Horror Movies

[Sharkonabicycle]

Nice! I'll see if I can find it, and check it out.

The whole movie is on YouTube (at least for now, with Spanish subs but the normal English voice acting) LOL. Just search Street Trash.

 

[returnofjakedog]

Might have already been posted but this one is not only great effects (body horror) but pretty funny too boot. The concept of what's happening though is pretty frightening.

Jesus man.......what did you make me watch here!! Lol!

Street Trash (1987)-
(trailer in linked post above)

.......so this one is a mess. Low-budget '80s NYC area horror.

A bunch of homeless people steal and start drinking some really old alcohol, which makes them melt into a puddle of goo. Eventually they r*pe, steal, do some necrophilila, play catch with a dude's wang, more r*pe, more stealing, crazed psych cop fights crazed psych homeless king, etc, etc. You get the picture.

This is just barely a movie. Some awesome low budget melting fxs, but other than that.......

The bad:
*Very little plot.
*Everything and everyone is dirty, ugly, and dispicable.
*A couple actors might be mediocre, but most are just bad.
*Really bad ADR. I mean, I have a pretty high tolerence for bad dubbing, but I started watching this and thought it was a really bad Italian production! When I found out it was made in the USA, I was shocked.
*The dialogue. I don't know which would be worse, if someone actually wrote a script for this, or if it was just really badly improvised.

The good:
*The fxs. There are 6 or 8 pretty fun body meltdown/explosion scenes, and a pressurized gas flask decapitation that is quite good!

So as I mentioned, this was an 80s NYC area production, which is famous for the likes of Frank Hennenlotter (Basketcase, Brain Damage, Frankenhooker, which I just reviewed), and the rather infamous Jersey based Troma Films (The Toxic Avenger, Cannibal: A Musical, Tromeo and Juliet). Unfortunately, Street Trash would be low quality for a Troma film, and that is pretty f'ing low. It was intentionally written to offend on every possible level so maybe they succeed on that?

The director was a favorite cameraman of James Cameron, and worked on many big budget films.

I did recognize a couple of the actors as the lead dude from Frankenhooker makes an appearance, as does the fat mayor from The Toxic Avenger.

This one is a bit of a cult classic, and gets generally decent ratings and reviews. I have heard of it before when talking about early body melt scenes, but I've seen many earlier melting fxs, so I'm not sure what sits this one apart. But I have to go against the grain as I personally can't in good conscious go more than about a 3 outta 10 for the cool fxs. I can't even recommend it as a Sobad, it's good flick as it mostly baffled and bored me.

I feel like I need a shower after watching it! Lol!

 

[Sharkonabicycle]

Jesus man.......what did you make me watch here!! Lol!

Street Trash (1987)-
(trailer in linked post above)

.......so this one is a mess. Low-budget '80s NYC area horror.

A bunch of homeless people steal and start drinking some really old alcohol, which makes them melt into a puddle of goo. Eventually they r*pe, steal, do some necrophilila, play catch with a dude's wang, more r*pe, more stealing, crazed psych cop fights crazed psych homeless king, etc, etc. You get the picture.

This is just barely a movie. Some awesome low budget melting fxs, but other than that.......

The bad:
*Very little plot.
*Everything and everyone is dirty, ugly, and dispicable.
*A couple actors might be mediocre, but most are just bad.
*Really bad ADR. I mean, I have a pretty high tolerence for bad dubbing, but I started watching this and thought it was a really bad Italian production! When I found out it was made in the USA, I was shocked.
*The dialogue. I don't know which would be worse, if someone actually wrote a script for this, or if it was just really badly improvised.

The good:
*The fxs. There are 6 or 8 pretty fun body meltdown/explosion scenes, and a pressurized gas flask decapitation that is quite good!

So as I mentioned, this was an 80s NYC area production, which is famous for the likes of Frank Hennenlotter (Basketcase, Brain Damage, Frankenhooker, which I just reviewed), and the rather infamous Jersey based Troma Films (The Toxic Avenger, Cannibal: A Musical, Tromeo and Juliet). Unfortunately, Street Trash would be low quality for a Troma film, and that is pretty f'ing low. It was intentionally written to offend on every possible level so maybe they succeed on that?

The director was a favorite cameraman of James Cameron, and worked on many big budget films.

I did recognize a couple of the actors as the lead dude from Frankenhooker makes an appearance, as does the fat mayor from The Toxic Avenger.

This one is a bit of a cult classic, and gets generally decent ratings and reviews. I have heard of it before when talking about early body melt scenes, but I've seen many earlier melting fxs, so I'm not sure what sits this one apart. But I have to go against the grain as I personally can't in good conscious go more than about a 3 outta 10 for the cool fxs. I can't even recommend it as a Sobad, it's good flick as it mostly baffled and bored me.

I feel like I need a shower after watching it! Lol!

Your review and overall take has me dying of laughter.

 

[returnofjakedog]

Your review and overall take has me dying of laughter.

Lol!

Did you watch it? It was rather painful!

If you did, do you have any thoughts to add?

 

[Sharkonabicycle]

Lol!

Did you watch it? It was rather painful!

If you did, do you have any thoughts to add?

Oh I have (hence why I linked it). The entire dialogue, acting, audio, etc. is absolutely ridiculous and horrible. There's racism, sexism (both of which were not humorously/cleverly done), completely unlikeable characters and it looks like a borderline High School/College project.

And God help me, that's why I found it somehow it's own flavor of ridiculous and amusing. Maybe I'm really street trash as well

 

[returnofjakedog]

Oh I have (hence why I linked it). The entire dialogue, acting, audio, etc. is absolutely ridiculous and horrible. There's racism, sexism (both of which were not humorously/cleverly done), completely unlikeable characters and it looks like a borderline High School/College project.

And God help me, that's why I found it somehow it's own flavor of ridiculous and amusing. Maybe I'm really street trash as well

......so it was intentional torture on your part!

Yeah, it sucked. Again, I have a high tolerance for flawed, crappy movies but I have no clue how this is getting a 62% positive critic review score on Rotten Tomatoes. That might be the most insane part of it.

 

[DJ]

 

[DJ]

Moose Jaws

LOL.

 

[DJ]

 

[DJ]

 

[returnofjakedog]

Body Bags (1993)-

A made for cable tv anthology series pilot that I surprisingly (considering the star power) have never heard of before.

So apparently Showtime was looking for their version of HBO's Tales from the Crypt, and managed to get the legendary John Carpenter, and a crap load of other big names involved. But despite that it didn't get picked up so only the pilot exists.

John Carpenter himself kicks things off as a gaunt, grey, creepy morgue attendant who goes around opening up body bags and inspecting bodies. He is basically this series host (equivalent of the Crypt Keeper). He then introduces 3 different tales associated with the different corpses.

The first tale, The Gas Station, involves a new employee at an isolated gas station in an area where a violent inmate has escaped. It is a fairly standard slasher with a twist, but it is pretty decent.
Robert Carradine and a relatively unknown actress star in it, but the fun part is Wes Craven, Sam Raimi, and David Naughton (American Werewolf in London) all making appearances!

The second feature is Hair, and stars the always fun Stacey Keach as a middle aged balding guy who tries a new hair treatment. It is wildly successful, but the side effects are literally murder. Other cast members include the likes of musicians Sheena Easton and Deborah Harry, and the now famous director Greg Nicotero (more of a famous fx guy at the time), and a few others.
All in all, another decent one, but struggles a bit with tone, and some bad early cgi fxs.

The last tale is Eye, starring Mark Hamill as a baseball player who loses an eye in a car wreck. He gets a transplant eye, but it turns out it was the eye of a serial killer and he starts having flashbacks, and behavioral issues that escalate.
We've seen this transplant/possession tale before with various body parts, so it isn't really anything new. But, again, it is pretty decent.
As in the other tales, we have some name actors, and celebrities with the likes of Roger Corman, Charles Napier, and Twiggy performing here.

Lastly, the John Carpenter framing tale is concluded with a twist involving Tobe Hooper and Tom Arnold.

The overall movie, and the individual chapters are all decent, but nothing spectacular or groundbreaking. Good production all around with great directors, and name actors, and celebrities mixed in.

All of the celebrity appearances make it a bit hard for a horror fanboy like myself. Seeing the likes of legendary directors Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Greg Nicotero (The Walking Dead), Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Dr. Strange), Wes Craven (Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream), Roger Corman, and John Carpenter (The Thing, Halloween) mixing it up with various rock stars (Deborah Harry, Sheena Easton), super models (Twiggy, Kim Alexis) and name actors like Mark Hamill, Stacey Keach, Tom Arnold, etc., is half of the fun!

I'll go about 6 to 6.5 outta 10 range, and that is with an added bonus for the cast. The tales themselves were fine, but a bit generic. A must see for deep dive horror fans.

It is too bad it didn't get picked up. It would have been interesting to see where they would have taken it.

Oh, one last note, I swear to god that it looks like Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) is actually nailing Twiggy in Eye, as we get a full on under carriage shot that indicates either a bizaree prosthetic, or full shaft penetration!
This is not unheard of as the likes of Angel Heart with Micky Rourke and Lisa Bonet supposedly going at it, or Caligula with actors such as Peter O'Toole and Helen Mirren, and several other big production flicks are rumored to have full on stuff. But it is was still weird to see here.

Anyways, enjoy the holiday folks!

 

[returnofjakedog]

 

[DJ]

 

[DJ]

 

[returnofjakedog]

Kinda keeping in sync with the last post by @DJ here is Brain Dead (1990)-

I say "kinda in sync" because the Peter Jackson was actually titled Braindead, but was retitled to Dead Alive in North America because of this film was recently released here as Brain Dead.

Anyways, Bill Pullman plays an neurosurgeon who experiments on brains in jars. He has hundreds of these brains (stacked 20 ft high on basic metal shelving that isn't even attached to the wall for some really stupid reason). Bill Paxton is a corporate big wig who recruits Pullman to try to extract information from the brain of a researcher who went crazy and killed a bunch of people. From there it spirals into weirdness with multiple realities and bizarre events before reaching a shocking conclusion.

I always wanted a Pullman/Paxton crossover, and wasn't aware it existed until seeing this. I saw the strange cover with the stretched out face (which is sadly not used very much in the film) in the video store back in the day but never pulled the trigger on renting it. But this on has it's problems.

The story itself is good but the execution is poor. The storyline is intentionally convoluted and comes off as similar to Jacob's Ladder or Pullman's own Serpent and the Rainbow in the sense that it leads you in many directions and you don't know what is reality. But unfortunately it isn't as good as either of those. It does have some fun visuals and fxs though.

Apparently this one was produced after the studio made a bunch of interns go through hundreds of old, "dead" scripts and found this one. It was written by Charles Beaumont, who was a main writer on the original Twilight Zone!

The budget seems to be a big issue as some of the sets and fxs are cheap and they hired a director whose best known film is Carnosaur.

5 to 5.5 outta 10 range. Has the bones of something good but comes up short l. This is one that could be vastly improved by a well executed remake.

.......next!

Warlock 2: Armageddon (1992)

I remember liking Warlock and this one falls into the same range but is slightly lesser.

Julian Sands returns and chews up the scenery, as a warlock who transports from the past to try to destroy the present. It is essentially the same story as the original only using rune stones as the key to start the apocalypse instead of a book.

I was pleasantly surprised by some excellent slimey fxs, and Sands is really good. Unfortunately the rest of the cast is forgettable at best. Apparently there is a 3rd Warlock movie in the franchise without Sands, which makes me not want to see it.

5.5 to 6 outta 10 range. A couple of high points blended with middle of the road stuff.

A newer one!
I Still See You (2018)-

A laboratory explosion causes a huge death event which wipes out 1/3rd? 1/4? (I'm guessing here) population. Those that were killed are now "remnants", specteral visions who appear and reenact moments at the end of lives as ghosts. They generally are only like replaying a film and you cannot interact with them (except for when the plot needs you to, in which case you randomly can). But Bella Thorne finds that some murder victims are connected to her birthday (date and year) and she might be next. So her and a love interest dude investigate, which of course leads to a twist conclusion.

Not bad, but too many plot holes. Conceptually a cool idea, and an interesting specific plot but they focused on the teen drama stuff too much. Some decent acting.

The constantly seeing the dead folk's ghosts out just doing daily life stuff can be both quite sad and a bit creepy. The mystery itself is kinda interesting. But the lack of consistency in regards to the "rules" of the interactions with the spirits is stupid and frustrating. Also the kinda happy ending bs really hurt the narrative.

5 outta 10 area. Meh. Could have been a good movie with some gritty darkness added to it instead of pandering to the teen audience.

The Unnamable (1988)

A very '80s kids in a haunted house movie based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story.

A couple of groups of college kids go into a local legendary haunted house only to have them get picked off one by one while trying to escape.

Not much else to say here. The actors aren't great and the budget retraints are obvious as they wander around the dark corridors. The '80s feel is kinda fun if you like that, but the the original Night of the Demons and others do it better.

This one was mostly forgettable and mediocre for the majority of the flick but it does get better at the end. The problem imo is that they don't show the monster, only first person camera views from the monster's perspective, followed by an arm reaching out and killing folks, or an offscreen kill. But in the last act they reveal a pretty damn good monster (kudos to the monster actress who embraces the role)!
The one bitchy hot chick does have a nice set of ta-tas that she whips out, so a bit of a positive.

Another below average to average one that I'll go 4.5 to 5 outta 10 range. They could have made a much better movie by putting the full creature in it a lot more.

Ok, a bunch of middling stuff here. I do have several actual good movies in the holster but wanted to get these out of the way and give the better stuff full reviews.

 

[returnofjakedog]

Audition (1999)-

A Japanese horror film from the original The Ring and The Grudge era.

A widower and his buddy sit up a casting call for fake movie with the real purpose of finding a bride. He becomes infatuated with one of the applicants, but it turns out she is something other than what she appears to be.
A simple enough premise, but there are some interesting layers and directions taken here.

The good:
*Dare I say, A GREAT story!
*Excellent direction.
*Some very good acting by the leads (this is somewhat mitigated by the subtitles).
*Some brutal fxs.

The bad:
*The aforementioned subtitles will kill it for some folks.
*The extended run time (basically 2 hours) and how it is used is interesting but could probably be chopped 10 minutes or so in the first half.

This is an odd one in that the first 60-70 minutes give very little indication that this is even a horror movie (it could jyst be a kinda dark rom-com). Other than a single repeating shot of the actress sitting silently in her empty apartment with a large bag that sometimes moves, it isn't until the last 45 or so minutes that things get freaky, but when they do it is pretty disturbing stuff.

The investigation of the back story by the lead guy is well done.

When it does flip into the horror it is fairly nasty and graphic, particularly for the time. Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, etc list it as a favorite and a big infuence. For me it kinda becomes a blending of Misery and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (which I surprisingly didn't like, but in reference to feel and pacing).

Definitely worth a watch for fans of Asian horror, or intellectual/kinda artsy stuff, or even the torture p*rn stuff (though I find it less graphic and much better than that genre, you can see how it infuenced it).

I'll give it a solid 8 to 8.5 outta 10 range. It is probably a bit lower for some with the essentially extended non-horror majority of the first hour or so but even that is well done.

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

A bunch of homeless people steal and start drinking some really old alcohol, which makes them melt into a puddle of goo. Eventually they r*pe, steal, do some necrophilila, play catch with a dude's wang, more r*pe, more stealing, crazed psych cop fights crazed psych homeless king, etc, etc. You get the picture.

You had me at bums drinking alcohol, but then you sold me with playin catch with a dude's wang.

 

[FaCe-LeE-uS]

Gotta give a shoutout to @returnofjakedog . Keep up the fantastic work my man!

I've grown quite reliant on his reviews in here as a means to keep my "head in the horror game". Life has been throwing me 1 too many curveballs lately and I haven't been able to enjoy the genre I love most... Hopefully soon I'll get back on track & helping provide some great content in here.

In the meantime, I hope @Sharkonabicycle keeps making an appearance because I often start wheezing from laughter...

 

[returnofjakedog]

Gotta give a shoutout to @returnofjakedog . Keep up the fantastic work my man!

I've grown quite reliant on his reviews in here as a means to keep my "head in the horror game". Life has been throwing me 1 too many curveballs lately and I haven't been able to enjoy the genre I love most... Hopefully soon I'll get back on track & helping provide some great content in here.

In the meantime, I hope @Sharkonabicycle keeps making an appearance because I often start wheezing from laughter...

Thanks man!

Hopefully life gets smooth for ya soon. I know you have a couple of young ones that are still a few years away from appreciating horror so that also takes precedence.

 

[Sparhawk]

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