Castle Freak

Howdy all! Apolgies for being a day late, but I've been fighting a nasty cold. This week's entry is called Castle Freak. If it's about a castle that comes to life and freaks out, I'm giving it a 10 out of 5. As always, be prepared for SPOILERS...

Things start out in the kitchen of a witchy-looking old woman. She's preparing a meal of bread and meat, then she lights a candle. As she leaves her dwelling, we see that she lives next to an imposing castle. Oh, and a cat follows her to the castle.

Once inside, she brings the candle and the food into the dungeon, where she puts everything on the ground to pick up a whip that's hanging on the wall. Kinky. After unlocking a cell in the dungeon, she begins to whip the occupant, who cowers on the floor and screams. Then the old woman feeds her prisoner, leaves the dungeon, and has a pesky ol' heart attack.

After the opening credits, we meet the Reilly family. The parents are John and Susan, and they have a blind daughter, Rebecca. The castle is some kind of inheritance, and it's in pretty poor condition, with broken stones everywhere and a rat scurrying past them as they walk through the front gate.

The Italian lawyer explains that he found the Reillys after he launched an investigation into any living heirs of the estate. He also apologizes for the condition of the castle, due to the family fortune being depleted over the years. John responds that they won't be staying very long, as he plans to liquidate the assets and sell the estate.

They are introduced to an elderly maid, and Susan requests that a third bedroom be prepared. It seems that she and her husband sleep in different beds these days, because of friction over the death of their son. John was driving drunk, and the accident was also the cause of Becky's blindness. And the winner of Father of The Year is...

Later that night, John knocks at Susan's door. He asks for a chance at a fresh start, then gets a little too grabby for her. She tells him that she can't forgive him and she sends him back to his room, where he passes out and has a nightmare about the crash. His own anguished cries in the dream manage to wake him up, and he gets rattled by the sound of a monstrous wailing that seems to be from within the castle.

John decides to do some exploring. He follows the noises to the wine cellar, where he cuts his hand. Then the maid finds him washing the blood off in the kitchen. She tells John that the elderly duchess lived alone in the castle for 42 years, and that the sound John heard was the ghost of the supposedly-dead son of the duchess, a boy named Giorgio.

The next day, John decides to take his daughter on a tour of the castle. They find a nursery, another bedroom, and several pieces of art. When John decides to snoop around for any valuable jewelry, he comes across the whip. Oh, and he also discovers a strange photo album.

Becky hears a mysterious scratching noise, so she stumbles off to check it out. John, fully engrossed by the old pictures, completely ignores his daughter. Man, this guy is a real family man, huh?

Becky finds her way back to the room full of toys, and nearly has a heart attack when she gets scared by a cat that was behind a door. She follows the sound of the cat to the cellar level, where she takes a tumble and scrapes up her leg. John finally notices that she's gone, and searches for his daughter. Better late than never, I suppose...

Becky gets back on her feet, and she inadvertently wakes Giorgio. She hears him moving around, but tries to convince herself that it's just the cat. He finds the cat after Becky leaves the area, and he decides to eat it. Becky tries to tell her folks that she heard somebody downstairs, but they don't believe her.

After snacking on the cat, Giorgio gets a surge of energy. He snaps off his own thumb with his teeth, then manages to break free from the chain that was holding him to the wall. Let's hope he doesn't have to hitch a ride anywhere. After Giorgio breaks free, he holds the chain over his head in victory. Rocky! Rocky! Rocky!

Susan scoffs at Becky's story, telling her that her imagination is just running wild. Giorgio busts open the door to the dungeon area, and then we see the Reilly clan sitting down to dinner.

Becky asks the elderly maid about the cat, and is told that the cat was probably a pet that belonged to the duchess. Then we see Giorgio discover a mirror, and he recoils when he sees his own grotesque image. The sound of the mirror being smashed brings the family out to check out the damage.

After everyone goes to bed, Giorgio decides to wander around the castle. He limps into Becky's room, where he watches her sleep, then tries to figure out how to undress her without waking her up. Becky does wake up, so Giorgio tries to hide. The sound of his chain falling to the floor makes Becky scream, and her parents somehow manage to come running in seconds after Giorgio leaves, without ever seeing him.

John rushes out of the room with a flashlight, and misses seeing Giorgio a second time. He even finds the cell that Giorgio was living in, but misses seeing the dead cat on the floor. This man is some kind of genius.

John finds the family crypt next, and looks at the various names and dates on the wall. Giorgio sneaks in behind him, just as he reads the plaque for Giorgio's death. It says that Giorgio died at the age of 5, which brings John to tears over the loss of his own son.

A cop comes by the following day, and questions the family very briefly. The officer clearly doesn't think that there was an intruder, and he notes John's injured hand. After implying that John himself broke the mirror, the officer leaves.

After getting Becky to take a nap, John tells his wife that he has something to show her. He brings her to the crypt, and the picture of Giorgio has now disappeared. John decides to kill himself, but then he chickens out. He finds the local tavern, and decides to get drunk instead. Uh, okay...

While he's getting smashed out of his gourd, John meets a prostitute. He buys her a drink, then proceeds to spill it all over her skimpy outfit. A man at the bar suggests that it's time for John to leave, so he begins waving around a wad of cash to pay for the drinks. The hooker sees the money, and decides that he suddenly looks a lot more charming.

John takes her to  his wine cellar, where he manages to spill another drink on her. She makes a fuss, but he shushes her, worried that his family will discover them. They start to make out, and Giorgio sneaks in to watch.

The sight of her nudity excites Giorgio, who has decided to start wearing a white hood over his face. Where'd he get the hood from? He waits for John to finish up and pass out, and then Giorgio grabs the wine bottle. He follows the hooker to the toy room, then attacks her from behind with a white sheet over her head.

The next morning, a cop knocks at the castle door. He's the same officer that arrived the other day, and this time he's VERY interested in looking around the castle. Susan learns that her husband was seen leaving a bar with a hooker, and that makes John get a little bit defiant. Nevertheless, the cop seems to believe that he did something to the hooker.

After the cop leaves, we see that the hooker is still alive. Wow! She seems to be begging the monster to let her go, but he offers her a swig of wine instead. She decides to play along and seduce him, but then she discovers that he's missing more than a thumb, if you know what I mean. She gets her hands on the bottle, smashes it and slices a gouge into his arm, so he throws her up against a wall, then bites off her nipples.

John is really up shit creek now, because the maid has discovered the hooker's purse in the castle. When John finds out, he's told that the police will will definitely arrest him. The maid's brother agrees to keep quiet, but only if John pays him off. Then he informs John that his lineage isn't quite as royal as he was led to believe, making him a bastard of the family. Boy, he sure is having a bad day!

The maid hears a horrible scream, so she decides to go have a look around the dungeon. She finds the hooker's mutilated body, and the hooker is barely alive. She tries to warn the old woman that Giorgio is right behind her, but the monster attacks the maid, repeatedly beating her after she hits the floor.

John gets home, just in time to see his wife and daughter leaving. She tells him that it's too late to salvage what they had, but all John is worried about is how there exit will make him look even more guilty to the authorities. She refers to him as a "whipping boy", and the phrase suddenly helps him to see what the evil presence is that is living in the castle. He vows to prove his innocence. Oh, and the cops arrive, telling Susan that the entire family must remain in the castle until the investigation is completed.

John grabs a heavy shovel, and the others can hear him bashing it against something somewhere deep in the castle. Susan and a couple of the officers decide to see what John's up to, and they leave Becky with another officer. Yeah, because splitting up ALWAYS works out well in horror films!

It turns out that John was breaking into Giorgio's crypt, to see if his body was in there. He breaks open the coffin in front of Susan and the cops, confirming that there's no corpse. Then he tells them that Becky was right, and that the presence she kept hearing in the castle was Giorgio.

The officers handcuff John, even after he tells them about the whip, the mirror, and all of the noises they've been hearing. Then they stumble upon the bodies of the hooker and the maid. John is dragged away, even while screaming that he's innocent.


A couple of officers stay at the castle that night, and Susan is expected to come to the police station in the morning to give the investigators an official statement. She asks the pair to get her and Becky some fresh water. One heads to the kitchen, while the other cop remains outside the bedroom door.

The cop in the kitchen sees some dirt and soot getting kicked up, so he examines it. Giorgio ambushes him from above, as you might expect. After some kicking and screaming, the cop is dragged up into the chimney.

John begs the officers who arrested him to get his family out of the castle. He even reminds them that Giorgio's coffin was empty, but they still refuse to believe that a maniac is running loose. The cop brings out a lead pipe, and waves it at John in a threatening manner.

Susan asks the cop guarding the door why the other officer never brought back their water, and I wish he would have said, "Because we're not your servants, lady!" Alas, he just agrees to go find his buddy. Fetch your own damn water!

He finds a body wrapped up in a sheet. The first cop? Nope, it's Giorgio, who jumps up and grabs the cop by the chin. He nibbles on the poor guy's eye, and that's that. I may become a vegetarian after this one ends.

Now alone, Susan and Becky have a serious talk about the family. Becky seems to think that her folks loved her brother more than her, because all they've done since his death is fight. Susan tells her that they both love her very much, and that she and Becky have to be strong for John. Yeesh, this is turning into a soap opera!

Giorgio opens the bedroom door, and watches them both pray for their family. Then he noisily shuts it again, but the sound is masked by rumbling thunder. While Becky continues to pour her heart out to her mother, Susan decides to leave the room. That's kind of awesomely hilarious, when you think about it.

Susan is attacked and knocked out cold in the hallway. Becky is still rambling on about her feelings, and she mistakes Giorgio for her mother. She takes off her shirt, only then realizing that her mother isn't the person watching her. Is this supposed to be as funny as it is? Giorgio abducts her, just as Susan regains her senses. She begins to chase after the mutant.

Susan grabs the biggest knife she can find in the kitchen, then she sees the cop fall out of the chimney. She screams and runs away, then we see John still being interrogated. Wow, way to break up the action, movie!

The interrogator gets fed up with John, and smacks him across the face with the club. After another officer drags the interrogator out of the room, John manages to make an escape. He attacks another cop to do it, though, so he's still in some pretty serious trouble here...

Giorgio carries Becky back to his cell, and ties her up. He realizes that she's blind, even waving at her, so, yeah, now this is a wacky comedy.He babbles at her and removes his mask, and tries to kiss the girl. He's into it a lot more than she is.

Susan arrives, and she offers herself up in exchange for Becky's immediate release. Giorgio decides to get close enough to sniff her, and she attacks him with the knife. While Giorgio struggles to remove the blade, Susan works on releasing her daughter.

A short chase back up the stairs ensues, and Giorgio uses his knowledge of the castle layout to somehow get in front of them. They run down a corridor as he limps after them, and Becky costs them precious seconds by tripping past some of the furniture.

He chases them into the bedroom where he murdered the duchess, but they've seemingly vanished. They're actually hiding behind some of the covered furniture, but Giorgio is trying to literally sniff them out. He finds the whip instead, and flies into a rage as he recalls the torture that he endured over the last several decades.

He uses the whip to destroy several objects in the room, then he wanders back into the hallway to continue his search. Becky and Susan think it's safe to leave the room, but he soon discovers them. Another chase begins, this one bringing them onto the roof. Where it's raining. And the blind girl is mostly topless. Need I say more?

Giorgio corners them, but John shows up. He gets the killer to come after him instead, and the two men battle to the death on the roof. John kicks him in his man-gina, punches and beats him several times, then rejoins his wife and daughter.

After a big family hug, Giorgio pops up a final time, and uses the whip on John. As the monster goes after his family, John chains himself to Giorgio, then jumps off the roof. Both men fall to the ground below, and Susan just now decides that she still loves her husband.

They pack their belongings, and load up the coffin to return to America. Before leaving, Susan sees the cop who suspected that her husband was guilty of murder, holding a young boy's hand. The cop removes his hat, and she smiles at him. THE END

Man, what a goofy movie! I mean, the plot was really silly, the acting was over the top, and the only truly impressive thing in it was the gore. I'm giving this one 2 killer trees out of 5, only because it was marginally better than the crap I watched last week.

And what did Castle Freak teach me?

-If you inherit a castle, there's usually a catch.

-A blind girl can hear a monster several floors away, but can't tell if her mother leaves her alone.

-On a related note, blind children love it when you just abandon them at random moments.

Later this week, I'll be watching Pumpkinhead. I could have sworn I did it already, but I couldn't find it on the blog. Happy Halloween!

Intruder

Do you ever see a movie where, you watch the film, and for whatever reason, you just kind of "get into it"? Well, I used to feel that way about today's flick, Intruder. For some reason, I remember the highlights as being a lot more gory and crazy than they actually are. I still kind of liked it, just for the inexplicable weirdness of everything, but it's a VERY dated film.

Overall, it has just enough oddball shit going on to make the end result sort of a fun time(but only if you're a dude who watches movies to make fun of them). Now, my first bone to pick with this thing is the title. Intruder? Couldn't they have shown at least a LITTLE creativity? The thing's set in a grocery store, how about something like Slaughtermarket? 10 Corpses or Less? Death-icatessen? Stop 'n' Chop? Gross-Eerie Store? See how easy that was, movie?

Second complaint: Having folks like Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi and Bruce Campbell in it. Now normally that would make me want to see it even more. But they literally have nothing, walk-on roles! Probably all did their scenes in a couple of hours, then went home to sleep on mattresses stuffed with million-dollar bills. Well, okay, maybe not. But they still could have been used better. Especially Bruce, whose ONE SCENE has him playing it straight for once.

The story itself is surprisingly pretty relevant to today's audiences: A local grocery store is closing, and the small staff of the night shift are trapped inside with a killer. So we get a small cast of isolated folks, a creepy night-time setting, and lots of props for a killer to use. So let's get to it!!

The movie begins with a moon right out of Transylvania. We see the aforementioned "stars" named as the cheesiest music ever heard in a horror film plays. I had to go back to the title screen, to make sure I didn't rent Haunted Honeymoon or Transylvania 6-5000 instead. Nope, it's Intruder! Ah, apparently this thing was produced by Bender from "Futurama", and directed by the Spiegel's catalog folks. Neat-o!

As the movie finally leaves the haunted Transylvanian countryside, we see 2 young women at the registers, gossiping and bagging groceries. An elderly customer complains that they're not paying attention to what they're doing, and his grocery bag breaks open to help him make his point...HEY!!! Maybe he's the killer, seeking revenge for his spilled items! No? Okay, movig on...

The 2 girls, Linda and Jennifer, share a laugh over ruining his night. Jen decides to go out to the parking lot and gather stray shopping carts. As she spends waaaaay too much time organizing the carriages into a neat row, a scruffy-looking guy is watching her from about 2 feet away. This being a slasher flick, she doesn't see him, even when he pushes a shopping cart toward her. Smart, observant chick. Nice ass, though.

Anyway, as Jennifer returns to her register, Scruffy Fonz(aka "Craig") approaches her. Apparently, Craig and Jen recently broke up, and he's having a hard time accepting it. He begins causing a scene, and when some of the other employees try to calm him down, he attacks them and then runs deeper into the supermarket to get away. They all split up to find him. Gee, splitting up sounds like a smart, safe idea!

We see a bargain-basement Keanu Reeves-type steal a package of cookies while no one's looking. Another guy wanders around in the deli department's meat locker. He thinks he hears a noise, but it appears to be only the wind flowing between his ears. We get a few more scenes like these. Geez, just die already, store employees!!

While the employees are wandering around scaring each other and wasting my time, Jen's been busy trying to report Craig to the police. He sneaks up on her and hangs up the phone before she can give them any details. When he tries to grab her and give her a kiss, 3 male employees sneak up behind HIM and grab him. Maybe this movie should have been called Sneaker! They drag him to the entrance, throw him out of the store, and lock the door behind him. Jen calls the cops AGAIN, and they promise to send a squad car right over.

The manager and his assistant manager hold a staff meeting. After congratulating everyone for how they helped Jen, they also announce that the store has been sold. After being told that they have a month of employment left, the manager leaves assistant manager Bill(also his brother) to deal with all of their complaints. What a great guy.

As everyone goes back to work(mostly to clean up the mess made by Craig), Jen begins getting scary phone calls. She tells Linda that she broke up with Craig because he was abusive and violent, to the point where he actually killed someone during a fight. He went away for awhile, but he somehow became a free man again, putting Jen's life in danger.

So, at around the 26-minute mark of a movie that's only 83 minutes long, the Keanu-reject and Linda discuss Jen's ex, the psycho. He was apparently obsessed with her and began stalking her after his father died, doing drugs, stealing. Whatever, just START DYING ALREADY, WILL YA??!!??!!

*Deep Breath*

Okay, moving right along...So, they all decide to take a late-night snack break. Yeah, because when a dangerous dude is stalking you at your place of employment late at night, FOOD is your most pressing concern. Anyway, Bill decides to tell them all a story. He was once a volunteer fireman, which meant that in his small town he was called in on all sorts of strange "emergencies". So one night he and a buddy were called to the scene of an accident, and found that the victim of this car wreck had been beheaded. While he and his partner were looking for the missing head, the other guy was apparently eating a sandwich. When they found the head, the guy was still eating the burger in one hand while carrying the head with his free hand. Charming story, Bill. Hey, this one time, at Band Camp...

Thankfully, before Bill gets to tell another great story, the cops finally arrive. They make Barney Fife look like Columbo. After the world's quickest "investigation", these 2 geniuses leave a business card with the group and decide to make a hasty retreat. God forbid that they should look around the premises at all. When Jen and Linda talk at the registers again, Jen's nose is starting to bleed. Again. Hey, wouldn't it be cool if she was the killer in Valentine, instead of David Boreanaz? No? Oh well, I tried to make this thing more interesting for a minute. Sue me. Gee, Valentine was a good movie. I should rent that again...

So, here we are, now 32 minutes into a slasher film with no slasher and no victims. I've seen more thrills on "I-Carly". So Linda goes out to her car to pack up some groceries she wanted to bring home with her, and hears a noise. She puts the bags into the back of her car, and the killer raises a ginormous butcher knife. Aaaaand....scene. Dammit. But hey, at least we finally have a body count. Sort of.

The 2 brothers who are closing the store are having an argument about...closing the store. Repetition, thy name is Intruder. Bill wants to stay in business, his brother could care less. Fascinating stuff. So glad they decided to show us this scene(and a rather pointless scene where Ted Raimi cuts a watermelon in the goofiest way possible), instead of Linda's murder. Bold choice, fellas.

As Bill leaves, he hears a noise out back behind the store. Going out for a quick look around, Bill spots Craig skulking around while peeping on Jen through a window. There's a quick scuffle that ends with Craig knocking down Bill and sneaking back into the store. MORE pointless clips of people cleaning up follow. This is quickly becoming the biggest snoozefest in slasher-film history

As I begin to lose my will to live, something else happens. The manager is assaulted at his desk. To no one's surprise, his death involves the clutter on his desk. See, kids? Neat people never get murdered. He eventually gets impaled on the friggin' Godzilla-sized nail on his desk where he slams down all his memos. Before the killer leaves, he takes a peek out of the manager's small store window, to look for his next target.

Meanwhile, Jen gets a call from Linda's house: she never arrived at home, and they're worried. Freaked out by the way her night's been going, Jen seeks solace from a male co-worker. He calms her down, but then also decides to make a move on her. She kisses him back, and now ANOTHER co-worker is watching the show while stacking beer. Jen gets laid out onto the register's conveyor belt, and begins giggling. Great, a store porno...a storeno? When our Peeping Tom moves up for a closer look, the killer watches HIM from behind the beer bottles. Geez, can't any of these jerkwads SEE each other? It's a store, not a Brazilian rainforest!

The movie switches briefly to the doofus from earlier, still stacking cereal. Fun. Interesting. We also watch Sam Raimi in the deli department(I guess), working on packaging food for a display case. As he works, he sometimes takes an olive or two out of an open jar next to him. Compelling stuff. We get to see that one olive is actually a human eye. THIS is why I never eat olives! Anyway, Ted Raimi is cutting up the watermelon from earlier as well, and he is still doing so in the dorkiest way possible. He takes these massive, over-the-shoulder swings, and brings his knife down in a huge arc. Conan the Delicatessenarian! His last silly swing leads to the killer planting a knife deep into his skull, severing his Walkman's headphones and the sides of his head. The punchline to the scene is a sign nearby warning employees to use caution when handling the sharp knives. Ha. Ha. Ha.

The doofus stacking cereal and detergent is next on the deathlist. He's working at a brisk pace, stacking away, but one product keeps falling onto the floor every time he places it on the shelf. He yells at another employee, whose face is only seen partially by blocked products. When the face asks his for a box-cutter, doofus tosses it over the shelf.

The killer, who now has a nifty blade, goes after the OTHER Raimi, by tossing a ladder at him. Oooooh, scary! Or it would be, if anything happened. Moving right along, we find a dude in the beer cooler. He sees the frezer door opening and closing, and starts yelling about how he's the only one not screwing around. The killer pops up and stabs him in the stomach. Now who's screwed?

The stoner dude is now being stalked by the killer. He starts to follow the killer, but winds up in the beer cooler. He sees beer guy standing behind a stack of cases, and assumes he's just depressed or wasted. He starts mocking the corpse, until the killer's arm shoots toward him and pulls him into the cooler. Not dead yet, he is dragged by the killer to a hydraulic compactor, and his head is crushed as he screams bloody murder. Of course, no one hears him. Do any of these guys even have names?

Sam Raimi is next. His character has been listlessly moping about, stamping price labels onto various shelved products, so he's pretty bored. I guess murdering a watermelon was the highlight of his night. He goes back into the butcher shop area(popular hangout, huh?), and finds a severed hand wrapped into one of the meat packages. Before he can react, the killer grabs him from behind and pushes his head into a hanging hook. He leaves him there dangling, as a pool of blood spills out from under the freezer door.

The guy who earlier handed over his box-cutter demands it back, and the killer throws it over the shelf toward him. The blade slices the guy's palm pretty badly, but when he gets angry, there's no response. He walks over to the other side of the aisle, only to find a deli slicer operating, but no signs of any workers. He uses materials found in the deli to wrap up his hand wound, then goes to the employee bathroom, wondering out loud where the heck everybody is. He spots a pair of feet in one of the stalls, and opens the stall door, only to find the shoes contain severed stumps. Does he freak out? Nope. He says they're pig hooves stuffed in the shoes. Uh, sure. Why would that freak you out any less???

He leaves the bathroom, and decides to visit the world's most crowded meatlocker. Instead of entering though, he spots a ladder, and climbs it through a small door in the ceiling. A severed head rolls toward him, but it's a Halloween mask prop, there are several more up there as well. As he climbs fully into the room, the boss pops up, short one eye. The boss claws at him, but he gets away, and finds the small window used to watch the store activity. As he stands there, helpless to do anything, he sees Craig making his way down an aisle, as Jen concentrates of her register. He tries to warn her that Craig is there, but he can't be heard through the glass.

Captain Doofus goes into action! He starts climbing back down the ladder, despite the boss begging him for help. The blood all over the boss's hands gets on the ladder, and Doofus slips and falls the rest of the way. As he tries to get up off the floor, the killer whacks him with a meat cleaver, before dragging him toward a table saw to finish him off. So much for our "hero".

Jen finally notices that everybody has vanished. Smart cookie that she is, Jen begins strolling past each aisle, calling out names. She wanders into the back area, and steps on an eyeball. Ow! She finds "Randy" hanging off of a meat hook, and runs away to hide behind the stacks of other hanging cow corpses. Jen thinks she sees one of the sides of beef moving, and runs away screaming. She tries to lock herself into the freezer, but the killer's hand gets in the way. She uses a small hook to wound his hand, then drags Sam Raimi's corpse over to prop in front of the door.

Jen then jogs upstairs to the office, but sees the blood leaking under the doorframe, and backs away to seek some other form of help or escape. She falls down a chute, immediately finding 2 more corpses, then Ted Raimi's corpse when she attempts to climb a conveyor belt to get away. The rear entrance isn't much help either, as it's locked tight. She runs through the store again, being pretty much useless.

At this point, a car shows up. When a customer finds the doors locked, he gets back in the car. Jen pounds on the door as the car pulls away, then sees Craig in the door's reflected glass. Failing to understand how reflections work, she backs away from the door, and right into his arms. Thinking he's the killer, she injures him. And, because it worked so well the first time, she resumes walking backwards. Craig wakes up, but no one notices yet.

She hears a loud noise, and yells for help. The assistant manager, Bill, shows up. He hears her story of murder and mayhem, and assures her that she is safe now, even giving her a hug. As Bill is supposedly calling the cops, Jen leans against her register and looks back at Craig nervously. While looking around, she realizes that there is blood on her, and it's on her hands, her clothes, everything. Too late, she figures out that Bill was the murderer, not Craig. DUN DUN DUNNNNNN

He chases her a bit, and when she's cornered, she begs him to tell her why he did it. Great, it turns into an episode of "Murder, She Wrote" now. Turns out that Bill was angry at his brother over the closing of the store. He realized after murdering his brother that he'd be found out if he left the workers alive, so he decided to murder everyone and pin the blame on Craig. Before he can make good on his promise to finish her off, Jen whacks him over the head with a bottle and makes a run for it.

Desperate for a hiding place, Jen finds a popcorn display that opens up, and climbs in, closing it behind her. She left a convenient trail of broken glass and litter behind her, though, so she's nice enough to help the guy do his job faster. Sweet! He actually ends up standing next to the popcorn display, and sees the blood spreading across the floor. Grinning, he begins hacking away at the wooden case, and she screams. Somehow she manages to escape, and she grabs two big, sharp butcher knives to defend herself with. She should just poke him in the eyes with her late 1980's teased hair, it probably has the consistency of porcupine spikes.

So, there they are, playing the lamest cat-and-mouse game EVER(seriously...at one point, the excitement consists of him putting a box of cereal back on a shelf...OOOH!!), when he pulls the same scare on her that we've seen about 12 times in this film already: the old "reaching through the shelf of boxes to grab you" gag. He pulls Jen off her feet by her hair, and she knocks him out with a jar of wheat germ. See, I always knew that crap was bad for your health. It causes headaches and unconsciousness.

Jen picks up the knife(again? what, is this like the slasher version of Groundhog Day?) and dashes for the front doors again. Remembering that they're locked, she swings a fire extinguisher or a helium tank at the plexiglass. Nothing, not even a dent. This leads to my single biggest laugh of the movie: Jen leans against the locked door in frustration, and a delivery guy strolls right up. When he sees the doors locked, he knocks to get her attention, and Bill kills him with several stabs in the back. Now, I may not be a rocket scientist, but wouldn't the delivery guy notice another guy waiting near the door, especially if he was brandishing a knife and covered in blood?

Oh, and get this: Jen is still hovering around by the blood-stained front door, and hears someone behind her in the store. What would you think she'd do in that sort of situation? She screams, "Who's there? WHO'S THERE???" like the nincompoop that she apparently is. Bravo. I mean, who did she THINK it was, considering how many dead bodies she's seen?

In typical dumbass fashion, Jen holds the knife out in front of herself, and decides it's a nice night to stroll through the empty market. She finds the manager again, who supposedly was strong enough to drag himself along the floor out into the main store. She rushes over to try and help him to his feet, when it's revealed that it's just his severed head! Remember the weird story Bill told them all earlier? The one about the severed head and the guy eating the sandwich? Well, he decided to act it out for Jen. In another movie, it probably would've been cool to see.

Jen decides to start running away again. She runs past the same shelf of groceries about 170 times in a row, a montage that truly has to be seen to be believed. At the end of the Endless Aisle, she is grabbed by...Craig! Wow, a somewhat decent surprise, I had nearly forgotten he even existed. Craig covers her mouth to keep her from screaming, and explains to her what we already knew: How Bill was the killer, his plot to knock out Craig and frame him for the murders, etc. Right before Bill finds them, Craig tells Jen that he managed to get a window in the bathroom open, and that the window will be their escape route.

Alas, Craig does get knocked out(a pretty funny sequence, actually: Bill uses the severed head to keep hitting him with), which sets Jen off on a marathon again. She finds the window that Craig mentioned, but has trouble getting it to stay open. Eventually it does open, and she tries to climb out as fast as her acid-washed jeans can carry her.(okay, they're not really, but this movie is so full of '80's crap, they should be acid-washed.) She finds the right car, opens the locked door with her keys, and her friend, Linda(I guess that's who it is, anyway) falls out of the car, long-dead. She screams some more and Bill grabs her ankles and drags her under the car.

As he hovers over her on the ground, he raises his cleaver to finish her off. That's when Jen takes her hands out from under the car, to reveal her trusty butcher knife. She tells him to suck on it, and plunges it deep into his chest. In another amusing twist, he falls backwards and the knife flies out of him. As he lands on the ground, the knife comes back down and gets imbedded in a box right next to his head. She leaves his body to rush to a nearby phonebooth to call for help. I'll bet you can't guess what happens next...

Yup, you guessed it.

Bill attacks the booth, trapping her inside. When he realizes he can't get to Jen, Bill decides to try to tip the phonebooth over instead. While Bill is climbing through broken glass and Jen is attempting to crawl out of the side of the booth, Craig wakes up and goes after him with a cleaver. He even imbeds it into Bill's hand at one point, before hacking away at his arm, neck, shoulder...I'm guessing they won't be "friending" each other on Facebook any time soon.

As they survey all the damage, the cops arrive. One is Bruce Campbell(FINALLY!!!), the other is just some dude who gets to be in a scene with Bruce Campbell. The cops see Craig and Jen covered in blood, and immediately slap the cuffs on 'em. In the background you can clearly see Bill moving slightly, and he manages to gasp that they're responsible for the massacre inside the store. Bruce goes inside to check it out, and Bill appears to die, until Bruce returns to report to the other cop that "it's a bloodbath" inside. Bill's eyes snap open again, Jen shrieks, cut to credits.

Ay yi yi. I honestly remembered this being better than it turned out to be. Maybe I saw some uncut version, or maybe my memory just sucks waaaay more than I realized, because this was pretty disappointing. As tedious as I find most remakes(especially with the trend toward PG-13 crap like Prom Night and When A Stranger Calls), I really do think a great slasher flick could be done in a supermarket. Or, heck, why not a superstore, like a Wal-Mart or a Sam's Club? Someone get right on that, okay? 2 killer trees, only for the general mayhem towards the end and the 3"guest stars".

So what has Intruder left me with, besides the sour taste in my mouth?
-I now realize that stuff that seemed epic when I was younger may have been seen through rose-colored glasses. Geez, this one must've been seen in a friggin' Rose Bowl Parade for me to think it was cool.
-When a director can't deliver a clever script or great, copious amounts of gore, he will use gimmicky, silly camera tricks instead.(My personal favorite was seeing a character from the perspective of a rotary phone, complete with the image spinning while the number was dialed, lol)
-Sandwiches always taste better when mixed with severed heads.

Up next, I'm going to start going through more of my Instant Watch queue, so I'll probably begin with the Friday the 13th franchise. My overall queue is at the 500-movie limit, so I realllllly need to start watching and eliminating some of them. Oh, and I'm going to be seeing Devil this weekend, so I may just make that my next one if it's slashery at all. Looks like it might be, but with M. Night Shamalamadingdong, ya never know...