#46 Ghostbuster 2 and #47 The Lawnmower Man

Since yesterday was both Stephen King and Bill Murray's birthday, we did a double feature. We watched the lesser Ghostbusters movie and one of the oddest SK adaptations from the 90s.

First, Ghostbusters 2. I've never seen what the problem was with this movie. A lot of people don't like this sequel, but I think it's fine. Sure, it's not the first one, which is one of the greatest movies of all time, but what is! It nearly succeeds in recreating all of the fun of the first one. That's all it can really hope for, that magic and chemistery. I would watch this group of actors wash dishes together and although there are parts of this flick that kind of seem like that, it's still better than most movies.

Then we threw on The Lawnmower Man. It's barely a King adaptation, loosely based on a short story of the same name. It does have a lot of essential King elements though. Mean Hicks. Abusive Fathers. A Shitty View of Religion. Smoking. Telekinesis. Plus, it deals with the idea that human consciousness can be accelerated to the point of enlightenment through drugs and digital stimulation. A lot of ideas in this flick have also shown up in stuff like The Matrix and more recently in Lucy, Her, and Transcendence. So, in that way, it's pretty cool. And it has Pierce Brosnan in it.

#45 Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

I actually watched this with Witter last week, but kind of forgot about it. We talked about it some last night and came to the conclusion that this in one of our favorite in the Freddy series. Sure, it's got some (unintentional, I would argue) anti-gay undertones, but for the most part this movie is fun.

This flick has grown on me a lot over the last few years. At one point I would have said that it was my least favorite in the series, but especially watching it with a friend and having a laugh about it, this movie turns into a fun roller coaster ride of real horror moments, goofy spots, and complete weirdness. Plus, it doesn't conform to the Freddy formula. That's pretty cool. There is no group of friends that Freddy rips apart one by one. There is no female heroine. Freddy makes it into the real world because he wants to in this one, he isn't just drug into reality in order to be killed like he is in a couple of the other ones.

And, when Freddy does get into the real world, oh man what a good scene that is!

#44 Frankenstein's Army

This flick is a nice little find in the Instant Netflix queue. Thanks to horror aficionado Scott Phillips for the recommendation.

This bad boy is an odd bird. It is a period piece, set in WWII. We follow a group of Russian soldiers as they patrol the countryside and eventually go looking for some of their comrades who seem to be in trouble. This flick is also a found footage movie. It takes a bit of suspension of disbelief to buy that the (english speaking) Russians would cart around a film camera on all of their misadventures. Also, there is no mention of sound equipment, so that'll bug you a little bit now that I've pointed it out. There are other little historical inconsistencies with the plot and logic of the show, but as the flick progresses, we forgive these problems because, well, the payoff is worth it.

I won't get too far into it because I imagine that most of you haven't yet seen this flick, but, let's just say that the soldiers stumble into a factory of tortured humanity where a descendent of Frankenstein has been funded by the Third Reich to bring their two talents together. He is delivering the goods!

The back half of this movie plays like a first hand document of someone roaming around the best f**king haunted house ever created. The gore is plentiful, the monsters impressive, the dangers many and bloody. Enjoy!

(One note: I think that it is awesome that the Nazis were so unarguably doing evil shit, and we find out more and more weird stuff that they were looking into all the time, that a movie like this actually almost seems conceivable. Boy those Nazis are villains. And when you throw Dr. Frankenstein into the mix, forget about it!)

#43 Dawn of the Dead (1978)

The king of the Zombie movies. There isn't much to be said that hasn't been said already. This movie is groundbreaking, socially relevant, horrific and also a little bit boring. It is also the template that all other epic zombie movies use.

Most of the flick is about how to fortify a mall. We watch the entire arch of our group of characters as they escape from society, overcome their differences, work together to insure their own safety and eventually have all of their plans torn apart not by the flesh eating monsters but by entirely different monsters. The killing and the blood effects are just thrown in there so that we don't stop paying attention.

Also, Tom Savini is king.

#42 Bubba Ho-Tep

Bruce Campbell gets back to his campy horror roots in this flick about a couple of long dead cultural icons battling a 2000 year old mummy to save the residents of a rest home. Campbell plays (fairly convincingly, I might add) an aging Elvis who traded places with an impersonator in order to escape the trappings of fame. Now he's wasting away in a Texas rest home where his only real friend is John F. Kennedy, played by Ossie Davis (yeah, you read that right). 

When the two crazy old geezers realize that there is a mummy sucking the souls of their fellow residents and writing Egyptian graffiti on the bathroom wall, they do the only thing they can: they devise a plan to whip the mummy's ass.

This movie is awesome for a bunch of reasons, but the best one is that it is actually pretty sweet and melancholy, even with all the craziness of the plot. 

#41 Simpson's Treehouse of Horror 13-15

Two out of three of these I've never seen before. I bought the DVDs since last Halloween. These seasons were getting back to the point where the Simpsons were getting good again. Some highlights include a parody of InnerSpace, Professor Fink's dad being voiced by real life inspiration Jerry Lewis and Homer's stint as Death. #14 was also written by John Swartzwelder, a guy who has probably had more to do with The Simpsons being the cultural juggernaut that it is than anyone else who has worked on the show. They don't inspire the old nostalgia that the first few season's specials do, but it is still fun to watch the folks of Springfield get bloody.

#40 Beetlejuice

Another classic from back when Tim Burton had something to offer the world. All the major players in this movie used to be maverick young entertainers who were hungry to make their mark on cinema. Now, they are all old, rich, crusty white people that are so severely out of touch with their fellow man that they don't understand why nobody likes them anymore.  Wynona has fallen on hard times and legal troubles. Alec frequently goes on drunken rampages. Geena let one bomb sink her career and now shoots bows and arrows or some nonsense. Jeffrey got busted for child porn. Tim tries over and over to rehash his former glory by dumping out whatever crap Hollywood thinks would make a good 'Burton Project'. And Keaton just started looking for paychecks but hasn't done quite as well as his replacement in Burton's heart, Mr. Johnny Depp.

Oh well, we'll always have Beetlejuice.

(It does look as though Michael Keaton is looking to return to form in the weird new flick, Birdman, Burton's new project makes me more interested than I've been for one of his movies in a long time. So here's hoping.)

#39 Mystery movie

More info to come.

#38 Dracula (1931)

Oh Bella! You so crazy with those little lights pointing at your eyes!

Man, I have a hard time staying awake during this movie. It IS good, but everything moves in slow motion in it. It's based on a theatrical adaptation of the original Stoker novel and Lugosi actually had to campaign to keep the titular role in this adaptation. He's awesome in it, and totally creates everything that is still associated with the world's most notorious blood sucker. The supporting cast is pretty blahs-ville except for Renfield, who is played by Dwight Fry. Fry also played Fritz (the Igor character) in the original Frankenstein. It's kind of sad that he had just as much to do with some of the most recognizable characters in fiction as some of the other big names but rarely gets remembered. So, here's a shout out to him. I mean, ol' Bella only played Dracula one other time for cryin' out loud!

#36 28 Days Later #37 Pet Semetery

I haven't watched 28 Days Later since it came out. This movie was kind of a turning point in a lot of ways. Its use of digital photography was an experiment in style at the time. The digital cameras were just barely capable of producing images that could compete with film, and Danny Boyle, always the innovator, took a chance to experiment with this low budget zombie movie. What he produced was as close to this generation's Night of the Living Dead as you could imagine. Watching it now, it doesn't look all that different from the dozens of worthless low budget zombie movies that are produced every year now. But it WAS different in that it was the first. It also has a big amount of charm, skill and care put into it that it's frequent imitators fail to capture, new technology or not. Boyle also managed to (digitally) present a deserted London cityscape. No small feat.

The other big advance of this flick is that it isn't really a zombie movie at all. The antagonistic cannibals are not undead. They did not rise from the grave. They are not really looking to feed on the living. They just want to kill everything.They are actually living people suffering from a horrible disease. That aside, this is the first noticeable 'fast moving zombie' movie. This one element was enough to secure 28 its spot in horror movie history and bring back the zombie genre for a new millennium.

Other than that, it's just a zombie movie. It's got all the elements that make a rad zombie flick. Likable characters, social commentary and dirty zombies rippin' people apart and puking blood. That's all ya need!
______

After that, Witter and I watched one of our favorites, Pet Semetery. This movie is amazing, but only under the right circumstances. You have to watch it with a like minded bud and just sit back and marvel at all the individual moments that this movie throws at you in order to creep you out. Some of them (the moments) are, indeed, scary. Some wildly miss the mark. Some are downright hilarious while others are kind of brilliant. This flick is so uneven that when it hits one of its genius moments, I am always more impressed than I should be. There are sequences, hell, whole performances in this flick that are just terrible. Then you get to that scene with the dying sister or ol' Gage calling his dad on the phone and you can't help but be amazed.

Plus, Fred Gwynne! Right!? Am I right?! Master of what I have officially dubbed 'The Stephen King Accent'.

#35 A Nightmare on Elm Street

I've seen this movie so many times that I can't even guess at the number. It is one that I have watched almost every year of my adult life. Like Tombstone or Robocop, it will always just be a movie that makes me remember why I love movies. Everything is just so perfect about it. The production design, the performances, the tone, the music, Johnny Depp's hair. Even the cheesy parts are awesome (Freddy's super long arms! What's with that!)

This time I watched it with my dog at about 2am. I watched it with the commentary on. It's kind of cool listening to Carpenter, Saxon, Langenkamp and the DP (who actually had a lot of good stuff to contribute) muse on their contribution to American culture. It's also a little boring. Carpenter discusses the inspiration for the film and the psychological undertones, with an occasional contradiction by Saxon, Langenkamp continually comments on her appearance and how long it took to shoot each scene (and Craven makes fun of her for doing so). The DP (whose name I can't remember and am too lazy to look up) talks about making a movie.

#34 I Sell the Dead

This little period piece about grave robbers in the late 1800s has been on my radar for a while, since it hit the video store shelves a few years ago. Just the names of Ron Perlman and Dominic Monaghan were enough to grab me, and their dialogue scenes are definitely the highlight of this macabre flick.

Otherwise its full of that bland and slow british humor that's all the rage right now. Personally I've never had much use for the style. The Brits spend a little too much time talking about the world and not enough time living in it, at least in their cinema. Each vignette is prefaced by Perlman and Monaghan talking about what's going to happen first. Kind of takes the air out of the scenes. Plus, again, the conversations are actually more interesting than the scenes they are introducing. Some of the action is worthwhile, harkening back to the slapstick zombie fun of Evil Dead 2, and it all ends well. I mean, the ending is worth the slim 85 minute runtime.

#33 Teen Wolf

The original 80s flick starring Michael J. Fox. Not the new TV show. I would be curious to watch that show, but I don't think I'm necessarily the target audience for it.

This flick nearly drips with 80s awesomeness. From the cool best friend tryin' to make a quick buck, to the next door neighbor love interest, to the blond babe who is a total jerk, to all the fun extras, this movie is a product of its times, and its times were cool.


Questions: What the hell happened to Scotty's mom? He seems pretty sensitive about it when her death gets mocked and his dad seemed pretty in love with her. Was her death Werewolf related?


Also, what's the deal with Lewis? That kid is, like, the only one who isn't into the Teen Wolf without a reason. He just seems to generally dislike Scott when he's wolfed out. Everyone else seems to have no problem with the wolf except for the antagonists of the flick. And then there's no payoff. How come Lewis doesn't come up and high five Scott at the end when he wins the big game without the wolf? Why is that character even there?!

And then there's the coach. He's the best. Just a gum chewin', knowledge spoutin' good time. He probably has one of my favorite quotes in all of cinema. I hope I can write a line of dialogue that ever even comes close to this: 

"There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep, never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city, and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese."

#32 Scary Movie 2

You'd think with a cast that included James Woods, Tim Curry and David Cross, this sucker would be out of hand hilarious. Sadly though, most of the screen time in this flick revolves either around degrading Anna Faris' character and Chris Elliott (who I've pretty much never found funny). In fact, is there anyone out there who is super into Chris Elliott? Where's my Cabin Boy fans at?

Anyway, this one is mostly a parody of the House on Haunted Hill/Haunting genre of flicks, which are also pretty hit or miss, so the movie doesn't really amount to much. About the funniest part in the whole thing is when Shawn Wayans' dick pulls the evil clown back under the bed. There are other moments of note, but this parody is much like a lot of the other ones that have come out since, kind of just a once and done, couple of light chuckles throw-away.