Review: Basket Case

Basket Case (1982)

Basket Case is about two brothers separated after birth, that nevertheless remained...quite close. However, their relationship is often strained and blood-stained. Duane Bradley was born with a deformed conjoined twin; their birth caused the death of their mother, and the scorn of their father. Eventually, their father paid some doctors to remove the more unfortunate-looking boy, but it was an off-the-books surgery. The twins didn't much appreciate this gesture--all grown up, they decide to go track down the doctors that performed the surgery in the big city to "pay them a little visit", as the kids say these days. The city holds a lot of distractions for someone as sheltered as Duane, though, and his little buddy grows jealous since he can't quite get the same satisfaction. The movie does a great job at characterizing the brothers and is actually quite touching at times despite less-than-stellar acting. There is an inescapable charm about this movie, and the feelings of jealousy and protection between the brothers felt really genuine. It functions very well overall, creating a balance of tension and comedic relief. I really liked the puppet and stop motion effects of the deformed brother, Belial, and found it actually really freaky at times. Easily the best scene is right at the end--which I really don't mind spoiling because it really is that great--where we're afforded this perfect piece of visual poetry. I recommend Basket Case for anyone who likes the lighter side of horror, or just loves anything really weird.


Enjoy with a nice--

Flaming Little Brother

2oz Kaluha
1oz Vodka
1 scoop vanilla ice cream
1 dash of vanilla extract
1oz 151 Rum

put the first four ingredients into a blender, and mix them good. pour into a glass and pour the 151 on top, then carefully light it on fire. Insert two straws and suck it down with your closest bro...

Review: Chopping Mall

Chopping Mall (1986)

Chopping Mall basically combines several things that were popular in the 80's: Robocop, slasher movies, and shopping malls. This shopping mall has purchased a set of new security robots to patrol the building at night, that will incapacitate any intruders. They have safety features that should prevent them from coming after mall employees, but of course they get hit by lightning and that control system malfunctions; of course, they go on a murderous rampage. This rampage happens to occur whilst a group of teenagers that work at the mall decide to stay overnight and have a party at a furniture store. The movie follows some of the general cliches after that--the janitor (albeit he was white) gets killed first, the kids drink and have sex (thereby calling down the old testament judgement of the slasher movie gods), and the really nerdy couple that does not hook up at the party end up living. The movie also is reminiscent of Dawn of The Dead, since the group ends up smashing lots of windows in the mall and there are lots of scenes in which they gear up to try to fight the robots. The heroine shows plenty of competence with firearms and definitely holds her own against the robots, which was fun to watch. There is also a great head explosion, a couple good one-liners, and the robots actually look pretty cool. The soundtrack is really great--the perfect kind of 80's synth but with a manic, goofy quality that really fits the mood. It's a really fun movie that combines lots of elements of other 80's movies and is definitely worth a viewing or two.

Boom! Head Shot!
dash grenadine
1/2 oz 151 Rum
1/2 oz Grand Marnier
1/2 oz Midori

put booze and ice into shaker, strain in to shot glass, violently dash in grenadine being sure to spill some on the bar. then throw it back hard, like a laser from a robot exploded your melon all over the place. optionally, throw the contents of the shaker at someone's face and pretend it exploded (read: cheesy effects).

Review: The Gorilla

The Gorilla (1939)

This is an incredibly hard movie to review, or easy. Yeah its easy, because its basically a three stooges rip-off about a guy in a gorilla suit who may or may not be murdering people and three bumbling detectives trying to figure out what is going on, and who fail miserably. That's really about it. Don't know what to say. Its only about an hour long

Just take three shots of whiskey and put on another movie...

Sorry this one sucks...I'll make it up to you one day.

Review: Assault of the Sasquatch

Assault of the Sasquatch (2009)

Bigfoot double feature! Wells sort of, meant to squeeze it in yesterday but I had social obligations. This film has way more big foot mischief and murder than The Untold. This is exactly the kind of thing you want from a Bigfoot movie: cheesey, humorous, low-budget, monkey-suit mayhem. It starts off with a group of bear poachers hunting bears for their paws to sell on the black market as aphrodisiacs in China. I liked the guy using a slice of pizza as bait in the trap. Very soon they find something they weren't expecting and the Sasquatch kills off the other poachers. The leader of the trio of poachers is a grizzled old asshole who has some pretty funny lines throughout the movie. After finally tranquilizing the Bigfoot and putting it in the back of his truck he is arrested by park rangers and taken into the city (I believe this is supposed to be in Jersey) to jail. From here we get the b-story about the family of one of the rangers who made the arrest and why he had to leave the city police force. This exposition is cut in between scenes of the Sasquatch escaping the truck and wandering around the city getting into trouble like stealing a drunk guy's pizza and watching a girl shower and stomping her tiny dog. This kind of thing continues for a while until the cops realize there is a Sas' on the loose and also the poacher and another criminal. Everybody is hunting everybody and as folks are knocked off by the Sasquatch eventually it boils down to a final battle between the poacher and the Bigfoot. Its a fun movie, tongue-in-cheek but not quite cartooney. It's low budget for sure, so the acting is forgivable and the Sasquatch suit actually looks pretty decent. This is a fine monster movie, somewhere on the level of the made-for-tv syfy specials but with practical effects.

Review: The ABCs of Death

The ABCs of Death (2012)

Ok so ABC's of death is an anthology project with each letter being tackled by a different group of filmmakers making a short film themed with a word starting with a certain letter from the alphabet. Overall I was kind of exasperated by how weird or kind really stupid some of these were. Only three or so really stood out to me as being really good, and it was kind of a shame for them to be mixed in with a lot of these which I really hated. The majority are horror-comedy or just dark comedy, or just stupid toilet humor, or just really fucking weird. I'm going to go through each letter briefly, without giving too much away.
A- meh
B- pretty good
C- ok, simple, cute premise
D- one of the stand-out's, it has a satisfying twist
E- meh
F- Goddammit Japan
G- boring
H- Goddam Furries
I- pretty tense
J- Goddammit Japan
K- stupid
L- one of the most fucked up, but actually tense and not just annoying
M- quick and fucked up
N- funny, classic comedy bit gone violent at the end
O- just weird
P- well done, tragic and tense
Q- I lol'd R- I didnt really get the symbolism or something, kind of wanted a little more explanation because I was intrigued and left hanging.
S- ok
T- hey look, more toilets and poop.
U- ok
V- probably my favorite, crazy, distopian, brutal
W- fucking weird, but kind of funny
X- ok
Y -just kind of weird, but ok I guess.
Z- GOD DAMMIT JAPAN!! So to tally it up, there's about 9 that were worth watching, about 8 that were meh, and another 9 that I really disliked. That's not really a great ratio. I would skip it overall, I kind of wish segment V would just be its own movie and was just longer, maybe not even feature length but a good 30 minute short film. If you really want to watch the whole thing anyway I suggest that you skip any of the shorts that start to be annoying or boring, because they dont get better at their ends.

Review: Strippers vs Werewolves

Strippers vs Werewolves (2012)

You probably wouldn't expect a lot from a movie called "Strippers vs Werewolves", and you would be right not to but it does at least have a lot of strippers and some werewolves. The really weird thing is that they are all British as this takes place in London. Makes sense for the werewolves, but I didn't know they had strippers in England. Shows what I know. Hopefully they don't actually dance to any of the terrible music that they do in this movie. There are quite a few decent gags in the movie that had me laughing and a little bit of good violence. It definitely leans much more on the comedy side of the horror-comedy axis. Somehow they got Robert Englund for one scene, and his is easily the best performance in the whole movie. If they got him to be more involved in the movie it might have actually been kinda good. You might also recognize the club owner, Sarah Douglas, as Queen Taramis from Conan the Destroyer. If you ever find yourself drunk and flipping through netflix, and if you associate with me you probably do, its worth checking out.