Cujo - 1983

I have always had a interest in the Stephen King movies, probably stemming from reading his books as a young kid. To be honest, I don't remember at what age I read any of his books, and I don't remember which of his books I read. I remember I lost interest in his books before I was 14, because we moved out of the house I remember at that age and I didn;t read any of his books ever again after that. I never read Cujo.

Cujo stars Dee Wallace and Christopher Stone amongst others, and in that way this always felt similar to The Howling, the original Halloween horror movie of mine which...I should really rent tonight and rewatch before I offically go off the booze for a little while. Dee Wallace is having a affair with another man and is raising her young son with her husband. The kid is played by Danny Pintauro and turns in an annoying character but extremely well written and acted, thought I.

In the beginning of the film, Cujo is a huge Saint Bernard that chases a rabbit into a hole and gets bitten on the nose by a bat that lives inside the hole. Rabies being the culprit to the events that follow, we have about 45 minutes of character building and the cheating by Dee Wallace I spoke of earlier. She would later get married to Christopher Stone and become Dee Wallace Stone, and their chemistry is undeniable. She takes their car to the shop around minute 45 or whatever, and it promptly dies there. Meanwhile, Cujo has had the rabies sit in, and he's gone fully off the deep end.

The dog in this is fucking incredible. This movie was the one that got me into animal attack films, I realized midway through it. I really have to think it was this. The dog is insane, and it looks vicious as shit. It's covered progressively with more and more blood, slime, and drool as the film goes on, and looks like a goddamn monster.

Why isn't this film more well known?! This is my Jaws. honestly, I've always talked about this, I think Jaws is massively over-rated, and I'd take Cujo over Jaws any day. The Dog in this is a character, he is smart and vicious, intense and unpredictable. He looks fucking awesome, and is fully believable as not only a acting dog, but as a legit deadly threat. I think director Lewis Teague should've gone on to great things, and he did create some known stuff, but it's too bad this is probably his best work. The animal work in this alone deserves note, and the acting and cinematography help it along as well.

This is one of my childhood horror movies, I am biased, this is a five star film.

The Twilight Zone - 1959-1964

I'm legit trying to remember if I had or seen this show before middle school. It seems sort of unlikely, but the truth of the matter is that, as suggested on this blog before, I was raised without a cable TV connection and we only had our VHS collection and what we saw at friends houses as "our TV time".

I checked the IMDb just now to see if there was trivia about this show being aired, or being pitched, or anything. I wonder if there is a documentary or something about it, because I'd have to imagine it pissed people off, scared people, broke records, the like. There is SO much here. Just so much, whether it's the horror elements, or the more extreme underlying themes. I can't see how this show didn't garrner controversy.

Rod Serling introduces each episode of this well known series, a series which for me introduced me to many actors and was a launching place for really well known writers, directors, actors, and other screen icons. The range is of course all over the place. I had never seen the entire show before now, when I sat down and watched all fucking 5 seasons, but I had seen many of these episodes before. I was spurred on to buy the series because I wanted to see them in order, nazi that I am, and because I had never seen any of the season 4 episodes which changed the show from 30 minutes to an hour. The plots are always something alien, something new, something different from what was being shown on TV at the time, and connected by a theme that they're all otherwordly. Otherworldly because, as said by Rod, this is the Twilight Zone.

A great many of these episodes have stuck with me throughout the years. I've found myself being able to randomly recall such episodes that I saw first such as The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street or Time Enough at Last. What I didn't know when I started watching the whole show was just how many episodes involve time travel, time travel which is usually around 20-30 years spans. That plot came up again and again, as did the whole war thing, having the war come out differently or having something remaining from the war. World War II being only 10 or 20 years in the distance cemented this, and it's not a bad thing or anything. Just unknown to me.

Now that I've seen every episode, including the hour ones, and they were all in order, I wonder a lot about the show as said in my first paragraph. I also wonder if I'll ever watch the whole show again, like I have with The X-Files or Star Trek. I'm confident I might play an episode for someone here and there, but I don't know if some of these I'll ever need to watch again. The show is great, it's tremendous and obvious, but it is a long, long show and it takes a long time to get into it. Sometimes, though, late in the cabin, watching 3-4 episodes in a row, felt really awesome and I'll miss those nights.

There is no rating other than a 5 to give this, it was so far ahead of it's time and so influential in obvious and extreme ways.

Glass Jungle - 1988

I bought this one randomly on VHS from a local store. It looked fucking stupid, I need no explanation besides that if you've ever read this blog. Dog.

Joe Canalito was either a boxer or a football star, I don't remember, but he wanted to switch to acting like so many others, and had a brief stint in Hollywood where he was cast in this dumbass movie. In this one, he's a LA cabbie driving people around and getting mixed up into the plans of baddies and goodies alike.

He is a entirely charmless character, thinly written and badly acted. We start with the fact it always sounds like he is reading directly off a page, emoting nothing, and it goes from there. This is a great riff material movie. I am frankly shocked Rifftrax hasn't done this movie yet. This is right in their wheelhouse.

He gets involved in some crime, I don't remember the details, and he gets entangled with the girl, and we have a flashback about how his last girl died, and there's other irrelevant stuff as well along the way. There's also plenty of scenes where he drives around, doing cab fares or not, and they even had their own 3-4 minute Glass Jungle song that plays at one point! That was hilarious.

I liked this in a so-bad-it's-good type of way, and was excited to watch it with my friend while we drank, but I was actually surprised that he didn't enjoy it. It's not even 80 minutes when the credits roll, so I thought it was perfect, but I guess I mean to say you'll either like or hate it. He described it as insanely slow....which it really, really is.

I will give it 3 stars still though.

The Evil Dead - 1981

It's Halloween time again. And I was browsing through Netflix with my girl and saw that this was available and shit yo. I can't think of a better way to celebrate Halloween early.

Bruce Campbell stars in the Sam Raimi directed early 80s horror film about a bunch of people going out to a cabin in the woods. Back then, it wasn't quite as over used but even this was aware of that as a trope. And this is aware of a lot of those things because it's also one of the first best horror comedies. I forgot how fucking great this movie is.

The effects start early and they start often, with members of the friend circle becoming Undead. There's the infamous tree rape scene which leads to the first girl turning into a creature and getting locked in the basement and then there is slowly by slowly girls turning into the zombies. I do say girls because it is all the women who turn into monsters first, as if making a statement about chicks and stuff in general. It's a subversive film with an agenda for sure but it's also really really well done.

Bruce Campbell is great in it and the action Keeps us interested. There's a shit ton of jump-scares and there's a lot of wondering what's going to happen next. The extremity of the violence and the blood is laughable and that's where the comedy comes in. And there's also some great camera work and truly great effects at different points. It's no wonder that this guy went on to do some great horror.

I remember this movie being barely legible as a film and it being Evil Dead II that was the great film. But while we were watching this I was struck with how good it is... and I know that Evil 2 is generally accepted as better, but this still gets 5 stars in my book.

The Naked Jungle 1955

Charlton Heston and some lady star in this slow, slow a movie about ants, but really it's about Charlton Heston and the other girl not getting along.

in the beginning we see that Charlton Heston is some guy living in the Amazon who sends for a mail-order wife. When she arrives the woman wants nothing more than to love him, but apparently she's married to the biggest assholes of all time and this guy just wants her to shut the fuck up.

I'm serious though he's a total ass the whole movie and no explanation is ever given. He's downright abusive and yet she wants nothing but to be his wife and it's very demeaning towards women. Not to sound super woke or anything but this is a type of film that I'm surprised that was ever made because of how unnecessarily offensive it is.

a long time goes by without nothing happening until the last 30 minutes random ants appear in Charlton has to fight them. The effects in their are pretty okay but overall the really slow movie that is really really bad. Despite the fact that I got it used with a sticker that says a great film stuck to the front of the VHS.