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I kept waiting for that stupid pool thing to attack somebody. Or even just have it fly out the pool and bean somebody in the head. But it never did and I was disappointed

I still find myself thinking back on Bad Times at the El Royale. What a gonzo movie! I think I need to rewatch it.

Michi wrote:I watched the first 3 via Pluto TV a couple months ago. They were....alright. The first one just made me want to kill the male lead myself (Like, seriously, I shouldn't have to root for the evil demon, ya'll.) The second one had the best jump scare, but was more of the same. And by the time you get to the third everything is just so predictable that it's not even marginally fun anymore.

Haha Pluto TV as well! We cut cable over the summer and have Direct TV Now, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime yet I watch so much on Pluto haha.

Recently watched Halloween 5 and 6, along with Exorcist 3, Hocus Pocus, Over the Garden Wall, Pet Semetary 2 and Jingle All the Way.

Also a few other Christmas specials, mostly Flintstones ones. Oh and the made-for-TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol starring Kelsey Grammer. It's my favorite direct adaptation of the original (i.e. not a modern retelling or retold with cartoon characters).

In the grand tradition of prehistoric epics...



ALPHA
I’m going to keep this review short and get straight to the point. The movie Alpha is flawless. The cinematography is absolutely breathtaking. Dialogue is terse, written in a fictional proto-language. Alpha tells the story of the first dog and that dog’s connection to man. Alpha is also a coming-of-age story about a boy who grows to a man in the Paleolithic era. The world of Alpha is primal, violent, magical, awe-inspiring, and mysterious.

If I must criticize the movie Alpha, the only criticism that comes to mind is that this movie is awfully darn butch. I’m not sure if women would enjoy this movie or not. Alpha is, after all, a survival story of man versus nature. Don’t let that stop you from watching this movie.

Verdict: Purchase Alpha on Blu-Ray. You will want to own this film to re-watch with your son.

Alpha's good and all, but it's not this precious gem:



Deadly Prey

Imagine if the folks in Killer Workout maybe a rip-off of First Blood. Because that is exactly what this movie is. Imagine if the inept cop from KW still had his mullet but ran a band of mercs, and it was up to that private investigator from KW to stop him, while a lady merc runs around in what must be standard issue camo short-shorts. But don't feel bad; everybody in this movie wears short-shorts.

The evil Colonel Hogan trains his army of mercenaries by kidnapping the citizens of Los Angeles and then hunting them in the woods. Unfortunately, one day they kidnap Mike Danton, a former protege of Colonel Hogan and the best man he's ever trained. Danton is a Vietnam veteran with more skill, knowledge, and combat training in his golden, flowing mullet than the entirety of Colonel "Mullet" Hogan's mercenary army. So he begins dismantling them.

But Mike's girlfriend/wife Jaimy isn't going to take this lying down, so she calls her father, actor Cameron Mitchell! Mitchell investigates, but Colonel Hogan kidnaps Jaimy, rapes her, and then murders Cameron Mitchell. Then Danton shows up in all his muscular, half-naked, mullet glory and kills a bunch of mercs with the help of Jack Cooper, another of the mercs who was friends with Danton back in the shit in 'Nam.

Colonel Hogan's no. 2, Lieutenant Thornton, then manages to take Jaimy back with his own mullet and then kills Cooper. Lieutenant Thornton shoots Jaimy in the face in front of Danton, but Danton is having none of this; he chops off Lieutenant Thornton's arm. Then he beats him to death with it. Then he scalps him. Then he presents the scalp to a wounded Colonel Hogan, makes him strip down to his pants, and has him run into the jungle while screaming. Then "Never Say Die" by Steve McClintock plays over the end credits. Suddenly you realize you have a mullet and have grown muscles after watching the manliest thing you will ever see in your entire life.


Do you not feel the muscle bulge growing just looking at that prime specimen of man meat?

If I must criticize the movie Deadly Prey, the only criticism that comes to mind is that this movie is so awfully darn butch that not only will men enjoy it, women will too. It's a survival story of shirtless, mulleted man against man. Don't let that stop you from watching this movie.

Verdict: Purchase Deadly Prey on VHS. You will want to own this film to re-watch with your entire family. It is clearly the pinnacle of family viewing. You will practically feel everyone in the family's muscles get harder while watching the sweaty, oily mullets flapping about in the jungle heat of southern California. You too may grow a mullet. It would be the greatest possible thing that could ever happen to you.

noiseredux wrote:

Michi wrote:I watched the first 3 via Pluto TV a couple months ago. They were....alright. The first one just made me want to kill the male lead myself (Like, seriously, I shouldn't have to root for the evil demon, ya'll.) The second one had the best jump scare, but was more of the same. And by the time you get to the third everything is just so predictable that it's not even marginally fun anymore.

Haha Pluto TV as well! We cut cable over the summer and have Direct TV Now, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime yet I watch so much on Pluto haha.

Heh, yup. We did something similar. Ditched cable and picked up PS Vue to pair with Prime. And despite all they offer I still spend most of my time watching free Pluto TV.

Nomads

Bikers and hooligans in 1980s Los Angeles are really just ghosts. I don't know if this makes them better or worse.

Pierce Brosnan plays a French anthropologist who dies at the beginning of the film. However, Lesley-Anne Down, the attendant doctor, somehow gets possessed by his memories. Through hallucinations, Down discovers that Brosnan had come across a group of what he initially believed to be urban nomads, street punks who never slept and just wandered from party to party. Unfortunately, Brosnan eventually learns that these nomads are in fact Einwetok, evil tricksters spirits drawn to locations of violence. Brosnan's new house happens to be the site of a vicious murder, and now they want him for their own While Down can't save Brosnan, she does manage to meet Brosnan's wife, Anna Maria Monticelli. Down and Monticelli then escape the wrath of the Einwetok as they come after them.

Nomads is a confusing movie, moving between the film's past and present seamlessly while also mixing in hallucinated flashbacks and causing Down's character to often relive what has happened to Brosnan, while Brosnan himself at times wanders into pure illusion. Critics reamed it for its problematic structure, but the thing it nails is a creepy, dreamlike atmosphere, fueled by Ted Nugent's music and full of dirty alleys and distant views of the LA skyline. Unfortunately, the Einwetok are primarily silent, though they attack people whenever possible and loudly dance to music to party while playing with knives, sticks, motorcycles, and whatever else they feel like. They're all dressed like leather-clad punks, too, so remember that bikers and the urban youth are a real problem, folks.

No, the Einwetok don't appear to be particularly menacing, even when they're committing acts of violence. They're certainly mysterious, but they don't feel particularly threatening up until they show up en masse. As much as the movie poster wants to claim you'll be terrified, you won't be. You might feel dread though; the way the movie is approached, the soundtrack, and the cinematography help build a menace that the evil spirits just don't match. It's this sense of dread that made the movie one really important fan: Arnold Schwarzenegger. You see, John McTiernan directed Nomads, and Schwarzenegger loved it so much, he brought him in to direct his next movie project, a little film called Predator.

Regardless of what you think about McTiernan due to his legal troubles (which is a nice way of saying his prison sentence resulting from his illegal wiretapping of a producer's phone), there's a lot in his oeuvre worth watching. In my opinion, Nomads is one of these, even if its problematic and obviously the work of an inexperienced but talented director. Give it a shot sometime when you want something very '80s and a little messy.

I'm still not done watching my stories, yo.



Piranha

I remember watching this once on television in the early '90s. In particular, I remember the raft being gnawed apart scene. I know there is a mid-90s made-for-TV remake; I want to say this aired around the time the remake was released.

A couple of teenage hikers go missing, so a skiptracer named Maggie who is searching for them finds a hermit drunk named Paul and has him take her to an old military facility on a mountain. In the process, Maggie and Paul unleash mutant piranha into a river. The piranha, bred for intelligence and resistance to cold as well as survival in both salt and fresh water, proceed to attack old people, children, women, and everything else that gets in their way...but mainly women and children. Meanwhile, there is a tongue-in-cheek ripping off of Jaws while screenplay writer John Sayles gets flashed and knocked out. A good time was had by all!

I know Roger Ebert complained about the effects, but there is something campy and entertaining about the bloody closeups of the piranha gnawing on people and chewing them into pulp. The gore is nasty when it appears, and the movie is alternately humorous and disturbing. It's got plenty of WTF moments too, like some strange puppets and claymation of what must be mutant eels in a lab. The important thing though is nobody listens to the good guys, and most of the bad guys get theirs in the end. Most of them, but not all, and the film ends on a creepy note with the implication that the piranha have made it into the ocean and are now going to destroy our coastal waterways.

Funny enough, while most 1970s eco-horror movies were tirades against pollution, Piranha posits that pollution may just be the savior. It'll kill anything supposedly, even mutant murder fish. What's the first plan when we have to deal with such an aquatic threat? Poison and pollution! Suck it, Captain Planet. The film also posits that camp counselors are jerks (this is true), people are dumb (this is also true), and when you have a bunch of boaters in the river, somebody is inevitably going to do a stunt jump in one speedboat off of another, exploding speedboat (oh my God, this is incredibly true). It's a shame we didn't have any killer piranhas jumping out of the water to the explosion, but I guess that's why Ebert complained about the effects. Gene Siskel hated this movie too.

Still, this was both a starting point for Joe Dante and John Sayles, two people whose work I dearly love. If you're not aware of either of them, you desperately need to go watch Gremlins and The Brother From Another Planet. Both are fantastic.

Ack wrote:Alpha's good and all, but it's not this precious gem:

If I must criticize the movie Deadly Prey, the only criticism that comes to mind is that this movie is so awfully darn butch that not only will men enjoy it, women will too. It's a survival story of shirtless, mulleted man against man. Don't let that stop you from watching this movie.

Verdict: Purchase Deadly Prey on VHS. You will want to own this film to re-watch with your entire family. It is clearly the pinnacle of family viewing. You will practically feel everyone in the family's muscles get harder while watching the sweaty, oily mullets flapping about in the jungle heat of southern California. You too may grow a mullet. It would be the greatest possible thing that could ever happen to you.

I see what you did there!