Evilspeak (1981)

July 29, 2018

Directed by: Eric Weston
Written by: Joseph Garofalo, Eric Weston
Starring:  Clint Howard, R.G. Armstrong, Joe Cortese

Budget: $900,000

Quote: Data incomplete... Human blood required. Thus spake the computer.

Trivia: The production did some filming in a South Central church that had been condemned and scheduled to be torn down. When the aged minister saw that the crew were refurbishing the church, he didn't understand that this was "show business refurbishing" and that the church would ultimately be burned down, dropping down on his knees and thanking God. Nobody had the heart to tell him the truth.

Evilspeak is about a misfit that is constantly picked on who discovers a way to summon demons and Satan through his computer. I don't know if it is because I was born in 1982 and spent a good part of my later childhood watching 80s movies on TV, but there is something so comforting about 1980s computer movies. I love the computer prompt with the green and black screen and the ridiculous things that movie writers had computers do because nobody had any clue how computers work. WarGames, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and of course Hackers. Seriously, watch these movies again, the plotlines are adorably ridiculous. Evilspeak is no different, except with the added bonus of Satanism and gore!

Brain Dead (1990)

July 29, 2018

Directed by: Adam Simon

Written by: Charles Beaumont, Adam Simon

Starring: Bill Pullman, Bill Paxton, Bud Cort

Budget: $2,000,000

Tagline: From the writer of the original "Twilight Zone" comes the most terrifying film of the decade.

Trivia: Dr. Rex Martin (Bill Pullman) mentioned that he went to "Miskatonic University", the college where Re-Animator (1985) took place. Miskatonic University is supposedly located in Arkham, Massachusetts, a fictional town created by H.P. Lovecraft.

Brain Dead is a bizarre psychedelic films that explores the human mind and blurs reality with fantasy. There were a couple of these in the 1970s and 80s, Altered States comes to mind. What is interesting about these films is that they force the viewer to question what exactly is reality? What is madness? If I were mad, would I comprehend my own insanity? In addition to the mind exploration films of the 1970s, this film is also inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's writings and modern medical breakthroughs in brain surgery. When the brain can be so easily manipulated with a poke here or a prod there, thereby changing the subjective reality for the individual, is there an objective reality?

The Prowler (1981)

July 28, 2018

Directed by: Joseph Zito

Written by:  Glenn Leopold, Neal Barbera

Starring:  Vicky Dawson, Christopher Goutman, Lawrence Tierney

Budget: $1,000,000

Tagline: You don't need a chainsaw to have a massacre.

Trivia: It's been only recently discovered that "The Prowler" was re-released to a handful of theaters in North and South Carolina as "Pitchfork Massacre" in Spring 1984. It is still unknown who the distributor was, or whether they had legally acquired the rights to release the film.

 I got behind on my movie discussions so I am going to make this one a quick one. This is one that Job Bob Briggs watched during his The Last Drive In marathon so I'll try not to repeat anything he said. The movie is a pretty straight forward slasher film that is *remarkably* similar to the plot from My Bloody Valentine. Instead of being a miner, he's a veteran that uses a pitchfork to kill his victims. Why does a masked military vet use a pitchfork? Good question. I guess the pitchfork is to help separate this film from the dozens of slasher films that were being cranked out during the late 70s and early 80s.  The pitchfork does allow for some pretty cool scenes.

Excision (2012)

July 27, 2018

Directed by: Richard Bates Jr.

Written by: Richard Bates Jr.

Starring: AnnaLynne McCord, Roger Bart, Ariel Winter

Quote:"Solely based on the definition, I don't know a teenager that doesn't profile as a sociopath."

Trivia: AnnaLynne McCord really did shave her head for the final scene.






Excision is one of the grossest and weirdest movies in the best possible way. At its heart, it is a coming of age story of a high school girl named Pauline (AnnaLynne McCord) who wants to become and surgeon and has sexual fantasy's of blood and death. The fantasies are extremely gory with excessive amounts of blood mixed with sexuality and power. The power and beauty that Pauline possesses in her fantasies are in stark contrast to the isolated world that she has created for herself in reality. While much of the film is intended to horrify, there really is something beautiful to the shots.

Frailty (2001)

July 27, 2018

Directed by: Bill Paxton

Written by: Brent Hanley

Starring: Bill Paxton, Matthew McConaughey, Powers Boothe

Budget: $11,000,000

Quote: "I didn't kill her, son, I destroyed her. She was a demon. You know, I wasn't so sure I could do it myself. I mean, she looked like a woman to me, too. But after I touched her... all I could see is the evil."

Trivia: Bill Paxton used the same beer can the entire filming of the movie because they could only find one Hamm's beer can like that from 1979. The can was "opened" off-camera and a sound effect added for popping its top.

I saw this movie last in my early twenties a few years after it first came out and fell in love with the movie. I even wrote a song for the band I was in based on the movie called "Kill for Christ." I was so excited to show this to my wife who had never heard of it and had no idea about the twist ending (I don't want to spoil anything here, but it is up there with The Usual Suspects as one of the great twist endings). The ending also caught her off guard and makes for such a fun and odd movie.

Children of the Corn (1984)

7/25/18

Directed by: Fritz Kiersch

Written by: Stephen King, George Goldsmith (Screenplay)

Starring:  Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton, R.G. Armstrong

Budget: $800,000

Quote: "And just as he was offered up unto Him, so shall be the unbelievers"

Trivia: In the original ending of the story Linda Hamilton's character Vicki was killed by the children. She joined "the blue man" on a cross and had her eyes cut out.



Watching this last night, my wife asked me, wait, where is all the white haired kids with the creepy eyes while showing me a google image search resulting in black and white movie shots with scary looking white haired children. Nope, those iconic creepy kids are from Village of the Damned. While the children of Children of the Corn's children don't have the same skin scrawling effect on viewers it is one of the better Stephen King movies and has some very memorable scenes. It combines three of the creepier horror subgenres: rural (Deliverance), religious fanaticism (The Wickerman), and creepy kids (Village of the Damned). These three mesh together really well into a twisted film that had to have been an inspiration for the incredibly film Frailty which would also combines these three subgenres sixteen years later.

The Vault (2017)

July 24, 2018

Directed by: Dan Bush

Written by: Dan Bush, Conal Byrne

Starring: James Franco, Taryn Manning, Francesca Eastwood

Budget: $5,000,000

Tagline: No one is safe.

Trivia: Keith Loneker's last movie before he lost his battle with cancer on June 22nd, 2017.







After reading the description on Netflix about a bank heist that goes south when they realize the bank vault is haunted, I decided to give the movie a shot. I realized that of the now fifty one movies I have watched, I have barely watched any haunted/ghost movies. I'm sure if I looked there'd be more but right now I can only remember House (which was not so good). This movie had some great actors and some definitely great scenes but overall it fell kind of flat. The film focuses too much on the family dynamics of the characters and the bank heist itself and the haunted vault is treated as an afterthought. If I had to guess, most of the $5 million budget was spent on the actors instead of the creepy stuff.