerleading camp party. And oh yes, there was definitely booze. The adults were too drunk to care when a couple of the girls went missing. And when one of them finally decided to go look, she was too drunk to be of any real use. The only purpose she served at that point was getting herself killed. And the sheriff was too drunk to do his job properly, and he was only good at getting himself killed too.

On paper, it sounds like a pretty good movie, if only for the scenes with the fat guy. But on film, it's not great at all. Its biggest problem is that it's boring as hell. I didn't give a shit about any of the characters (besides fattie, of course). Most of them were annoying or uninteresting. The pace was too slow, and the kills were not that great. There was no suspense, no horror. I guess it could have been good, but it just wasn't. And that's coming from the girl who loves nothing more than to see stupid campers getting killed.

#208 -- 100 Tears (2007)

Rating: 2.5 / 5
Director: Marcus Koch

According to IMDB, this movie has an NC-17 rating, and I think that's because it's a complete splatterfest. But make no mistakes, that's really the only thing it's got going for it. Once you've seen one killer clown, you've pretty much seen them all, and this one is really no different from the rest.

The first ten or fifteen minutes, the clown kills all the residents at a halfway house, including a poor diabetic girl in a wheelchair. It's a splatterfest for sure; he paints that house red. I will say that the clown is really freakin' vicious. But he somehow managed to be completely un-scary. After that, it takes a while for more blood to be spilled. We spend most of the time following a couple of tabloid reporters. They mostly do stupid stories about reptile people, and a ghostly Titanic rising from the depths of the ocean to cruise again. But Jennifer really wants to do a piece that will mean something. She figures the Teardrop Killer is a way to get herself noticed, and be a writer of more than just bathroom reading. They call him the Teardrop Killer because he draws a bloody teardrop at the murder scenes.

So why is the clown crying? Well, when he worked for the carnival, he fell in love with one of the girls there. While they were getting busy, a jealous girl told The Strong Man that he was raping the girl. So The Strong Man beat the hell out of the clown. To have his revenge, the clown killed the girl and The Strong Man, and then he ran away from the circus. I think he was searching for his long-lost love, killing everyone on the way. He eventually meets his daughter, and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. His daughter is some kind of Smiley-Face killer, and they go on a Father-Daughter killing spree together.

What I liked was the Father-Daughter thing. I actually liked the clown's daughter more than the clown himself. She killed people and giggled while she was doing it. She was loony tunes big time, and I liked that. I really wanted to like this movie--I really did. But the ending was so poorly done that it was ruined for me. It seemed like they were running out of time and couldn't figure out a good ending to the movie. So they just came up with some  half-assed way for the killers to be defeated and then rolled the credits. It was quick, it didn't really make any sense, and it ruined a movie that could have otherwise been enjoyable for me. For the most part, it was okay. It wasn't any different from any of the other ten million killer clown movies out there, but it wasn't boring. All the technical stuff--acting, effects, filming--was better than I expected it to be, and for the most part, it really wasn't all that bad. Like I said, though, the ending completely ruins it.

If you're just in the mood for a killer clown, there are only two I can think of that are unique and completely awesome. Try Stephen King's It, or Killer Klowns from Outer Space, if you haven't seen them. Those clowns are bad-ass and amazing. This one was just so-so.

#206 -- Trail of the Screaming Forehead (2007)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Larry Blamire

 What can you really expect from a title like that? Well, personally, I expected something awesome. I'm a huge fan of purposely stupid horror movies. I love that cheesy humor; I love movies that make fun of themselves. So, when I saw this on Fearnet's VOD, I was pretty excited. I thought, "Now there's something I can get on board with." But make no mistakes, this movie doesn't have to make fun of itself, because the viewers can do that for themselves.

Good horror-comedies have just the right amount of stupidity, and they're smart about it so it works. This is not one of those movies. It was purposely stupid; I wasn't wrong about that. But it wasn't very smart about it. There were no real jokes here, or at least nothing I actually found funny. It seemed to me that it was trying to poke fun at those old '50s and '60s movies that feature strange creatures and such. The difference is that those old movies are actually good. Trail had potential. If it had been done better, it could have been wonderful. But alas, it's just another one of those movies that tries to be awesome but fails.

It's about an alien race of foreheads. They were once just like humans, until they destroyed themselves through nuclear war. Then they realized that they only way they could survive was by evolving into foreheads. But that couldn't last forever, and their race was slowly dying. They came to Earth to steal the bodies of humans, so that they could continue living. They would attach themselves to peoples' foreheads, turning them into very boring folks. They were dull. Maybe it could have been better if the foreheads had turned them into wacky dancing machines. I'm not sure, but I don't think boring was the way to go. Anyways, the only people who weren't possessed were two annoying sailors and a librarian. It was up to them to figure out how to destroy the forehead creatures, and try to keep from getting possessed themselves.

Meanwhile, a couple of scientists were trying to figure out exactly what was going on. They knew nothing of the alien threat, I don't think. Their theory was that all human thought came from the forehead, rather than the brain. There was some chemical called Foreheadazine that would give them the answers. One of the scientists took Foreheadazine pills that were supposed to make him super smart. They figured that this would prove that thought came from the forehead. It did make him smarter, but it also gave him a gigantic forehead.

This one starred Daniel Roebuck as one of the boring possessed people. He's that guy who looks really familiar, and he's been in a lot of things I've seen, but I can't remember him from any of them. Maybe I'll remember him from this, though I'm not sure that's a good thing. The only thing this movie had going for it was its theme song. No, the song wasn't that great. But it contains the line, "When you're not dreaming, your forehead is screaming that we're all from outer space." Catchy, huh?

If you're looking for something that you won't have to think about, something really stupid just to pass the time, then Trail of the Screaming Forehead is the movie for you. If you're looking for something good, then you should probably skip it.

#205 -- Ghosts of Goldfield (2007)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Ed Winfield

Back in the 1930s, a hotel owner became attracted to a servant girl named Elizabeth. He didn't love her, though he claimed that he did. Even after their affair ended, he didn't want her to be with anyone else; he was extremely jealous. When he discovered that her infant child was not his, but instead belonged to the bartender named Jackson (played by WWE hall of famer, Roddy Piper), who Elizabeth truly loved, he became furious. He locked Elizabeth in room 109 of the hotel, tied her up and tortured her. He also killed the small baby and supposedly threw it down a mine shaft. Elizabeth's ghost was said to haunt the hotel, forced to relive her murder; she was also supposed to roam the halls crying, "where is my baby?" She was only guilty of falling in love, and having a child with the man she loved. She lied because (I'm assuming) she knew the man would react badly. She knew that her life, and the life of her child, might be at stake if he knew the truth. And she was absolutely right. Why she was punished be reliving that terrible night, I'm not sure. I believe that, maybe, she was only trapped in this dimension because she so badly wanted to find her child.

A group of documentary film-makers travel to the Goldfield Hotel, hoping to capture footage of Elizabeth. Things do not go according to plan, naturally, or else there wouldn't be  much of a horror movie here. Unfortunately, there wasn't very much of a horror movie anyway.

There wasn't a whole lot of action here. It was mostly the group walking around the hotel with one of those ghost scanners and filming absolutely  nothing. There were some noises, and some of them saw flashes of Elizabeth, but nothing to elicit fear in the viewer. All Elizabeth did was talk to them menacingly, or at least I assume it was supposed to seem menacing. She didn't look like a ghost, either. She looked like a girl in a bad Halloween costume. Her ghostly form completely contradicted what her story told us. She was supposed to be a sweet girl who got caught up in a dangerous love triangle. But her ghost was a whore. She even seduced on of the crew members through another girl's body. She tried to seduce him again, but by that time, he'd already figured it out. His response was "I don't fuck dead chicks. Go look for your dead baby or some shit." Elizabeth didn't like that very much, and it resulted in having his throat torn out by her long, black, plastic fake Halloween fingernails. It could have been gruesome, if they'd let us see it. It was shrouded in shadows, and all I could see was some fake blood spewing around.

When the rest of the crew noticed that two of them had been killed, they started getting worried. Julie, the leader of the group, had visions about Elizabeth and her two gentlemen callers. She wore a necklace that was connected to Elizabeth. It belonged to Elizabeth, and the girl who ratted her out stole it. That girl happened to be Julie's grandmother. So Julie figured that Elizabeth just wanted her necklace back. From the moment that I heard of Elizabeth's story, I was sure of where this movie would go. Since she roamed the halls of the hotel crying, "where's my baby?" I was sure that they'd have to find the baby's bones and return them to its mother, in order for her to cross over. But no. All she wanted was her necklace back.

There were two things this movie had going for it. The first is Roddy Piper. His performance wasn't great, but I think having his name plastered on the cover brings a couple of viewers. Second is Kellan Lutz (from Twilight). That one should attract a bunch of girls at least. But that's it. Though Elizabeth's story is interesting, the rest of the movie just failed to keep my interest. The characters were dull and pissed me off. The ghost was lame and unconvincing. The two murder scenes were too obviously fake, and the whole thing was entirely pointless.

All ghost stories have at least something in common. A lot of them are essentially the same thing with different characters. But if they're well done, none of that matters. We can overlook it. But when a ghost story is bad, it's really bad. This is one of those movies. It was originally supposed to be a part of the Urban Legends series, though I'm not really sure why. Though the Urban Legend movies aren't the best by any means, but this really isn't the same caliber as those. And this really doesn't feel like an urban legend to me. It just seems like a crappy ghost story. 

#196 -- Zombie Night (2003)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: David J. Francis

If there's one thing you need to know about zombie movies, it's this: there are a hell of a lot of them. And since there are so freaking many, it's natural that there are a few (okay, a whole bunch) of bad ones in the lot. It's actually kind of hard to find good ones once you've seen a couple. This is one of those bad ones. It's a low-budget affair, but that's not why it's bad. The effects actually weren't that bad; it was the story and acting that ruined this movie.

Of course, zombies are plaguing the world. The synopsis on IMDB said something about a nuclear fallout between Pakistan and some other middle eastern country, but I don't remember that being mentioned in the movie. That doesn't mean it wasn't; it just means that I didn't feel the need to pay enough attention to find out. It started off a man, his  new girlfriend, and his daughter. They were apparently on their way back from vacation, when their car died and they heard on the radio that there were zombies afoot. Surprised and scared, they made their way to an abandoned building. They were safe there for a while, and they met up with another guy who'd lost his family. They teamed up with a shitload of other people, holed up in some building, and tried to survive together. They had food, water and other supplies to last them a while. What they didn't have was anything at all to keep me interested in them. The only interesting character in the whole movie was only interesting because he was a complete asshole. It just kept me wondering what he was going to do next to piss everyone else off.

The characters weren't good, as you can tell. They didn't have any real personalities, and nothing going on for them to make me sympathize. They'd all lost family members, but that's nothing. In the zombie apocalypse, anyone can say they've lost loved ones; it doesn't make them interesting. And the acting was so bland and terrible that it was impossible to like any of them anyways.

The only thing it had going for it were the effects. They weren't perfect, they weren't amazing by a long shot; but they were better than I'd expected them to be. And that was the only redeemable quality this had. I've got to give them something, right? It was a boring movie that made nothing of itself. I'm not surprised that the only picture I could find from it was a chick with her boobs out. I take it back about the effects; the boobs were the best part of the movie. They were pretty nice. So, if you're looking to see a nice set of boobs, watch some porn. Because even the tittie shots don't make this movie worth watching. Oh, I couldn't find a trailer either; so don't expect it to be in The Trailer Park. Not that you were interested in the first place...

#195 -- Rabid Grannies (1988)

Rating: 2.5 / 5
Director: Emmanuel Kervyn

Yes, I've chosen another Troma movie today. I actually chose them randomly without looking, and I have no idea what I'm watching until it starts. So I'm surprised that I randomly chose a Troma movie two days in a row. Maybe it's a sign. A sign of what, I'm not sure. But anyways, this one isn't nearly as good as the one I reviewed yesterday, but that's not saying much as the last one was The Toxic Avenger. 

The title is kind of misleading, as the two old ladies aren't grannies at all. Well, I'm sure they're someone's grannies, but that's not how they're portrayed. They're portrayed as aunts having a birthday party with all of their nieces and nephews. They seemed pretty wealthy, and they lived in a nice big mansion. They were also sweet old ladies who gave food and wine to blind homeless men. Even so, all their family wanted was to inherit their fortune. None of them actually cared about the old women, and that's the only reason they went to their birthday party. I think they were all just waiting for them to die, so that they could get paid. There was one member of the family that wasn't present: a  nephew named Christopher, who apparently everyone hated. He was somehow involved in the black arts, and the entire family had shunned him. But he sent a present to the old ladies: a small wooden box which contained...some kind of mist that turned them into demons. So in the middle of dinner, one of the old ladies attacked and killed one of their nieces--bit her face off, it looked like.

So whatever was in the box must have been some sort of demon that possessed the old ladies. They turned into weird alien-looking things that were very hard to be scared of. They were silly, with some one-liners that didn't quite go over well. They were trying to be funny, but it didn't really work for. The only funny things were their faces. Everyone  had to flee and hide from the old ladies, until one of them figured, "Hey! Maybe if I destroy the box, the demons will go away."

This one is Troma, but it wasn't created by Lloyd or Michael, so it's natural that I didn't enjoy it quite as much as others. I always love the movies Lloyd and Michael make themselves, but the ones they buy off of other independent film-makers just don't live up. I'm not saying they're all bad, but they seriously pale in comparison to titles like Terror Firmer and The Toxic Avenger. I know I probably shouldn't compare them, but since they're all under the Troma label, I think it's only natural that I compare them a little bit. Even if I do compare them, I still view them as their own independent movies. Still, this one didn't live up to the Troma name. When I see Troma, I expect indie film-making gold, but I didn't receive that here. The effects were actually pretty good (aside from the weird alien-headed ladies), but the acting was severely annoying. I'm not sure what country this movie came from, but it made everything look weird. Sometimes, I was sure it was in another language and dubbed in English, because their mouths didn't match up with the words. But other times, it was obvious that they were speaking English. So I'm not really sure what was going on there. The acting was over the top and exaggerated, and it just became aggravating. I liked the premise of it, but it just didn't live up to what I expected.

#191 -- Hell's Gate 11:11 (2004)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Michael Bafaro

When I chose this movie to watch today, I thought that I'd seen it before. I was excited because I hadn't seen it in a while, and I liked it the first time around. But I was thinking about The Gate, a much better movie than this. Most of it I didn't even understand, and what I did get wasn't great.

It was about a girl named Sarah who saw her parents murdered when she was seven years old. Shortly before, she met a little girl named Raden out in a field past a gate that opened by itself. Already seems suspicious. Sarah moved in with some woman named Lydia, and she and Raden had a pretty good childhood together. After Lydia sleeps with a boy who tried to rape Sarah, she ended up drowning in the bathtub. Raden showed up at Lydia's funeral and promised to take care of Sarah. But Raden was oddly obsessed with her, and she didn't want her doing anything without her. She couldn't, though, because Raden always showed up everywhere she went. And anyone that messed with Sarah ended up dead. At this point, Sarah started to think that maybe there was something about Raden that wasn't quite right. With her  new beau, they went on a search for answers.

She found a video of her mother and aunt when they were children, and there was Raden hiding in the shadows. That was all it took for Sarah to realize that Raden wasn't normal. Personally, I would've realized it when she wouldn't let me leave the house and said that she was the only friend I needed. Maybe I wouldn't have thought anything about demons or anything, but I'd think something along the lines of "crazy bitch," and kick her out. I'm not really sure what Raden wanted, but I think it was something about opening the gates of hell in 2011. I'm not sure what she needed Sarah for either. I don't know if things just weren't thought out here, or explained, or if I just wasn't paying attention. This could have been pretty good. The story was interesting enough, but it just wasn't played out very well. Maybe I should have payed more attention; or maybe they should have made a better movie. I'm not sure which, but either way, I didn't like this one.

#185 -- Wreckage (2010)

Rating: 2.5 / 5
Director: John Mallory Asher

Some movies fail because of scenes and occurrences that make no sense and are not connected; that, and they make their surprise endings way too obvious way too early. This is one of those movies. It started out with two young brothers, Ricky and Wesley. Their mother was a druggie, and her dealer was abusive. One day when the dealer was being rough with Wesley, Ricky grabbed a gun and shot him; then he shot their mother. Cut to about sixteen years later, and a girl was almost killed (or raped?) by a some guy named Kane. She ran into the junkyard, and some unknown person took Kane out. This scene seemed completely pointless. Kane and the girl were listening to the radio, which was saying that some prisoner had escaped. So I guess the prisoner was in the junkyard, and he saved her from Kane. We never saw Kane or the girl again, and we never found out for sure who the unknown person was. We can have assumptions and theories, but it never gave  us a real, concrete answer. It just was, and we were supposed to accept it.

Meanwhile, a group of friends got trapped in the junkyard after their car broke down. there was the newly engaged couple, Kate and Jared; and there was the pregnant couple, Jessica and Rick. They all went to the junkyard so that Jared could find some part to fix his broken car. Rick was playing around with his gun, and he "accidentally" shot Kate. Jared went for help, but when he came back with the police, his friends were gone.


They searched around for a while, until they found Jessica dead and rick "wounded." Kate was nowhere to be found. Then, everyone in the junkyard (police officers, paramedics...) started to get killed.

You've probably figured it out by now. A little boy named Ricky killed his mom; then a grown man named Rick found himself surrounded by murder. No, it's not an accidental coincidence. They actually made it that fucking obvious. So, why wasn't Rick, or Ricky, locked away? That's because when the police arrived, his brother Wesley took the blame for him. Wesley was locked away, and he was the prisoner that the radio said had escaped. It was a big deal. I guess they thought that, once they'd established the grown-up Rick/Wesley situation, we'd have forgotten which brother was which--even though we'd seen it less than ten minutes before. Or maybe they forgot which brother was which. But it ruined the entire movie for me.

Some guy found Kate and brought her to Jared and his police officer friend. Assuming that this guy was the killer, Jared killed him. I think that guy was supposed to be Wesley, but I'm not quite sure. It never really cleared that up for me. For the most part, the movie wasn't all that bad. But the whole painfully obvious surprise ending thing ruined it. I knew from the beginning who the killer was, and I could tell that they were trying to be clever and sneaky with it. I honestly believe these people thought they were going to surprise me. But I kept watching, because I was hoping that--maybe--I was wrong. Maybe it wouldn't be Rick. Maybe it actually was an accidental coincidence. But no. They did exactly what I thought they would do with it, and it made the whole thing a complete waste of time. I don't want to go into a movie knowing exactly what's going to happen. I don't mind having a vague idea of what's going to happen; but for them to shove it in my face like that, and then expect me to be surprised by it? Oh hell no, I don't think so. They took a perfectly fine idea, and what could have been a pretty good movie, and they completely ruined it by being stupid.

#180 -- Mr. Halloween (2007)

Rating: 2.5 / 5
Director: Andrew Wolf

By looking at the cover of this movie, you're probably going to think, "Hey! That looks interesting." But don't let the cover fool you. It ropes you in with images typical for Halloween-based horror movies, images they hope will evoke terror and entice you to watch. It's about the crazy guy in the neighborhood, known as Mr. Halloween, who opens a kickass haunted house every year. But Mr. Halloween is creepy, and rumors circulate that  he uses real body parts for his exhibits. It turns out to be true, of course. He uses real people for his fake guillotine, and real body parts for the props around the house. Teenagers disappear from all over the neighborhood, but a seemingly incompetent police force fails to realize what's going on. When a couple of the neighborhood kids, Jack and Jill (groan) decide to investigate, things get sticky for them. There's also another kid Mr. Halloween couldn't use one year, so he kept him in the basement to use for the next Halloween. Jill ends up chained in the basement with Michael, and they've got to figure out a way to escape with their lives. After being trapped down there for a year, though, Michael seems to get out pretty easily. It makes me wonder why he hadn't gotten away already. In the beginning, we see kids throwing rocks at a red-light, and one of them says, "If you hit the red, he comes for you." That's just because [spoiler alert] the sheriff is actually the mind behind Mr. Halloween's actions. He's tired of all the asshole kids disrespecting the police force, so he enlists Mr. Halloween to get rid of them for him.

"We must execute them!"

So, it sounds pretty interesting on paper, and it is. But the movie is only semi-good. I almost liked it, but not quite. There were some problems I had with the characters, especially Michael pre-hostage. At one point, his friend wanted him to come over to watch a movie, but he said his mom wouldn't let him, and he was very adamant about it. So then the friend asked him to walk down the  street and check out the haunted house that supposedly housed real dead bodies. Michael wasn't at all worried about what his mom would say about that. He was totally chicken shit once they got there, too. But I guess spending a year chained up in a psycho's basement gave him a little balls. Despite the fact that it was sloppy, it really wasn't all bad.

Like I said, I almost liked it. It was one of those movies that I wanted to like, but it didn't quite let me. Oh, and let's go back to the cover of the movie. That clown looks pretty awesome, right? And the fact that it looks like he's after a very small girl looks pretty frightening, huh? Well, there wasn't a clown at all in this movie. Not once. And no little children, either. Mr. Halloween did wear a mask when he was guiding the kids through his haunted house, but it was far from being a clown mask. I'm actually not sure what the hell it was. And the kids that he kidnapped were all in high school. So like I said, it tries to rope you in with images it think will intrigue you--but don't be fooled! Don't expect any awesome killer clowns, because you're not going to find any. What you will find is a stupid man killing teenagers for shits and giggles. And he doesn't even do it any sort of interesting fashion. I love the idea of a real-life haunted house like that, but it failed to be as interesting as I would hope. And the whole guillotine thing got old really fast. So director Alex Wolf took an interesting and promising premise, and completely shattered it with lack of creativity. It's a shame, really. You can watch this movie, or you can pass on it. You won't really care either way.

#178 -- Hide and Creep (2004)

Directors: Chuck Hartsell & Chance Shirley
Rating: 2 / 5

I watched this movie probably about five years ago, but I couldn't remember anything other than the naked guy ranting about UFOs and crying about his lost 1964 1/2 Mustang. I remembered that I didn't like it, though, and now I know why. I can sum up the entire film in three words: rednecks fight zombies. That's just about as deep as the story gets. We're not able to care about any of the characters, really. The only character I really felt anything toward was Chuck, the guy who owned Chuck's Super Video World. He was that "I don't give a shit" kind of guy, and he was pretty comical. After he killed the first zombie, the police department refused to help him out with his problem. So naturally, he dumped the body in their lobby with a sticky note on its forehead instructing them to call him. Oh, Chuck! Actually, the entire move was pretty comical. You've got your typical rednecks: gun club, huntin', fishin' and all that jazz. The president of the gun club should have won the parent of the year award for leaving his two young daughters home alone to fight off zombies. The girls were able to take care of themselves, the oldest having a rifle, and the youngest a machete twice as big as she was. They were fine, but that's not the point. Who the hell leaves their children when there's dead folks running around eating people? Dumb hicks, that's who. Look, I was born and raised in Georgia, so I know a thing or two about rednecks. They're not all bad, but some are just dumb as a sack of rocks. So Hide and Creep's portrayal of dumb rednecks is actually quite accurate. It's not only the rednecks, though; there are some plain 'ol southern folks in there too. But they're just as dumb. There was a scene with Mr. Gun Club president, where he was faced with a bar full of zombie strippers eating people. He shot the first, but the second was chowing down on an equally naked woman, and he was just far too aroused to shoot that sexy thang. Luckily, shortly afterwards, he discovered that zombies are afraid of the dark, and he was able to use that to his advantage. Wait, back up, did you just say zombies are afraid of the dark. That's right. Zombies are afraid of the dark. I guess you learn something new every day, right? I mean, it's not like I've ever seen zombies killing at night, so it's got to be true. Oh, and another thing I learned: alien anal probes are actually quite sexy.

Note reads: Dead guy! Call Chuck.

Though this movie was extremely stupid, it did have some good things going for it. Not many, but a few. One, I will say that the actors were actually pretty good. Chuck (played by Chuck Hartsell, who also directed) was the best of the bunch, in my opinion. Not everyone was great, but with the content of the movie, you'd be surprised at how talented the actors were. Second, it was silly. I'm not sure if it was silly in a good way, but it did make me laugh. You can take from that what you will, because I honestly don't know if I'm laughing at it or with it. The effects were horrible, though. These things could have been cannibals for all I knew. They had pale faces, with black rings around their eyes. Add in a little dyed corn syrup and BAM! Instant zombie. No. They didn't look like zombies at all. I know there wasn't a huge budget, but they could have done at least a little something more there. But this movie's biggest problem was that it was boring. Even though there were some funny moments, for the most part, it just failed to keep me interested. I actually fell asleep, then had to rewind it so that I could catch the ending. Spoiler alert: there wasn't really that much of an ending. It was one of those abrupt endings that I always hate. It did have some nice boob shots, though. So, if that's what you're looking for...you can probably find it somewhere else.

#175 -- Nightmare Alley (2010)

Rating: 2 / 5
Director: Scarlet Fry

I had been eyeballing this one on Netflix for some time, though now I can't really come up with an excuse as to why I was interested in it. Just wishful thinking, I guess. It seems like I always assume a movie will be good, until I watch it and discover that it's complete garbage. Nightmare Alley is an anthology movie, which I usually love. Anthologies are easy to keep up with and stay interested in because the story is constantly changing. Usually there's a couple of individual stories and then one big wrap-around, and I haven't yet found one that I completely hated. Well, that is, until now. This one has no wrap-around, save from a Cryptkeeper wannabe "host" character who was really horrible. The mask or make-up that the actor was wearing restricted his speaking, his voice sounded muffled, and his lips barely moved--so I wasn't sure if it was actually him talking, or if there was some kind of weird voice-over going on. It was distracting and annoying, and there wasn't any point for his being there anyway. He just gave a brief synopsis of each story, which I could have figured out for myself, thank you.

There were actually quite a few stories in this one--seven, I think--and all of them were pointless. The characters were horribly bland and developed poorly. The actors were terrible, and the editing was bad. The sound was scratchy and jumpy, and it honestly made me think of a high school computer class project. There was no atmosphere, mood, or any sort of creepiness factor. There was nothing scary, funny, endearing, dramatic, sad...I could go on and on. There was just...nothing. The movie wasn't very long, and since there were so many different stories, I understand why everything was so sloppy and rushed. I understand, but that doesn't make it okay. If your stories are going to be short, you better have some serious talent or the viewer is going to be severely disappointed. There were a couple of the stories I thought had a little potential, so I'll focus on those rather than all seven.

In one, a man buys a little rubber rat from a dollar store. The lady at the counter tells him it's dangerous, it will possess his soul, and sends him on his way. The rat talks to him, instructing him to kill young women so that the rat can feed on their souls. Everything takes a turn for the worse for the man, though, when he picks up a hitch-hiker who takes no shit. In another, a cheating husband meets up with a woman he met online, only to be viciously murdered. That woman turns out to be the ghost of a woman who killed her cheating husband before taking her own life. And the last on my list is about a woman who murdered her angry husband and then fed him to her new lover. It said that he was fed the dead man's remains for six weeks, before he was found wandering the streets in a speedo. Now, I said those stories had potential, which they did. The stories were kind of interesting, and with a little better development, and a longer running time, they could have been good. Sadly, they were not good. They were still horrible, but they were the best in the bunch. The rest were completely pointless and could have been cut out completely, in my opinion.

I rarely feel that I've wasted my time with movies that I watch, because I feel that they all deserve my time. I do want to see every horror movie ever made, after all. But I was actually a bit angry after watching this, because it was a complete waste of time. These "stories" were more like sketches than anything, and all it succeeded in doing was making me wish it was over already. Director Scarlet Fry is associated with another movie I've been interested in, but now I'm kind of hesitant of that one too. My advice: skip this one, please.