“Introducing the New 2010 Chevrolet Chernobyl with optional power windows, power locks, and death ray emitting trunk.”

This weekend, while working on my Camaro behind the old toolshed & trailer, I busted a fan bracket off the engine block. There’s no nearby Autozone or NAPA dealer, and it was after 5 on Sunday. Luckily, Joe Don’s Salvage Yard is just a hop, skip, and a drunk stumble down the road, and I can always count on Big Joe to still be up watching “Law and Order” re-runs at his front office desk, mostly to avoid his old lady. The man refuses to get cable, and uses an old black and white TV with rabbit ears wrapped in tin foil. Usually I try to sweeten the deal with something deep fried as a gift for Joe. He’s much more willing to help me scrounge around the lot if his veins are immediately filled with salt and nitrates. However, this time I had nothing with me, not even a piece of pocket-warmed beef jerky; I was going into a gun fight without a six-shooter and Joe knew it. He immediately became agitated, cursing and mumbling under his breath, fumbling with the TV antenna, and just waved me off in the general direction of where I might possibly find the fan bracket or get a painful staph infection–whichever came first.

I find the junkyard to actually be a very peaceful place to think and meditate, much like a cemetery… minus the possibility of a spontaneous zombie uprising, though I am well prepared for such a situation. Sure, I always get funny looks at funerals when I carry that machete around, but you can never be too careful. I like to show it to people in the procession and say things like “Yeah, you never know…we might need to bury him twice.”

After hours of dead ends I finally found what appeared to be a Camaro similar to mine, with a heck of a lot more rust. It was a bit hard to tell though, as most of it had been flattened like a PB&J in a kid’s lunch sack, but the engine was still intact, so with my trusty Allen wrench, I removed the fan bracket cautiously. I couldn’t help but imagine the scene of Indiana Jones removing the golden skull from the altar. Checking around for hostile natives, I made my way back and paid the fair price of $25 and the promise of a bucket of chicken for Joe when I came back. Who said you can’t put a price on adventure?

Speaking of pioneers in the salvage industry, Emilio Estavez plays Otto Maddox, a rebellious punk who enjoys head banging with friends and eating his dinner out of dog food cans. Ahh, the rebellious youth of the 80’s. These are the same guys that wore Wham shirts. Howard Dean Stanton plays Bud, a seasoned, disgruntled repo-master who enlists Otto to join his dojo of car jackers. The other beer-inspired repo staff are: “Lite”, a streetwise gun touter, and “Miller”, a hippie mechanic who tries to teach him the repo code of ethics, and hopefully convince him not to make “Mighty Ducks 2.” Taking a few too many head butts at the previous night’s rave, Otto feels a kinship to them and the life of the auto repossessor. Sure the hours stink, but you do get the benefits of getting shot at by enraged Mexican immigrants, or getting the snot kicked out of you by a Mowtown band with guitar cases.

Meanwhile, during all this grand larceny fun, a one-eyed self-lobotimizied scientist, J. Frank Parnell, is transporting glowing shrimp platter aliens in his car trunk across state lines. Besides breaking some food import laws, he’s also encouraging people to look in his trunk, which immediately vaporizes them, leaving behind only the fresh scent of pine. It’s his own Ark of the Covenant on wheels, minus the Nazi’s. J’s plan is to meet up with Leila, one of the few members of the official fan club of UFO’s who isn’t still living in their parents’ basement, and expose the world to the truth. Otto puts some of his smooth moves on her, and she gets Estevezed in the back seat of his car. How romantic, but she hopes the horizontal mambo will encourage Otto to help her find the scientist, so they can  book the intergalactic shrimp cargo on local talk shows.

A $20,000 bounty is put on the Malibu, and soon a secret G-team in rented suits, along with every repo and car theft ring in the county is out looking for it. The G-team is led by a cruel German dominatrix with a mean kung-fu grip robotic hand (do they charge extra for that?), and an unhealthy obsession to get those alien remains at any cost. Otto gets captured  and is tortured by Mrs. Roboto so that she can try to learn the whereabouts of the actual car, but Otto is rescued before his hair gets singed. He later encounters his ex-girlfriend, Debbie, a particularly nasty punk rocker who left Otto for his best pal at a mosh party, leaving him heart broken in his tighty whities. It’s your typical boy meets girl, boy catches syphilis kinda of love story.

Debbie is hooked on speed and sushi eating with her new boyfriend, Boni, when they run into Otto while they’re robbing a 7-11. Everyone has a gun pointing at someone else’s head, leading to a pretty frantic session of scratch and win tickets. Boni however, just wants to settle down, get married and have little spiked hair social deviants. But instead, he ends up getting a shotgun blast to the chest. Just an early preview of married life, my friend; count yourself lucky.

Any semblance of a plot was lost a long time ago, but no one really cares at this point. We meander the city streets at night in glowing cars, have spontaneous shootouts in hospital stairwells, torch street people, and listen to hippie mechanics spouting universal wisdoms about the cosmic order of consciousness and the lattice of coincidence. Gotta love Saturday nights in L.A.

Repoman is a definitive cult classic that gets even better upon repeated viewing. A special Roadside award goes to Emilio Estevez, whose role as Otto redefined the anarchist punk rocker, and Howard Dean Stanton, who fit his role as a crusty, seasoned car reposessor perfectly. If I saw either of these two guys near my car, I’d be getting nervous. Retroman says check it out, and be sure to order the all-you-can-eat sushi buffet.

- Obsessive air freshener collecting
- Generic food in a can
- Radioactive intergalactic calamari
- Devo radiation suits
- Mace to the face
- Rat tossing
- Coffee to the face
- Emilio Estevezing
- Mexican rockabilly Vegas lounge singers
- Levitating cars

Rated 9.3 out of 10

“Don’t fear the Repo…baby I’m your man…we’ll be able to fly now”… man, those lyrics ring so true now.

Check out the trailer for Repoman

Look man, I told you to bring your ray-bans with you!  Now we look like dorks!”

The movie starts with Colonel Robert Neville, M.D. (Charlton Heston) discovering a vaccine which counter-acts a bio-warfare germ released in a war between the Soviets and Chinese.  Neville manages to inject himself at the last moment, but everyone else dies, leaving Neville alone and really, really lonely for a girlfriend.  Neville spends the next couple of years tearing bikini posters off of walls and indulging his female mannequin fetish.

It turns out not everyone infected by the germs dies; some of them turn into hippie-zombie-luddites.  Yes, they’re hippies with long hair who want to tear society down, they’re mostly undead, and they hate technology.  Just in case 1971 white America didn’t get the point of this movie, they also hate “honkys”.  For reasons that are never really explained, the infected dress up as monks and call themselves “the family”.  They also build catapults and use guns, despite the fact that they’re supposed to be against technology.

About an hour into the movie Neville finds other survivors and wastes no time getting busy with Lisa (Rosalind Cash), who’s infected but has no symptoms.  There’s a really creepy scene where Neville smiles broadly at Lisa and we get a close-up of Neville’s teeth.  Wow, that really should have been edited out.  Hopefully the NRA was able to offer him better dental care.

Inspired by his new found love interest, Neville uses his own “Anglo-Saxon blood” to synthesize an antidote to the bio-warfare germs for Lisa and her brother, who are both African-Americans.  Things are looking up until Lisa’s little brother, fresh from being saved by Neville’s blood, is killed by the zombies.  After that, all heck breaks loose as Lisa turns into a zombie, Neville’s home is burned down, and he takes a spear to the chest while trying to save Lisa.  In the last scene, he hands a bottle of the antidote, an extract from his own blood, to the remaining survivors.  He promptly dies in a pose just like Jesus on the cross, amidst a pool of his own blood.

Charlton Heston, Zombie-Hippies-Luddites, the collapse of civilization, race relations in America, white America as Jesus on the Cross, they’re all here.  In this case Neville represents traditional American values of the time; technical superiority, moral superiority, spiritual superiority, military superiority, masculinity, and guns, lots and lots of big guns, the way god and Uncle Sam meant it to be.  Neville spends roughly half the movie running around without his shirt, armed with a machine gun, drenched in sweat, perhaps in a bid to knock-out the zombies with his personal aroma or bullets, whichever works first.

This film is a moment in time, a reflection of the social and racial paranoia and unrest of the early 70’s.  The zombies are hippies and minorities who have no respect for culture, tradition or the benefits of modern life in America.  They’re ruining everything white Americans worked to build and making the cities scary!  The only way to escape it was to move out and away from the city.  Honey, let’s move to the suburbs, and fast…

- Homicidal Hippie-Zombie-Luddites dressed as monks
- NRA going out of business sale
- Zombie Catapults!
- Mannequin fetish
- Charlton Heston’s teeth
- Saxon Blood super formula – now with world saving power!
- Neville as Christ on the Cross

rated 7.0 out of 10

Check out the trailer for Omega-man

“A game of pin the tail on the donkey goes horribly wrong.”

Since getting rid of cable I don’t get to catch as many of those re-runs of my favorite TV shows like I used to. Cops used to tops on my list. High speed car chases, busting in drug dealer’s doors, police ride alongs, all for keeping the peace. Domestic disturbance calls would always be the most entertaining. Like a Jerry Springer reality show it always seemed to involve the same besheveled guy who resembles a young WIllie Nelson in a beer stained tank-top standing out in front of his double wide while his girlfriend is yelling at him with a broken cigarette hanging out of her mouth. “I didn’t do nothin’, you’re crazy!” He’d be yelling back at her as the cops would have to play referree and eventually throw him against his old firebird still on the cinder block. They’d cuff him kicking and screaming and haul him away to consider his career path in life. That’s reality TV at it’s best right there. There’d also be those episodes where a drug dealer thinks he’s an Olympic gold medalist runner and tries to out run not only the cops, but also a pack of vicious police dogs and a swat helicopter. After jumping over a few backyard fences flo-jo style, they’d finally drag him out by his pant legs from under an overturned kiddie pool. Criminals aren’t always very smart, but they sure are entertaining.

Speaking of unstoppable cops on a mission, the police officer whose face could stop a truck, Matt Cordell is back. Yes, the same cop who got framed and sent to Sing-Sing to get his face carved up a like a Thanksgiving turkey has returned from the dead to dish out some more bulk cans of whoop ass. In the first film he took a steel girder through the chest and ended up pinned at the bottom of the East river but now like Jason with a shiny new badge he returns as a supernatural killing machine with a killing quota. The undead officer Cordell, played by Robert Z’Dar, must be working out a lot or shootin’ up some crazy zombie steroids because he’s a monster of a man. Luaren “don’t call me Hundra” Landon and Bruce “Don’t call me Ashley” Campbell somehow survived the first film through pure dumb luck and are the only people minus a few who had their heads twisted off who believe he’s actually returned. They unfortunately get picked off pretty early by officer pizza face in an unfortunate chainsaw accident and drive-by neck stabbing. Doesn’t it seem like Bruce Campbell always gets killed off early in horror films now. Remember Congo? I think he barely got out 2 lines before being mauled to death by a pack of mutant gorillas. By the way, little known fact the Congo has the highest capita of mutant gorillas in the world. Lost Highway is here to educate.

Anyways, after strippers start showing up dead and cops end up on tow hooks the police chief calls in the big guns, a police shrink played by Claudian Christian who enjoys getting handcuffed to runaway cars, and wearing pants suits and turtle neck sweaters but she’ll always best be known as the stripper who liked to shake her Miranda rights in the sci-fi classic, “The Hidden.” Also on the case is the movie veteran and chain smoking Robert Davi who plays Detective Mckinney. This guy plays either an evil Italian mobster who hates everyones guts or a seasoned New York cop who also hates everyone’s guts. This time he’s re-directing his inner childhood rage at capturing the cool hand Cordell instead.

Cordell crashes in on a stripper’s apartment who already has an unwanted guest,  a grizzly adams looking serial killer who has an affection for collecting strippers like baseball cards. Somehow they end up bossum buddy and he let’s Cordell hang out at his apartment so they can drink Schnapps, eat some fondu and talk about their work day. The psycho hillbilly gets put in jail later that night and Cordell has to go bail out his new BFF with an epic shoot-up rampage at police station. He likely still needs his half of the rent. They escape on a field trip to his old prison stomping grounds dragging along the cop shrink as their hostage. Officer meat head plans to go puts some hurt on the prisoners who sliced him up years before. Lots of torched inmates, shootings, and vehicular explosions round off what I feel is actually a superior film to the original Maniac Cop. How often can you say that about a film in a b-movie trilogy? It also has one of the best car chase scenes ever filmed. Retroman says “You have the right to see this movie…If you give up that right then your opinions about it maybe held against you in a court of awesomeness.”

- 1 tow and go cop on a hook
- 1 police station shootout
- Neck twisting
- Death by stiletto
- Stripper Fu
- Shower Fu
- Chainsaw Fu
- Downhill car skiing
- Prisoner smackdowns
- Shish-ka-cop

rated 8.3 out of 10

I’m alway holding out for yet another sequel in this series. Coming soon… “Maniac Meter Maid…A pocket full of quarters…a pocket full of death.”

Check out the trailer for Maniac Cop 2

“Kmart’s new blue-light special mascot wasn’t very well received. He kept scaring away the customers.”

I know I would make a poor survivalist. When the zombie apocalypse comes don’t expect to find me living off the land in the high hills at my makeshift campsite. No my idea of roughing it  is more in line with a cheap roadside hotel that has hard beds and that don’t have those mini-fridge stocked with those neat little wine bottles. Just for fun I like to pretend I’m a freakish giant when I drink them. Give me a microwave over rubbing two sticks together anyday but mainly going camping is a flash back to those days of being crammed into a leaky tent with my cousin Ted whose uncontrollable flatulence could only be drowned out by his bear like snoaring. It seems everytime we did the family camping trip a terrential downpour would happen in the middle of the night creating a nice mudslide into our tent…mostly towards my side making a wading pool for me and my sleeping bag. I’d awake from my dreams of a buffet breakfast truck coming to save me in to being both soaked and hungry. My dad being the great outdoorsmen wouldn’t pack much food supplies instead opting to be  ”living off the land” by fishing or eating potentially poisonous berries along the way. The lack of fish in the nearby weeded lake didn’t seem to sway his determination either, so after a fine meal of saltines and blue gill we’d take a short hike in the to burn off all those extra calories. Now with as many horror movies as I’ve seen I’d  always halfway expect a masked psycho to jump out from behind a tree or a family of cannibals carrying us away to make us their next meal, but I figured I could just trip Teddy and buy myself some time. The camping trip would usually end with me desperately needing a shower and having a case of poison oak on my butt when I used those leaves for toilet paper. Ahhh those were good times.

Speaking of grizzled survivalist, Jack Palance is living off the land and is out to kick some alien butt in “It Came Without Warning.” This little 80’s made for TV sci-fi homage pits humanity against flying fanged frisbees that look like like vomit novelty props. A camouflaged dad and his hippy son are out hunting in the woods one day when suddenly super suction alien discs attache to their backs tossed at them from an unseen alien disc golfer. This particular part of the woods seems to be pretty popular for both disc golfing and camping as later that day a group of boy scouts and their troop leader also show up. The super trooper gets a dose of alien frisbee-fu and all the kids run away screaming from a shadowy lurking figure…well except for one kid who sort of just mosseys along instead. Just about that time a mystery van of college co-eds driven by Tom, a young David Curroso in mini shorts are heading towards the same wooded area for a relaxing camping trip. Beth (Lynn Theele), Greg (Christopher S. Nelson) and Sandy (Tarah Nutter) are along for this CSI miami camping trip of terror. If only Tom had some sunglasses he could cooly take off to indicate his disdained interest in this Camping Scene Investigation.

Once at the campsite Beth and Tom go off into the woods to perform their own “body frensics” leaving Greg and Sandy to better get to know each other. The couple mysterously doesn’t return so Greg and Sandy go off in search for the missing lover and their feathered hair. They eventually find them strung up in an old water shed along with the puss filled hunters and gooey camp scout trooper. High tailing it out there as fast as their wood-paneled van can carry them and wiping off aliens on their windshield along the way, they stop at a redneck bar for some help. The bar dwellers are already used to plenty of southern tales of alien abductions and don’t believe their story but then the crazy vet Sarge (Martin Landua) starts spouting off about the impending alien invasion and in his paranoid outburst shoots the Sherriff at the door (luckily he didn’t shoot the deputy.) Taylor played by Jack “my skin is 100% real leather” Palance shows up at the bar and tells the two about his own encounter with the alien years before and thankfully leaves out any of the alien probing stories. So they all head back to the alien love shack so Taylor can try to put a shot-gun slug in the predator wanna-be and add it to his trophies of alien kills in pickle jars. Taylor gets a vomit-disc to the knee and Sandy and Greg say asta-la-vista Taylor and run away screamin’ like little girls. Fleeing down the highway they get picked up by the crazy Sarge whose stolen the dead sheriff’s Police car and believes that they’re aliens too. The guy is definitely off his prozac. They go along with his delusions just long to  escape by a quick jump into the river and hide out in someone’ abandoned  house, post foreclosure. After a nap and a light snack Sandy wakes up to find Gary has been disced to death in a barcolounger with a little alien suction disc still sucking on his face. Sandy’s so jealous, oh and there’s a horrifying bubble headed alien hanging out in the living room too. The house party is just is getting started as Taylor shows up again limping but more grizzled then ever to help Beth escape. He then takes her back to the shed, the obvious safest place to go, where’s he’s rigged up the building with dynamite for his own fireworks display and a chance to yell “ALLLIEEEEN!!!” at the top of his lungs. Hey Jack Palance won oscar, who knows why he does these things.

This movie is a great example of b-movie cult 80’s TV. The tension ramps up towards the end and having Landua and Palance both in this type of b-movie is a rare treat. Retroman Steve says check it out but watch out for flying fake vomit.

-Alien disc golf
-Windshield wiper-fu
-Cat lynchings
-David Curros in 80’s shorts (more horrifying than the alien)
-Landua looniness
-Extreme Palance grizzliness
-Kill and store watersheds
-Fanged frisbees fake vomit

rated 8.6 out of 10

as Jack Palance would say “I crap movies better than this.”

Check out the trailer from It Came without Warning

“Never fall asleep in a jacuzzi”

I remember looking forward to the arrival of the spring county fair. The crowds, the smell of the deep fried meat by-products and the eventual sugar coma I got from the elephant ears. Traveling down the row of colorful tents, the carnies would try to hussle you and you’d inevitably fall victim to spending $50 for a $2 stuff animal. Well worth the cost to impress your date with your amazing athletic ability to toss an oversized softball into a fruit basket (it really is harder than it looks.) Of course the big attraction were those crazy rides of the midway. Suspiciously held together by just a rusty bolt and a lock pin, your life hidged on the safety expertise of the greasy haired guy operating the speed dial below. You know, the guy with the two missing front teeth and bottle of Jack Daniels in his front pocket laughing maniacally as he spins you around to unconciousness. Tilt-a-hurl…the Toboggan Run to the Bathroom… all with their own blaring hard rock sound tracks. Midway rides were your quickest way to both deafness and dizziness so my favorite ride had to be the fun house. Sitting in that little two seat metal death trap that resembled those old motorcycle sidecars you’d experience the combination of dread and excitement as a chain driven track would drag you away to it’s mysterious dark world.  Warnings sprawled in dripping neon paint telling you to “turn back now before it’s too late” or “beware of vampires” as you were greated by plastic skeletons popping up via air hydraulics and creepy things dropping and buzzing from the ceilings. You’d be ducking from side to side as lumbering zombies and giant styrofoam demon heads would lurch at you as you passed by until you finally emerged back safely into the real world. Sure it wasn’t exactly blood curdling terror but it was a fun goofy ride that put a smile on your face. 

1959’s House on Haunted Hill had this same sort of campy horror charm of a funhouse ride. An eceentric millionaire Frederick Loren played by Vincent Price invites 5 strangers to stay locked in a haunted house. If they make it through the night they’ll get $10,000 each which was a pretty good chunk of change back then. His wife Annabell (Carol Ohmart) is his cold hearted back stabbing wife who suggested the idea to throw his little haunted party. Why he’d listen to someone who tried to poison him earlier in their marriage is beyond me but this is his 4th marriage so he’s probably already used to parting with his money. The greedy guests not fearful of voluntary imprisonment from a stranger arrive at the home which resembles more a roadside motor lodge  than a haunted house. There’s the quintessential hero test pilot, Lance, a fragile nerved typist, Nora, a uptight psychiatrist, Dr. Trent and Ruth whose a chain smoking gossip columnist with gambling addiction. Aren’t all gossip columninst chains smoking gamblers? Watson Pritchard The owner of the house is also in the contest. He’s a bug eyed little man whose love of alcohol can only be matched by his absolute fear of the supernatural as he constantly whines about how the ghosts in the house are going to kill them all.  As the evening festivities begin which mostly consists of a lot of scotch drinking and cigarette smoking, Fredrick gives everyone a handgun in their own limited edition collector coffin holster. Always a good idea to give paranoid drunks some loaded guns in a haunted house. What could go wrong?

 Pritchard proceeds to tell heart warming bedtime stories of how countless people were butchered in the house and pieces were found everywhere except the heads. I sometimes can’t find my car keys so I could see how that could happen. Curiousity gets the best of Nora and Lance as they start snooping around the basement where they encounter dead flattened rats, an in-ground swimming pool of acid and a creepy old witch who glides around on roller skates. They return to their rooms only to find that Annabell supposedly committed suicide swinging from the rafters like a pinata. Later on she makes a cameo outside Nora’s window performing her vegas magic show of levitation and rope tricks. Ceilings start dripping blood, severed heads start popping up in closets and people get accidentally shot. It’s just another typical typical night in L.A. There’s a few interesting plot twist along the way but the movie degrades down into a kill by the numbers murder mystery. It’s capped off with a dissapointing ending that makes you feel like you were told you’d be getting a free dessert after a good meal only to find out they ran out of pie and it was closing time.

Whether House on Haunted Hill deserved its status as a frightful cult classic by today’s standards is debatable but for the time it was a campy funhouse style film that used some great gimmicks both on and off screen to give it’s audiences a few good jumps. The director, Mr. Castle was known for doing this sort of schlock-o-rama movie liked rigging electrical buzzers to the theater chairs for a nice jolt during “The Tingler” or in the case of “House on Haunted Hill”  had plastic skeletons on wires to float mysteriously above the audience during the humorous walking skeleton scene coining the term emote-o-rama. Special nominations go to Elisha Cook Jr.  who plays the house owners for uttering the obvious lines ”These guns are no good against the dead, only the living”  and to the immortal Vince Price who had such great lines as “Remember the fun we had when you poisioned me?” Vince you were a fine wine in a horror film surrounded by cheese. You will be missed.

-Squished rats
-Blood oozing ceilings
-Gratutious scotch drinking
-Disembodied floating head monologues
-Creepy witches on rollerskates
-Head-in-a-box surprise
-Coffin gun holsters
-Gold diggin’ pinatas
-Acid bone cleaner
-Skeleton puppet shows

rated 7.6 out of 10

House on Haunted Hill T-shirts available from Fright Rags At Fright Rags you can get this high quality horror shirts you can’t find anywhere else. Fright Rags has the best selection of horror shirts based on your favorite cult classics, creature features, and slasher flicks! Check out the House on Haunted Hill T-shirts

Check out the trailer for House on Haunted Hill

“Well, she warned Horace to stop staring at her chest”

Once again, Wes fails to impress with his 1989 Nightmare on Elm Street knock-off called “Shocker.”

While showing off some Deon Sanders style moves during football practice, future Heisman trophy winner Jonathan Parker hits his head on a goal post harder than a K.O. punch from Mike Tyson and suddenly without any explanation at all becomes a crime-solving clairvoyant. Could it be one of those famous Craven plot holes? Or, maybe Jonboy suffered temporary amnesia after hitting his head… Anyway, Jonathan uses a kind of psychic GPS in his dreams to track down and help catch a serial killer who’s been eluding the entire police department in his hometown.

Later that evening, Horace arrives at the “big house” for the prison BBQ they’re having in his honor the next morning. Man, that was fast. No trial, no courthouse hearing or any kind of legal proceedings… Even suspected witches in Salem got a trial. And we all know how those witch trials usually turned out ( the ol’ burned at the stake routine), but at least they got a trial. Well, time is running out for Pinker just like retail chain Circuit City and he better do something fast before he becomes fuel for that big furnace down below because he sure isn’t visiting that big antenna in the sky. So, Horace does what any Death Row inmate who’s about to be executed would do, he decides to catch up on his soaps which seems harmless enough, right? However, when the prison guards arrive to escort Horace to his date with death they see him getting the shock of his life from a television set. Could it be a Poltergeist from the netherworld who got angry after finding out he really wasn’t Carol Anne? Is it a possible suicide attempt? Or, did he get caught stealing cable from cable provider Comcraptic? Hey, wait a second… Why is he kneeling in front of what appears to be a makeshift altar with buring candles and several open books scattered on the floor? Hmmm… I’m not really sure what’s going on here, but something doesn’t seem right.

So, after finishing up his farewell tour and grabbing a quick bite to eat (two fingers and a lip) from the guards, Horace gets strapped in and prepares for ignition. And just as the festivities are about to get under way, Pinker reveals a truly shocking revelation like something from one of his favorite daytime soaps. That he is…”Dun, da, Dun” Jonathan’s father. Sadly, though the heart-warming reunion doesn’t last very long as the executioner pulls the lever and Horace rides the lightning which causes his body to convulse like a bobble head figure sitting on a rodeo bull during an earthquake. Not surprisingly, in true horror movie fashion it appears that the execution attempt has failed after only a few seconds. Immediately, the prison doctor goes to check his vital signs. Little does she know that Horace was only warming up and is about to do his own version of Shock n’ Awe. He quickly knocks the doc out and then vanishes under a shocktacular cover of electrical flashes and thick smoke like a ninja who has watched one too many David Copperfield television specials. But, before you can say free jelly doughnuts, every available law enforcement officer at the prison charges into the execution chamber room looking for the deep-fried demon. When Pinker is finally discovered, he bursts into flames and leaves behind an extra crispy meat suit in a scene that’ll remind you of Freddy’s exit at the end of Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. Apparently, hothead Horace couldn’t handle being in the hot seat.

Thanks to some black magic shenanigans via a telecast from the Darkside, Pinker has returned from the dead after a short commercial break. Now, you didn’t really think that Horace was using those candles and books for aromatherapy or mediation, did you? We soon find out that during the confusion of the botched execution, Horace possessed the injured prison doctor and left the “Slammer” undetected as she was put in the back of a police car and taken to a hospital for treatment. While chilling out in the doc’s body and recharging his batteries, Pinker/Doc suddenly lurches forward, killing the other officer who’s riding shotgun, and then forces Officer Pastori to crash into a fuel tanker which causes a huge Michael Bay style explosion that nearly knocked me out of my seat. Fortunately, it doesn’t take long for emergency and law enforcement personnel on the scene to find Pastori alive, not too far away from the smoldering wreckage. Amazingly, he has sustained very little physical damage to his body, not even a flash burn. It’s a good thing that he remembered to put on his fire retardant gel that morning before leaving for work because you never know when an electrically charged up psycho is going to take over your body and crash the car your driving into a tanker filled with flammable fuel. Soon, the movie short-circuits into supernatural silliness as Pinker body-jacks (an idea he got after watching the Hidden) bodies left and right in his quest to re-connect with Jonathan and make up for all of those missed birthdays and holidays. Will Father and Son meet again? To be continued…

Well, I would be “Sleepless on Lost Highway” if I left you guys and gals with a cliffhanger like that. So, here it is… Father Horace and Son Jonathan do reunite for a final time in a clever EFX sequence that has them battling it out WWE style (but I won’t say who gets canceled) as they channel surf through old television reruns that plays like a kid with ADD who got their hands on a TV remote after drinking a six pack of Jolt Cola. And while this TV Land action spectacle won’t make your heart race with suspense, it will give you a good laugh, and showed that Wes did have a brief creative spark during the filming process. The rest of the visual effects are so bad that if the effects saw their own reflections, they would immediately pull the plug on themselves. Also, don’t expect any scares in this one. The only way you would jump during any part of this movie is if you accidentally sat on a “live wire.”

And since Craven doesn’t give us any memorable screen exits or T & A, (not even a pair of perky nipples poking through a t-shirt) the best part of this movie is without a doubt the soundtrack that has bands like Megadeth who do a respectable cover of Alice Cooper’s rock classic, “No More Mr. Nice Guy. So, if you’re a fan of music from the 80’s seek out a copy of this high voltage, bang your head until snaps off soundtrack. If you want to see Craven when his movies were a nightmare scarier or a scream louder than the competition, then check out horror gems like “Last House on the Left”, “The Hills Have Eyes”(original) or his mainstream horror classic “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

In the end Wes just carried too much cinematic baggage from his earlier efforts into this production which prevented Shocker from being it’s own movie.

- 1 Seriously wet dream
- 1 Plug n’ Slay serial killer
- 1 Mother and Daughter demonic possession
- 1 Foul-mouthed kid
- 2 Kicks in the gnads
- 1 Botched execution

- 1 Power of love punch
- 1 Faked heart attack

Rated 2.0 out of 10

Check out the trailer for Shocker

“His pants were the obvious source of his super-powers!”

I love vintage diners. You know those old style diners where you could sit up at the counter and dodge the grease splatterings from the kitchen. Wood grain paneling surround your bright orange plastic booth and you have to avoid the newest stain on the floor smartly camouflaged by the 70’s style floor tiles. Orders were yelled by a middle aged waitress with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth with catchy titles like “Bloodhounds in the Hay (hot dogs and sauerkraut)”, “Adam and Eve on a raft (2 poached eggs on toast)” or the less apitizing “Angels on horseback” which is actually oysters rolled in bacon on toast. Yummy…. serve that in a smoke filled room and you got yourself some fine dining ambience.

Sure the food was greasy and the atmosphere was noisey but it was your grease pit not some impersonnel mega-restaurant chain. Now you get places like Johnny Rockets with their $7 hamburgers and awkward interludes of employees singing and dancing. There’s also Bennigans which is just an Irish dining experience without the drunken brawls. You can also see a lot of TGIF’s (Terrifying Godless Incarnations of Food) and the ever popular Apple Bee’s. They all pop up next to a strip malls like weeds. Well it’s time to stomp them out and stand up for the small businessman. Your heart attack shouldn’t occur at a Apple Bee’s where the last sounds you’ll hear is some poor sap getting a birthday serenade by workers covered in flair. Nope, let me die on that brown tiled floor with a couple partially chewed fries on my shirt. They’ll just step over me on the way out the door. “Hey Charlie, yeah you got another stiff over here from your food ya lousy cook. Come clean up this mess he’s blockin da door.” ahh the sweet sounds of the Jersey accent would be the last thing I hear before sitting down at that great greasy spoon in the sky. 

Speaking of Diners with questionable health standards. Blood Diner stands as a testimate to everything you thought might be in a fast food joint but were afraid to ask. Brothers Mike and George Namtu are the owners of their booming vegetarian diner where their only special ingredient  isn’t tofu but chopped up tramps in tight spandex. To guide them in running their venture business is the disembodied brain and eyes of their Uncle Anwar whom they recently dugged up and put in a canning jar. He’s no Gordon Ramsey but he is a loud foul mouthed organ with a jewish accent so that’s close enough.

Anwar gets a bit Fahklumpted as he orders his nephews to kill whichever big haired 80’s tramp walks into the diner but also demands they use only the best body parts for a resurrection of Shee-tar. Shee-tar is either a poorly named 2 million year old pagan goddess or the modern jungle princess of gold body paint. The dimwitted brothers patchwork together their golden frankenhooker with the spare body parts only needing the obligatory virgin sacrifice to bring her to life and rule the world. But that kind of ceremony can only work if it’s done at a punk rave party with a zombie buffet and motown harmony band. Mike hypnotizes a shy cheerleader with his Jedi mind tricks and dollar store neck charm convincing her that she actually wants to see a Nazi wrestling match that his brother is in. The date takes a sour torn when George bites off the ankle off his Hitler opponent and they have to knock out Connie unconciousness with a mean right hook (Isn’t that how Britney and Kevin Federline first met.) Some cops in 70’s leisure suits and greesy hair suspect that the brothers might be involved with the recent rash of nude areobic massacres and the recent killing of a handless vantriliquist chef.

Lead by a trovoltian saturday night fever parody who oozes grease through every pore,  the cops track down the brothers  at the local rave club. On the main stage is a propped up Shee-tar with some newly grown tummy teeth about to snack on Connie’s noggin while zombies party at the buffet table. The only thing that could save this movie is deep frying a batter dipped hooker and a kung-fu naked chick…and luckily it has both. Can it get any weirder? Probably but I think they ran out of film.

This gross horror-comedy is supposedly a low budget tribute to Herschell Gordon Lewis’ trashy splatter classic Blood Feast and with the crazed splat stick humor you can see the influence but I wouldn’t put it in the same class. Especially bad acting all around on this one but still enjoyable for it’s pure outrageous weirdness. Retroman Steve says check it out, but watch out for flying body parts. 

- Nude areobic workout massacre
- Pickled brains
- Belching overweight vegetarians
- Vantriliquist diner chefs
- Deep fried hookers noggins
- Finger food
- Multiple mamboo hit and runs
- Kung-fu nudists
- Hitler wrestling 
- Zombie mosh pits
- Broomstick decapitation
- Gratuitous use of the line “Georgie, stop fooling around!”

 rated 7.3 out of 10

Blood buffets…take all you want but eat alll you take. Sheetar commands it.

Check out this clip from Blood Diner. This is why I Love to Mamboo!

“So a mouse, a French leprechaun and an Indian walk into a bar…”

You know I often wonder why people refer to high school as the best years of their lives. Do these people actually remember what is was like back then, or do they get those years confused with a “Saved by the Bell” episode? This adolescent socialist prison system had to be some sort of evil physiological test confined to a rat maze of smelly lockers. Perhaps it was created by an ancient race of aliens in order to understand human behavior. If you’ve seen some of the school board members, you’d believe it, too. High school was divided into social cliques in their own 70’s street-gang style. There were the nerds, the geeks, bandzies, spazes, jocks, ice queens, druggies, snobs, and other lesser-known sub-categories like “fans of David Hasselhoff” or “kids that can play Casio keyboards.” And yes, I belonged to that last group ( I can still play Van Halen’s “Jump.”). It’s amazing lunch time didn’t erupt into a turf war. My money would be on the nerds…they had skills like MacGyver and could rig-up some explosives with a napkin, a couple of wires, and some day-old burritos. Watch out for the ice queens, though; they were like brain Ninjas…they’d leap from the rafters and attack your self-esteem and poor fashion sense. It’s strange looking back and wondering why we ever cared about who likes who; will I be able to learn to play Axel-F on my keyboard; will I ever pass Algebra? Guess what? Algebra…you’ll never use it again. That’s why they build calculators into shopping cart handles now. Gym class? I haven’t had the need to climb a rope since then, and don’t plan to, unless I’m involved in a prison break someday. Chemistry class…I seem to remember something about a periodic table, but I get that confused with the term “occasional furniture.” Just remember, kids: these are not the best years of your life; those are coming later and it’s called “college”…and possibly “retirement” for others. But do count your blessings. No paying taxes, no house payments, no responsibilities, and an unlimited amount of time to play Halo 3 on your Xbox. Curse you, Snipermaster07 and your unlimited training time. I will defeat you someday.

Speaking of high school kids with too much time on their hands, “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” is a 70’s musical featuring the Ramones and a wide assortment of teenagers who are most likely to break out and dance at any moment. Gym class turns into Jazzercise; freshmen get stuffed into lockers; and hallways become punk rocking mosh pits. PJ Stolls of “Halloween” fame plays Riff Randal, the always-perky rock ‘n’ roll rebel whose obsession in life is to write a song for the Ramones and have them serenade her in her bathroom. Kate Rambeau (not the Vietnam vigilante) is her nerdy friend who has a crush on the football captain, Tom, played by Vincent Van Patten. Tom just happens to be even geekier than Kate with his name proudly embroidered across his jersey, as well as his lame pickup lines about the weather and driving around in his Dungeons and Dragons Warlock van.  Hey haven’t I seen this van somewhere else?

Johnny and Kate are trained in dating techniques by none other than the gigolo of cool, Clint Howard. He’s Ron Howard’s more handsome brother. He plays Eaglebauer, the school’s one-man, one-named Mafia, who runs a very profitable business from within the boys’ bathroom stalls, complete with his own secretary and voice-over announcer. I see a future corporate CEO position for this guy. Embezzlement and corruption sure…but the man’s got moxy, and already has a receding hairline as a teenager.

A new principal is brought to clean up the school, Miss Togar the Ogre (Mary Woronov). She is a tall Nazi-like warden, whose hair buns are wound tighter than Princess Leia’s. She also enjoys blowing up mice with blaring rock music. Hey, all this lady needs is a date and a day at the spa. Her plans is to rule Vince Lombardi High School with an iron fist, along with her Boy Scout hall monitors Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. Riff fights back by camping out to buy tickets for the town’s big Ramones concert. The band shows up in a big pink Cadillac with the phrase “Gabba Gabba Hey” blazoned across their license Plate, while eating chicken and playing guitar. Yet Riff still wants to buy the ticket and doesn’t run away screaming. Nothing against the Ramones, their music defined punk rock, but they sure were a homely group of rockers, and Joey, their lead singer, was the definition of eccentric. The man lived off wheat germ and riboflavin, and would cower in the shadows to avoid the deadly rays of the sun. Also an honorable mention to Paul Bartel, who plays the wacky music professor and recently converted Ramon-ite. He shows up to the concert in a French-Leprechaun outfit, complete with beret, rocking out with a giant white Rat, and an Indian Chief. Now there’s something you won’t see in “Grease.”  The Ramones show up later at the school for yet another concert (Why did the students even have to buy tickets to begin with for the town concert?), and after a good old-fashioned album burning by the parents, they end up blowing up the school with some homemade dynamite, mixed by Kate Rambo…Yes, she finally lives up to her namesake. The TV announcer signs-off by reminding us “if your principal gives you trouble and you want the same to happen at your school, then give Screamin’ Steve a call.” Screamin’ Steve is now on a terrorist watch list, and the students are serving time in Guantanimo.

If you liked cheesy musicals like “Little Shop of Horrors”, “Grease”, or “Hairspray”, I think you’ll rock out to this cult classic and lasting film tribute to the Ramones. It was originally titled “Disco High School”, and they thankfully changed the title out of fear that nobody would see it, except Travolta fanboys. And you can only handle so much on-screen Bee-Gees. Retroman Steve says, “Gabba Gabba grab a copy and check it out.”

Roadside Attractions

-Boy Scout hall monitors
-blow-up doll sexual assaults
-freshman locker stuffing
-remote-controlled airplane flying
-explod-o-mice
-rock ‘n’ roll gym class
-bra- fu
-music instructors in berets
-Ramones bathroom attendants
-extreme hall monitoring
-record-ka-bobs
-lunch lady firing squads
-shag carpeted vans

rated 8.6 out of 10 for the movie

most memorable quote: “If you don’t like it, you can put it where the monkey puts the nuts.”

Check out the trailer for Rock ‘N’ Roll High School

“I can put my whole fist in my mouth. That’s how much I love you.”

 I used to do a lot of sketching back in junior high, since I had plenty of a thing they call “free time.” Mostly I’d draw zombies chasing cheerleaders or aliens with three boobs vaporizing gym teachers with their brain explodo-rays, but occasionally I’d like to draw cars of the future. I’d draw cool prototypes that would push the boundaries of car aerodynamics and practicality to whole new levels, all in my preparation for my inevitable GM takeover. I’d spend hours sketching my plans: I had a vehicle with built-in hover tires a la “Back to the Future”, so when traffic was heavy you could fly to the nearest 7-11; a big wing spoiler for fast getaways from the fuzz; and integrated side-view mirrors that the designers of the Ford Probe ripped-off from me before I could patent them.  It could also do 0-60 mph in three seconds, travel through time, and ran on a combo of vegetable oil and Diet Dr. Pepper. I haven’t gotten that vice president position at GM yet, but wait until someone “accidentally” electrocutes themselves on one these alien technology Chevy Volts. Then they’ll be breaking out the cans of Diet Dr. Pepper!  Electric cars–oh please. That’s so 1950’s. I think bigger. Cars that will cook your meals and give you full body massages; cars that display an LED middle finger to the guy tailgating you; or even hover cars for your pets!  Then my era of tyranny will begin (mad scientist laughter)!  In the meantime, maybe I’ll just do some mug sketches at the police station, or better yet, court room drawings. I bet those guys are pulling in some major bank.

In the movie “The Wraith” we get to see a prototype car brought to life from the kings of two-star crash test rating, Chrysler. Don’t worry, Chrysler lawyer guys, I haven’t found my old transformer sketchpad yet, so I can’t prove you stole my ideas. However, if you happen to leave a Dodge Viper in my garage, we can just call it even. Charlie Sheen plays 

Jake, the avenging spirit of a young man named James who was killed a few years earlier by the town’s one and only car racing, chop-shopping punk-rockin’ gang. Packard is their leader, who stabbed James when he caught him getting naked with his girlfriend, Keri. Perhaps Packard just saw the show “Two and a Half Men”, and that drove him to fits of homicidal rage.  Jake’s/James’ revenge weapon of choice is a Chrysler Interceptor prototype, except this car doesn’t run on unleaded–it runs on soul-sucking, netherworld power. It’s also indestructible and leaves its victims without their eyeballs and with a severe case of albinism.

Two of Packard’s gang members, Skank and Gutterboy (named that because their mommas didn’t liked them), and a Jimmy Neutron hair stylin’ Clint Howard are told to keep tabs on Keri, who’s been hanging out a lot lately with Jake since he stalked her at the quarry. When does Jake find the time for romance and quarry haunting with all the killing he has to get done? Gang members are picked-off one by one in various car races on the back roads near town, where the loser earns a head-on collision with the Interceptor in a fiery death of twisted metal. Yet each subsequent driver always feels like this time he’ll be the lucky winner and not end up engulfed in a ball of flames as his soul is siphoned off for the Wraith’s soul engine. The only thing that can stop the revenge Sheen-spree is Randy Quaid, the local inept law enforcement officer, and when he’s not spouting redneck Haikus, he’s roughing-up punk teens and trying to play catch-up to the death-mobile.  

Packard has become more and more irritable as his gang membership dues are dwindling, so he kidnaps Keri, who unfortunately picked  the worst time to grow a spine and stand up to him with harsh words about his manhood and choice of hair gels.  Before Packard can man-handle Keri, the wraith car shows up for one final big race.  It kills Packard, and then James or Jake leaves the killer car with his brother, so he can drive off into the sunset with Keri on his unholy dirt bike. ”Thanks, bro, for leaving me the car that every cop in the county is looking for.”

“Hey, it’s hos before the bros.” - Charlie Sheen

A great late-night 80’s sci-fi classic that used to play endlessly on TNT before Ted Turner went stone-cold bonkers.  While not on par with classics like “Gone in 60 Seconds” or “Vanishing Point”, it’s still a Charlie Sheen-tastic movie.  However, the real star of the show–in my opinion–is the cool-as-ice Dodge Interceptor.  I bet Charlie never thought he’d get out-acted by a car. I bet Charlie’s mom never thought he would act.

Roadside Attractions

-roller derby hooter girls
-fuel sipping punk rockers
-automobile shot put
-Randy Quaid-o-rama
-glowing leg braces
-Sheen-tastical stunts
-5 car explosions
-1 motorcycle chase
-redneck hot tubbing
-quarry beach sunbathing
-Chrysler teleportor/Onstar upgrade 

rated 9.1 out of 10 for the movie

“Can your drug-fried brain handle that, maggot?  Or have you been too busy pulling your insignificant pud to pay attention?”

Randy Quaid, your words are like golden nuggets of wisdom from heaven.  Little known fact, Randy Quaid also runs on a combo of vegetable oil and Diet Dr. Pepper.

Check out the trailer for The Wraith

“Ho-ho… Uh-oh. Santa’s coming to town for a holiday chopping spree.”

As a young boy I remember the response to the “Silent Night, Deadly Night” ads displayed in my local grocery store’s video section. Parents quickly covered their kids’ eyes, complaints were made to the on-duty store manager, and little old ladies gave their pacemakers a Sweatin’ to the Oldies-like workout after seeing the movie poster, which showed Santa’s darker side.

Based on Paul Caimi’s popular college writing assignment entitled “He Sees You When You’re Sleeping”, this blood-covered gift of Yuletide terror was directed by filmmaker Charles E. Sellier, Jr., who is known for his religious documentaries, and also created the lovable mountain man on the lam, Grizzly Adams.

On his family’s way back home from a fun-filled evening at the looney bin, Billy suddenly comes down with a very bad case of Santaphobia, thanks to Gramps. While Billy is left to senior-sit his supposedly comatose grandfather, the crazy geezer briefly snaps out of freeze frame mode, and tells the young lad a Brothers Grimm-style tale about a vengeful Santa who collects bounties on the naughty. This warps Billy’s little mind faster than a Federation starship escaping a Klingon Bird of Prey. Soon, what seemed like the harmless ranting of a bitter and mentally unstable man, becomes terrifying reality when Dad (Jim), ever the good Samaritan, stops to help someone who appears to be the jolly ol’ elf himself. Now, wait a second. I know for a fact that Santa doesn’t drive his red car or anything with wheels while on duty. How do I know this? Well, it’s part of his Santa Employment Clause. So, where are his sleigh and reindeer? Also, this guy is able to fit his robust frame down small openings with ease, can deliver presents to children across the world in record time by using a sprinkle of X-mas magic, but we’re to believe he can’t get his car started? Even an elderly person with cataracts in a dust storm at night could see that this guy isn’t the real McCoy. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this. And by the time Dad gets a clue from the Clue Fairy, he finds himself on the wrong end of a loaded gun held by a crazed maniac, and by then it’s already too late for him and Mom. Well, at least he’ll be spared from opening another gaudy necktie, and she won’t have to look at another crappy, handmade dried macaroni X-mas wreath.

A valuable life lesson has been learned here: If you have an overwhelming desire to be a “do- gooder” around the holidays, make sure you’re in a public place with lots of people. For example, try volunteering at a soup kitchen, collect Toys for Tots, or participate in a food drive. But whatever you do, don’t stop for any strangers wearing Santa gear at night on X-mas Eve, especially on dark, abandoned sections of highway, because they are most likely killer nutjobs who are a few ornaments short of a fully decorated X-mas tree. And if it turns out you snubbed the real Santa, no big deal. The worst thing that’ll happen is you’ll probably be put on his naughty list for a year, and find a few lumps of coal in your stocking come X-mas morning, but at least you won’t be sporting a body bag.

Just when you think young Billy hasn’t been traumatized enough after he witnessed Anti-Claus brutally murder both of his parents, things go from bad to worse when he lands in a Catholic orphanage run by Mother Inferior, whose disciplinary methods are approved by the Medieval Punishment Association of America (the MPAA for short). When she isn’t punishing unique artistic expression like a heart-warming depiction of holiday carnage, or tying little boys to bed posts S&M style, she keeps would-be fornicators and young Billy in line with her trusty sidekick, a leather belt I like to call the “Holy Enforcer.”

After surviving his cruel sentence at the orphanage, a physically and emotionally scarred, but otherwise happy-go-lucky adult Billy leaves to pursue a lifelong dream of working in the wonderfully rewarding world of retail. In no time he scores a sweet position at the local hot spot, Ira’s Toys, which also doubles as a storage facility for leftover seasonal stock. The place is so run-down that I wouldn’t feel safe keeping empty boxes there. Even the roaches have picket signs. But, hey, everybody has to get their start somewhere. Gandhi didn’t just wake up one morning with millions of followers. Eager to please his new boss, Billy immediately mastered the fine art of stocking boxes, became a pro at punching a timecard, and showed off some mad skills with a box cutter. His future at Ira’s Toys looked as bright as Rudolf’s red nose, aside from that close call involving a smiling Santa decoration, which almost caused his psyche to unravel like a cat playing with a ball of yarn. Everything after that was really going well for the star employee, until he got promoted to store Santa. To be honest, the only reason why he got the promotion is because Mr. Simms (the dork who owns the store) had a last-minute “no show”, and needed to find a quick replacement. Later that night at the store’s X-mas party, everybody was enjoying themselves until, without warning, the holiday cheer quickly turned into holiday fear, as Billy became the Yuletide Avenger and declared open season on the “naughty.”

Most of the holiday-themed murders look very ordinary when viewed with the same eyes that saw the shower scene from “Psycho” or the prom massacre in “Carrie”, though there are still some screen exits worth mentioning. An example is the humorous death of what has to be the wimpiest door in cinematic history, which was waving a white flag after getting hit with Maniac Santa’s first ax blow. The Big Bad Wolf with half a lung and advanced emphysema could blow this door clear off its hinges without any problem. Next we have veteran scream queen extraordinaire, Linnea Quigley, showing off her boobtacular trophies before succumbing to rack-on-rack violence. Another really cool kill involves a middle-aged loser who steals a toboggan and becomes “the headless hoodlum” during a late-night joyride down a hill. Lastly, we have Officer Barnes, who gets a mid-dissection via an ax to the gut, and then takes more tumbles than a load of wet clothes in a dryer down a staircase. Unfortunately, like the door, the victims in the film don’t put up much of a fight, either. They’re not paralyzed with fear, just bad writing and directing.

While “Silent Night, Deadly Night” may not be the best entry in the holiday horror sub-genre, it isn’t the worst one, either. That distinction (which is nothing to be proud of) goes to its sibling sequel, “Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.” So, start off the holiday season a little bit early this year by checking out this bah-humbug slasher with a glass of milk and cookies, and get in touch with your inner Scrooge.

Roadside Attractions

- Picturesque mountains of Utah
- Selection of heart-warming, but out of place X-mas songs
- Billy wearing an Obi Wan Kenobi robe
- Frosty the Headless Snowman
- Ira’s Toys named after producer Ira Barmak
- Various Halloween costumes
- Moon Goon
- Textbook left hook
- 80’s edition Mr. Potato Head
- Rapid fire flashbacks that may induce seizures
- Double-handed, competition style ax throw
- Babe kabob without the grill
- A killer ending

Rated 7.0 out of 10

Check out the trailer for Silent Night, Deadly Night

No comments Edit