Devil Girl From Mars - 1954

Back to the 50's I go with this little excursion into space fear, Devil Girl From Mars.  This movie is going to get a kind of short review, again, not that much to say about it.

This movie is based on a play, and it shows.  To me that's not a bad thing, minimalism in set and setting is something that doesn't bother me.  There's right and there's wrong ways to do movies based on plays, and I think this movie did it right:  stay true to the minimalism, stay minimal on the special effects, work with what you would've had in a play.

There's about 3 settings maybe - the house, the spaceship, and the outside.  It has a minimal cast of characters, it's mostly dialogue, not a lot of effect or action.  In other words, it sounds pretty boring; and sure some parts are, but generally if it's been performed in front of a live audience they know how to keep the audience watching.  That's the problem with some movies, they don't think about how this would look to a live audience.  You could not have the killer blindly walking around, driving around, etc - those scenes can be useful but a lot of time are filler and unnecessary.

The devil girl arrives, she is an alien from Mars, and Mars has had some great war.  In the war, it was males versus females, females won, killing all the males.  So now the devil girl has to come to Earth to steal some men away and take them back to Mars.  What an original idea.  Maybe they should've just realized like, "hey wait, we can't kill ALL the Martian men....let's take some hostage, or at least extract their semen before killing them".  Whatever.

Devil girl arrives and to demonstrate her power she "turns invisible" (seen off screen of course).  She also produces a death/disintegration gun that destroys anything it fires it.  Then later, she also has a stereotypical slow moving boxy robot that has a head that acts as a gun as well.  Oh and she can also hypnotize people, as if she needed more power.  Yet with all those powers she is incredibly stupid, and oddly nice to the humans.  Despite their trying to stop her she gives them multiple chances again and again, she never hurts one of them, and actually, asking for just a few men to go bone thousands of Martian women each....uh, why is she a devil girl again??!

The plot is pretty dumb, the acting is over the top by most involved, and we've seen this type of movie before.  I don't know why some of these 50's and 60's movies wanted to deal with sexuality in this way.  Were they trying to warn of perversions, playing out men's fantasies, or was it just a weird era in mankind?  I don't know.  The way it comes off though is kind of like a commentary on women's rights and their need of men, that would make sense given the era in which it came out.  But I wonder if it's plotline would've even been considered "controversial" at the time because it states so bluntly that women need men, and that women are...to put it mildly, unintelligent.

So of course the devil girl woman is deceived by a man, killed, and the movie ends like nothing ever happened, and we're left with only a vague idea and memory of another semi-bland but thankfully short 50's movie.  Necessary viewing it is not, fun it is, and fast paced as well.  At 77 minutes it's the right length, and the fact it was a play and dialogue heavy is not really a big problem.  It's genuinely kind of interesting and neat, and a cool historical piece if nothing else.

I don't know what to rate it, so I guess it gets 3 stars.

Night Shadows - 1984

Also known as Mutant.

I had an awesome day the other day.  Work was a breeze, went by fast, then I came home, had good sex with the wife, bought a different and tasty dinner, watched the rest of Jupiter Ascending (I'd give it 3 stars for trying) and the wife went to sleep.  Then I cracked a King Cobra 40, and chose a film directed by John "Bud" Cardos, the guy behind the phenomenal The Day Time Ended - my first choice was Dan Dohler, but I didn't wanna see the other movies of his.

It was a set clear contender for "best day ever" except this movie was just so boring.  I mean, it's not like this ruined my day, I just wanted it to be so much better.  Mutant / Night Shadows is one of those movies where, clocking in at 99 minutes, it felt like a good 20 minutes could've been cut off.  It's a long slow build to the last 30 minutes, which was spectacular, but you just gotta stick with it.

Night Shadows did surprise me though.  Incompetent pacing aside, the movie had good actors, good effects, a tight and realistic script, and a lot going for it.  I was genuinely surprised by a few of the plot turns, including a death that comes at about the 30 minute mark.  It helped that going in I did not know which actor was Wings Hauser, so I did not know who the main character was.  I think if you don't know, don't look it up - this is a rare case where the main character is not who you think it will be as indicated by the first 20 minutes.  I think so, anyway.

Night Shadows is the typical plot of a couple dudes rollin in on a small town, and taking up with some local weirdos.  Turns out the town has an infection going around and just about anyone could secretly be a mutant.  Hold on, wait.  Wings Hauser....deadly infection....anyone could be infected...homicidal crazies....that's the exact same plot AND star as Nightmare at Noon!  Is that a remake?  I don't know.  But since both these films are kind of unknown, it probably doesn't matter anyway.  Who cares, in other words.

The premise was sound, the build up slow but in the end the movie was good.  It's kind of a classic "take the good with the bad" scenario here I suppose.  But honestly, the movie is worth it, you just gotta wait.  It doesn't help that because of the script we know what's going on way before the main character, so watching him slowly uncover it feels incredibly tedious.

Not much else to say except that I loved the ending as well, and the general rating I formulated in my head was higher than expected.  I give it points for being riffable, drinkable and smoke-able as well.
In the end, 3.5 stars.

Cool as Ice - 1991

Run screaming.  Run away now, run screaming, please.  Why didn't you do it?  Dude, you're an asshole.

Who the fuck decides what the cult movies are?  Can I meet someone who decides these things and ask them why this movie, Cold as Ice, isn't getting shown at the midnight movies, why this isn't on the list of "best cult movies ever?"  Sure, I'm not like a Vanilla Ice fan, I mean no one is right?  But seriously, this movie has every single fucking ingredient required to make a cult film.  And yes, I've heard of some people calling it "cult" or "classic".  But this movie is not given enough cred.

First of all, it's Vanilla Ice.  I mean, for real.  The guy looks soooooooo fucking stupid.  He looks like every single horrible 90's and 80's cliche and bad fashion taste rolled into one incredibly overdone package.  Say what you will about puffy hair and neon coloring, at least those fashions were definitive of the 80's and lasted for most of them.  But what Vanilla Ice took on, the fashions, were extremely temporary.  They were indicative of maybe one brief, brief moment in the early 90's and that is IT.  He wears ridiculous, obnoxious, pajama looking, brightly colored, way over the top pants and a huge, puffy, over detailed and horrid looking coat...in just about every scene.  His jacket has all sorts of retarded sayings on it too, from single words to phrases like his signature phrase "yep yep".  Oh god.  This movie is so fucking awesome.

By far the best part of this movie is it's amazing budget, cinematography, set design, props department, and look.  And no, I am not joking about a single fucking one of those things.  This obviously was kind of like one long music video, and is looks the part.  Amazing sets, gorgeous crisp cinematography, camera work, etc.  Great forced perspective shots, crisp and beautiful color work, themes, etc....any other subject and this would've won an academy award for it's work effort.

The movie is quotable, fast paced, and so easy to laugh at it's almost too funny.  Vanilla Ice is certainly mockable, ridiculous, poser-looking, etc for anyone to get a huge kick out of watching him be a fucking idiot, and ANYONE will have a fantastic time watching this.  This movie really, really deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as every bad movie from The Room to Plan 9 From Outer Space.  It is THAT bad.  Which is why I give it a glorious 5 stars.

Super Mario Bros - 1993

I'm going to step out on a limb here and say this one might be the most "well known" bad movie I'll have reviewed yet.  I mean sure, Ed Wood is hella well known and I reviewed his best known film, Plan 9 From Outer Space, but unless you actively search that out and watch it, you don't know it.  I say this movie is more popular cause at least (at the time of my writing this) a lot of people grew up with this movie, remember it, and find it as incomprehensible as I do.

The real problem with this movie is not that it's nothing like the game, the problem is that it's completely awful no matter how you look at it.  It walks that interesting line between kid and adult movie (which was weird cause the original Nintendo was definitely not aimed at adults...) and it has some remnants of times when kids films were dark and/or weird, but where that normally makes a film better in this case it makes it worse.

First complaint is some minor things: number one the names?!  They gave both the guys the last name Mario, so that it's Mario Mario and Luigi Mario?  What the fuck where they thinking?  It's not funny, clever, interesting, unique, kid friendly.  It makes no sense and makes actual fans of the characters feel stupid.  Like, why did I like these guys?  Number two the goombas.  There are a plethora of weird monsters in this film, most not from the game, and that's okay.  But you take something that was 1) iconic, and 2) would've looked cool depicted on the screen, and then you change everything about it?  Why couldn't we have had short weird looking dinosaur goombas?  Instead they had to make them giant?  With tiny heads?  You took the two things that made a goomba, short and big head, and then you made the opposite.

The list could go on for this whole page, this is just a sampling.  The major flaws in this movie are the apparent overweight, useless stars, the look and hair of Dennis Hopper as Koopa, the whole thing they did with the Italian stereotypes, the lack of charm or wit, and the level of intelligence it aims at.  You can ask, "yeah, well how would you have made it better?"  Well, I wouldn't have.  Not everything should be made into a fucking movie.  This is a clear case of that.  There was no need to try and take a very simple idea and make some ridiculous movie out of it.  However, I was thinking while watching it that I wonder, since being a nerd is so popular right now, if they'll ever try to do it again.  They'd probably do it animated this time though.  And I bet somehow, it won't be any better.

And that's the flip side, the silver lining to this movie.  What was intentionally supposed to be childish fun is fantastic to watch with friends, with beer, with drugs, with riffing, with intolerance and hatred...this movie will bring every critical argument out of you as you search your life for meaning in comparison to the bizarre reality of this film.  One cannot justify one's existence in a world where this film exists, so watching it is an extreme dive into surrealism.

It's just that this movie feels far too weird.  It obviously had a large budget, tons of time and talent that went to work on it, and (at points) some potential for entertainment.  They got the pacing done adequately well, they got some real actors and some (sometimes) decent effects....so what the FUCK!?  What went wrong??!  It's just confusing, weird, hard to watch, easy to get lost in the silliness of it all...it's damn near perfect.

I guess one should play the game first.  That will just give you a better appreciation for the source material.  Get on the fucking internet and watch some guy playing it at least, and don't watch someone really good, watch some random ass video of some 10 year old who is medium good at it, at best.  Cause this is the best example of how they got from A to B....how things can get lost in translation.....how people interpret different things....yeah, all those.

Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake - 1981

Also known as "Croaked: Frog Monster from Hell"

Two Troma movies almost in a row, what am I thinking?!  Well, I'm not really thinking, and this was perhaps a mistake, but whatever dude.  It was worth it.  I watched the big chunk of this one at work, so I just got paid by the hour to watch Troma.  Yeah dude.

Rana was just distributed by them, they didn't make it.  In fact, this was directed by cult director Bill Rebane who did such wonderful films as Monster a-Go Go and The Giant Spider Invasion.  If you are not a MST3K person, honestly you don't know what you're doing with your life.  You should not be reading about cult movies if you don't watch MST3K.  That's like, criteria.  So they riffed those movies, that's what I'm trying to say here.

Coincidentally, a woman who lives in my apartment building is also named Rana.

Rana / Croaked starts with some lame backwoods retards in a cabin, the girl trades sex for backstory.  You know, back before I ever had sex I used to think that was unrealistic.  But since I've been married, I've literally had my wife trade clothes or whatever for sex.  I buy her something nice, I get laid.  It's even like, planned out that way, it's not just a reward.  It's a very clear barter.  Maybe my relationship is fucked, who knows.  But I'm just saying, she wants to know his backstory, he wants dat ass.  So, she gives him dat ass in trade for backstory.

His backstory is when he was a kid, and there were some killings at a rural community.  In connection with these killings there are mysterious bubbles coming out of a lake, an eerie feeling felt by everyone, and strange frogs that are acting weird and confrontational. That and the local crazy hillbilly claims there's something going on and that people need to be scared.  Hm.

This movie was cheap, sure.  Bad, yes.  So bad it's good, yes.  It's close, it walks the line between just bad and so bad it's good .  I couldn't decide whether it was done with the intention or not, that was hard to judge in this case.  One thing is for sure, that this movie would not be enjoyable to everyone.  The music is good, the acting is ok, and it did have some minor surprising moments.

The main problem with this movie is the pacing.  Far too long between each kill, waaaaay too much unnecessary dialogue.  The monster sometimes looked okay, and sometimes looked way too awful to be taken seriously.  Those things combined with the fact the movie was cheaply made...it all adds up to the classic bad movie experience, except this one was just so fucking slow.

Croaked being a bad movie was not that surprising, I can't say I expected a lot.  It'd be good to drink or smoke to, it'd be good to put on and then get distracted by something else for a while and only look up at the interesting parts.  The child actor in it was pretty good and a strong character.  I like to see movies where children are put through reckless endangerment, and that happens a lot. Also, he is made to look strong even compared to adults, which was cool.

For trying, walking a thin line, and keeping me slightly interested I guess it gets 2 stars.

Hero and the Terror - 1988

We're entering into that weird area again, where I doubt if my reviews are really worthy of writing.  I'm telling you, it's hard to write movie reviews and keep up the drinking when you've got a wife and a job (plus I briefly held 2 jobs for a little bit there).  I've just not had that much free time, been skipping my exercise and diet too.  In summary, I suck, and I'm kind of glad no one reads my blog.

Hero and the Terror is a movie I saw on TV about 10 years ago when I lived in a different town.  It was a different world then, blah blah, but I was the same person.  Being the same, I had a passing interest in Chuck Norris because I am a big fan of Jean Claude Van Damme and Bruce Lee.  I was feeling like if I liked martial arts and all, I was doing a disservice by not watching anything by Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal.  So I saw this movie was on AMC or something, and I recorded and watched it.

Now I'm going to say right here that I've had these experiences before.  The experience where you see a movie and then later you watch it again and it's just not as good.  It's not like I remembered thinking Hero and Terror was great or anything, but I definitely thought it was alright.  Because it has one major difference between it and several other action movies:  it has a plot, and that plot incorporates horror film elements.

Well, maybe not horror, but suspense or thriller.  So I remembered it as "that action movie that kind of had horror parts" and then when it came on Netflix instant view, I saw it again.  This movie has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, and even though I don't understand how their rating works, I guess that's bad.  It just seems backwards.  If it's 0% rotten, doesn't that mean it's good?  It's not rotten?  Yeah, whatever bro.

Hero and Terror is a movie thing about a hero cop (Norris) who stopped some terror killer (other guy) and then is plagued by memories of it for super long.  He's all whiny and depressed, but moving on with his life and banging his psychiatrist (isn't that like, a huge conflict of interest?)  Then, in the most ridiculous way of escaping prison, the terror escapes.  At first no one is sure if the kills that happen then after are the terror or not.  Norris's cop guy is kinda sure, "has a feeling" but doesn't wanna give in to paranoia.

Yadda yadda yadda, things go on, there's filler, and you know how it ends without me telling you.  One cool thing, they filmed at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.  I used to live within walking distance of that theater, and I once went there to see some lame stand up comedy show with my ex girlfriend.  It was lame.  I didn't get laid for it, either.

What I'm getting at here, and haven't said yet, is that the horror element I grossly over exaggerated in my mind.  Sure, there's some suspense, and there's not much action.  All the kills were all done in a very un-horror way, and I really had over-done the amount of tension and whatever in this flick.  It's more a drama, and less a horror.  But it deserves points for trying, 1.5 points to be precise.

Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator - 1990

Well, here's what I wish would be a first and last time I ever watch a movie like this:  a movie where, literally, no one involved has done anything else.  Actors, director, etc.  This movie was the first and last for everyone involved.  That's a bad sign right there.  But, I decided to watch it, convinced somehow that the great name of the movie would somehow make up for it.  It didn't.

Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator (SSITI) is the story of some rich people who, to get their kicks or whatever, decide to play these long drawn out games of death, intrigue, mystery, and stuff.  The movie begins in the midst of one of these, and it's like a classic wife is the betrayer type game, and then it ends with someone being tortured and all this stuff, and then "Roberta" takes off her wig to reveal it's a man.  Cut to the characters the next day discussing how great the game went.

SSITI then goes through the normal story, character A is leading the games, characters B and C think the games are going too far, they start to have an affair, and they wanna stop character A.  A won't give up, the game turns deadly, and things go all wacky.  B and C suffer some set backs and apparent double crossing, and then spoiler warning (but you won't see this movie anyways) it was all an elaborate game, another elaborate game, and the movie ends with no surprises whatsoever.

Like I said, no one went on to anything else, and that's the most predictable thing about this movie.  The actors are all definitely not good, they are trying really hard which makes it a little worse for me, and it's just painful to watch.  The pacing in the movie also sucks.  It feels overly long, extremely low budget, and it feels impossible to take it seriously.

The worst part about it?  Not only does no one ever get stuffed into an incinerator, no one ever even tries to stuff someone, talks about stuffing someone, or looks at an incinerator.  There's no fucking incinerator in the movie AT ALL.  How the fuck does that make sense?!

Maybe, maybe with a few beers and some good comedians you could rip this to a whole new level and make it fun but....it's probably not worth it.  Your efforts would be better spent on a more enjoyable movie.  I give this one zero stars.

Independence Day - 1996

Said it before, will say it again, I write about whatever I want.   Bittttttches.   I love this movie.  Independence Day feels gloriously 90's.  The 90's were an awesome time to be seeing movies, and an awesome time to be a kid.  I remember watching this, maybe not in theaters, but when it came out on VHS.  I was 9 or 10 at the time, and everyone at my elementary school was talking about this movie.  The quote of the year was "Hello boys, I'm baaaaaaaack" and if you didn't get it you weren't cool.  Of course for me, I got it, but still wasn't cool - but that's a different blog.

I miss feeling like movies are special.  I miss feeling like movies are something that everybody will love.  When these big summer movies come out now they're normally just so bad that they're not momentous.  I watched the new movie San Andreas yesterday at the theater, and it was just so bland.  It's all bad CGI, it's characters are undeveloped, over-makeup-ed, and desperately fake looking....it's just got no heart, no soul, and no like-ability to it.

Movies like ID4 had a huge emphasis on the characters.  Sure, they weren't like the most developed ever and followed some typical roles, but they were human, they were made to be imperfect.  One thing which I used to see and don't any more is the presence of realistic looking actors.  I hate how, in movies that come out now, everyone has to look so fuckin tough and/or beautiful.  Every man has his trademark 5:00 shadow, a ripped 6-pack chest, and a head of hair so thick you could stand on it.  Every girl has grade A tits, a flat stomach, and looks like a total bitch.

I miss actors like Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman.  Both are really good looking men, but they weren't the Hollywood look that is escalating now.  I just feel like Hollywood is invading us with unreal looking stars, and it makes them harder to relate to, for me.  No one looks real.  In the new Avengers movies, there isn't a single character who looks real to me.  I know that Hollywood has been pushing the strong and beautiful all along, but they used to let real actors act, and they used to not care as much about things like origin and body type.

I guess I feel like someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't get a chance to be a major film star now.  People would gripe about his accent and he wouldn't get cast in a movie where he plays a robot.  "Why would a robot have an Austrian accent?" would make the producers back their money behind a more acceptable American star.  Back in the 80's and 90's, I just don't think there was the big money pressure.  People made movies to make money, just like now, but they also were allowed more creativity, weren't pressured to make as much money.  It wasn't like every single movie HAD to be #1 at the box office.

I dunno.  It's hard to quantify.  I just love Independence Day.  With 2 sequels coming, I'm sure it'll get ruined just like Star Trek and the upcoming Star Wars, but you know, fuck it.  The original is a fucking classic.  Not quite a movie review per say, but you don't need a plot and scene analysis.  If you haven't seen this movie, something is wrong with you.  Go see it.

Grizzly - 1976

"Jaws with claws" as the poster and the tagline read, this was a brief excursion into animal attack movies started by Jaws a couple years earlier. And Jaws set the bar pretty high for animal attack films. Grizzly is directed by William Girdler, who directed some great 70's films and then died in a helicopter crash. Tragic really, as a lot of his films showed promise or at least innovation. I think he probably would've gone on to be quite successful if he didn't die so young.

Grizzly is the classic story of a towering 18 foot grizzly who gets a taste for human flesh and starts rampaging all throughout the woods. It's got everything you'd expect from a movie like this: the tough cop good guy who is out to stop the monster, the blinded politician who either doesn't care about the threat or is too worried about bad publicity to follow the orders of the tough cop, and plenty of guys in bell bottoms running around getting bloodied up by the beast. It's medium paced, poorly edited, but followed through with getting some real bears and some genuinely cool moments.

I love animal attack movies. Especially when they were real animals instead of retarded CG things that look ridiculous. Girdler's other animal attack movie, Day of the Animals, is in my opinion way better then this one, but this movie is pretty entertaining as well.  Animal attack movies are just a lot of fun to me, you get the classic horror things, but you also don't get to have the killer ruined by a bad story line or bad acting or dialogue. So many times the killer could've been more menacing if only the film hadn't shown the killer doing stupid things or saying stupid things. Animal attack movies circumvent that with inhuman killers.

Plus in the older films like this, you couldn't show the bear that much since the animal needed a trainer and was relatively uncontrollable. You can almost feel the genuine fear of the actors and the film crew at the sight of some huge fucking grizzly roaring in your face. I'd feel fuckin freaked when I see a real bear attacking a real guy in the film, and knowing that even if that's his trainer right there, shit does go wrong and accidents happen. It's pretty impressive to see these sorts of scenes take place.

The pacing was kind of slow and there are plenty of times in the movie when it just feels like filler. The kills are usually not shown in detail, and when they are they're pretty lame. But it's worth it for the use of the real bear, for the acting which is pretty good, and for the ultimate payoff. The last 5 minutes are really, really cool.

This movie is bound to be eventually lost in time, it's pretty forgettable and all. Jaws will probably survive for quite a while longer as films like this just disappear into the sands of time. It's a shame, but it's also just the way of things. This director would go on to direct the equally good and freaky film The Manitou, which feels very similar in tone and pacing. Makes a lot of sense they were done by the same dude. This is a worthy entrance into the animal attack movies I've seen, not as good as Prophecy or Day of the Animals, but better than half of those bad shark movies and way better than some bullshit film like Stanley.

I give it a standard 2.5 stars.

Surf Nazis Must Die - 1987

Have I done anything Troma yet?  I'm too neglectful right now to check, but my gut feeling says yes. Okay, I'll check.  Having just now checked, I don't know still.  Troma is/was a production and distribution company led by Lloyd Kaufman who was behind those Toxic Avenger films.  Side note, apparently he was also in a bit part in the first Rocky movie.  Huh.  Who knew?  That'd be a good "degrees of Kevin Bacon" thing to remember right there.

Anyways, bottom of the barrel doesn't describe some of these movies his company was involved in.  Sure, sometimes they could get away with their awfulness by being "comedy" films, like the sort of comedy where people make visual gags and penis jokes.  Not funny, in other words.  Whatever.  The point is, some of the movies are trying to be funny, some are trying to be scary, some are just plain bad ideas all around.

Surf Nazis Must Die is the latter in that breakdown, it is just an all around bad idea, bad movie.  It doesn't really try to be funny, or if it does it's just such an undeveloped type of humor that even if it was funny to begin with, it would kill the comic potential with it's delivery.  The plot's about as loose as they come, some local gang is trying to control the beach, and they dress up like and take the names of Nazis.  Yeeeeeeeeep.

Okay, so it's not all bad.  It's just that really nothing happens in this movie.  Like, seriously, the movie is 83 minutes long and a good 81 minutes of that is filler.  Footage of people surfing, the gang walking around and acting vaguely tough, some dialogue...it's not like killing you to watch it, but it is still bland as fuck filler.  There's very little that happens in this movie.  I honestly don't even remember most of the middle part.  But basically, the gang kills this black guy and then his mother is out for revenge.  That's the plot.

For the first part of the film we follow "Smeg", a Surf Nazi-junior type guy.  He lives with his mom, and there are some minor funny interactions there, but mostly it's dulls-ville o'rama.  Man, it really feels like I have used that exact description before for something else.  I wonder what it was.  I'm not the most creative typist in the world.  I wonder for example how many times I've put the word "anyways" in this blog.

The film is instantly forgettable, boring, and cheaply made.  Nothing happens, as I said earlier, also.  There's not really any blood, there's a little nudity, and there's "bad language" but you know this movie honestly felt PG in it's display of itself.  It doesn't feel offensive at all.  In fact, I kinda got lost in the surfers and it made me really want to try surfing more than anything else.

For nothing as bad as say, a movie where I'll turn it off, for not making me want to die, and probably some higher like-ability rating had I been drunk/high, I'll give it a full 1 star.

The Babadook - 2014

This was not going to be an entry, believe me.  I kind of want to go back and delete some of my old entries, for movies that "don't count" but I also am always thinking, it doesn't matter anyways.  But there's that part of me that thinks, "what if people actually do start reading my website, and they wonder wtf is up with me reviewing Nightcrawler on a website called Grindhouse Review?"  Look, simpleton, this website abides by no rules.  It just is.  The exception is not the rule.  Just cause I review some non-Grindhouse movies does not mean I don't get to name my site that.  Besides how boring would this be if I only reviewed the same fuckin 100 something movies every other cult, grindhouse, B horror, etc blog is reviewing??

You can see a review of Rocky Horror on just about every single website ever.  Fuck, that shit's been talked about in the Wall Street Journal.  C'mon.  I wanted to be on the outskirts.  You know, the fucking Lone Gunman.  Like in X-Files.  How cool would it be to actually be in a group like that??  Some brilliant dudes on the outskirts, fighting the government, friends with the FBI...man I love that fuckin show.  BTW, new X-Files are coming, in case you live under a rock.

The Babadook is a film that will surely become a "cult classic".  This must be placed in quotations because new films cannot become cult for at least ten to twenty years.  They have to survive the test of time.  But I do actually think this one will.  Now, I don't want to say it's the best film ever and give it some giant ringing endorsement, but this movie does deserve praise.

The best thing about horror, as I've said again and again, is the fear of the unknown.  That as well as atmosphere.  Get the unknown, the atmosphere, and then the music and acting, and your film will work.  This film has all of that done expertly.  It's not going to redefine horror as it is, but it takes a fairly simple idea, runs with it, and does it well.  In a world where horror films are escalating their shock value, the blood and guts and "jump" factor, this one dares to take horror back to it's creepy beginnings, where just being weird was enough, and you don't GET to jump.  Rather, you have to imagine, and let your mind scare you more than anything else.

Like nudity, it's what you don't see.  People like lingerie for a reason.  Sure, I like a good ol' naked chick too, but I'd much rather see a slinky striptease.  People know that, as quoted by Jackie Treehorn in The Big Lebowski "The brain is the biggest erogenous zone", well I argue it's the same with horror, except instead of erogenous, uh, scariest??  Well yeah, it was a far way to go to make that quote work.

The Babadook took a genre I hate, kids in horror movies, and made it good.  Like I said it's simple.  Mother and child are isolated.  Enter the threat, this time in form of a bizarre children's book titled "The Babadook" that one day is just on the kid's shelf like all the others.  It's off kilter story and drawings are too dark, they scare the mother and she decides not to read the rest.  After reading the book, the child starts acting strangely, is actively scared all the time, and says he is seeing the Babadook.  The mother of course thinks the child is just a dick, and throws out the book.  But there is no stopping The Babadook.

The movie moves along mostly as expected, the only differing twist would be the bizarre ending.  I understand these type of ideas are generally hard to end, they either have to defeat the monster or die.  But in defeating said monster, usually there is a confrontation.  In that there is closure, and this film I think wanted to avoid that.  So the ending is a bit weird and I didn't exactly like it, but I understand why it ended the way it did.  The film does what I love which is to leave things not quite right, and kinda say fuck you to it's audience.

The Babadook itself relies mostly on the sound for it's scares.  Okay, sure there are some vision effects too, but the trailer and the movie are heavily based on the sounds of the creature itself and the music.  The music in the movie is awesome.  The score is creepy, interesting, dynamic, and unique.  The sounds of the Babadook, however, are dumb.  Like when you do a "croaky frog" voice, it's lame.  But I guess unique, and apparently people online found it scary, so whatevs.

All in all, for being a good horror film, and being unique, I wanted to give it 4 stars.  I feel like, in retrospect, it might only deserve 3, but I'll go with my first thought.  Also, the kid actor in the film was really good.  One of the best I've ever seen actually.