Horror Movie Talk

We watched Host on Shudder because everyone has been talking about it and found out that you can make a pretty effective movie that impresses everyone as long as theaters are closed and there is a global pandemic. Host doesn’t do anything new, but it doesn’t waste your time and it delivers fairly well compared to many found footage movies. @dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website. Synopsis Six friends decide to cure their Corona-19 blues by hiring a medium to hold a seance over a Zoom conference call. One of the friends doesn’t take the whole thing seriously and decides to make a joke at the expense of the seance – this angers the spirits who are also probably pretty bored of being on lockdown.  The friends get more evil spirits than they bargained for https://youtu.be/SNlKbqHqGcY Watch Host This link will bring you to Amazon where you can sign up for Shudder Click here to Watch Review Host brings literally nothing new to the table at all. Everything I saw during my watching of this movie is stolen whole cloth from another found footage movie of varying title.  The most obvious borrowing is the  movie’s format from titles like Unfriended, but I caught stuff from the Paranormal Activity series, Blair Witch, and about twenty other very common scares and tropes. That doesn’t make Host bad, it just makes it pretty common. The thing that I really appreciated from this movie was that it was less than an hour in length.  Nothing about this movie will stick with me for very long, mostly because I didn’t feel empathy for any of the characters. With these computer screen found footage formats the characters need to be really strong in order for them the break through to the audience and build empathy. Instead what you have with Host is a bunch of Friday the 13th camp counselors who you barely know and don’t care about.  The scares work to a middling extent and I wasn’t upset with this movie in any way. I will say that I had heard a lot of positive reviews and opinions of this movie before watching it and it just didn’t have enough substance for me to recommend Score 4/10 Final Recommendation Bryce seems to love this movie if you listen to the podcast attached to this episode but for me it falls pretty flat. I think those who love the found footage genre will appreciate this, but mostly it’s a bunch of used up tropes and scares.

Event Horizon is the best movie that Paul Anderson ever made and ever will make. It’s one of the most late 90’s movies you will ever see and has very Hellraiser aesthetic. Actually, now that I think of it, this movie is a mashup of Hellraiser and Alien mixed with a gimmicky action movie. It’s beloved by many, which makes it hard for me to do what I’m about to do. @dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website. https://youtu.be/OVlnER8SxfQ Synopsis Event Horizon starts with a very strong intro describing the far-flung future of 2015 and beyond! By 2015 we have already set up a colony on the moon. By present-day in the movie (2047), we have launched and lost a spaceship called Event Horizon that was meant to explore the boundaries of the solar system. The Event Horizon was lost around Neptune in order to avoid jokes about your butthole, and our ill-fated crew has been sent to determine what happened to the missing ship. Onboard the rescue vessel is Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) and Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill), who was the creator of the Event Horizon ship. Apart from them, you have a crew of stereotypical, disposable clods. Everyone is soon told by Dr. Weir that the Event Horizon vessel that he created was not a vessel made to explore the outer regions of the solar system, but a faster-than-light vessel meant to catapult humans around the universe. Everyone ends up with more existential terror than they bargained for… Event Horizon Review This is the first time that I’ve sat down and watched this movie from beginning to end, and I must say, I am not impressed. Granted, this movie is talked about lovingly by only the people who love it, and is almost never talked about at all by anyone who doesn’t like it. It seems to fly under the radar of movie hatred that other, more controversial movies are stuck with. I’m not saying that Event Horizon is bad – it’s not. It’s just that I heard so much praise for it from so many people that it probably inflated my expectations a bit. Watch Event Horizon Watch on Amazon now Click here to Watch The main thing that this movie does well is borrow from other films that are quite successful at what they do, like Alien and Hellraiser. The aesthetic and setting of this are like a Warhammer 40k gothic sci-fi meets real-world futuristic scenario. The visuals are graphic and disturbing. The story is of a man gone mad by the invention he created, almost like Frankenstein. Everything else is not for me. The action is very run-of-the-mill fast cut bologna. The disturbing imagery, while disturbing, does absolutely nothing to amp up the tension or frighten. The concept is cool enough, but without great execution, it just falls flat. I want to like Event Horizon; it just doesn’t do a damn thing for me except remind me of a bunch of actually good things that were probably going through Paul Anderson’s dull head while he was creating this. Score 4/10 Paul Anderson’s Horrible Career Even though he married Mila Jovovich, I think Paul should be a little embarrassed about the life he leads. It’s based on the shoddiest of work on the most braindead of all projects. Event Horizon is his best work. Here are his biggest ventures to date. Directing: Mortal Kombat Soldier Resident Evil Alien vs. Predator Drift Death Race Resident Evil: Afterlife Resident Evil: Retribution Resident Evil: The Final Chapter Writing: Resident Evil Alien vs Predator Resident Evil: Apocalypse Resident Evil: Extinction Death Race Resident Evil: Afterlife Death Race 2 Resident Evil: Retribution Death Race: Inferno Resident Evil: The Final Chapter Death Race 4: Beyond Anarchy Kids – follow your dreams. This is America; if Paul Anderson can be a multimillionaire married to Mila Jovovich for writing and directing all these gigantic steaming piles of zombie shit and Hotwheels wet dreams, you can make it doing anything! Final Recommendation If you remember this movie fondly, by all means, love it. I just can’t recommend seeing this to anyone who doesn’t get off on sci-fi and horror combos. It’s not great at what it does.

Patrons voted last month, and now we’re reviewing Ghost Ship, and it’s… from the early 2000’s. If you are in the mood for some modern schlock, then maybe it’s worth the $3 to watch the whole movie. But really, this movie’s opening scene sets expectations way too high for itself. @dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website. https://youtu.be/a7xNXTpQA5Q Ghost Boaty McBoatface is available to rent on multiple streaming platforms.  Synopsis Ghost Ship is about a Ghost Ship filled with Ship Ghosts that’s discovered by a salvage crew that eventually become Ship Ghosts on the Ghost Ship. The salvage crew aboard the tugboat HMS Whogivesafuck, are given a lead on an abandoned ship in the Bering Strait. The information is brought to them by Jack Ferriman, a Canadian Air Force pilot who insists on coming along with them on their salvage operation because he looks too handsome to be in just one scene. The crew sails out to the ship and discovers it’s a missing 1960’s Italian ocean liner called the Antonia Graza, which suffered a tragic boating accident that bifurcated most of it’s passengers.  As they lazily wander around the corridors talking about working, they find out that this SHIP has more GHOST than they bargained for. Ghost Ship Poster Review of Ghost Ship (2002) Ghost Ship is described by Roger Ebert as “It’s better than you expect but not as good as you hope.” Which is pretty accurate, but still pretty generous considering expectations going in are scraping the bottom of the barrel. The movie starts out with one of the best schlocky gory sequences in all of horror. Really, If you watched the opening scene and just walked away, you wouldn’t be missing much. The rest of the film is a pretty standard slow burn haunted house story set on a boat. The problem with that set up is that it requires the supposed professional salvage workers to do exactly zero work for an hour and 4 minutes of the 91 minute runtime. There is a little bit of mystery unraveling going on during that first hour, but most of the action happens in the last 20 minutes. It’s not a good movie, but it has a good cast, and it is salvaged by the bookends of it’s ridiculous beginning and ending. If you would like to watch something better from the same time, check out Dead End, which could easily have been called ghost car. Score 3/10 Ghost Ship Add the Blu-ray to your collection or stream on Amazon Buy/Stream Now

This week we follow up David’s favorite “horror” movie of all time, with my favorite horror movie of all time: The Exorcist. Every time I revisit it, I’m reminded that it truly is a masterpiece. @dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website. https://youtu.be/YDGw1MTEe9k The Exorcist Trailer Synopsis The Exorcist, if you don’t know, is about an exorcism of a little girl. Regan, played by Linda Blair, is the 12 year old daughter of single mother Chris MacNiel played by Ellen Burstyn. Regan starts complaining about her bed shaking at night, and then as days pass, her personality slowly changes and she starts behaving erratically. Chris exhausts every medical and psychological avenue, and is still left hopeless as her daughter continues to get worse. Some doctors reluctantly mention Exorcism as an option. Father Karras, played by Jason Miller, is a reluctant skeptic, but is recruited to perform an exorcism. With the help of an older more experienced exorcist, Father Merrin, played by Max von Sydow, they struggle to expel the demon or demons that are tormenting Regan. The Exorcist Poster Review of The Exorcist The Exorcist is the center tentpole of the horror genre for me, and probably for a lot of people. It’s often at the top of best horror movies of all time lists, and for good reason. Some of the themes and scenes from this movie are still genuinely disturbing nearly 50 years after it’s release. It deals with a lot of conscience and subconscious fears about life, reality, and little girls. A lot of the notoriety about the film comes from it’s marketing and stories of people fainting or leaving the theater. However, it doesn’t owe it’s longevity to these gimmicks, it is still held as one of the best critical and commercial successes in horror. The special effects might not hold up to modern audiences, but everything else is timeless. The acting is great, the themes are handled maturely, and the director had an unhealthy conviction to get his vision of the story. All of these work together to create a film that has spun off a whole subgenre of exorcism and demonic children. Score 10/10 The Exorcist Add the Blu-ray to your collection or stream on Amazon Buy/Stream Now Final Recommendation If you are a horror fan, and want to see the original “elevated” horror movie The Exorcist is a must see.

Alien is an incredible movie that did amazing things for horror, sci-fi, and cinema as a whole. It imagined an incredible amount of very real-seeming possibilities for space travel and contact with other life forms that impresses me to this day despite being 41 years old. @dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website. Synopsis Alien is the story of a deep-space commercial towing vehicle, named Nostromo, and it’s crew who are bringing a tremendous amount of ore back to earth.  There are seven crewmembers and they seem to be mostly blue collar folk, with the exception of the Chief Science Officer, Ash. They are awoken from stasis following receiving a transmission from a nearby planet and are bound by their contract with “the company” to check it out.  They discover some eggs near a spaceship crash-site and end up with more alien than they bargained for! https://youtu.be/LjLamj-b0I8 Watch Alien Now Watch on Amazon Click here to Watch Review Alien is one of the most impressive pieces of cinema in history. It set the bar so high for horror and sci-fi that I think it’s still the apex of both.  Every single aspect of this movie is carefully thought-out and crafted to the highest of standards. The setting is bleak and cold, very much unlike how space is typically portrayed today, with Guardians galavanting around galaxies and such. It’s completely unforgiving and inhospitable in almost every single way.  With Dan O’Bannon writing the story and screenplay and Ridley Scott at the helm as the director, this is one of the most accurate and impressive imaginings of the far-flung future as I can find, with much of the tech they dreamed about being in use today.  The xenomorph is, without a doubt, the coolest and most insane diabolic biological lifeform ever dreamed up. While everyone is very familiar with the xenomorphs at this point, you don’t get to see it almost at all in this movie, even though it seems like you do. This may be my favorite movie of all time, and is definitely the best horror movie in my book.  I mean, someone MIGHT be able to hear you scream if they were really close… Score 10/10 Final Recommendation If you don’t have a massive boner during your viewing of Alien, I don’t want to know you. This is a classic that trumps most classics, and should be seen by everyone within the sound of my voice and beyond.

This is a different kind of episode. You can’t see this movie yet, well at least not with some difficulty. This is a feature that I saw at the Portland Horror Film Festival, and it was by far my favorite. This will be available for streaming probably at the end of the year. It’s making the festival run right now, so if you can catch it at one, definitely do. Dustin Goebel, the man, the myth, the @dgoebel00 on intstagram made this. https://youtu.be/w-KbcVlzn1s Synopsis The Brain That Wouldn’t Die tells the story of mad scientist/surgeon Bill Cortner as he tries to defy the laws of nature and resurrect the dead. In a tragic car accident, Bill’s wife Jan is decapitated and he rushes to save her head with science! While Jan’s disembodied head begs to die, Bill and his lab assistant Kurt search far and wide for the perfect replacement body for his wife. Preferably one with big’ole titties. UP TOP! Review of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (2020) The Brain that Wouldn’t Die is a loving remake to the 1962 film of the same name. You might recognise it from Mystery Science Theater 3000, when they lambasted the original reanimated head-on-a-table film.  The Original on MST3K This film is surprisingly faithful to the original with a lot of the original dialogue, but with a distinctly more humorous tone. It’s in the realm of B-Movie homage comedy/horror films like Re-Animator and Young Frankenstein. That may sound like hyperbole, but this film is very similar to those two, and really funny. Most impressive is how well they pulled off this film with an estimated $80,000 budget. To give you a sense of how little that is, the original that was actually filmed in 1959 had a budget of an estimated $62,000, which would be over half of a million in 2020 dollars. The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (2020) Poster The lead played by Patrick Green is pitch perfect, and the acting from the rest of the cast really sells the serious, but not serious tone of the movie. If you would like a more modern take on brains and how they work, check out our review of Possessor Uncut. Score 8/10 MST3K The Brain That Wouldn’t Die Since you can’t watch this version, let the MST3k episode tide you over. Buy/Stream Now Final Recommendation Definitely go see it if you can. If you are a fan of Mel Brooks style humor, this is well worth your time to seek out. Look for it at film festivals near you, and on streaming services later this year. Spoilers Expand for Spoilers It’s kind of silly to care about spoilers on a remake of a 60 year old movie, but here are some points of discussion that we had on the episode. The opening black and white credits are copied from the original film. This is underscored by the original music. This really sets the stage for a 50s-60s B-Movie experience The tone of the film is established right out of the gate. The acting is intentional overacting, and sight-gags start immediately. As Bill is performing a surgery in the opening scene, a comical amount of perfectly timed blood sprays directly into his eyes. The next sight gag, which is a favorite of the writer producer Hank Huffman, is the two doctors ripping off their scrubs to reveal full suits and ties underneath. A lot of the dialogue is taken directly from the original movie. Even seemingly comedic lines like “our baby isn’t going to be a test tube baby” is in the original. Some of my favorite lines are: The response to “let me die” is “we should do as she asks” “I am the only man in the world capable of reviving a human head.” “She’s been decapitated”, “What!?”, “it means beheaded” “never mind her, she’s recovering from a brain injury.” Mentioned in The Episode https://youtu.be/FcVmC1NOWrA https://youtu.be/8-v2BHNBVCs

The Lodge is a movie that is heavy in tone and aesthetic, that went to great lengths to disguise the danger and keep the audience guessing as to what or who may be behind the nefarious details of the story. @dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website. Synopsis The Lodge is a story of two families, both with a tragic past that meet to determine who has it worse. We have the Hall family, who are a fractured family of four, father Richard (Richard Armitage), mother Laura (Alicia Silverstone), older son Aiden (Jaeden Martell), and younger daughter Mia (Lia McHugh). Laura and Richard have clearly been taking a long break from their marriage and this has treated Laura much worse than it has Richard. We also have Grace (Riley Keough), who is the only surviving member of a now dead, death cult which just so happened to be led by her father.  Needless to say, both of these families have their fair share of problems.  As the story unravels, the audience is left guessing as to what and where the danger may be coming from, but the tension is undeniable. https://youtu.be/ZN4E-NV2bpo Watch The Lodge Watch on Amazon Click here to Watch Review The Lodge is a very interesting movie for a lot of different reasons. The directors, Severin Fiala, and Veronika Franz made a lot of wonderful choices that put this squarely in my “favorite movies of 2019” box. The framing and location choices were bleak, cold, and clinical. This is an easy movie to compare to Hereditary based on many of the filming and set styles used. Lots of the shots are on the pretentious side of artistic and that’s just fine by me. The mood was mostly sad, and strangely dangerous, with the story constantly dangling danger at the periphery of the audiences vision but never quite letting it come fully into the light.  Just when you think you have a good handle on what is going on, the rug is pulled out from under you, which happens several times in The Lodge. There is lots of allusions to danger, and coincidences in this slow burn thriller to keep any hardcore thriller fan happy.  While I had quite a good time with the movie I must say, the content is deadly serious and fairly heavy, which left me with a gross taste in my mouth at the end, but that’s part of the allure. Here at Horror Movie Talk, we are family people, and have made it very clear that one of the horror elements that work best for us in movies is the breakdown of the family structure, and The Lodge has that in spades. Score 9/10 The Lodge Spoilers Click here to expand spoiler for The Lodge Re-imagining of “The Turn of the Screw” I didn’t know this going in, but after the 2/3 point I started to realize that I was familiar with this story. The Lodge is a re-imagining of “The Turn of the Screw“. It’s much better than another “Turn of the Screw” based movie, The Turning, which was released at almost the same time as this movie. While the characters all have vastly different pretenses for their being in the situation, the story is still very much the same. This story gives a much more contemporary and compelling reason for the caretaker character, who is Grace, and an alarming background to her and the children she is in charge of. So let’s take a brief look at how The Lodge unfolds and compare that to it’s original counterpart. There is definitely some symbolism going on here with the turkeys The Kid’s Backstory The movie starts with Laura Hall, the mom, dropping her kids off at their dads house. Richard asks Laura if they can finalize their divorce noting that it’s gone on long enough and heis going to marry Grace in several month. Laura storms out and, in a very shocking scene, commits suicide. The movie jump-cuts to a “6 months later” screen and we get a sense of how distraught Aiden and Mia really are. They argue with their dad that they don’t want to go to their vacation lodge with Grace because she is crazy. They are often shown playing with dolls in a playhouse built to look just like the vacation lodge that their family owns. With this playhouse they seem to act out scenes that come true, indicating they are somehow manipulating those around them. Grace’s Backstory Grace has an even darker past than the Hall kids. She is the only remaining member of a, now dead, death cult that was led by her father. There is footage shown early in the movie that is shot by a young Grace, finding all of her family and friends dead in this gruesome mass suicide. How it Comes Together As Grace and the remaining Hall family settle in to the lodge for Christmas, Richard gets called by work for something urgent, and leaves his fiance Grace in charge of the kids. At this point we are ever so slowly dipped into hell as a series of inexplicable events turn this lodge into a purgatory of sorts. Everyone’s belongings go missing, the power goes out, even the characters who should die, don’t. The whole while the audience is left guessing at whether it’s the kids, Grace, or something more sinister at work. Who Did It? It’s finally revealed that the kids have been messing with Grace the whole time, but while they did, they took away her medication. Remember, Grace has a seriously fucked up past, so she has some serious demons that she has had to conquer to make it to a seemingly normal life. Grace is pushed over the edge and retaliates in the most extreme of ways. Final Recommendations The Lodge is one of the slowest burns I have seen since Gretel and Hansel, but I enjoyed this even more than that. If thrillers and extremely dark subject matter are your thing, this is a fabulous movie. If you are squeamish when it comes to emotions or the family unit being torn apart, steer clear.

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser is a transgressive journey into a world where the lines between ecstasy, pain, heaven, and hell are blurred. It stands as a unique counterpoint to the one-note slashers of the 1980s. @dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website. Synopsis Hellraiser is about a psycho sexual sadist named Frank that seeks out a personal pandora’s box. He believes that by opening the mysterious puzzle box, he will get everything he ever wanted in life. Turns out he was mistaken and he didn’t end up liking eternal pain in Hell. Whodathunk? When Frank’s brother Larry and his wife Julia arrive at the family house that Frank mysteriously disappeared from, flashbacks reveal that Frank made his brother a cuckold by sleeping with Julia. When Larry accidentally cuts his hand and bleed on the floor of the attic, he inadvertently helps Frank begin resurrecting himself. When a mostly goo Frank is discovered by Julia, he recruits her to bring sacrificial singles in their area so that he can become a real boy. The only thing standing in their way is Frank’s niece Kristy, and the hell-demon Cenobites that seek to recapture him. https://youtu.be/8mOn4h0lgKQ Original Hellraiser Poster Review of Hellraiser This film is Clive Barker’s best film, and it is a unique mix of family dysfunction, sex, sadism, and gore. At times it feels like a 50’s melodrama, other times like a nightmare, and sometimes like torture porn. The tone that it sets is hard to put a finger on, but it is definitely dark and icky. The surreal imagery and goopy special effects are really the best parts of the film. The acting isn’t particularly great, but the imagery and themes of the film overwhelm any shortcomings it has. Score 9/10 Hellraiser Add Hellraiser to your collection or stream it now. Buy/Rent Hellraiser

We watched tremors and I have to say that this may be the epitome of a made-for-TV-movie feeling movie. I’ve seen it 20 times and I’ll see it 20 more during my life, and that’s a good thing. @dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website. Synopsis Tremors follows Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) in their attempt to leave Paradise Valley, Nevada, while doing odd jobs and handyman work. As they make their way up and down the valley between odd jobs and quirky small-town characters they begin to notice a string of seemingly related ground-level killings.  Upon meeting up with a grad student, Rhonda (Finn Carter) who is doing some important if timely seismic research, they learn that there are a bunch of little earthquakes – or tremors – happening all over the valley.  Before they jump the gun on declaring that there is a 100 foot tall, 200 ton serial killer on the loose, they find evidence of a subterranean suspect. A worm of sorts.  The rest of the movie is spent running for their lives from an unlikely, if terrifying phenomena with a ton a quirky townsfolk. https://youtu.be/liJfZvXdiTE Watch Tremors Now Watch on Amazon Click here to Watch Review Tremors, by director Ron Underwood, is one heck of a solid movie. It’s basically a monster movie, but it feels a bit more like an action-thriller to me because of all the action and adventure that takes place, along with lots of changes of scenery and methods. Tremors is a nearly perfect movie in terms of it’s script, who we have S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock to thank for . Everything that is said or mentioned is followed-up on or ruled-out at some point in the movie. Almost nothing extraneous or unneeded is mentioned, and all the characters play a wonderful role in making Paradise Valley a believable place. Maybe the best part of Tremors is it’s intense focus on the characters instead of the monster. Sure, we see the monster but the focus of every scene is on the characters and getting the audience to empathize with them. This forces a pivot in the otherwise fucked-out monster movie paradigm. It’s why Jaws was great, and it’s probably no coincidence that this is essentially a Jaws remake – even down to the movie poster.  It’s terrifically ironic that a movie that focused so much on the characters instead of the monster spawned five completely monster-focused sequels that lack most of the charm of the first, with exception of the second movie, Tremors II : Aftershocks. Many horror skeptics will say that this movie is not a true horror movie noting the goofy fun and light ambiance, but I beg to differ. Not only is Tremors definitely a horror movie, it’s the most important kind of horror movie – entry level horror.  This is the stuff that I watched as a little kid and sent me scrambling for the rocks. It hooked my pint sized imagination and lit up every corner, making me wonder if it really was safe to play tag on the playground or if I should seek the high-ground. Tremors is interesting, has wonderful tension, and most importantly is fun as any movie you will ever watch.  Score 8/10 What Makes Tremors so Great? From an entertainment and rewatchability standpoint this is a bit of a sleeper, but upon review, it holds up quite well. a big part of this is the horror aspect mixed with good, old fashioned humor. Humor in Tremors The humor in this movie is goofy, and downright wholesome, but it’s good enough to make you smile on every viewing. The wholesomeness of an early 90’s feel good sitcom mixed with the horror elements of Jaws really works. It’s directly responsible for the late success of the movie on television. In theaters, Tremors did poorly with a 5 million dollar take on what cost 11 million to make. But the real success of this movie kicked in with syndication on cable TV. I watched it probably 20 times on TV because it was fun, funny, and always on. You Can’t Beat Burt! Burt (Michael Gross) and Heather (Reba McEntire) Gummer are just as much the leading actors as Val and Earl in this one, and how couldn’t they be? They are preppers and gun enthusiasts without being insane, instead just a little quirky. You probably know a Burt, which is what makes this character so fun. But the character of Burt isn’t so over-the-top as to make him not human. He’s passionate, but not a caricature. Burt brings the boom in this movie, and it’s just what the doctor ordered. Graboids are Awesome In my personal experience, it’s rare for monster design to work out well. It’s even rarer to have monster reveals work out well, but in this, Graboids are handled perfectly! The monster design is simple, believable enough that it’s not totally jarring (unlike Pumpkinhead), and the presentation is fabulous. Each Graboid is killed in a totally different way, but they follow the same rules. For example, the first one that is killed runs into a concrete wall while chasing our protagonists. This perfectly sets up the last Graboid kill, where Val runs toward a cliff and uses a bomb thrown behind the creature to scare it to make the jump onto the rocks far below. The movie increases the tension before even first showing our worm like friends, which sets up the reveal quite well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK7-tBuEoq4 These guys are great at reviews and have good taste, check them out. What Tremors Gets Wrong So, it’s not all great, but what is? The worst aspect of this movie is definitely the musical score. Bad Music Makes a Big Difference I’ve talked a bit about how this movie is very similar to Jaws, and that’s mostly to it’s advantage, but they got it wrong in terms of music. OK, I get it, it’s hard to stand-up to one of the best musical scores of all time, but man, you have to try! Tremors soundtrack digs deep into that 90’s sitcom bin of pop-country jazz riffs and pulls out the most goofy music you can imagine. A part of me says it works for nostalgia, but that’s the same part that cringes at nostalgia. Ernest Troaost wrote the original soundtrack, but they only ended up using it for a few spots in the movie, most notably at the beginning and end. The good, suspenseful bits that are actually effective but not quite iconic were later written by Robert Folk. Final Recommendations This is the most crowd friendly movie that we have reviewed, even more so than Gremlins. Tremors is a very light-fair, action-thriller that goes easy on the cussing and sexual themes in favor of tension and violence that the whole family can enjoy. If you haven’t seen this, you absolutely must.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a fictionalized, and harrowing vérité portrayal of real life serial Henry Lee Lucas. This is a movie that will stick with you and make you feel dirty. We’ve been sitting on this review for a while, but are excited that it is finally seeing the light. We recorded it back in September of 2019 to be a backup episode when we needed to take a week off. Turn’s out, we rarely take a week off. @dgoebel00 on Instagram provided this amazing artwork. Follow him and check out his website. https://youtu.be/IU3P6WXzvXU Synopsis Henry played by Michael Rooker,  is serial killer constantly on the move, but is momentarily staying with his former cell mate Otis (Tom Towles). Also living with them is Otis’ out of state sister Becky (Tracy Arnold). She flys in to escape her abusive boyfriend and to try to find work to bring her daughter down to live with her. The drama in the film is in the interaction between these three characters. The trio is a powder keg trauma, sociopathy, and victimhood. However, as the title of the film suggests suggests, the main purpose of the plot is to paint a stark and unflinching portrait of Henry as a serial killer. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer Poster Review of Henry This is one of those films that feels a little too real. Even though it is definitely a narrative driven Hollywood film, it shows the realities of killing in such plain detail that it almost feels like a documentary. When I told David about this movie I described it as “Taxi Driver, but without the touchy feely parts”. You are thrust into a world of people that are deeply broken and are dangerous to each other and themselves.  It feels like a snuff film, mainly because within it, is a snuff film. Watch Henry Now Watch on Amazon Click here to Watch Henry reminds me of a couple of my favorite movies in terms of subject matter and tone. First is David Fincher’s Seven, and even more so, Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. It’s a film that sticks with you and makes you feel dirty just watching it. This is because unlike most narrative driven Hollywood movies, this one has no glamour or spin. It is full of dread and terror even in scenes that on the surface are innocuous.  It is undeniably a great film, just from the fact that I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it and it deeply affected me.  Score 10/10 Spoilers Expand for Spoilers The film opens strong with flashes of hyper-realistic crime scenes with brutally murdered corpses. This communicates one thing: buckle up. It feels very real early on. There is no veneer on this film. Compare this to another serial killer movie made the same year: Manhunter. Manhunter is highly stylized and a romanticized, fetishized portrayal of serial killers, Henry feels like a documentary in comparison. This feels like it’s the first movie of it’s type, and probably the greatest because of it’s commitment.  The character of Henry is loosely based upon the real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. As in the film, Lucas was acquainted with a fellow convict named Ottis Toole (although in the film, the character’s name is only given as Otis). Additionally, Lucas became the lover of Toole’s eleven-year-old niece, Frieda Powell, who lived with Lucas and Toole for a while, and often went under the pseudonym of “Becky” (although in the film, Becky is Otis’ sister, rather than his niece, and is considerably older than Powell was). Also as in the film, Lucas ultimately killed Becky. Furthermore, like the fictional Henry, the real Henry’s mother worked as a prostitute from her house, often forcing him to watch her while she had sex, and occasionally making him wear a dress. The real Henry’s father had also lost both his legs in an accident, prior to which he had been a truck driver, just like the fictional character. However, the actions of the fictional Henry are inspired not by Lucas’ real crimes, but by his fabricated ones. In prison, Lucas confessed to over six hundred murders, claiming he committed roughly one murder a week from 1975 to 1983. Ultimately, however, the vast majority of these claims turned out to be false, while many of the rest could not be substantiated. Lucas was simply confessing to every unsolved murder brought before him, because doing so ensured better conditions for him, as law enforcement officers would offer him incentives to “confess”. Such confessions also increased his fame with the public. In the end, Lucas was convicted of eleven murders, and sentenced to death for the murder of Frieda Powell, although his death sentence was later commuted to life in prison by the then Governor of Texas George W. Bush. The characters in this film is a group of completely broken people. Henry and Otis are raised in abuse and become predators, and Becky turns into an ideal victim. She has a real casual attitude about getting abused and sexually assaulted. Henry describes his MO as killing in a different way each time and moving on, which is probably how most serial killers get away with it in real life. Henry and Otis go and murder a family and film it. This is the realest scene of murder I have ever seen on film. Henry Ending Explained Henry goes on the hunt, but doesn’t kill anyone, when he returns Otis is raping Becky. After killing Otis. Henry escapes with Becky. The whole time you wonder what’s going to happen with Becky, until inevitably he kills her. Despite the close connection that Henry seems to have with Becky, he can’t help himself. The film is really great at showing how unfeeling killers are towards their victims. And that’s why it feels so real, because they don’t make Henry “crazy”, he’s just a pure predator.