TODAY I WATCHED... (Movies, TV, etc.) 2023

"Stale Popcorn and Sticky Floors" (2020)

A cheap but watchable documentary that focuses on grindhouse horror films from the '70s and '80s. The format is simple - some gory clips from a cult classic are shown (usually from the trailer) and then someone who was involved with the movie (actor, producer, crew member, etc.) shares their memories of it. The films discussed include such old time video-store faves as Spookies, Blood Diner, Street Trash, and Basket Case, as well as better-known works like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Re-Animator, and even Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Some of the interviews look like they were conducted via Microsoft Zoom (!) but some cool behind the scenes stories are told and it's fun to see clips from so many "video nasties" collected in one place. Not a must see, but an OK time waster.

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"Collision Course" (aka "Kamikaze Detroit," 1989)

A decade before Rush Hour, a pre-Tonight Show Jay Leno and Pat "Mr. Miyagi" Morita did the East-meets-West mismatched buddy cop thing first in this serviceable-but-bland action comedy. Morita is a Japanese cop who's sent to Detroit to find a stolen engine prototype with the potential to change the automotive industry. Eventually he ends up partnering with Leno's wise-ass Detroit detective to solve the theft. Lots of car chases and crashes, shoot outs, fist fights, and explosions ensue.
Filmed in '86/'87, this movie sat on the shelf until an overseas theatrical release in 1989, and then it was dumped direct-to-video in the US in '92 to cash in on Leno's sudden notoriety as Carson's late night successor. Jay spent the rest of the decade trying to live it down. Unsurprisingly, he hasn't acted in a movie since.

Been watching some (mostly) crappy horror so far. Some I've never seen.

Bleeders - (A Lovecraft tale)

Underwater -  actually not bad at all deep sea Lovecraftian

The Unnamable  - another so-so attempt at a Lovecraft story. Gore! But an absolutely atrocious score that killed what could have been a decent movie.

Tales of Halloween  - an actually pretty good anthology.  The highs are high.

The Thing - Yes! Watched the best ever again.

Intersect - a barely Lovecraftian tiime travel/portal movie. Would have been better as a 20 minute short, although the lead actress *A Phoenix broad) is 10/10.

Eyes of Fire - 1983 - Set in frontier 1750 it's a pretty effective folklore horror/suspense. Good practical fx, horrible special fx.

Possession  - 1981 - Sam Neill from Jurassic  Park and his wife are divorcing ugly. It's super-weird set in 1981 West Berlin. Ultra violent and weird. Too weird. 

The Dark and the Wicked - pretty good ghost story set in Thurber, TX.

Blood Quantum - First 1/3 was an interesting take on Zombies: Native Americans are immune. The final 2/3 was an episode of The Walking Dead,  Red Crow edition.  ‍

The Exorcist III - Recommended!! George C. Scott slays it! Is he the best actor ever?

Lake Mungo - "Documentary" ghost story. Effective!

The Last Winter - 2006 - Read good reviews but it ended up being a lame eco global warming thing. Had Ron Perlman among other notables, but don't waste your time.

American Horror Stories

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"Super Duper Alice Cooper" (2014)

Director Sam Dunn of "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey" and "Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage" fame scores another home run with this supremely entertaining documentary profile on The Coop, from his humble beginnings as the Detroit born son of a preacher man to his peak as a '70s rock icon whose appetite for alcohol and coke nearly cost him his life. Lots of great vintage clips and commentary from bandmates and associates like Dennis Dunaway, Bob Ezrin, Dee Snider, and more. Great stuff!

Been watching the new Goosebumps series on Disney+. It's much better than I expected.

Reform School Girls

The Return Of The Living Dead (1985)



John Russo's take on the classic Night Of the Living Dead, about a a pair of medical supply warehouse workers accidentally unleashing a deadly gas into the air, causing the dead in a nearby cemetery to reanimate and search for living brains to consume. The 2 employees, their boss, a mortician friend and a group of punks attempt to deal the the unkillable horde and survive. A great horror film, with touches of comedy and a rather interesting soundtrack. Spawned a bunch of sequels, of which I have seen the next 2, and didn't really care for them as much as this one.

007 wrote:

The Return Of The Living Dead (1985)



John Russo's take on the classic Night Of the Living Dead, about a a pair of medical supply warehouse workers accidentally unleashing a deadly gas into the air, causing the dead in a nearby cemetery to reanimate and search for living brains to consume. The 2 employees, their boss, a mortician friend and a group of punks attempt to deal the the unkillable horde and survive. A great horror film, with touches of comedy and a rather interesting soundtrack. Spawned a bunch of sequels, of which I have seen the next 2, and didn't really care for them as much as this one.

To me this is one of the best ever. Truly unsettling and scary. When that guy comes out of the drum!!??

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A couple of stand up comedy specials via Tubi and YouTube: "George Carlin: 40 Years of Comedy" and "Jon Stewart: Unleavened," both from the mid 1990s.

Watched 2 seminal horror flicks to end the Halloween season :

Halloween (1978)



The night he came home. Enough said.

Night Of The Living Dead (1968)



The first horror movie I remember watching as a child and one that scared the living daylights out of me, but started my lifelong love of the horror genre.

"Black Mama, White Mama" (1973)

Two lady inmates -- one white (Margaret Markov) and one black (Pam Grier) escape from a hellish women's prison in a Third World banana republic. Naturally they hate each other's guts at first, but since they're chained together at the wrists, they have to learn to work together to avoid re-capture while a gaggle of gun toting mercenaries and revolutionaries chase them all over the island. If any of this plot sounds familiar, that's cuz it's basically a re-tread of the Fifties flick "The Defiant Ones," with way more nudity, cleavage and cat fighting. An entertainingly trashy, ultra violent combo of the blaxploitation and chicks-in-chains genres.

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"The Spy Who Loved Me" (1977)

When Russian and British nuclear submarines begin mysteriously disappearing, James Bond is paired with a lovely Soviet counterpart (Barbara Bach, who cannot act but has stellar cleavage) to track them down. Their search takes them from Egypt and Italy to the bottom of the ocean, where crazed supervillain Stromberg wants to use the subs' nuclear missiles to destroy the surface world.
This elaborate production was the biggest 007 flick since You Only Live Twice a decade earlier, and it was Roger Moore's best outing as Bond.

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The X-Files

"The Naked Cage" (1986)

Wrongly convicted of bank robbery, a woman is sentenced to three years in one of those typically hellish all-girl B-movie prisons where the warden is a corrupt lesbian, gangs rule the cell blocks, and none of the inmates seems to own a bra. While trying to figure out how to clear her name, our heroine also has to deal with the usual cat fights, shower room attacks, rampant nudity, and gory prison rioting that you expect in a chicks-behind-bars flick. Sleazy fun!

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The Marvels (2023)



Latest entry in the burgeoning MCU, with Captain Marvel and her 2 allies, Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau, dealing with a Kree insurgent out for revenge on Captain Marvel for the accidental near destruction of her home planet. Standard, by the numbers film, but hits all the right notes and is very entertaining and fast moving.

"Reform School Girls" (1986)

A new set of inmates at a hellish all-girl reform school/prison rally their fellow prisoners in a revolt against their abusive matron and warden in a campy-on-purpose spoof of 70s "chicks in chains" flicks, with former Plasmatic Wendy O. Williams as the baddest, butchiest lesbo gang leader ever captured on film. Cheap, sleazy fun.

Sticky : A (Self) Love Story. A 2016 documentary about the taboos, guilt , and shame of masturbation. The person who put this together talks with doctors, sex therapists, former surgeon general during the Clinton era, priests, musicians,actors, porn stars and teachers on the subject.