UHF (1989)

Weird Al gets his own TV station, which he fills with ridiculous programming.

This movie is pure trash. This shit had me crying.



#Review

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006)

This is a good mid-80s NYC period piece following a bunch of juvenile delinquents. It switches between 1986 and the present, as recollected by Robert Downey Jr.

The setting is wonderful. The whole thing is beautifully made and the cast nails it. The crude teens harrassing everybody in town is a lot of fun to me. It's like Kids, where the teens are getting drunk and suffering adolescent melodrama. Shia LeBeauf is among the teens, mostly a spectator rather than instigator to the gang violence that Channing Tatum's bad attitude keeps egging on. The girls are eye candy, everybody's got issues, and people get fucked up. These teens are trash, and I love it.

What's funny to me is that Shia LeBeauf becomes Robert Downey Jr., and Channing Tatum becomes Eric Roberts. This movie needed levity, after all.

It could have been a trash epic if it added some nudity and shown more of the suggested violence. Instead, it's just a really good movie, which is good enough, made better by its level of trash. Like the scene where they beat a small child with a trash can. Fun times for the whole family.

#Review

Alien Romulus

When I heard this was to be set between the first two movies, I wondered how the hell that was going to work. So here's the setup: The company sends a ship to gather some space junk from the Nostromo wreckage. Guess what kind of space junk they find?

But we're not dealing with them. We're dealing with a group of young people on a mining colony planet, and like most young people, they don't want to work. They form a plan to steal some cryo tubes from the wreckage of the ship that went out to get the wreckage from the Nostromo, and... are you still following me?

With the help of a special-ed android, they infiltrate the ship, and then it all goes to shit for them. It's not a bad setup, but it took me a moment to wrap my head around what was going on. Then I got even more confused when I saw a damaged android that looked and dressed like Ash from the original film. Eventually, we confirm that it's a different synthetic that merely looks like him.

This movie relies a lot on nostalgia and doing the same thing over and over again. The atmosphere is good, though, and it has some cool scenes. They do some cool stuff with the facehuggers and the acid, and I liked that ringed planet setting. The movie acknowledges Prometheus pretty readily, and it also homages Alien: Resurrection with a weird hybrid type, who's really stupid and gross.

One part I thought was stupid is how they try to guilt trip the android for not opening the door to save what's-her-face, even though doing so would have guaranteed all of their deaths. I hate that morality shit. It's like that train-track thing where you decide whether to kill the one guy on the tracks or the 5 guys on the tracks, which apparently is a huge moral conundrum for some people.

You'll get a lot of fan service. I read some review say it works best when it's not trying to copy the original so much, and I'd agree. The new ideas were cool, the old ideas are just franchise tropes at this point. Not a great movie, but I don't really hate any of the movies in this series. It's at least better than Covenant.

#Review

Dee Snider's Strangeland (1998)

I haven't seen this film in nearly 20 years, so it was time to re-evaluate.

Dee Snider plays Carlton Hendricks, who goes by the username "CaptHowdy". He's a sadist and online predator luring teen girls to his lair where he sews their mouths shut and puts them in weird sex/trap devices.

What sets him apart from others is that his aim isn't to kill people. He just loves to torture them. What a fucking asshole, but Dee makes it work.

Captain Howdy lures detective Gage's daughter Genevieve (Linda Cardellini) into one of his weird fetish torture traps, and this act gives him a hard-on for Howdy to get his due justice.

About halfway through, the movie takes a different direction. There's a whole subplot about reforming this evil bastard (damn that insanity plea), and it's a great way to introduce Robert Englund into the movie. He plays Jack, part of a lynch mob out to end Howdy, whether he's reformed or not. It's a fun parallel to Freddy getting killed by an angry mob, and Robert got to be on both ends now.

On a side note, when they reform Carlton, he looks like such a lame ugly fucking square. I know Dee was probably trying to make him look as uncool as possible, even admitting that it was one of the hardest parts to film in the movie because of how much he hated his lame aesthetic so much.

And did I mention how ugly he looks? I find him more frightening than when he's pierced & tatted!

The movie then resumes its original course and has a pretty decent ending. This includes a house of bodily horrors, and a theme that's always disturbed me. It's when someone goes through something traumatic, but gets out of that situation... only to find themselves back in an even worse situation.


The movie isn't great. I hated it when I first saw it, but it does have a good cast and a decent story, albeit so-so execution. What I'll never understand is how Dee Snider kept the rumors alive for a sequel for like 15 years, given that ending.

And since we're talking about flesh here, I remember Bill Hinzman kept rumors going for a sequel to FleshEater for about 20 years. I'd buy that for a dollar!

#Review

Trap (2024)

Here's an instance where a movie has a perfect trailer. It sets up the plot that the FBI set up a sting at a pop concert to catch a serial killer. That's all you get out the trailer, and that's perfect. We don't want to ruin the suspense and the M. Night twist by yabbering on about the details, but the end result is this: This movie is crispy! Extra fried!

M. Night delivers what may be my favorite of his films thus far. That's not saying much since he's so hit or miss, but this one is a home run. Josh Hartnett kills it. Seriously, the dude plays it cool. I've always liked him since H20 and The Faculty, and he rocks in this movie.

This movie is all about staying one step ahead, and as a viewer, you'll try to do that too. I kept wondering what the twist would be, if this was the twist, if that was the twist, and I have my own interpretation of what the actual twist is, but regardless... all the twists or not-twists are great.

Solid movie, I definitely enjoyed it.

#Review

Red (2008)

Good flick. Great cast. Brian Cox is out fishing when three teens hassle him and do something quite wicked. The rest is him trying to get justice while the parents of the evil boys try to sweep it under the rug.

Jack Kechum movies are always pretty twisted. This one isn't as disturbing as his later ones, but it's still very good. A cruel movie, and Brian Cox plays it real cool. I love that guy, one of those forever-old types.

#Review

Deadpool & Wolverine

This movie is inappropriate. It's a Disney movie, but there's all this blood and murder and carnage. What gives?

When I go to the movies, I expect certain things. My shoes need to stick to the floor with every step I take. A single hotdog will come with 8 packets of sauce. And of course, all the blood and violence and cool stuff will be reserved for horror and crime flicks. Certainly not Disney flicks.

When I go to see a Disney movie, I expect something family-friendly and cringey and boring that I can't bear to watch and will probably walk out of. That wasn't the case with Deadpool, though. It was all entertaining and funny and stuff. Entertainment is not what I want when I go to see a movie. 😠

And you call this an R-rated movie just because it's a bloodbath filled with foul language? Not a single titty in sight. Just a bald lady fingering a bunch of dude's mindholes while Deadpool uses Logan's corpse to stab a bunch of henchmen up their assholes. No drug-use either. For shame, Disney.

I can't believe I wasted money on this wonderful movie. 4/5 stars 😞

#Review

White Water Summer (1987)

Alan (Sean Astin) is an introverted youth who is coerced into going on a long nature hike in the mountains, led by a nice looking survival expert named Vic (Kevin Bacon). Alan is a total pussy, too fixated on his radio and his stuff and taking shortcuts in his camping endeavors. This pisses Vic off, since he believes this whole camping trip is about the great outdoors, survival, self-discovery, et cetera. Soon, Alan begins to feel like Vic has it out for him, since Alan is always slowing the group down by being a scaredypants wimp.

It's a clash of two stubborn individuals, and it's more engaging than you might expect. I can relate to Alan as I'd probably wimp out as a kid in those situations too, but I think Vic was mostly in his right mind, even though they can depict him as an asshole. But with that said, Alan is basically the villain for ruining the trip. Sure, he has his moments, but Kevin Bacon will always be better, even if he is a villain. Especially if he is a villain.


Fun FACT: This movie is (not) a prequel to Friday the 13th. After endangering the children, Vic changed his name to Jack and moved to New Jersey where he would be almost become a camp counselor.

Another fun FACT: Kevin Bacon was also in The River Wild (1994), which is a (not) a sequel to White Water Summer, which is (not) a sequel to Friday the 13th.

#Review

Eden Lake (2008)

This was a hit when it came out. It's been a while since I saw it, so I gave it another chance because of our leads, who were nobodies at the time.

Michael Fassbender plays romantic leading male, and Kelly Reilly plays sweet teacher leading female. This movie is soooo un-Beth Dutton of her. And it's sooooo un-Magneto of him. It's been out for a while, so SPOILERS if you're late to the party.

To recap, these two love birds take a weekend at the titular location. They are promptly greeted by some asshole teenagers who harrass them with loud music and rebellious attitudes until things go too far.

If this was the real Magneto, he would have done some jiu jitsu on these assholes and choked them with the iron in their blood, but what does he do? He gets pwned to death. And Beth Dutton is all nice instead of being a bitch? It's like an alternate reality where bad-asses are pansies and children are the real heroes, and for that reason, it's hard to watch.

This movie should definitely make you squirm. Part because of the violence, but also because you hate everybody so much. Our heroes aren't the worst, but they're certainly questionable, and I've laughed at their expense at times. Same goes for the bad guys. I cheer when the kids die because they're evil little cunts, so don't try to squeeze some sympathy out of me for the one kid who was reluctant to participate. If you don't want to be an asshole, don't hang out with assholes.

The movie is certainly well made, and our leads do a solid job. It's got a lot of what a real horror movie needs, and it puts our characters and audiences through the wringer. I used to hate this movie, and you know what? I still do.

#Review

Longlegs (2024)

The hype was big for this one. Directed by Anthony Perkins' son Oz, the movie is about an FBI agent who investigates a satanic serial killer. I think the movie is set in the 80s or 90s. It's one of those ominous slow-burners where you don't really know wtf is going on until it finally starts coming together at the end. I went in blindly and I wont say much else about the plot, but Satanic stuff is generally pretty unsettling, and this movie had a few creepy moments.

Maika Monroe is our lead, either psychic or "highly intuitive" as she pieces this cold case together. She had a great run in 2014 with The Guest and It Follows, and now another decent genre piece 10 years later. Good for her.

Nic Cage plays "Longlegs", and in typical Cage fashion, he hams it up HARD. He doesn't actually have a lot of scenes, which is probably for the best. Too much Nic Cage can drive a man insane. Look at Nic Cage, for example. He's had to live with himself for 60 years, and he's obviously gone completely insane because of it.

I wont say it was the best, but it was a solid effort.

#Review