Mom and Dad (2018)

While prowling around the internet I stumbled upon the announcement that there was a new movie coming out starring Nicolas Cage. I can’t lie and pretend that I wasn’t interested. As bad as most of his recent outings have been there is some enjoyment out of seeing him overact and chew on the scenery. Then I read that Selma Blair was co-starring and that the movie was about an epidemic of parents killing their children. Now this has some potential!

Things start off nicely enough. Cage and Blair play the parents of a teenage daughter and elementary aged son. The movie follows the family on its normal day that is derailed by media coverage of kids being killed. This prompts the parents to track down their children to protect them… and of course as soon as they see the kids, they become homicidal. The daughter, Carly, jumps into action to protect her little brother with the aid of her boyfriend, Damon. Eventually Carly and her brother end up in the basement where Cage and Blair’s characters try to gas them by messing with the supply line to the furnace. They are so going to blow up their Dad!

Much mayhem and violence ensue. This includes the paternal grandparents showing up for a planned supper and going apeshit as well. I guess it doesn’t matter how old the kids are you just got to kill them all! Who could they possibly have cast as Cage’s father? God dang Lance Henriksen! Things get really crazy really fast with some kitchen cutlery and a prized muscle car. After some deaths and more terrible stuff happening the movie just sort of ends and does so in a perfect way.

I rather enjoyed Mom and Dad. There are some horrific and disturbing scenes in it. Oddly enough they don’t have much to do with gore. There is a scene in a hospital where Blair’s sister is giving birth and the buildup to giving her the baby to hold for the first time was gut-wrenching. The audience knows something bad is up, but the characters don’t. This also leads into a quick bit with fathers starring at their newborns thru the glass. The look on their faces is creepy as hell.

Cage is always awesome not matter how bad the movie.

When we finally get to the meat of the plot with the parents coming home to kill Carly and her brother it gets crazy. Mostly because Nicolas Cage is awesomely over the top. Dude is singing the Hokey Pokey while trying to kill them which is a call back to him being lovingly goofy early in the day. It was also really funny to see Mom and Dad fighting over him bringing a gun into the house that she didn’t know about. I mean the kids could get hurt! Sure, they are trying to kill them, but he needs to be responsible I guess? The dialogue and the normal conversational way that Cage and Blair deliver it only adds to how bonkers this whole setup and situation is.

Most of the kills are implied or off screen. You see a bit of gore, but this isn’t the kind of movie that is going to linger on it. The direction and editing are solid and keep the action moving along and slowly building tension. You can see something coming but aren’t sure what. In fact, the movie ends in a totally abrupt and surprising way. But I liked it a lot. The opening credits have a very retro feel to them and was a nice way to start off. I also noticed a lot of cool older songs that as a child of the eighties I really dug. The highlight for me was when Erasure’s Chains of Love pops on during a big fight in and around the muscle car. It was an odd choice but this is an odd movie so it works.

Honestly, I haven’t even scratched the surface with Mom and Dad. There are so many cool things going for this one that all I have left to say is check it out. Good flick that is worth your time.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

Kids are hanging out necking in the woods when they see a shooting star. Mike and Debbie decide to interrupt their fun and investigate since it looked like it crashed nearby. They aren’t the only ones as Farmer Gene gets there first with his dog Pooh Bear and trust me that doesn’t end well. The kids show up afterwards and end up thinking it is some strange circus since a big top has been setup in the middle of the woods. Only it isn’t a circus but is in fact a space ship filled with Killer Klowns! The title is beginning to make sense now, right?

The pair get back to town where they try to get the police to believe them, but of course that isn’t going to happen. I mean adults… am I right? Only when officer Dave sees the Klowns in action that he sets Mike free to warn the town while he goes to the station to summon help. But will that be in time? The Klowns are running all over town killing and kidnapping the locals for food. I suppose a Klown does have to eat… The movie ends in a big showdown between our heroes and the alien menace who luckily does have a weakness they can exploit.

I love this movie. The premise is absurd but works well for the overall tone of Killer Klowns from Outer Space. This is a parody of the old fifties monster movies that I’ve covered quite extensively here at Crappy Movie Reviews. You have “kids” (actors well into their twenties portraying characters much younger than that) finding out about an alien invasion and trying to warn the adults. They don’t listen to the teens, or in this case college students, and accuse them of playing pranks. This is taken to the extreme when Officer Mooney, played brilliantly by the great John Vernon, refuses to acknowledge the phones ringing off the hook. His response to all the calls for help? Kick back at his desk and ignore them!

There are other examples and references to the classic fifties sci-fi tropes such as the out spot when it all starts, a farmer being the first victim, something crashing from the sky, and eventually the younger generation saving the day. These are all lifted from the Blob but were used repeatedly in movies like Invasion of the Saucer Men and The Giant Gila Monster. This connection to old movies only makes me love Killer Klowns more.

The Klown makeup is great and varies from one to the other giving all the alien baddies a unique and individual look. The Chiodo brothers, who made this movie, got their start off as special effects guys so this attention to detail shouldn’t come as a surprise. This is all practical effects work with actors in actual rubber suits and masks as it should be! The Chiodo brothers were also responsible for another favorite creature feature of mine, Critters, so I’m a huge fan. The kills aren’t terribly bloody, but we do get a head knocked off which is fun. The rest of the kills are Klown themed and include cotton candy guns, shadow puppets, and little popcorn monsters. God, I love this movie!

This is a personal favorite of mine. I had the chance to see it on its initial release and have never forgotten how much fun it was to see in the theater. Since then I’ve watched it every year around Halloween and even managed to catch a screening in the theater this past year (check out this link). Regardless of how many times I’ve watched Killer Klowns from Outer Space is has never disappointed. You can’t ask for much more than that. I’m recommending this one if you haven’t figured it out yet.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer

House of the Long Shadows (1983)

I’m a huge fan of director Pete Walker’s movies, especially his output from the seventies. He had retired by the end of that decade only to return for this one last time. With House of the Long Shadows he was hired by Cannon films to make an old school horror flick and boy did he succeed at that.

Desi Arnaz Jr. plays Kenneth, an American author touring England promoting his latest novel. When his publisher makes a comment about how they don’t write them like they used to Kenneth bets him that he could knock out an old school story in twenty-four hours. The bet is accepted, and an isolated country house is chosen as a nice quiet location to work. Only the place turns out to not be so peaceful. The weekend that he arrives to write also happens to be the same time that the former inhabitants decide to revisit their ancestral home. If that weren’t enough the publisher also sent his lovely assistant Mary along to spook Kenneth and distract him! I suppose all is fair when bets are involved.

Now if this alone were the story it wouldn’t be terribly interesting, would it? The family has a skeleton in their proverbial closet, as well as one upstairs in a locked room! Before anyone realizes it they are all being stalked and killed off one at a time by an insane brother bent on revenge. It doesn’t matter if you are family or not, being present is enough to make you fair game. The rest of the movie plays out as a mystery/stalk and kill. Along the way we get a couple old school twists and turns to make things entertaining.

I love this movie for a couple of reasons. The first of which is the casting. When Walker was hired to direct an old school horror movie, he basically cast everyone still living from the old days. The patriarch of the family is played by John Carradine with his sons being portrayed by Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Vincent Price. Let that marinate in your brain for a few seconds. Here we have four of the greatest horror actors ever, and certainly the best still living at the time. The only bummer was that they had intended to cast Elsa Lanchester as the only daughter, but she was too ill to travel to the set. Not only is it amazing to see these guys working off of one another, but individually they are each able to bring something unique to the screen. Cushing plays the mousy, cowardly brother with zeal. Price is larger than life delivering over the top soliloquies and chewing up scenery, and well Lee is awesomely creepy. This alone makes House of the Long Shadows worth a watch. But that isn’t all we get.

Look at this cast... seriously drink it in. Amazing...

The source material for the movie is based on an old play, Seven Keys to Baldpate, which itself had already been made into a movie seven times as well as a television adaptation in the fifties. While this story only loosely references the material in spirit it is very close. Basically, this is a more modern, for the early eighties, take on the old dark house movies that were immensely popular in the thirties. We get hidden doors, cobwebs, candles, and a big storm outside effectively trapping our characters in a giant spooky house. Of course, there is murder and a family secret that no one wants to revel as well as an unknown and unseen killer lurking about. The filmmakers effectively took these classic actors and put them in an equally classic story completely succeeding in making a fun throwback film.

I could and want to go on talking about House of the Long Shadows, but I’m afraid I’d spoil things and I really don’t want to do that. The decade of the eighties was dominated by Slasher movies and other gorefests. While I love those movies there is something special about seeing these old favorites getting a chance for one last hurrah together. Plus, this is the only movie where the big three of Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and Vincent Price appear onscreen together. How can you pass that up? In case it isn’t obvious I’m going to recommend that you don’t pass on it. For many years you could only find this movie on bootlegs of varying quality, but now there is a very nice and affordable Blu-Ray from the fine folks at Kino Lorber. I suggest this as the best way to check out the movie.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer

Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Bloodmania (2017)

I’ve known about this movie for a while now but avoided watching it. First it was the final project of one of my favorite directors, H.G. Lewis, which made me sad. This is the last new thing that I would ever see from him. Second it was an anthology with only two of the four stories being directed by him and I’ve heard bad things about the other segments. I really didn’t want the last new H.G. Lewis movie to be anything other than great. Eventually I sucked it up and checked it out.

The first story is directed by H.G. Lewis and is called Gory Story. It is a random bit of nonsense that basically exists to be bloody and do horrible things to the main character. Brewster has a hook for a hand and inexplicably it has a mind of its own. Basically, the hook makes him do terrible things on accident, mostly to himself. Though he has a hook because he tried to cut off his cheating girlfriend’s hand with a chainsaw and lopped his own off instead. So maybe he is just a klutz.

As one would expect from a story from H.G. Lewis this has a lot of gore in it. Brewster not only lops his hand off in a flashback, but he also loses an eye, gets puked on by a kid, and gets his legs run over. For the most part the effects work is practical but done on the cheap. The latter is important because that is what I want from an H.G. Lewis flick, lots of cheap gore. There is also a bad pun towards the end that made me groan and giggle simultaneously. So far, I’m digging the movie.

Next up is Attack of Conscience. Time for the first segment that Lewis didn’t have a hand in. This is an odd story where we see the same woman being killed by the man that she loves in different scenarios. She is killed in a car wreck that he causes, tossed off a roof, nailed to the wall and burned alive. It ends when he finally just shoots her. It all is very confusing until we realize that she is in a coma. Thru some narration by the doctor taking care of her we find out that she did something violent to the man and his new girlfriend before ending up in a coma. I guess what we see is her in purgatory of sorts, so I suppose the title makes sense.

This story seems like it wanted to be deeper than the budget allowed it to be. Attack of Conscience attempts to have a dreamlike vibe and explore the concepts of guilt and eternal punishment. Any chance as success is ruined by the lousy CGI gore, mediocre acting, and an inexplicably stupid end credits sequence that revisits this segment and kills any impact the story might have retained. I appreciate that this was an attempt to do something different, but it failed miserably.

H.G. Lewis returns as director for the next segment called The Night Hag. After seeing an older couple being killed by something mysterious, we see a new family has moved into the same home. The mother is disturbed by the house and warns her children not to fall asleep. Dad is obviously perturbed by this and sneaks some medicine into her drink so she can sleep. Big mistake as a creepy figure crawls out from the walls and starts to eat his wife’s hair! More weird stuff happens until the couple’s young daughters come to the rescue with some hair remover. I guess they were listening to Mom and were ready to do battle?

Now this is an H.G. Lewis movie!

Other than an odd choice of playing the death of the older couple as a sitcom, complete with a laugh track, this is by far the best entry. Ironically it also has the least amount of gore from the four segments. Lewis instead gives us a very creepy and scary story with a creature that is well designed and frightening. The Night Hag was done with the same low budget as the other stories but looks amazing on screen. While we do get on head ripped off as a highlight of the effects work what really pops the creature design. It is the star of this segment and kicks butt. I found it cool to see that even at the end of his career Lewis had other things to offer rather than just the over the top blood and guts that made him the Godfather of Gore.

Things end up with Gorgeous, a heartwarming story about an all-girl rock band and their homicidal manager who ends up killing everyone in sight. The girls are about to hit it big and decide to go with a younger and hipper representative who understands them and the audience better. But their old manager isn’t going to be tossed away so easily. His last day on the job is also the day they are going to shoot their big music video, so he decides that is as good a day as any to start killing them off. From here it becomes your typical stalk and kill flick. Nothing wrong with that and very satisfying.

This is the most “H.G. Lewis” of the bunch. Over the top gore with a killer spouting odd catch phrases and gleefully murdering his way thru the story. Hands get cut off, a throat gets slashed, intestines are pulled out, and damage is done to an eye! There is tons of nudity which is also fun. The killer, Gordo, keeps crowing “Cock-a-Doodle-Doo” and acting like a fool as he commits his murders. Basically, being awesome in that over the top silly way that I want when watching anything with H.G. Lewis’ name on it. While I still dig The Night Hag the most this is a close second.

All four segments tied together with a wraparound of H.G. Lewis introducing and commenting on what we have just or are about to watch. I was very worried about Bloodmania being a poor way to say goodbye to a legend like Lewis, but they nailed it. Even my least favorite of the four isn’t horrible and the last two kick so much butt that they more than make up for it. This ended up being a great farewell to a legendary director.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer

Harry Price: Ghost Hunter (2015)

I’ve had this on my Amazon Prime to watch list for a while now. I’ve recently been on a haunted house/ghost story kick, so I figured it was time to check it out. Plus, it is a British production and I’ve had some great luck recently with spooky stuff from England. 

Set immediately after World War I the movie opens with Harry Price conducting a bogus séance to milk some cash out of a frightened family. He asks them to leave the room so he can cleanse it which allows the audience to watch him gather up the devices he used to trick them. He collects his cash and heads home. Waiting for him on his front step is a young man in a uniform. Remember that this is right after the war. One thing leads to another and based on the bogus information from an earlier scam the young man kills himself in front of Price.

Years later, well into the twenties, Price has dedicated himself to actual research and goes around trying to explain and debunk spiritualists. Clearly this is him doing penance for his earlier sins. When a very powerful member of parliament is caught up in a scandal involving his wife and their haunted house Price is called in to explain things away. He doesn’t want to, but immediately feels sorry for the woman and decides to try and save her. If he can’t explain her behavior and make things better, she is on her way to spending the rest of her life in a sanitarium.

I can’t say much more than what I did above without giving away spoilers and I don’t want to do that with this movie. Harry Price: Ghost Hunter is an excellent bit of fun that I’m going to recommend. The story is great and has an interesting twist by making our main character a skeptic who tries to explain everything away with science. This means that spooky things happen and we the audience question if it is real or not (cinematically speaking that is) while the protagonist is automatically dismissing it. I can’t remember a supernatural haunting movie that pits the audience against our main character in such a way and I found it a fun exercise. Is this a real haunting or is it some political intrigue attempting to sabotage the career of someone being groomed to lead the country? The story walks that tightrope nicely where it could go either way and maintains the suspense until the credits roll. Do we get any answers at the end? Do they explain it all away or is there a ghost? My answer is… sort of. And that is one of the reasons that I loved the movie.

This is one of those ghost stories (whether it is really a ghost or not!) that managed to create and maintain tension without any jump scares. The movie has so many creepy moments that it doesn’t need to toss the proverbial cat from stage left to generate interest. There are doors that slowly open and close, bells that ring when they shouldn’t, voices when there shouldn’t be any, and the always great strange sounds/knocking. I’ve said it many times when reviewing ghost stories here at the site that I love this old school stuff. My favorite is setup by a single line of dialogue… “He is standing right behind you…” Trust me when you see the scene it will send chills down your spine!

I enjoyed the heck out of Harry Price: Ghost Hunter and recommend it. This is an old school spooky tale that will satisfy fans of the classics like The Uninvited and The Haunting. In case you don’t know those movies (shame on you!) that is high praise.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer

Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Have you ever wondered why the characters in horror movies all seem to do the dumbest things? Why do they go off in the scary woods to make with the romance? Are they really stupid enough to play with the creepy stuff in the basement? Well Cabin in the Woods gives answers to all of these questions and more.

Things start off in an office building where we see some workers discussing how the Swedes have failed and it is up to them or the Japanese to get the job done. Um okay… Then we see college kids hop into an RV and head off for a weekend trip at an isolated cabin. Along the way they meet up with a creepy gas station attendant that is sort of a harbinger of doom. They get to the cabin, act stupid, and generally give you what you would expect from a horror film. Then we are back to the workers taking bets. There is a pool on which monster the kids will choose to bring about their doom. What the Hell movie?

Okay so here is the skinny on what is happening. There are elder gods locked deep within the Earth that require a sacrifice. But the key to this is that those sacrifices have to be young and have to of ended up dead by their own choices. So, the governments of the world setup young people in situations that can and will go horribly wrong. Apparently, it isn’t against the rules to nudge or help the sacrifice along thru the use of chemicals and gas. Want people to get frisky in the woods? Pump some pheromones into the environment. Need a smart person to make bad decisions? They have a gas for that. Hell, they even sneak some chemicals into hair dye to make the fake blonde girl act like a real blonde!

Weed saves lives!

I enjoy it when filmmakers take a genre and turn it on its head. This is exactly what Cabin in the Woods does. They take all the expectations of an eighties horror movie, dumb kids, drug use, sex in the woods, etc. and explain it all in the most clever of ways. I was amused the first time that I watched Cabin in the Woods and I still enjoy it after several viewings. Cabin works both as a horror movie and as a parody of one. That is a rare thing. But where it gets really nifty is how the system breaks down on them. One of the sacrifices is a stoner whose chronic weed smoking has immunized him to the drugs they use to influence their behavior. He is the only one that questions everyone else’s behavior. Why are normally smart people acting dumb? Why is the friendly guy suddenly turning into the “alpha male” and the nice girl getting slutty? It is a fun flip of how these sorts of burnout characters are normally handled in horror flicks. He sort of becomes the hero in the end.

Damn they even do a decent Werewolf!

In addition to being clever and well written the movie does deliver the creatures. While they choose a family of zombie hillbillies to be their killers, they had other choices. When they escape into the facility underneath the woods, they let the rest of their potential monsters loose on the facility and the workers. We get to see a werewolf, a pinhead want to be, creepy ballerina, ghosts, killer clowns, and my personal favorite a unicorn. Don’t laugh those horns are sharp! I almost forgot the merman… don’t want to do that.

The final thing that I wanted to mention is the ending. While the rest of the movie has a tongue in cheek feel to it the ending is awesomely horrible. Spoiler alert. A couple of the kids survive, and the movie ends with the old gods rising and destroying the world. How is that for an ending? This movie is funny, twisted, and depressing all at the same time. I love it and recommend checking out Cabin in the Woods.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer

Gravy (2015)

I must be falling down on the job here folks. Psych was one of my favorite television shows and its star, James Roday, is one of my favorite actors. Seriously I loved that show! Apparently, he directed a horror comedy about cannibalism, and I didn’t notice. Yeah it is just now getting a wide release, but still how did I miss that?

Brothers Anson and Stef have a family tradition. Every Halloween they trap, torture, and eat a group of people. This year they have targeted a Mexican Restaurant and the staff. Along for the ride is Stef’s new girlfriend Mimi, who they picked up the previous year when instead of a victim she became a participant. The trio weld the doors closed and take everyone hostage before their games start. Much blood is spilled, and flesh eaten before we get to the bloody and sort of funny end.

This movie is everything that I wanted it to be. The dialogue is cleverly written and each of the characters is given a chance to shine. Everyone has their moment where they get to deliver the punchline of a joke. Normally every genre movie like this has characters that are tossed in just to up the body count, but here the cast is used really well. I found myself liking the soon to be victims which meant that each death is sort of sad… and maybe just a little bit funny. The humor in Gravy is twisted and I loved it. I’ll give you an example. The restaurant has a French Chef that is forced to cook his friends for the cannibals and instead of being horrified he does his best to make sure they taste good, so that their deaths mean something! That is the kind of wacky mayhem that you can expect. I could point out more examples, but I don’t want to ruin the fun.

The kills have an old school vibe to them

As excited as I was to see Roday’s take on a horror comedy (he also co-wrote the script) when I saw who did the special effects work, I was hopping out of my seat in anticipation. Literally I did and it annoyed my wife terribly. Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero! Two thirds of KNB did the gore and it shows. First it is all practical work and if you have spent any time at all here at Crappy Movie Reviews you know how I feel about that. Nothing like actual latex to spice things up. And oh boy does it get spicy here. Necks are torn out, a face has a close encounter with an arrow, noggins end up in ceiling fans, bottles are put to good use, and a head splits like a ripe melon on some pavement. Needless to say, the blood flows freely and I haven’t even touched on what happens in the kitchen! If you like gore you won’t be disappointed with Gravy.

Again, I could keep going on about the things I dig about Gravy, but that might spoil it and I really don’t want to do that. I haven’t had this much fun with a movie in a long time. This fits in nicely with all the crazy flicks I used to rent on VHS back in the day. Gore, funny dialogue, pretty girls… it has it all. I’m still kicking myself that it took me four damn years to realize the movie existed. I highly recommend Gravy and suggest you find yourself a copy right away. This is the kind of flick that I’m definitely going to revisit, so a purchase is the right way to go.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer