31 in 31

Ghostbusters

Directed by Ivan Reitman

Released 1984

In these troubled times, children of the 80s can live by a few simple rules.

1. Don’t cross the streams.

2. Never get involved with possessed people.

3. Aim for the flat top.

And that wraps up 10 years of 31-in-31!  We rate Ghostbusters a dog and a cat living together; mass hysteria!

House of 1000 Corpses

Directed by Rob Zombie

Released 2003

On October 30th, 1977, Dwight Schrute and Singled Out’s host Chris Hardwick, along with their respective girlfriends, pulled into Captain Spaulding’s gas station and roadside Museum of Monsters & Madmen. They had been driving across the country documenting offbeat roadside attractions for a book they plan to write and have seemingly hit pay dirt. Captain Spaulding, who is part clown, part “over it” carnival barker, regales his eager audience with the tale of Doctor Satan, a one time serial killer in the area that was hung by an angry mob on a nearby tree. Ignoring the protests from their wet blanket girlfriends, Dwight and Chris are determined to find this legendary tree. Along the way they see a hitchhiker and since this is the 70′s and also a horror movie, they decide to pick her up. “Hi, I’m Baby Firefly, a free spirited necrophiliac who lives with her even more fucked up family. We kidnap people from out of town and commit unspeakable horrors on them”. Unfortunately for Dwight, Chris, and the wet blankets, Baby leaves out those details and they agree to give her a ride home. Uuugh, someone call Michael Scott, I don’t think Dwight is coming back from his PTO...

This is one of those cases where the Rotten Tomatoes score of 20% is so off it brings into question the legitimacy of Rotten Tomatoes as a platform. This is a great fucking movie. Granted, it is a very particular type of movie and while it’s not a perfect movie, it’s incredibly entertaining. It’s gory, demented, funny, and just total insanity. The Firefly family is perfect with each character fully realized and perfectly casted. We even see our second appearance of Karen Black this season as Mother Firefly. It’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes grindhouse baby. 

We rate House of 1000 Corpses.....1000 corpses.

Lord of Illusions

Directed by Clive Barker

Released 1995

October 29, 2020

BAKULA IS DRACULA!  Just kidding.  That does seem like a no brainer that unfortunately we never got. I guess there is still time. The guy isn’t dead yet. 

Lord of Illusions was written and directed by Clive Barker, and was his follow up feature to the awesome and underrated Nightbreed.  This supernatural noir stars Scott Bakula as private dick Harry D'Amour, who comes to L.A. for a simple surveillance job but stumbles across a much larger and apocalyptic plot to resurrect a magical cult leader named Nix who is determined to bring upon the end of the world.  Lucky for Harry and for us, this plot includes Hall of Fame smoke Famke Janssen in her first movie role. Famke is married to master illusionist Philip Swann, who was Nix’s protege before he turned on him. Swann is basically a fusion of David Copperfield and David Blaine but, like Nix, his illusions are actually magic. Swann, haunted by the thought of Nix’s eventual return, takes a rather drastic step to throw anyone off his scent. This causes Harry to dig deeper into the mystery behind Swann’s past....and sleep with his wife. 

Lord of Illusions is a great little horror wrapped in a sweet mid-90′s glow.  Bakula must have written into in his contract that he would have no less than two scenes where his shirt was optional. He delivered his lines as if he was at a table read and it was the first time he’d seen them. Oddly enough, it worked. The only thing I had trouble getting past was the character Nix. It wasn’t because he was a badly written or acted, but because he was the same actor that played George Costanza's apathetic boss Mr. Kruger. Seeing him as this all-powerful warlock was just a bit of a stretch.  

We rate Lord of Illusions 32 rabbits out of 40.

The Room

Directed by Christian Volckman

Released 2019

The premise of this movie is cool but it kinda goes off the rails at the end.  A couple moves into an old house and discover a room that can create any material object they want - money, food, clothes, wine, art, etc.  There are a few too many montages of the couple partying hard and rolling around in stacks of cash.  Anyway, all that partying does nothing to dispel the pain and grief the wife feels after having two miscarriages.  You see where this is going?

There are some aspects of this movie that remind me of Vivarium and I don’t want to give it a hard pass, but towards the end the characters are written like totally different people and you get a sense Volckman was trying to be shocking but it comes off as lazy.

We rate The Room 5 fat stacks of cash out of 9.

The Puppetmaster

Directed by David Schmoeller

Released 1989

For as long as I can remember, The Puppetmaster was one of those Blockbuster rental movies I always wanted to get, but never was able to because I was too young. I can still see the VHS cover picturing all the different sadistic little puppets in their display box. Fast forward 30 years and now I am finally getting to see this damn movie.  My only thoughts on this movie are, what is this movie?? and, what is going on??

We rate The Puppetmaster 20 puppets out of 27.

Trilogy of Terror

Directed by Dan Curtis

Released 1975

Our first and only anthology of the season is Trilogy of Terror. Written by the iconic Richard Matheson, we have 3 independent short stories, each telling the tale of a woman’s torment and all played exceptionally well by the legendary Karen Black.   

The first story is titled Julie, and has Black playing Julie, a frumpy looking teacher at some university. If I had to guess, it was likely a community college. It just kinda had that vibe of “I’m gonna save a couple bucks while I still try and figure some shit out” to me. Dear reader, there is an episode in this trilogy worth watching and this one isn’t it. It’s not really a horror and it doesn’t age very well. It’s a shoulder shrug of a story about an obsessed male student who wants to see his teacher naked. He watches her change while hiding outside her window, he persistently asks her out, she finally agrees to see a movie with him where he drugs her, takes her to a motel and takes compromising photos of her, and then blackmails her to be his sex slave.  The end?  No!  The big twist for the audience is that Julie was in on it all along and actually the real victim is our boy Chad. Side note, if you’re trying to find a less rape-y name than “Chad”, it doesn’t exist.  In a moment that would make any Bond villain proud, Julie reveals that she is a serial killer and prays on students by seducing them and poisoning them after she gets bored. Our boy Chad dies and Julie adds his name to her scrap book.  Pass.

The second story, Millicent and Therese, has Black playing dual roles of two warring sisters. One sister, Millicent, is a homely, repressed, brunette shut-in while the other, Therese, is a free spirited blond. Millicent hates her sister and tells their doctor that she is evil. We learn that Therese slept with her father and subsequently killed her mother. That actually sounds pretty evil. This vignette, while a little closer to a horror, was still more of a psychological thriller. The twist at the end was a little better, it involved a book that was simply titled “Voodoo” and one of those dolls you poke needles into. That said, if you’re only going to watch one of the trilogy, it wouldn’t be this one.  

The third and final story of our Trilogy of Kinda Terror is titled Amelia. Black, aka Amelia, is the only person in this short and she fucking kills it. This one woman play has her acting against a crazed Zuni fetish doll. I won’t lie, by current standards this is a pretty offensive looking doll. It’s an aboriginal warrior with a huge frock of black hair, sharp teeth, and is equipped with a spear. It also comes with a Gremlin-type warning in the form of a little scroll that states a spirit of a Zuni warrior named “He Who Kills” is trapped in the doll and if you remove the gold chain it will come to life. Needless to say, the chain falls off and we are treated to one of the more insane human vs. doll fights I’ve seen in awhile.  Side note, while I never want to find myself really fighting for my life, part of me does want to try my luck against some of these crazed dolls. I always find it hilarious how difficult a time people have defending themselves against these miniature nightmares.  Just soccer kick the fuckers across the room! 

We rate Trilogy of Terror 1 Karen Black out of 3.

The Hole in The Ground

Directed by Lee Cronin

Released 2019

Changelings are creepy but the concept has been done ad nauseam so, to be a worthwhile movie everything about it has to be done REALLY well.  And The Hole in The Ground does everything REALLY well.

What does a mother do?  A mother dies.  But a mother also knows when a subterranean monster is playing pretend at being her son, and doing a shitty job at that.  What the plot lacks in originality is otherwise made up for with the acting, score, scenery, and tension throughout that never allows the viewer to relax.

We rate The Hole in The Ground 8 holes in the bog out of 10.

Child’s Play

Directed by Tom Holland

Released 1988

I was watching this movie with some friends (virtually) and I kept thinking, wow, I don’t remember any of this!  Didn’t I watch this sometime in the past decade?  I consulted the 31-in-31 archives and turns out the only movie in this bountiful franchise I have seen is Curse of Chucky.  Phew, dementia hasn’t set in yet.

Child’s Play is both god awful and awesome.  It made me nostalgic for my 80s childhood.  6-year-old Andy makes his mother breakfast in bed, rides the subway by himself, walks through a homeless encampment, takes a piss in front of an abandoned house, breaks out of a mental institution and walks all the way home, AND successfully lights the match to set Chucky on fire without burning the entire house down.  I don’t know a 6-year-old today that could do a single one of those things.  As a child of the 80s I may be technologically illiterate but I sure as hell wouldn’t let a doll punk my ass.

Child’s Play is a great bad movie, best watched with friends virtually or host a socially distanced backyard movie night.  Life is too short to wait until covid is no longer a thing.

We rate Child’s Play 42 best friends out of 65.

Our House

Directed by Anthony Scott Burns

Released 2018

Ethan is a college student and wannabe Nikola Tesla. One fateful night, Ethan’s parents are killed in an accident running an errand he was supposed to do. As the eldest sibling Ethan must put his life on hold and drop out of school to take care of the younger brother and sister.  He also breaks up with his girlfriend, which seemed unnecessary, but maybe she sucked and his dead parents were as good excuse as any?  By day Ethan works an hourly retail gig, and by night he fights crime dressed as a bat, whoops wrong orphaned child story...by night he’s locked away in his garage tinkering on an invention that could change the world - wireless electricity. Unbeknownst to him, this machine creates a portal into the spirit realm awakening sinister specters. These angry Swayzes aren’t the pottery-making type. Instead, they follow the “befriend the smallest child in the family” playbook and slowly ramp up the terror. On paper, Our House isn’t gonna make you tingle. It probably sounds like something you’ve already seen and maybe you have since it is a remake of a 2010 film, The Ghost In the Machine.  As an aside, doesn’t 2010 seem a little too soon to be making a remake in 2018? Aren’t there some unwritten rules on this? If not, can we please remake Star Wars 8 & 9 already? Heck, how about 1, 2, 3 &and6 while you’re at it? 

Back to the movie.  While on paper it might be nothing to look at, the movie for the most part delivers. It has a genuine foundation with director Anthony Burns successfully capturing the feeling of a broken family and how they reforge that bond while staving off some fairly creepy ghosts.

We rate Our House 9 alternating currents out of 12.

Malicious

Directed by Michael Winnick

Released 2018

Trigger warning for anyone who struggles with the topic of pregnancy loss.  There is a pretty brutal late pregnancy miscarriage scene.

Malicious was very.....meh.  There are a few effective scares but overall the movie doesn’t tread any new ground and everything about it was mediocre.  You don’t waste your time watching it, and I won’t waste my time writing about it.  However, there is one recurring truth this season of 31-in-31.  What does a mother do?  A mother dies.

We rate Malicious 10 fertility boxes out of 21.

The Darkness

Directed by Greg McLean

Released 2016

The Darkness has a score of 3% on Rotten Tomatoes.  I’m sorry but any movie starring Kevin Bacon automatically comes in at 20% based on that fact alone.  Kev was 58 when this was filmed and DAMN, the few seconds of him shirtless make the other 92 minutes worth it.  KevBa is aging like a fine wine and I have no doubt he could bust out the Footloose dance at a moment’s notice. However, no amount of shirtless K Bacon can save this movie from the awful dialogue and plot gaps.  These poor actors worked with what they had, but it wasn’t much.  The horror genre is flooded with Amityville Horror rip-offs and The Darkness is a hard pass. We rate The Darkness 1 degree of Kevin Bacon out of 6.

The Monster

Directed by Bryan Bertino

Released 2016

This movie should come with a trigger warning for people with toxic mothers.  I think you can appreciate this movie on a totally different level if your mother way, um, not super warm, but even Carol Brady’s children would enjoy it.

The movie starts with a mother (Kathy) and daughter (Lizzy) on a road trip battling their inner demons, but quickly turns into a deadly scenario when they have to battle a very real monster stalking them outside of their disabled car.  Like many children of, um, not super warm mothers, Lizzy is capable beyond her years and in many instances behaves more like an adult than her mother.  That being said, even, um, not super warm mothers have a shred of maternal instinct buried deep inside them and it sometimes comes to the surface when their child’s life is in imminent danger.  As we learned way back on October 1st with Vivarium, what does a mother do?  A mother dies.

We rate The Monster 17 tow trucks out of 22.

The Lodge

Directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala

Released 2020

The Lodge is a psychological thriller in which not only do all the main characters heads get fucked with, but so does the audience.  I appreciated the little twist that I didn’t see coming, but Franz and Fiala also didn’t make it the focal point of the movie M. Night Shyamalan-style.  It was just a part of the overall story that goes real dark real fast, but this is what happens when daddy gets engaged to a (much younger) woman who was raised in a cult.  And not like a Scientology cult.  Like a Heaven’s Gate cult.

I highly recommend this movie but it is disturbing.  Consider yourself warned.  

SPOILER ALERT: the dog doesn’t make it.

We rate The Lodge 9 sins out of 10.

Devil’s Gate 

Directed by Clay Staub

Released 2017

FBI agent Daria Francis (painfullly played by Amanda Schull) is dispatched to a small town in North Dakota called ... you guessed it, Devil's Gate, to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Maria Pritchard and her son Jonah. She is accompanied by local deputy Colt Salter, who spends the early part of the movie acting like he’s never seen nor talked to a woman before. Agent Francis suspects the husband (it’s always the husband), but the local sheriff seems suspiciously unconcerned. I was hoping this would develop into something more, but unfortunately what at first feels like a possible red herring is actually just some over-acting on Jonathan Frakes’ part, plus some bad writing. He’s adamant that Jackson Pritchard has nothing to do with his family’s disappearance and not to question him. Instead, the sheriff wants Agent Francis to focus on the sister who Maria and Jonah were going to visit on the day they vanished. After wasting some time talking to the sister, Francis and Salter head to the Pritchard farm, which is more of a stronghold at this point with boarded up windows and booby traps. During all this you get cutaway scenes of a half mad Jackson screaming at something in his basement that he has locked in a cage. Needless to say, Jackson has some explaining to do when Awful Francis and Virgin Salter show up. Then hell breaks loose and shit starts to go downhill. We find out that this simple disappearance is a part of a larger alien conspiracy to slowly replace humans with changelings.  OMG doesn’t this sound like something Trump would say?  What follows I will leave for you to watch since it’s really the only part of the movie worth watching. 

Overall I think the Rotten Tomatoes score is a little harsh. They gave this movie a 38% while I would give it 52%. I did enjoy it, which is the most important part. That said, the dialogue and acting were pretty rough for the most part. However, the concept is cool and anything with aliens is always interesting to me. It’s part “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and part “any changeling story”. It was a good idea, but the execution missed the mark.

We rate Devil’s Gate 31 harvests out of 41.  

My Bloody Valentine

Directed by George Mihalka

Released 1981

My Bloody Valentine or, as the Canucks call it, MBV, drops us off in the remote mining town of Valentine’s Bluff, where Valentine’s Day is a pretty, pretty, pretty big deal. At one point it was such a big deal that a couple of miners abandoned their post so they wouldn’t be late for the big V-Day bash in town. In doing so they forgot to check the methane levels, which resulted in an explosion that trapped their co-workers in the mine. Sadly for this crew, there isn’t a Chilean ending for them. Out of the six who were trapped, only Harry Warden survives after resorting to cannibalism and he goes mad. I don’t remember how long he was trapped but I like to think it was only a couple of hours. Once rescued, Harry is sent to a mental hospital where he conveniently escapes and unleashes his predictable revenge against the townspeople he blames for the accident. Before he is sent back to the asylum, Harry warns the town to never hold another Valentine’s Day party or he will return.  Fast forward 20 years and this grisly murder is already the stuff of legend. Grandma spinning tales like “eat your veggies or Harry Warden will eat you!”.  It seems silly that after only 20 years people act like this may not have happened. I can easily remember things that happened 20 years ago and I don’t have the traumatic history some of these people do. You know who else also doesn’t forget? Harry bleeping Warden. The young folk want to get their dance on but, unlike Footloose, this dance doesn’t turn into synchronized fun.  The bodies start to pile up  

Canada, the country that brought us Pontypool, Black Christmas, and the Cube (to name just a few) also brought us the cult classic slasher gem, My Bloody Valentine. I didn’t realize this until recently, but Canada is sneaky good at making horror movies.  If you think about it, it makes a ton of sense.  Canada is the second largest country in the world behind Russia, yet only has 37 million people to fill it. The Great White North has vast expanses of icy nothing. It’s the perfect setting for something horrible to happen. This movie is a fun, grisly time. It’s oozing with late 70s/early 80s camp.  Oh, and it ends with an amazing song, The Ballad of Harry Warden.

We rate My Bloody Valentine 5 49ers out of 6.

Vampires v. The Bronx

Directed by Oz Rodriguez

Released 2020

Vampires v. The Bronx works well on two levels, both as a kids rule feel-good movie and as an allegory for gentrification.  We recommend this family friendly Netflix original!

We rate Vampires v. The Bronx 3 bodegas out of 4.

The Blair Witch Project

Directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick

Released 1999

I saw The Blair Witch Project in theaters when it was released......20 years ago!!  Ah, 1999.  Another time.  Another era.  I was hanging out with this guy named Ryan and I crashed at his place after the movie.  I had to pee shortly after we went to bed but I was too scared to get out of bed and go to the bathroom by myself.  I also felt stupid waking him up and having him take me to the bathroom.  So, I just laid there awake all night with a full bladder.

It was fun to revisit this movie 20 years later!  While The Blair Witch Project was by no means the first “found footage” movie, it is easy to see how it popularized the genre and it is still among the best.  In my humble yet expert opinion, I think only Paranormal Activity ranks with Blair Witch.  The genre became so saturated with crap that Michael and I typically avoid it.

I definitely recommend checking it out again if you haven’t seen it since 90s buzz rock ruled the charts.  And if you have never seen it, you are probably my 20 year-old little sister.

We rate The Blair Witch Project 14 stick men out of 16.