MonsterBoy

It seems the older I get the more I regress into childhood. Oh, I pay my taxes and hold a steady job and all of that adult garbage, i'm not irresponsible by any means. But unlike most adults who let life crush the life out of them, when the work day is over and the bills are paid and the garbage has been taken to the curb, my mind switches back, just switches easily like a light, to what can only be described as the open breezeway mind of a child, filled with sugar and cartoons and ridiculously bizarre but nonetheless genuine thoughts, a luxury I had posessed all along but until only recently had returned to me. And with the return of this came all of the memories, things that had been implanted in the circuits and synapses of my brain from so long ago, things that never aged, never changed  or had been updated, but remained bottomless nonetheless, surprising even me as they writhed into the front of my mind like impatient senior citizens in a deli line, all vying to be the next thought in my mind at that particular time. And being a product of the 1980's (yes i'm pawning it all off to being a product of my time. I am a coward)
my time capsule of a brain always has the coolest thoughts for me. And while having a staring contest with my cat last night I realized something. The imagination and designer-drug fueled culture of the 1980's, for the most part, always seemed to have a twist of horror to it.That is, at least whatever I was attracted to did. Going into a Bradley's or a Caldor, browsing the toy shelves, all I ever saw were mutants or monsters or ghoulish inventive playsets, playing my Nintendo with game titles like "Ghoul School" and "Zombies ate my Neighbors", not to mention the movie licensed games, fueling my Saturday mornings with (accompanied by dozens of apple cinnamon Eggos) cereals like Fruit Brute and Frankenberry. Everything seemed to have a subtle if not outright assertion of one or another horror element and it was EVERYWHERE, in more places and more forms than I can stand to write about and I remember and love all of it. But the constant and most available resource for all this saturation for my demented  fixation(as well as the main culprit for the person I am today) were the cartoons.You couldn't always go to the mall or the store to keep constant tabs on the coolest shit out there everyday, but you could always turn on the TV and, unless you were and asshole  who liked "Thundercats" or something dumb, see the coolest and most imaginative shows. And the best part about them was they were horror themed, monsters and mutants in high schools or pizza shops, it was always anything goes, and with those elements in place you could go anywhere and do anything, millions of scenarios and variations, and it was always so cool to look at because the stars of you favorite cartoons were MONSTERS!And monsters are cool!! So, as a deviation from form, I'm going to embark on this pet project of mine and run down the Top 5 most important, influential and detrimental shows that filled my childhood, impacted me the most, and helped me cultivate my love for everything horror into the most extensive and funnest chunk of my life.

5) Gravedale High- Airing on NBC Saturdays from 1990 to 1991 and with only 13 episodes, this was probably the the best example of horror and kid's cartoons coming together. The show starred Rick Moranis as Max Schneider, a human teacher transferred to the institution of Gravedale High, a school comprised entireally of monsters, ghosts, zombies, boogeymen and soforth. All of the classics are on display, all of the Universal Monsters and even Amicus and Hammer nods, but the beauty of the whole show was its overall attitude.It's no big deal that they're monsters, just like it's no big deal that Moranis is a human.He's just a teacher who just so happens to have to do his job at school where the valley girl is a Gorgon creature, the heartbreaker greaser-type is a vampire and the football coach is a massive lumpy cadaver voiced by Jonathan Winters(Fats Brown!). It was one of those shows that was too smart and entertaining for it's own good. It approached this whole attitude so well that it went too far over peoples heads and was subsequently dismissed as the same "sharing is caring, we all learn something in the end" show that people were already choking on by 1990. As for me, I loved everything about it, I loved the renderings of the teenage monsters, I loved the jokes and actions played to the strengths and mythologies of the characters, it was witty and sharp and cool as shit, and I just thank the stars that I still remember why I love "Gravedale High".

4) Attack of the Killer Tomatoes- The name says it all. Why the hell WOULDN'T  this show have appealed to me?! Huh?!HUH?! DAMN YOU!!  Based on the 1979 John DeBello film of the same name, AOTKT aired on Fox Kids Saturdays and ran for technically 2 seasons between 1992-93, the second season changing art styles from the first and being animated with the same technology used for the Phillips CDI game console. Anyone who knows what I'm talking about also knows then why the show was cancelled. But anyway, this was another show that sort of sabotaged itself with it's brilliance. The show focused on the denizens of San Zucchini California, and more specifically Captain Wilbur Finletter, fearless tomato killer and our hero of the first two films, though the show's stories revolved closer around the adventures of Wilbur's nephew Chad and Chad's tomato/girl friend Tara as they battle the angry(not mad, just angry) scientist Dr. Gangreen, progenitor of the killer tomato outbreak and voiced to my absolute delight by John Astin. The show was a total riot, exuding the same "we know exactly what we are" type of humor that made the films so much fun, skewring themselves, popular culture and monster films in general somehow all the while inexplicably maintaining that same off center cult aesthetic the films exuded, and the cartoon medium was a perfect tool for the stories' many incarnations of the tomatoes themselves. But more importantly this cartoon needs to be noted as the exposure that got me into my fascination with the horror and cult films I am consumed by to this day. Had it not been for this show I would have never found out about the movies, I would have never gone to Tommy K's cult section to rent the films, I would have never proceeded to research, pursue and devour the rest of their cult section, all the resulting time spent in there would have never led me to the horror section, I would have never repeated the process and my life would not be a hideous spiraling vortex of vhs tapes and illegally pirated dvd's, and that is how I saved Christmas.Wait...no, don't wait. I DID save Christmas, you damn robbers. And I owe it all to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

3) Toxic Crusaders-Probably the most puzzling choice for the medium of children's cartoon programming, we have the short lived but highly marketable and very fun "Toxic Crusaders". Based on TROMA Studio's 1984 alarmingly violent, cruel as venom and fucking hilarious film "The Toxic Avenger" this show was the perfect antidote to the heavyhandedness and pure uncut boredom of "Captain Planet" and it's "hey kids, let's recycle and shit" ilk.Taking it's premise from a film that featured the murder of a seeing eye dog, bullies who engage in the "sport" of running over children and no less than two dozen graphic maulings my a giant mutant, this should have been the very last subject in the world to be made into a kids show. But it's just that logic that stands to augment my whole reasoning for doing this essay. As opposed to today's mentality, back in the 80's and 90's television executives seemed to have the same thought process as your average fan-film making or fan-fiction writing supergeek of today's culture , in that if something is cool you want to see more of it and you want to see it continued and expanded upon but also rendered in different ways to see how much of the creative gambit you can cover, kinda like how they put Casey Jones, hockey mask and all, into the first Ninja Turtles movie. Did they have to?No.Could they have and fucked him up royally?Absolutely. But they did and they didn't, because THEY were fans and THEY knew how to do it right, staying true to something dear to fans while also keeping it fresh and relevant.And with that in mind, DIC entertainment gave us our cartoon of topic running from 1992-1993 and featuring a full length cartoon film to promote it, and if anyone has ever had one of those "wouldn't it be cool if.." moments while watching any of TROMA's films you know the Toxic Avenger has a lot of room for creative expansion and input. Inkeeping with the established mythology of the film, the show introduced us to the big bad Doctor Kilemoff, emissary of  Planet Smogula, the alien world built on pollution, and his plans to conquer the galaxy for his race by trashing every planet in the stars.So when the good doctor sets his sights on Tromaville, "Toxic Waste Dumping Capital of the World", he finds quickly he's  first got to get through The Toxic Crusaders, super hero mutated monsters looking to clean up the likes of Kilemoff and his wicked deeds.Lead by the shows inaugural mutant, The Toxic Avenger, the team set about thwarting the Smogulans with their mutant abilities and a triumphant cry "It's Clean-up Time",(or, "I hope I don't get hurt", whichever you prefer) and battle from Tromaville to planet Smogula and all points in between to secure a better tomorrow. Pretty straight foward in the plot and wholesomeness, the beauty of this show is the aforementioned source material for one, and a great case of style over substance for another. Sure the message is fine but I for one am more apt to recycle and shit if a giant monster dog man named Junkyard, a two-headed surfer dude/mad scientist, a plant-man super patriot and the Toxic Avenger himself are telling me to.The monster heroes were intricate, creative, big,ugly,detailed to within an inch of their lives and just plain old cool looking and just based on the three pronged premise of wanting everyone to hate Captain Planet in favor of these guys,exposing children to the TROMA culture and creating inspiration for some of the coolest action figures ever, this show was the greatest public service message of it's or any time.So the next time your in trouble, look to the horizon and maybe, JUST maybe, THE TOXIC CRUSADERS will be there.

2)My Pet Monster/Mad Scientist-Yep, i'm cheating, but I don't have to answer to you because theres nobody reading this. This is a tie, making this a technical Top 6, but only on the premise that both of these shows were awesome and both of them were criminally short lived.So we'll just dive right in to this so I can actually finish it before I publish it this time. My Pet Monster is first, and like Gravedale High this was one of those concepts that was right on. Based on a children's doll of the same name made by Mattel, this stood as probably the most detrimental and healthy of ideas for little kids in it's time.Every kid wants a monster for a pet and if you didn't ,even briefly, then either you are a liar or you have some Flowers in the Attic shit going on and I just can't be bothered. The show, released by HighTop video from 1989 through 1990,centered around two kids and their pet monster.Nothing to it right?Well hold on, spinach chin. Like a good joke, you had to have been there.Watching this show was kind of a cathartic experience for kids, it exemplified to them what it was like to have a pet monster( and remember we're talking about stupid little kids like me, so these things were real to them) and was sorta like a fill in the blanks for their imagination.You have the groundwork laid out but what would you do with a pet monster, how deep would the rabbit hole go with a monster in your life?Would it be scary, or adventurous or goddamn zany or what?Well if your own imagination ever stalled on you you were always able to refer to My Pet Monster, in my opinion the closest thing to HONEST mass marketed childhood imagination and a testament to a long dead time when there were still enough smart encouraged imaginative dream headed kids to justify such a cool idea.The Mad Scientist on the other hand was just petulant fun.Featured here and there on the TX Critter Cartoon Power Hour from that shows run from 1988-1991, this was the second show on this list to be inspired by a line of toys and the two 45 minuet cartoons that comprise the entire lifespan of the show were as brainless and irredeemable as they came, just two cartoons based around the manic suggestions and ideas of the titular Mad Scientist and the shows insistence that we come along and experience it whether we wanted to or not.This represented every kid who ever wanted to see that would happen if they turned a horseshoe crab upside down.It was about discovery, but the the kind of discovery that's only relevant to a child, and it was the show that had me convinced that a mad scientist was an actual occupation.If the essence of  My pet Monster was the wholesome Cheerios your mom made you eat then The Mad Scientist was the half pound of sugar that you poured on top while she was on the phone with her back to you.Well, this has deteriorated into nothing but a 25 year old miserating about wanting to be 5 again so lets move this along to the grand finale

1)The Real Ghostbusters-That's right, junior Ghostbusters, I did it, I dropped the big one, the 18 Mega-Ton big daddy manifestation itself, the show that ate your precious Thundercats for lunch and picked it's teeth with the bones of He-Man, the most important thing in the world to me (ages 2 thru 16 ), the best thing ever, The Real Ghostbusters. With it's premier on ABC Saturday mornings on September 13th 1986 and with a six season run along with 2 spin-offs as well as being in syndication, the show followed the continuing and seemingly bottomless adventures of Peter Venkman, Ray Stanz, Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddemore(along with their newly anointed yet perpetually irritating mascot Slimer) and is arguably the best example of a film successfully translating into children's television in any and every respect.Picking up directly where the first film ended, the debut episode "Ghosts R Us" sees the Ghostbusters returning from their Gozerian rooftop rumble with their flight suits caked in dried marshmallow man and no worse for the wear, wherein they trade their protonically charged uniforms for the iconic color coordinated uniforms that would go on to define the show's characters. And just to signify without doubt that the show was here to stay, the genius of the episode is on full display as we learn the marshmallow goo is a supernatural irritant that when stored too close to their containment unit bonds with the spectral energy and gives birth to the anti-Ghostbusters, green ghostly dopplegangers of our heroes who have come to fuck them up.It's at this point that you knew you were really privy to something special being handled by very talented people, because by now the Ghostbuster phenomenon was in full swing and the last thing anyone ever expected after the showstopper that was a 100 ft. marshmallow man was something as wild as our aforementioned scenario, and it only got crazier and more commendably creative from there.Needless to say the Ghostbusters rise to the challenge and put their evil counterparts out of commission, but in the six years that were to follow the Ghostbusters would go up against everything from the Boogeyman, the Spirit of Halloween, The Deep Ones of Lovecraftian lore and even the Devil itself, always coming together with their individual strengths and smarts and some honestly too-smart-for-cartoons logic to show every opposing prehistoric paranormal bitch exactly how you do things downtown. But to the credit of the horror elements in place here, this show offered some of the honest-to-God scariest things anywhere,cartoon or otherwise,whether it be the overall tone of real dread and possible doom, the completely mold breaking conceptualizations of the ghost and monsters, right down to the choices and uses of music or even the talents of the voice actors chosen to fill the roles, it can be said today as could have been said back then that the show pulled no punches, never got too cutesy with it's ghosts and whenever possible opted to convey real fear and all the corresponding emotions to the point of most episodes being the kiddie equivalent of a soap opera where you were totally invested and engrossed whether you knew that's what you were feeling or not.It played on that oh so perilous line of entertaining with visuals and  cheesecake while somehow eliciting a full gamut of emotions from an audience that couldn't care two fucks about anything outside of having to get up and go watch tv somewhere else because your dad wanted to watch "Soul Train" now, which is tantamout to say that it absolutely was it's own smart approachable animal, always was, and that it never sat back and set out to condemn or condisend emotion or intelligence or attention just because it's target audience were at the most underdeveloped stage of these things that only fantastic entertainment can make you feel. And aside from being the incalculably priceless continuation of a story that needed to keep being told (a huge leap of faith by itself considering the amount of notice and care taken of brilliant material nowadays.Save Todd and the Book of Pure Evil!!! ) and the fact that not only was it given blessing to continue and grow however but that it was nurtured so easily and carefully from a respectable distance so as not to over-homogenize any naturally occurring "magic", it really was a very important thing to many little MonsterKids, myself obviously one of them.This show did exactly what Roger Ward was hollering at little Mel Gibson about.It gave us back our heroes.Not so much as to tell us to go out get a ph.D in proton based psychics and hunt ghosts, but to say that nothing, no matter how big or bad or ugly, NOTHING in your life couldn't be busted.It showed you fear and it showed you perseverance in the face of abject fear, your heroes got scared and they got discouraged and they most definitely got knocked on their asses, but then they pulled back, put their heads together, and with the first bar-slide of the theme song creeping in to rev up the final showdown it gave us a glorious tingling tears in your eyes get up and fight finale, it translated into your mind as something that wasn't confined to the fictitious cause and effect parameters of a cartoon show  but as to say that the life  ahead of you is going to be horrifying, life is going to show you terrible things whether you want to see them or not, that things are gonna be bigger and badder and tougher to beat every new day fraught with personal demons and monsters and ghosts of all shapes and sizes and faces and powers over you. But that if you can stand up strong no matter what, no matter the odds or the size or the doubt in your mind, if you can find the tools and the talent, you just might be able to tear your own positron colliding path of beautiful blue and orange right through the darkness and horrors of the life ahead of you and scream to the skies "Nobody steps on a church in my town!"...No,wait..I mean(ahem).."I ain't afraid of no ghosts." But then again, this is just one MonsterBoy talking.

At Last,
The End

Even a man who is pure of heart.....

             The Classic Wolf Man dates from 1941 and seems to be seated in that era as well. The Father Talbot is a scientist and the younger Larry Talbot well we don't really know what he does but he works with a optical company. As we Find out when he helps fix his dads telescope and spy's upon the local women. (kinda purvey) Most notable our heroine Gwen Coniliff. He try's horribly to hit upon her at her fathers store. This is where he comes across the famous silver wolf cane and the story of the werewolf.

             For some reason Gwen agrees to go out with him. (maybe she likes that annoying narcissistic ass type) But she brings her friend Jenny Williams along to keep her safe.  Bella Lagosi plays a gypsy cursed with the mark of the beast. (thus being the first wolf man) who looks more like a painted German Sheppard. naturally the "wolf" attacks Jenny and Larry kills it with his cane, Not before being bitten of course.

Gwen and the Gypsy Women bring Larry home so he can recover from the wolf attack as the men of the village conduct a investigation. They find Jenny alright with a chunk taken out of her neck and the gypsy male (Bella) and start speculating that maybe Larry killed the gypsy man instead of the wolf. they head to Larry in the morning where his wound has healed over night. Fueling the investigator's story, leaving Larry paranoid and most of the villagers frantic.

The action slows as the gypsy's come to the village to celebrate the life of there fallen family member as Larry sinks further in to paranoia as the full moon is coming and he feels he is going to change. We only see the Wolfman in fleeting glances witch only goes to show you that film makers in this day and age only want to show off there digital effects because they all thought Avatar was cool (BARF) The Piratical effects on the transformation  are amazing for there time and a great visual for anyone who wants to peruse film or effects. the story line is fantastic and although dated and a tad drawn out has a type of charm that has not been embraced by the new age films. This is why the wolf man remains a classic and movies like "blood and chocolate" will be forgotten 

 
until then 

           

The (second) Ultimate Driller Killer Thriller

So heres the one all (two) of you have been waiting for,the classic cut of 1982 Long Beach bloodletting and power tool euphemisms known as "The Slumber Party Massacre".Probably in the top 5 of  goddamn entertaining post-"Friday the 13th" slasher film ,The Slumber Party Massacre is a rare type of slasher film and,yes if you keep and open mind and not snob the fuck out of it,is one of the most entertaining films available in the slasher or overall horror film cannon and next to Abel Ferrara's "The Driller Killer" is the best post "Texas Chainsaw" power tool slasher.The film plays out in the classic popcorn-type movie pace,not wasting any time and establishing a lot of foreshadowing while introducing us to key components of the movie, namely our main character Trish.We meet Trish(and Trish's naked boobies)on the morning her i'm-not-sure-what-they-do-for-a-living 80's parents hurridly pack their car to make it to the airport on time leaving Trish to herslef for a couple of days.But not before we get some of that great foreshadowing I mentioned earlier, here in the classic form of a news radio bulletin.As Trish changes for school we hear a not-quite Screamin' Steve Stevens break in with reports of the escape of notorious driller killer Russ Thorn,whose been incarcerated since 1969 for for his crimes.But in classic fashion Trish disregards this, absently tuning to another station.

So we have our set-up, so far perfectly establishing the series of events that shape the film in a admirably small frame of time, but filling us in with enough information to give us what we need to follow and doing it economically,something a lot of films in general have a hard time pulling off.So back to our story.Trish and her group of basketball gal pals are cooking up a slumber party while Trish's parents are away, little knowing that as their party gets underway, their voyeuristic male classmates who got wind of their party and show of for some peeping aren't the only problem waiting to ruin their mood.Our driller killer is closing in on their neighborhood, having by the 20 minuet mark already racked up three especially nasty kills with his giant handheld drill. So onto the slumber party we go, again being economic as well as conscious, intercutting between the girls and their party, the butt-whisker peeping classmates,and the driller killer getting ever closer having by now dispatched of the next door neighbor keeping an eye on things for Trish's folks and thus isolating the girls from any kind of salvation known to them.

But,oh now wait a minuet, the Killer has got himself a regular John McLane on his hands,here in the personage of party-shunned new-girl/next door neighbor Valerie, home alone farting around with the kid sister and who is invariably interwoven into the tapestry of the killer's plotting and stalking.But as the bodies of the interceding male characters(including a pizza guy) start piling up and getting attention from the few main girls who wander away from the party, Valerie and her sister start becoming suspicious, ultimately letting these suspicions give way to taking some initiative,keeping in contact with the girl's basketball coach as things get weirder(Get out of the House,Call the Police, all that neat stuff),until their suspicions mount and they go over to investigate, finding the classic "Halloween" vignettes of dead friends and only a few girls left alive at the mercy of our killer.The film culminates in a very not bad cat-and-mouse bit of girl power in which the tables are turned and the suspiciously phallic drill-bit of our killer is cut down to it's prime(Hilarious!!) and he himself is messily done in by a now battle worn and weary Valerie, thus ending the first and best of the Slumber Party Massacres.

Now i know I've been over this but I you really have to appreciate this movie if for nothing else than as a great technical achievement.There is A LOT going on in this movie, a lot of pace and set-up, a lot of characters all of which start off in their on their of wavelengths and agendas and whom all of which end up thrown into the same central storyline,and theres only 77 minuets to get all of this beginning, middled and ended, and damn skippy does it do it's job.The set-up is classic,the kills are as nasty as they come while still being spaced well apart so as not to beat you over the head with blood and guts to distract from anything lacking or any of that crap, the pace is swift AND smooth, never terribly slow or boring or grating on you,( it's like the film equivalent of a good light beer) the characters are a damn good balance of "God, just die in hell" and "Oh they're not so bad", the nudity deserves an honorary mention(the shower scenes are just a hair away from straight pornography,the best kind of shower scenes) and the dialogue is spare and honest, spoken with natural execution by a solid cast of kids.And let's not forget our driller killer, played almost wordlessly with genuine menace by Michele Michaels.Add all this up, and you've got the near-perfect addition to the slasher movie toolbox, the original, the best, "The Slumber Party Massacre".

A Thin Layer of Sleaze

 Seeing how we're still fairly new to this we thought it would be a good idea to keep things fresh, ya know sorta throw a little something different in here now and then, cause if you've read our epilogue you'll already know that we have a long way to go and it's way too early to start letting this get stale. Now for this week's review we're going into exploitation territory with the 1978 Cameron Mitchell vehicle "The Toolbox Murders".

Our film opens with a moody urban-decay type  night shot of the inside of a car driven by an unseen occupant down the streets of what could very well be NewDenvAngelesYorkLasChicago or whatever. But our drive is suddenly interupted as we freeze frame while the scream of a crashing vehicle assaults our senses and we begin to see intercuts of a car accident and it's interveening stages(paramedics load a body,police inspect the car's damage, girl in accident dies at hospital) ,all of this shown in a luscious Didn't-add-eneough-KoolAid powder-to-the-water orange tinge.(oh yeah, that's car crash orange mama).

Although the car crash scenes reek of the 1970's, this scene is actually handled really kinda well, taking a neat ,quiet nontraditional way of establishing the perverbial tragedy that runs through this film and drives the actions of the film's antagonist.Without beating us over the head with a loud or obnoxious execution of an already hackneyed scenario, the film in a way suggests it, just puts it there quiet and compact but with a good amount of effect and sense and then moves along.

Now if you haven't gotten it from the bloodred title card or the little "antagonist" slip from the preceeding paragraph, this IS a sleazy slasher exploitation flick and (oh, no shit) the phantom driver is our killer, driving to his kill.His killing grounds are a seedy, swinging shag-carpeted and particleboard adorned apartment complex filled with the best throw-away assortment of drinky,smokey ,man crazy and bathtub-masturbatin' 70's ladies you could ask for,and perfect targets for our skimasked killer and his giant toolbox of fun and games.In the first ten minuets we are privvey to four of the coolest,most mean spirited day-glo bloodiest killings, along with some very not bad nudity and a little goofeyness, not yet equaled in the first ten minuets of most movies.

The killer does his thing and moves along, making way for the harried police and their off the mark theories about why the women were killed all this while they confer with the apartment super(played with great underwhelmed relish by Cameron Mitchell).As the police chase their tails and exhaust ideas, the killer strikes again, this time sparing his victim and kidnapping her instead,sending the girl's brother to the aid of the police in an attempt to zero in on the killer and the girl alive. The brother decides to find his sister himself gathering information from his friend (who just happens to be the landlords nephew) He runs around in circles until he gets end up getting himself killed. Leaving the sister to fend for herself.

The basis of this story were actual evens in the late 60's and its really a impressive dramatization of the events.
the Girl was eventually found and spent time healing in psychiatric institute. Finally moving on to live her life.

Are YOU having a Tommy Jarvis moment?

Dear Horror Fans,
Are you suffering mental brake down from being Corey Feldman as a child?
Are you haunted by a serial killer that  killed your whole family(and your dog)?
Do you carry around random masks to each halfway house/mental institution you visit?
Do you like to dig up graves just to mutilate the corpse because you have Jason issues?
Do you kiss with your eyes open? (extremely rude if you ask me!)

If you answered yes to any of these questions you maybe Tommy Jarvis.... Sniveling little puke that has plagued not one but three Friday the 13th movies. At the end of Jason V they hint at Tommy picking up where Jason left off and hence becoming the new "Jason". When he is in the hospital and finds the (ahem, wrong) hockey mask in the dresser only to put it on and crash out the glass window letting the credits roll.

Cut to a few years later(now the beginning of Jason Lives) Tommy Jarvis and his friend ,friggin Horshack, are driving out the the cemetery where Jason is buried to you guessed it. Dig up Jason! (super smart plan there Tommy) Once they open the casket Tommy has one of his moments and starts to stab the corpse with a metal spike. (during a thunder storm) Lightning hits the pole and reanimates Jason.(nice friekin' play, Shakespeare)

The town of crystal lake has apparently moved on and changed there name to Forest Green and are opening the camp again. fulled with the usual camp staff but this time 90's style complete with crimped hair, sweat pants and suspenders for that classic camel toe look. Little do they know that Jason is coming back.

Now this Film takes a different formula than the other classic films where you have the teens away from any adult that can possibly help them. Here they have adults to help, well in the last half of the movie they do. Not only that but we have a few characters that you can feel an attachment to and don't want to see die. (but if they have to die you want it to be EPIC)

The movie defiantly had a great feel as well and a good story progression. It tried to be a little but more comical than the other movies but still hold true to the mythology that was set down by the first four movies. I will say go ahead and watch it, perfect end of summer, date movie, or first time horror flick.

And then there was those two crappy movies...... yeah sorry about that!

Yes... we all knew it would come,eventually, to this.But then again any discussion of horror films in any capacity 
always has to come down to the "Friday the 13th" films. Knowing that reviewing these films can make or break your opinions about my tastes in "Classic or Iconic Films" I really have gone through great lengths to take the film in with an open mind and through various viewpoints. Cleverly coming up with logical reasons why the films were taken in these directions, how they worked, and how they failed.

Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning(1985) -Starting with what I've been told is the absolute lowest point in the series' history, begins with Tommy Jarvis (the little kid from the fourth movie) all grown up and being transported from a mental institution to this half way house.  Here they introduce all the regular assortment of cast. The fat one, the pretty one, The jock, the Loser, and the sex fiend. This movie kind of  drags at first kill.The fat one pisses off the mean one and the mean one kills the fat one thus the high point of the movie comes and goes before we even get to the point(i use that term loosely). The local police and medical officials report to the scene to blah blah bloobloo and we get the feeling something is off here as upon viewing the body of fatty fatty fat fat(God i hate the fat kid) he casts a shifty glance menacingly somewhere off camera, and while we get an idea that this guy will have something to do with something somewhere down the line because the whole thing is so transparent(Fatty Deadshit is the ambulance drivers son) we as the audience don't see the backhanded result that bookends this movie. So with that out of the way all the folks we've seen so far begin to die one by one by either Jason himself or a Jason copycat,as the inter cut town officials and police speculate about , further sabotaging any chance of letting the movie keep it's rotten little trick secret, as the story limps along at an uninteresting and redundant pace.The story finally eeks to the final showdown of between "a" Jason and black Elliot(watch it and you'll see what i mean), the guy who gave Indiana Jones his hat and a woman who wears high-heeled cowboy boots in the woods,resulting in Jason falling from a barn and galling on a bed of spikes, thus revealing the so far indestructible killer as...Roy the ambulance driver from the fat kid scene who has taken it upon himself to become impervious to bullets,bulldozers and a myriad of injury without so much as a peep all the while masquerading as Jason Voorhees.Yep, this film does NOT have Jason in it but it exists in the Friday the 13th film series anyway, and although the film is hated universally,usually for only that reason, it is as a film a confounding mess that should be avoided at all costs.

Now in some fairness i can see what direction they were attempting to go with this by trying to go in a different direction and put in something fresh, but it was all handled so damn badly that if unless you can get past the pain in your head this movie and everything about it gives you you're never gonna see that. It's painfully inconsistent, ignores any preexisting groundwork or mythology that could easily be referenced but is not through what seems like pure laziness and is such a damn mess that it's central character(besides not even being it's ACTUAL central character)basically has no right to exist within the parameters the film portrays him within,but exist he does and furthermore without any logical explanation as to why an EMT with a smoldering grudge can withstand the punishment and beating he takes without so much as a groan.And,yeah yeah, the same could be said about Jason himself, but we're not talking about Jason,the icon of horror who we can't even to ourselves explain why we love him and regard him in such an iconic and endearing position. No we're talking about Roy the fucking EMT, being seen as Jason, being fought as Jason, surviving and killing and as far as we know until the last ten minuets being Jason,but he's not.He just isn't, and it's cheap and mean and we have to put up with a lot of crap to get a whole to get what we get.But i digress, ya get the point.So if you've found this helpful in anyway then stay with us as we review what seems to be the producers way of making it up to us for this turkey "Friday the 13th part 6:Jason Lives"coming soon

I survived "Sole Survivor"

Eager for the challenge of reviewing some good movies I glanced over the titles all lined up perfectly on the shelf of my living room. With 300 titles it took about 20 minutes before I had seen all the titles and picked out the first movie to watch.

"Sole Survivor" (1982)

Sole Survivor was put on video by Vestron Video based out of Stanford CT. Written and directed by Thom Eberhardt. With the Running time at 85 minutes and a rating as R, this movie seemed like a good place to start.

The box art (as seen in the picture above) The cover depicts a Airplane Radar with a scull and some ghostly hands . The radar comes in to play in the movie in a great way showing how less can be more in filming when done right.

We start this movie with some interesting cut scenes of a plane taking off and a women in her bedroom having some sort of episode to really annoying screaching music. Finally suspense builds as we cut to the air traffic controllers and the radar as they we follow the plane and it disappears off the radar. Cut to panning over limbs and dismembered bodies as we focus on out main character, Denise Watson. shes just sitting in her chair stiff as a board (we can only assume that she was the only one who had there tray table up and there chair in the upright position) As she gets brought to a hospital she mentions that the other weren't dead that some of them were moving.These exclamations are dismissed by the hospital officials but seem to hold very real significance to Denise, as they are the beginnings of odd feelings that slowly find their way into Denise's awareness.

Ghostly specters seem to follow Denise, always staring creating suspense for the viewers, as well as causing paranoia for Denise. The Doctor assumes the she is just suffering from "survivors syndrome" and the police think she is a whack job. The only person who believes her is a crazy actress who claims to be psychic . The actress tries to explain to Denise that death wont stop it will chase her until it finishes its job. Thus Denise and anyone who figures this out must die.

A dead man brakes in to Denise's house later that night and ends up killing the neighbor and things start to pick up until everyone is dead and in the morgue. The coroner putting the pieces together starts to document the events when you notice in the background a body sit up as the credits roll.

The movie was really more suspenseful than scary but it really worked well in a creepy way because no one likes to be stared at. I attribute that to a bit of the animal in us all where we feel challenged or threatened by a person just staring at us. Defiantly a movie to watch if you can get your hands on a copy. I couldn't help but notice a similarity to the final destination series from 2000 as well as a movie called "soul survivors" (2001) with the actress Elisa Dushku, as the plot idea was very similar. Both of these films have the same idea based off this original, some one cheats death and now death wont stop until it kills them. But nothing compares to Original source material.

Next up lets take a look at a summertime classic ..........lets take a bite out of the Jason franchise with Jason V