Burnt Offerings

Dan Curtis always had a thing for haunted houses, didn't he? After milking the horrors of Collinwood for about 5 years, he wasn't quite done with the subgenre yet, opting to turn this novel into a feature film. Funny enough, trivia says that he read the book years before getting the offer to direct, and thought that it was less than ideal for a screenplay. Fortunately for us, he put his magic touch on it and turned it into one of the best haunted house movies of all time.

The story is about a family who rents a summer home with the simple condition that they take care of it. Notably, this is the same house they used in the original Phantasm, as well as the 1985 Bond flick "A View to Kill". The place is a bit of a wreck when they get there, so it may seem a bit daunting at first, but no matter. Things seem to work themselves out... at the cost of our family's sanity.

The cast is what makes this film work. Karen Black is the mother who gets too interested in the upkeep of the place, often prioritizing it above her family's wellbeing. Oliver Reed plays the father, and this dude oozes charisma in everything he's in. He's a regular guy who starts to understand that the place is getting to everyone's head, including his own. He wants to fight it, but it's never that easy when the place seems to have a mind of its own.

The film also features a troubled Bette Davis who finds mind and vitality are challenged by the place, but at her age, no one believes she has a valid reason to be alarmed by the madness she bears witness to. Burgess Meredith has a bit part as the man renting the home out, and he enthusiastically overlooks any wrongdoing so long as the house will flourish.

It's easy to think that this film could have influenced The Evil Dead. You have a creepy old house in the middle of nowhere that doesn't seem to want its guests to ever leave. It wants to swallow their souls even, not to mention a bit toward the end when they try to leave in the storm, but the trees block their path and the vines wrap around old Ollie and smack him around a bit. Plus, there's also the theme of being possessed, which while not as prevalent as in Evil Dead, it's a more gradual approach that goes along with the theme of people going mad.

At about two hours, this movie maintains a decent pace because our lead actors are so easy to watch. Hypnotic, even. The ending is fantastic and makes it all worth it. Quite a chilling little horror story for those who are willing to dig a little deeper into the genre.

Night School - Another 1981 Slasher

I've made it a quest in my life to watch as many 1981 slashers as I can, because this was the pinnacle year for the slasher subgenre. Somehow, most of them end up being pretty decent because the genre wasn't fatigued yet. Filmmakers were enthusiastic about it still, and they had a few good ideas up their sleeves. Most importantly, they still took themselves seriously, and camp value didn't destroy the integrity of slasher movies yet.

When they made slashers back in the day, it all about finding the right ingredients. This meant an original look for the killer, a unique weapon, a proper M.O., and a setting. For this one, we have a black clad biker whose identity is concealed by a helmet. This killer wields a kukri and is terrorizing the female students of a Boston night school, cutting off heads left and right.

We have a few prominent characters throughout, such as the male professor who has relations with all of his students, his sexy foreign assistant/"lover", a dumb peeping tom, and a couple of detectives investigating the murders around it all.

There are a few good moments here and there, some violent slashings, and a decent score by Brad Fiedel of Terminator and Just Before Dawn fame. It's a whodunnit, but the twist shouldn't come as much of a surprise considering we're only ever following a handful of characters, but it's decently crafted, and I've definitely seen worse.

Italian horror directors and movies

Any faves there or opinions you want to share?

Mario Bava (probably my number 1 mostly because of his older atmospheric stuff) In my collection (all Arrow releases):I Vampiri
Black Sunday
Black Sabbath
The Girl who Knew too Much
Blood and Black Lace
Kill Baby Kill
A Bay of Blood
Baron Blood

Lucio Fulci (made some pretty decent gialli late 60s eearly 70s even though they don't really have RW value to me. I know The New York Ripper is well liked but that was the first in a series of 'monstrosities' to me and yes I have seen all of the man's horror flicks). In my collection:
Zombi 2
City of the Living Dead
The Beyond
House by the Cemetery
The Black Cat

Dario Argento (the guy has huge potential and a great craftsman but I find his style over substance approach not really satisfying. Especially Phenomena sounds like the coolest premise ever only to find out it's the umpteenth style exercise. Yeah Suspiria is hailed as one of the greastest horror movies. It does have its gruesome scenes but overall I find it rather empty and boring). So no I don't have any of him in my collection. Still 2 I would consider:
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (at least this has a decent story)
Trauma (more straightforward than his others)

Ruggero Deodato (honestly I haven't seen that much except for his most infamous ones and also 'The House at the Edge of the Park' That's how The original Last HOuse on the Left should have been like IMO) IN my collection:
Last Cannibal World
Jungle Holocaust
Guess I need to dig deeper into his filmopgraphy

Umberto Lenzi (I have seen a handful but I tend to forget which ones. NOt really a good sign.) Anyway those I have seen at least I can remember I did:
Man from Deep River (first cannibal movie with little cannibalism, disappointing)

Eyeball (seen yesterday, giallo not bad bur far from good rather repetitive and proly sleep inducing without the nudity)
Eaten Alive (well it's a cannibal movie and it copied a lot from other movies, better watch the ones it copies from cos this one doesn't offer much original)
Cannibal Ferox (very weak Cannibal Holocaust clone)
Ghosthouse (barely remember it)

Joe Spinell is The Undertaker

The concept of a funeral home killing people to keep the business going is a good one, but it's only happened a few times. The most notable movie I can think of is The Comedy of Terrors, with Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and Basil Rathbone. That one is pretty good from the cast alone, but we're not here to talk about that movie. We're here to talk about Maniac. Maniac 2? Maniac 2.5? The Undertaker.

Joe Spinell was in some awesome movies. Check his filmography and you'll see he worked with some of the greats like Coppola, Scorsese, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, William Lustig... but toward the end of his career/life, he started falling into some crap territory. Sadly, this movie falls into that category.

I don't even have much to say about this movie except that it's too derivative of Maniac. You've got a crazy dude who kills people, keeps their bodies, and talks to them. He even acts the same, putting on the regular front when needed only to laugh and cry to himself when he's alone or on the prowl. Also, the very end is basically an exact copy of Maniac's ending, too, where the seemingly dead body comes to life and kills him. It seems that Spinell may have actually gone crazy toward the end of his life if he thought he could keep rehashing the same old premise like this.

I watched this one on youtube, where the quality ranges from good to awful in some scenes. Some of the kills are alright, and some of them are far too blurry to tell what's going on. I can't believe it took four people to direct this turkey.

Crawl (2019)

Alexandre Aja teams up with Sam Raimi to make a survival horror story about a woman trying to save her father from alligators whilst trapped in the crawlspace of their Florida home during a hurricane. That about sums up the plot right there, but these kinds of movies don't need a heavy plot. It's a situation you have to survive, and there's always another obstacle being thrown in your way, be it gators, rising waters, injuries sustained, or crazy winds throwing all sorts of things at you.

For what it is, this movie isn't bad. It's good to see Barry Pepper in a prominent role, because he's always pushed into those bit parts when in reality, he's a poor man's Johnny Depp. This is one of those movies where it could be easy to sigh at the stupid decisions that characters make, but there aren't a lot of those in this movie. The only stupid characters tend to get chewed up by gators, so it's all good. The gore is there, too. Nothing too intense, but enough to make you say, "ew".

For what it's worth, this movie is alright. I'll probably forget most of it in a few days though.

My latest haul

I went on another splurge this week, here is what I bought:

Shiver (2008)

P2 (2007)

Citadel (2012)

Julia's Eyes (2010)

Rabies (2010)

The Battery (2012)

The Corridor (2010)

Across the River (2013)

Acacia (2003)

Midsommar (2019)

The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018)

Deathgasm (2015)

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead (2014)


What do you think ?

RAF Round 3

Hey guys it's time for round three of this fun game!

Here are the rules:
Players have 3 options:
1. Shoot themselves
If you shoot yourself anyone else who shoots you dies and you live, but if no one shoots you then you kill yourself.
2. Shoot someone else
If you shoot someone else then they die, unless they chose to shoot themselves, then you die.
3. Shoot the sky
You kill no one, but you die if some one shoots you, however you don't run the risk of shooting someone who shot themself and dying from it.

Players will PM their choice to me.

Go ahead and sign up below!



Players:
Ballz
Der_Tables
ZombieCPA
Zed
Box_a_Hair
Basic_Username
Bambithedeer

Trick (2019)

Trick is a Todd Farmer / Patrick Lussier collaboration that snuck up on us today. It's about a masked psycho who goes on a killing spree at a Halloween party in 2015, and while he's seemingly defeated, he tends to return every year to up his bodycount.

A fun fact about Farmer/Lussier is that they were supposed to direct a sequel to RZ's Halloween 2, but that never took off. They must have put a lot of thought into the idea of a Halloween slasher and didn't want to let it go, so they created this movie instead. Now mind you, the final product turns out vastly different than anything regarding Michael Myers, but it must have been in their thought process when they decided to created a seemingly indestructible seasonal slasher.

The movie deals primarily with the detective trying to hunt down the killer each year, only 'Trick' is always one step ahead of him. Sometimes, annoyingly so. However, the payoff is pretty good because the story does make a fair amount of sense, and it's loaded with gory kills and seasonal imagery. Plus, you have Tom Atkins playing a bad-ass, but as expected, he's not in a very large role. It's still great to see him in another Halloween movie though.

Also to note is that we have a Scream 2 reunion with Omar Epps and Jamie Kennedy. The cast is pretty likable, so you want them to get a one-up on Trick, but that doesn't mean they don't take a hell of a beating to get there.

It gets more interesting toward the end too, but the less said, the better.

The Lost Boys sucks

I remember back when I bought a lot of dvds on Amazon and you could get free shipping if you bought $25 or more, so I tacked on this $3 disc hoping this movie would grow on me with further viewings. It didn't happen.

Something about this movie bugs me. Sure, it's 80s and all that, but it's not good 80s, if that makes sense. I feel like Joel Shoe-maker put too much of his gayness into this movie, because our bad boy antagonists are all pretty boy delinquents, not to mention that one random shirtless beefcake who was only in the movie because the director wanted to see him all oiled up.

One thing that's really stupid is the opening, right before the credits begin. The boys are kicked out by the security guard, and when he goes to his car afterward, he sees the vamps are after him. He tries to get into his car and grabs the door, but they fly by and pull him away, and his whole door rips off. Now that goddamn door would only come off if the security guard himself was strong enough to pull it off, but he wasn't. He was merely trying to open the door when they pulled him away, yet the whole fucking door rips off of that car? Was it held on by duct tape?

I also hate the main theme music in this movie. That song with the children singing? It's a real mood killer. Fuck that noise. Like I even like The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want", but definitely not when the children start singing.

1987 had a much better vampire movie that wasn't directed by a homo. It was directed by a woman, and it's called Near Dark. Watch that one instead.

Suggestion on Site Description

Looking up Trash Epics on a search engine turns up the following: "A community of creeps who love B-movies, retro fashions, and sleazy perversions of a psychotronic nature."

If looking to get more people to join, Joe or Jane Anyperson will look at that and say "No thank you."

If that's still the main drive behind the site, then no big deal. But if you're looking to expand the amount and 'diversity' (excuse the use of that word which I have grown to hate), them maybe tweak it.