It is Saturday afternoon as I begin this report, and we have had our
first appreciable snowfall of the season. Yesterday morning it came down as
wet, sloppy snow, but right now it is cold enough for it to remain on the
ground. Shauna has been entrusted with some of the dog walking duties this week
as I mend from my shoulder surgery, and I do not envy her. Jasper accumulates
wet snow in her fur as she walks, and by the time she is back in the house, she
is the Michelin Dog with big balls of snow all over her legs. My sympathies as well to
all local trick-or-treaters and their escorts. Halloween has always been one of
my favorite times of the year; this is when I catch up on my ridiculously bad
horror movies…
I have been an aficionado of bad cinema and bad television since I was a
young man, but horror flicks are my passion. I like directors like Ed Wood and
George Romero, the low budget guys who make movies so bad they become cult
classics. Movie critic Joe Bob Briggs used to rate horror flicks in terms of
breast and body counts, but I feel there should be other considerations as
well. I saw a horror flick with my friend Bob maybe thirty-five years ago – I think
it was called Night of the Zombies-
and even by my low standards, this one was
hands down the worst horror flick I’d ever seen. The very first scene was of a
zombie munching on an arm, which seemed promising, but it then descended into
complete chaos. This movie had absolutely no plot whatsoever, and, to make it
especially ludicrous, in between the gory scenes of flesh eating were nature
shots which had absolutely nothing to
do with the movie. It was as if the director needed some filler, so he just
grabbed some stock wildlife footage, and spliced it in. One minute a screaming woman
was being eviscerated by a blood-soaked zombie businessman in some big city,
and the next, there was a completely incongruous shot of cranes alighting from
a swamp. You don’t need much plot for these things, but you need some plot.
Years ago, when I still lived in Buffalo, there was a really crappy low
budget horror flick filmed nearby in the south towns, and one of my friends was
on the crew. It was called The Burning,
and it did have a plot, sort of. My friend got a hold of the script one day,
and a bunch of us got very wasted one night and tape recorded our “version” of
one of the movie’s more inane scenes. Even by our juvenile standards this
script appeared to have been written by a ten year old with no imagination, and
clearly no idea what actually happens when a man and a woman have sex. I
imagine the writer fit the profile of the misogynist video gamers to whom I
referred in last week’s report. The movie could have been more aptly entitled Stunted Development. Anyhow, when the
movie was (miraculously) released, a bunch of us went to the local drive to see
how it came out. I am quite sure there was weed involved in the viewing,
because I do not remember much about the movie other than that it sucked moose
gonads. It far exceeded our expectations for badness. Added to the obvious
movie flaws - poor writing, continuity failures, and abominable acting- this
movie had some laughable technical glitches. At one critical point in the
movie, when suspense was intended to build, the cameraman chose to adjust the aperture
on the camera lens, so that the viewer clearly saw the click stops as the scene got
darker, then lighter, then darker again. Remember the old SNL skit with Dan Akroyd’s
character Leonard Pinth Garnell, reviewing bad movies? This one would have been
a headliner!
In honor of All Hallow’s Eve, last night I watched an episode of the
much-touted series American Horror Story-
Freak Show, and frankly, I was disappointed. I was hoping for something as
creepy as David Lynch’s Twin Peaks or
Blue Velvet (two of my favorites), but
the show somehow fell short. It features a great cast, and a nice touch is that
the creepiness takes place in the 50’s. I don’t think you can’t go far wrong
with a bunch of deformed freaks, and a psychotic, murderous clown in the plot,
but something was missing. It’s well filmed, but I think the writing was the weak
link. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and watch a few more episodes
before I give it the gong. What is your
favorite horror flick of all time? Son of
Bride of Chucky? Friday the 13th
Pt 25?
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2014 ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
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