TODAY I WATCHED... (Movies, TV) 2017

"The Chilling" (1989)


A cryogenics facility becomes Ground Zero for a zombie outbreak when a storm knocks out the power and its frozen occupants thaw out. Can a lab assistant (Linda Blair) and a night watchman (Dan "Grizzly Adams" Haggerty) stop the invasion of the walking Popsicles?
Cheap direct-to-video nonsense that's good for a few laughs, depending on your tolerance for B-movie pain.

Dual Survival

Curse Of The Undead (1959)

Standard western movie with a twist. This movie deals with a land dispute between to ranching families. A couple of deaths in one family leads to the surviving daughter to place a bounty on the other family's patriarch. One man steps forth to possibly collect on the bounty but there's the twist, he's also a vampire. This made it an interesting watch.

"Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary" (2017)

Cheap looking but cool behind-the-scenes doc about the making of the '89 flick based on Stephen King's novel. Lots of interesting stories are told by cast & crew members and fans, tho King himself is noticeably absent from the interviews. I've seen the movie quite a few times over the years and thought I knew everything there was to know about it, but I came away from this documentary with a few new tidbits of trivia.

"Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter" (1984)

In the fourth, though obviously far from "final," F13 flick, Jason escapes from the morgue and heads back to Crystal Lake, where he proceeds carve up yet another cabin full of horny/stupid teenyboppers. However, The Big Jay may have met his match this time in the form of Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman!) - a local pre-teen who's handy with monster makeup and also happens to possess mad skills with a machete. In other words... more of the usual enjoyably gory nonsense.

"It Follows" (2015)

After a one-night stand, a teenage girl is pursued relentlessly by a mysterious, murderous spirit. Is there such a thing as an "STG" (Sexually Transmitted Ghost)?
This movie got a lot of rave reviews when it came out but I thought it was "meh." The concept is interesting but aside from a couple of creepy bits it mostly runs around in circles. Pass.

Went and saw The Dark Tower and it was just terrible. Really makes me angry that books like Harry Potter can get the full on movie treatment with 8 movies, and an epic book like the Dart Tower series gets the shaft. Stephen King should be furious, but following him on FB, he's been really hyping this garbage saying it's great. I guess if you haven't read the books, you might like it. If' you've read them and love them like I do, it will probably piss you off.

Dual Survival

"Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children” (2016)



Following a series of clues left behind by his late grandfather, a teen travels to Wales, discovers a secret “school” on a hidden island for kids with strange abilities, and helps them battle some monstrous villains.

Tim Burton's elaborate fantasy flick (based on a young-adult novel series) is kinda like a steampunk mash up of “Harry Potter” and “X-Men.” I enjoyed it but my son, who’d just finished the book for his summer reading program, nit-picked endlessly about all the stuff the movie did differently, so your mileage may vary.

Family Double Feature Night:

"Garfield: The Movie" (2004)

The comic strip cat makes his live action film debut (in weird CGI-animated form), voiced by Bill Murray no less, in this tiresome kid flick. When Garfield's canine pal Odie is kidnapped, the big G must brave the big city to rescue him from life as a circus dog. By the midway point I was thanking God that Jennifer Love Hewitt was in this movie because her short skirts were the only thing making it watchable.

And speaking of unwatchable.. we followed that up with:

"Independence Day: Resurgence" (2016)

Years-too-late sequel to the 1996 hit brings back some old faces (Jeff Goldblum, Brent Spiner, Bill Pullman) and a bunch of new ones when those nasty aliens return in an even bigger and badder mothership to try and wipe out what's left of the human race. The fancy special FX and global mayhem is fun to watch for a little while, but it gets old pretty quick. Let's be honest, the original "ID4" was no great shakes either but compared to "Resurgence" it looks like the work of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Will Smith was smart to sit this one out...

"The Second Best Secret Agent In The Whole Wide World" (aka "Licensed To Kill," 1965)


First in a series of three cheaply made James Bond knockoffs starring Tom Adams as suave British agent Charles Vine, who protects a scientist and his plans for an anti-gravity device from a variety of enemy agents, double crossers and femme fatales. Pretty standard Eurospy nonsense; I've seen better but I've seen lots worse too.

"Chopping Mall" (aka "Killbots," 1986)

A gang of teenage mall employees want to have an overnight drunk-n-horny party after the stores close, but their bash is rudely interrupted by the mall's three hi-tech security robots, who turn homicidal after lightning shorts out their central computer.
It doesn't get much more "'80s" than that premise, folks! Jim Wynorski's sci-fi/horror/T&A cult classic is a dumb, fun time capsule that will bring back memories of leg warmers, VHS cassettes and "USA's Up All Night."

^^^^ They actually show the only part I remember from that movie: the exploding head!

"The Visit" (2015)


Two teens spend a week at the home of their estranged grandparents, and slowly begin to realize that there's something odd about the old folks...

M. Night Shyamalan's "comeback" film starts off on the slow side (and the younger brother is one of the most irritating movie kids I've seen in ages), but once the "twist" kicks in around the 3/4 mark everything suddenly snaps into place and it turns into a pretty decent thriller. Better than I expected.

"The Conjuring" (2013)

Creepy-cool haunted house flick based on a case file from Ed & Lorraine Warren, the real life paranormal experts best known for their investigation  of "The Amityville Horror."

"Never Too Young To Die" (1986)


Good Lord! How have I NEVER seen this trash classic before today?? I should've been all over this movie ages ago on the strength of the casting alone. This ultra-bizarre movie mashes up James Bond spy hijinks, adds some "Rocky Horror" drag show elements and "Road Warrior" ultra-violence and the result may be the most "Eighties" movie EVER!

A secret agent (one-shot 007 George Lazenby) is killed in action, so "the company" drafts his estranged high-school gymnast son (John Stamos) to help Dad's former partner (Prince protege' Vanity) stop a hermaphrodite terrorist (Gene Simmons!) who wants to poison California's water supply with radioactive waste...for some reason. Lots of butts get kicked, stuff blows up frequently, Simmons overacts painfully, and Vanity takes her clothes off, all set to an oh-so-80s synth-heavy soundtrack

Anyone who sez "Howard The Duck" was the worst movie of 1986 has obviously never seen "Never Too Young To Die!"

Fat Freddy wrote:

"Never Too Young To Die" (1986)


Good Lord! How have I NEVER seen this trash classic before today?? I should've been all over this movie ages ago on the strength of the casting alone. This ultra-bizarre movie mashes up James Bond spy hijinks, adds some "Rocky Horror" drag show elements and "Road Warrior" ultra-violence and the result may be the most "Eighties" movie EVER!

A secret agent (one-shot 007 George Lazenby) is killed in action, so "the company" drafts his estranged high-school gymnast son (John Stamos) to help Dad's former partner (Prince protege' Vanity) stop a hermaphrodite terrorist (Gene Simmons!) who wants to poison California's water supply with radioactive waste...for some reason. Lots of butts get kicked, stuff blows up frequently, Simmons overacts painfully, and Vanity takes her clothes off, all set to an oh-so-80s synth-heavy soundtrack

Anyone who sez "Howard The Duck" was the worst movie of 1986 has obviously never seen "Never Too Young To Die!"

I never heard of this movie before so out of curiosity I looked it up on IMdb.  You forgot to mention that Robert "Freddy" Englund is also in this flick which just adds to the strange casting. And the reviews of it are all over the place but I found this one amusing:

Quote :

No wonder Vanity left the entertainment industry and turned Christian: After just watching this movie, I felt like I should spend the next three years praying for forgiveness.

That review has "Freddy Flick" written all over it!

"The Conjuring 2" (2016)


Sequel to the 2013 hit sends real-life ghost busters Ed and Lorraine Warren to London, where a single Mom and her family are experiencing a haunting that may have roots in one of the Warrens' most famous cases.
Not quite as spooky as the original but still a satisfying creep show.

Quote :

I never heard of this movie before so out of curiosity I looked it up on IMdb. You forgot to mention that Robert "Freddy" Englund is also in this flick which just adds to the strange casting. And the reviews of it are all over the place but I found this one amusing:

Quote :

No wonder Vanity left the entertainment industry and turned Christian: After just watching this movie, I felt like I should spend the next three years praying for forgiveness.

That review has "Freddy Flick" written all over it!

I'd heard of "Never Too Young To Die" over the years but had never pulled the trigger on it till now. When it came up on Shout Factory's streaming channel yesterday I said "Ehh, what the hell." I kinda knew it was gonna be bad but I had no idea how screamingly WTF it was gonna be, from the first scene to the very last.

Live PD

Stephen King double shot:

"Christine" (1983)

High school nerd Arnie Cunningham buys a hunk-o-junk 1958 Plymouth Fury with a dark past, and while he restores the car to its former glory, his friends notice some sinister changes in their buddy. One of the better King adaptations, directed by John "Halloween" Carpenter.

"The Mangler" (1995)

An industrial laundry factory in a small Maine town is home to a gargantuan steam-ironing machine with a taste for human blood. This could've been good gory fun in the right hands, but Tobe ("Texas Chainsaw Massacre") Hooper's take on one of SK's lesser short stories is cheap, poorly acted, and quickly falls apart under the weight of its own ludicrous premise. Even the usually dependable Robert Englund (virtually unrecognizable under a sh*t ton of makeup and prosthetics) can't save this from total crap-dom. Followed by two (!) sequels, for some ungodly reason.

I always liked that SK short story but when I heard they were adapting it to the screen my first thought was "How the hell is that going to work?"  Apparently it doesn't.

tohostudios wrote:

I always liked that SK short story but when I heard they were adapting it to the screen my first thought was "How the hell is that going to work?"  Apparently it doesn't.

It's been years since I read the story but I'm fairly sure the movie had a lot of added "padding" that wasn't in the source material.

My annual revisit of when Peter Jackson was great:

“Tango & Cash” (1989)

Two hotshot L.A. cops - a straight & narrow suit & tie guy (Stallone) and a scruffy loner (Kurt Russell) are framed and sent to prison by a crime boss (Jack Palance). Once they put aside their differences and escape, they kick a lotta ass and blow up a lotta stuff while trying to clear their names.

“T&G” is a pretty obvious attempt to duplicate the “mismatched cops who become buddies” formula of the “Lethal Weapon” films. It’s certainly not Shakespeare but it is a decent butt kicker; Sly and Kurt work well together. It’s also worth seeing just to check out a pre-“Desperate Housewives” Teri Hatcher at her peak of big haired 80s hotness as Sly’s exotic-dancer kid sister.

"The Black Room" (2017)

A couple moves into a home whose prior owner mysteriously disappeared, and soon they discover a secret room in the basement where an "Incubus" (that's a "demon of lust and desire," kids) has been cooped up for decades. When it possesses the husband, hilarity does not ensue.
...in other words this is basic, cheap T&A horror trash. Aside from some pretty nice eye candy (esp. Natasha Henstridge of "Species" fame, who's aging quite nicely) this movie is utter poop. Avoid.