Doll Graveyard

Back in the late 80's/early 90's, there was this production studio called Full Moon. Their movies were almost always cheesy, often terrible, but also quite fun. The vast majority of the movies tended to feature dolls and toys that were evil, such as the Puppet Master films, or Demonic Toys. Today's entry, Doll Graveyard is one of the newer efforts, having been released in 2005. Is it any good? Let's prepare to be SPOILED, and find out...

The opening scene takes place in 1911 in Los Angeles, where we see a young, lonely child named Sophia. She playing with a group of dolls that represent various ethnic stereotypes, including a savage named Ooga Booga, and an Asian warrior named Samurai. Nice. Piss off most of the audience with offensive crap right at the top of your movie.

So, cute little white supremacist Sophia is so preoccupied with pretending to commit genocide, that she fails to realize how close she is to other objects in the room. She bumps into an end table, sending a vase crashing to the floor. That gets Sophia pretty worked up. Relax...it's not like your dad's going to see the mess, force you to bury your dolls in a mass grave, then add you to the pile, because you have an accident that snaps your neck! What's the worst thing that could possibly happen?

Oh. Um...oops?

Yup, Daddy comes downstairs, and starts out by calling his daughter names, then threatening to whip her. As Sophia tearfully apologizes, he forces her to gather up the dolls, then follow him into the yard. They dig a deep grave, then Sophia says a special farewell to each doll.  All while her father chews the scenery and berates her for having feelings.

As she starts to climb out of the ditch, her feet slip, and she falls into the hole, dying on impact. Dear ol' Dad quickly decides to cover up the  grave, then go find someone else's life to ruin. Best part of this whole scene, is how he doesn't hesitate for even a second to bury her like that. I hope the screenwriter never had kids.

Ah well...after that nonsense and the opening credits that look like something you'd see on a silly late-night horror show, the main story kicks in. Now it's 2005, and the place is being occupied by a single dad and his two teens. The father's Lester, the older sibling is DeeDee, and our protagonist is Guy. After Guy irritates DeeDee, she asks for permission to go out with some friends. Lester(who looks an awful lot like Sophia's father...) needs her to babysit Guy, because Lester's got a date. Yay.

Aha! Lester IS a direct descendant, because he also has the pocket watch that Sophia's father carried. See? Me AM has brains! And gud speler, tu! The scene ends with Lester staring off into space, possibly trying to figure out a way to get both of his kids to dig a pair of ditches in the yard, then throw themselves in.

The next scene has this distracting song that sounds like the intro to Sympathy For The Devil...but it isn't. Mick Jagger should sue. Guy leaves the house, walks about 40 miles, then finds a pile of tree branches blocking his path. We get to have the honor of watching him move the branches and do yard work.

While raking, he stumbles upon a bunch of items that once belonged to Cyril, Sophie's father. He puts aside a liquor bottle and a letter opener, then he uncovers the DOLL GRAVEYARD!!!!!!!! Which really should have been named Doll Hole, seeing as there's only a single grave, but whatever. Maybe there was already a porno with that title.

Using a paintbrush with fine bristles, Guy meticulously cleans up the various dolls when he gets them to his room. DeeDee bursts through the door, nearly having a bird when she spots the grotesque dolls. She tries to terrorize her brother with blackmail to get him to do all of the chores in the house, but he calmly blackmails her as well. Isn't it great when families show how much they love one another?

Lester seems mesmerized by his antique watch, until his daughter snaps him out of it. As soon as he leaves to go on his date, DeeDee whips out her phone, and gleefully tells her best friend to gather up some guys and head over to her house for an impromptu party. She figures that Guy will most likely just stay in his room, giving her and her friends a wide berth.

Guy finishes cleaning up Samurai, then puts the doll on a special shelf in his room. When Guy turns his back, we see Samurai blink, and his doll eyes become human eyes. Guy's not very observant, is he?

DeeDee answers the front door, and greets 2 friends, Terri and Olivia. They have food and drinks with them, but no guys. This could get kinky! *leans forward*

Guy walks into the kitchen, reminding DeeDee that their father never gave her permission to have friends over. When Olivia insults him, Guy asks her if she know what the difference is between her and the Eiffel Tower. The answer? Guy doesn't know any guys who've been on top of the Eiffel Tower. Heh, score one for the geek!

As they exit the kitchen, Terri lingers behind to speak to Guy for a moment. It turns out that she's a bit of a geek too, and she flirts with him, before giving him a quick peck on the cheek. He promises her that he'll keep their visit a secret from Lester.

Back in DeeDee's room, the girls light candles and get drunk.  Guy just sits on his bed, pawing through an old porn mag. Then he picks up Samurai again, telling the doll that he thinks Terri is hot. He hears a voice whispering out in the hallway, and decides to see who it might be.

It's Rich and Tom, a pair of jocks that DeeDee invited over for her little shindig. They assault Guy, carrying him into his room, where they threaten him with bodily harm, break some of his action figures, then tie him up. After they leave, Guy hears another voice whispering something, and he can see that the dolls are no longer on their shelf.

As a typical thunderstorm kicks in, Ooga Booga, a Nazi-looking soldier, and a deformed Baby Doll are all summoned forth by Samurai. Inside, the partying teens get drunk and stoned, although Terri abstains. She also doesn't feel very comfortable once the jocks enter the room. Olivia tries to hook up with Tom after Terri rejects him, but he makes a joke similar to Guy's earlier remark, so I guess she's going home alone tonight. Unless Rich wants her, but he's busy grabbing beer in the kitchen at the moment.

Guy hears the voice a little clearer, and it is Sophie. She promises that the dolls are there to "help" him, and he sees that they are now lined up and ready to begin their attack on the party. Anyone else think that this one is moving a bit fast? I mean, we barely know all of their names, so now they're going to die?

The party itself is in full swing, which means that it's boring as Hell. Olivia gets jealous after seeing DeeDee and Tom going at it, and she suggests a possible 3-way with Rich and Terri. Terri wants no part of that action! Then DeeDee and Tom get up, prepared to get more intimate in a private setting.

Rich scares Terri in the kitchen, and quickly apologizes. He offers to help her clean up the kitchen. Hey, maybe he's actually a nicer guy than his buddy. But I doubt it...

Olivia changes the music that's on, then light a joint. Meanwhile, DeeDee and Tom are getting ready to screw like bunnies, but not before DeeDee cuffs his hands behind his back. She steps over to her closet, then orders him to close his eyes.

True to his word, Rich helps Terri to clean up the kitchen. Then he ruins the image by moving in for a kiss. She pushes him away, then exits the kitchen.

DeeDee promises Tom a surprise, then the kaiser doll pops up on the bed. It engages Tom in a staring contest for a few seconds, then uses the sharp point on its helmet to destroy his crotch. DeeDee knocks the doll off of the bed, then sees that Tom is drenched in blood.

Then we head back to Olivia. Um, okay. We were right in the MIDDLE of a scene, but let's jump around at random. That makes sense. So, screw DeeDee...what's up, Olivia?

Turns out that the answer is "not much". She's dancing to the music by herself. Oh, and one of the dolls sneaks in to have a peek. But we don't even get to see which one it is. Lame...

DeeDee watches Tom die from blood loss, then backs away from the bed. Still not content to let a scene finish at a logical place, the movie shows us Rich getting drunk by himself. Olivia struts into the room, sitting on his lap. Gee, I wonder what message she's trying to convey with her subtle signals?

Removing her shirt, Olivia asks Rich why he's not with Terri. When he reveals that she rejected him, Olivia rejects him as well, then leaves him drunk and confused. I get the impression that many, many things leave this guy in a constant state of confusion.

Olivia puts her shirt back on, then shuts off the music. Shouting for her friends, she gets worried when no one responds. Then she just meanders back to the hallway. This movie has all the energy of a coma victim.

DeeDee sees the kaiser doll watching her, so she screams for assistance. Olivia rushes in, sees Tom's body, then spots the killer doll. The tiny Nazi raises a teeny-weeny gun and tries to shoot at the girls, who flee out of the room.

They hurry downstairs, where Olivia grabs her purse. While she looks through it for her phone, DeeDee discovers Rich passed out on the kitchen table. She manages to revive him, then she goes off in search of Guy and Terri.

Terri finds Guy, who has been in and out of consciousness, and she gets him untied in a jiffy.Guy finds out that she wasn't enjoying her time with the others, but she seems kind of interested in him. Like, "To Catch A Predator"-level of interest. Weird, man.

When Terri sees what Rich did to the collectible action figure, Guy suddenly notices that Samurai is missing. He tells her how he found it in the yard, then he blacks out again as Sophia whispers in his head. Terri eventually snaps him out of it, but they're both frightened by the incident.

DeeDee and Olivia tear apart the living room looking for the cell phone, then it starts to ring. They locate it across the room in a chair...being held by the Baby doll. Baby turns to stare at them, then bites Olivia on the hand as she reaches over to take her phone back.

DeeDee screams at the caller to come rescue them, and Terri hears all of the commotion from Guy's room. When she suggests that they go see what happened, she finds Guy in a trance again, speaking as Sophia. Terri shakes him out of it again, then she nearly gets ambushed by Samurai. Guy picks him up to  examine the doll closer, and he and Terri both conclude that the dolls must be alive, possessed by some kind of evil entity that can speak to Guy as well. The doll keeps his opinion to himself.

Rich, determined to be useless, is still drinking. He briefly considers screwing a melon with a hole in it, but changes his mind. Thank God. He bends down to pick of some litter, then comes face-to-face with Ooga Booga when he sits up again. When he leans closer to talk to the native doll and offer it a beer and some snacks, Ooga Booga plucks out one of his eyes with the tiny spear it wields. then it slashes his throat and watches him die.

Olivia and DeeDee are afraid to leave the room, fearing that it will open them up to another doll attack. DeeDee then finds Rich, and Olivia gets injured in another quick skirmish. Believe it or not, but the running time for this one is less than 90 minutes. How did they manage to make it feel endless?

As Guy and Terri try to leave his room, Guy falls down against the stairs. As Sophia, he tells Terri that the dolls are seeking vengeance for her demise. Then Samurai slashes at Terri's ankle, until Guy snaps out of his possession and orders the doll to stop.

As DeeDee and Olivia decide to call 911, Nazi doll reappears. He fires his gun at them, and they duck behind a sofa, screaming like ninnies. DeeDee waits for him to pause between shots, then knocks him over with a pillow. As they try to back away, Terri and Guy run into the room. They briefly discuss what's happened so far, and start to make a run for the door.

Olivia insists that she needs her purse, and runs back to retrieve it. She reaches for her phone on the floor, and the Baby removes another chunk out of her face with those crazy teeth. Luckily, DeeDee comes to the rescue, but now they're trapped by Baby.

DeeDee prepares herself to attack the doll, but Guy, possessed again by Sophia, stops her. After a brief struggle, they realize that Ooga Booga has entered the room as well. Terri asks Guy to call off the dolls, but Sophia's in control of him now, and she sees the teens as a threat to her precious toys.

After Guy stomps away, the Nazi doll also suddenly pops up. Surrounded by all of the killer dolls, the girls realize that they might never leave. Terri gets away to check on Guy, who collapses again. Then Lester returns from his date.

Except that he's no longer Lester. He's now also possessed by Cyril, and they have a bitter reunion right then and there. As Lester/Cyril threatens to whip Guy/Sophia to death, Samurai stabs Dad in the ankle. A second hit makes him fall to the floor, and the killer dolls all move in to kill Lester/Cyril.

Terri tries to appeal to Guy for mercy, but Sophia won't let him go yet. When Lester manages to fight his own possession though, it causes Sophia to momentarily lose her focus. Guy orders the dolls to cease their attack, and he and the others re-bury them in the yard. As Guy backs away from the grave, a flash of lightning reveals that he has now become Sophia entirely. THE END...?

Ugh. I can remember back when these Full Moon movies were fun and creative, but this was horrible. I swear, this guy just recycles the same concepts and designs over and over again, and honestly thinks that the audience won't notice. And 80 minutes? Really? I sit through this crappy movie, and it's barely even a movie at all! 1 out of 5 killer trees. And here comes the hard part...

And what did I learn from Doll Graveyard?

-Possession can run in the family.

-Kids love racist toys!

-Nice girls like to rob the cradle.

My next SAW entry should be either Dark Floors or Pinata: Survival Island. We'll see what comes in first. As long as neither one features killer dolls, I think we're good. Yeesh.

Evil Dead (remake)

I really don't "get" the concept of remaking a movie, whether it's horror, comedy, or whatever. I mean, the story's been done, the script is usually a recycled compilation of great bits from the original version, the cast almost always looks bored...why bother? For every decent one(Friday the 13th, Black Christmas), we get dozens that seem pointless(Nightmare On Elm Street, Prom Night, The Hills Have Eyes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Stepfather, One Missed Call, Halloween, Night of The Demons, House of Wax, Toolbox Murders, Sorority Row, My Bloody Valentine 3D, I could do this for weeks and weeks...). Why not use that time and effort to write something else that we HAVEN'T seen yet?

Anyway, I found myself wondering this the other day at the movies, while watching a trailer for a remake of Robocop. Maybe not the best mood for watching a remake of Evil Dead. We'll see...SPOILERS from this point on...and apologies to Bruce Campbell for not doing the original trilogy first.

Okay, opening scene: A young woman is scurrying behind some trees in a forest, breathing heavy and looking very rattled. Some redneck-farmer type gets the jump on her, and forces a burlap sack over her head. Wait, were we just invited to a hillbilly wedding ceremony?

She sees shadowy figures in front of her and begs them not to hurt her. An older woman tells her not to be afraid, but there's a table next to her covered with bloody tools. The elderly woman opens an ancient-looking book, and begins to recite strange verses.

At this point, a man approaches the prisoner, then whips the burlap sack off of her head. They stare at each other, and he turns out to be her father. The girl asks him what's happening, and who these strange folks are, and he informs her that her mother has died, and at her hands no less.

Then he procures a bottle of water and dumps the contents on his daughter's head. Acid? Holy water? Dr. Pepper? Nope...it's gasoline. And apparently he's being too slow, because the old woman orders him to hurry up.

Realizing that she's about to become a crispy critter, the girl once again begs her father to take her back home. Then her face changes, and she goes full-on demonic. Even after being set ablaze, she grins and continues to deliver her threats. Dad steps back, then raises his trusty shotgun. He shoots her to death, then the title slams onto the screen. Heh, reminds me of the way they did the title for Cabin In the Woods. Funny.

Now there's a long road, closed in by trees. Maybe this is Wrong Turn 12: Three Finger Makes a Treehouse. Nope, a jeep has pulled off the road, and now we're outside a cabin. In the woods. Like in that movie, Atonement.

As everyone stretches their legs, we meet our victims: Olivia is a cute brunette, and a registered nurse to boot; Eric is the token hippy, a young teacher with an attitude; Mia, a druggie-artist in need of an intervention; And David is Mia's estranged brother. There may be 1 or 2 others, but they don't have names yet.

David gets the front door open, and the interior looks like a bomb recently went off in there. Mia finds herself in a bedroom filled with old family pictures, and David wanders in behind her. They reminisce about their childhood memories, blah blah blah.

Later, Olivia tells David that this is Mia's second intervention. She left the first one after only 8 hours. Oh, and she OD'ed later, and nearly died. They decide that, in order for the intervention to succeed, they must resolve to force Mia to stay if she attempts to leave again.

That first night doesn't go well. Mia's screaming her head off about a bad smell, and she's being held, as if she could suddenly go crazy on them. Even after Mia's calm again, she still insists that there's something rotting in the cabin (in the woods), The dog one of the guys brought along seems to smell it as well. When he tries to dig through the floor, they all take a closer look.

The dog found a trapdoor, probably leading into a basement. They explore, but not before grabbing their trusty flashlights. Smarter than the usual fodder! That's refreshing.

Anyway, the cellar isn't exactly out of Better Homes and Gardens. Dust? Check. Cobwebs? Yup. Multitudes of little kitty-cat corpses? You betcha! Book of the Dead, bound up in barbed wire? Well, that's a little bit specific, but, yes.

They quickly vacate the creepy basement, and they bring the book with them. After a brief debate over all of the satanic-ritual paraphernalia that was down there, they decide not to decide anything just yet. The bad weather kicks in outside, and Mia paces around the muddy yard while the other girls prepare a meal that looks like something that Leatherface would drool over.

Hey, let's see what Eric is doing! He's actually off by himself, staring at the mysterious book. Using a pair of pliers, he begins the process of snapping the wires from around the book. It's wrapped in plastic, so he rips that apart, as well. Then he opens the book up, and begins to read the Latin inscribed within. If the original version and Cabin In the Woods have taught me anything, it's this: Never Read The Frickin' Latin Out Loud! Dolt.

He finds a page with a warning scrawled across the top: DON'T SAY IT, DON'T WRITE IT, DON'T HEAR IT. Beneath that ominous phrase there is a block of text that has been scribbled over. Using a pencil and a thin sheet of paper, Eric makes an etching of the message that was blacked out: Kunda Astrata Montossa Kanda". Yeah, Hakuna Matata you too pal.

Dumbass reads the words out loud, and a malevolent entity flies into Mia's body, possessing her. She drops to the ground, pukes, then sees Samara from The Ring standing in the forest. Okay, maybe not, but the demon sure does resemble Samara.

Mia rushes into the cabin(in the woods...), and starts to pack her stuff. She tells her friends that she needs to leave immediately, and they assume that it's a drug withdrawal thing. Eric informs Mia that they decided that they couldn't let her leave until she was better, so she turns to David for help. When he refuses as well, she tears off the protective amulet he gave her, then stomps outside to steal the car.

No one's smart enough to stop her, so she takes off. Ghost Girl appears again, so Mia swerves to avoid her, landing the car in a small body of water. Awesome. She gets out, nearly drowning in the process. Then Samara-Lite calls her name again, and bursts out of the water. Mia screams and runs.

As the demon-ghost thingy chases her around the forest, Mia gets tripped out by some twisty vines and branches. Her leg gets caught, then a tendril wraps itself around her throat. The entity appears to her again, then Mia gets tree-raped. Yeah, you read that right. A tree fucks her. Worst case of morning wood EVER. (My heartfelt apologies to any readers who've ever been sexually assaulted by trees. They can be vicious. Take back the splinters, am I right?)

Her friends find her, and manage to bring her back to the cabin(in the woods. By the lake. Yeah, I could do this all day...) Olivia examines her wounds, but disregards her rantings about demon-girls and tree-rape as nothing more than delusional mumbo-jumbo brought on by withdrawal. When the suggestion is made that she might be better off in a hospital, Olivia gets pissed off and tells them that Mia's getting the same care that a hospital would provide for her.

Olivia also theorizes that the assault on her body could have been self-inflicted. She claims that they can't trust Mia not to harm herself, as she'll likely do anything to get a fix. David then leaves the room to see Mia, who begs him to take her away from the woods. She tells him about the demonic presence, claiming that it's in the room with them. He leaves the room after being convinced that Olivia was right, and Mia actually sees the demon girl glaring at her from a dark corner of the bedroom.

Eric's still poring over the book, even finding a picture depicting the tree-rape that Mia described. Olivia suggests that he should put the book away, so that he can help David clean up the aftermath of Mia's incident, but he selfishly declares that David should do it by himself, because he's been out of their lives for so long. Wow, this is a tight-knit group here!

David heads outside with some trash, only to find his dog, named Grandpa, dead. It's covered in blood, so naturally he assumes that Mia must have killed it with a hammer. While he tries to confront her, she's locked in the bathroom, being boiled in the shower by hot water. The demon inside her then sets the room on fire.

He finally breaks the door down, and finds the bathroom filled with steam and smoke. The water was so hot that he nearly burns his hand trying to turn the faucet off. David picks Mia up off of the ground, then attempts to drive her away in the other car.

Eric finds a picture in the book that depicts a figure pouring boiling water on themselves, and he suddenly realizes that life is somehow imitating art. Mia begins to cough up some nasty spew in the car, then David is forced to pull over when he sees that the road is now underwater. Man,  this is turning out to be a pretty fucking horrible weekend for these guys, huh?

Everyone heads back to the cabin(in the woods), and Olivia discovers that Mia now has second- and third-degree burns all over her body, from her hot shower. A heated argument then develops, everyone blames each other for not leaving sooner, and none of them notice that Mia has snuck into the room.

When they do finally see her, they realize that she now has a rifle. David begs her not to use it, and she just barely misses shooting him, hitting the window next to him instead. In the demon's voice, Mia announces that they will all die that night, then she faints.

Olivia makes a grab for the gun, but the demon stops her. Mia leaps on top of the other girl, pins her to the floor, then vomits about 20 gallons of bloody puke into her face. Best vomit scene since Meaning of Life, I swear. Fun for the whole family.

They manage to trap Mia in the basement, and talk about the physical changes she's undergone; most noticeably, her demonic black eyes. Gee, think maybe she's possessed?

Eric checks in on Olivia after things have calmed down, and the light in the bathroom goes out. He creeps over to the shower, only to find that her eyes have gone monstrous as well, and that she's used a knife give herself a wider smile, Sardonicus-style.

Horrified, Eric tries to leave, but trips and falls. The bathroom door slams shut, and Olivia stabs Eric in the shoulder before he can get up again. She then stabs him several more times with a hypodermic needle, until he manages to knock her out with a large chunk of porcelain.

He crawls over to the furthest corner away from her body, then sloooowly pulls the broken needle out of his eyelid. Ouch. Then he sees Olivia crawling toward him, ready for another round. He picks up the chunk of porcelain, repeatedly bashing it into the back of her skull.

David bursts into the room, and Eric tries to explain what happened. David tries to patch up his wounds, and Eric tells him about the contents of the book. Natalie leaves the room and considers making a run for it, but a voice stops her at the front door...It's Mia, trapped in the basement.

Mia tells Natalie that she doesn't have any memory of what transpired, and that she's suffering from some severe injuries, so Natalie offers to come down to have a look. Not the smartest banana in the bunch, is she? Y'know, something just know occurred to me: The people in horror movies have NEVER WATCHED a horror movie! That must be it. How else can you explain the rampant stupidity in their actions?

To no one's surprise, Mia is not herself. By the time that Natalie figures that out, she's almost at the bottom of the stairs, and tries to scurry back up to the ground floor. The demon collapses the steps, but Natalie manages to hoist herself up through the trapdoor anyway. The demon grabs her by the ankle and pulls her back down into the cellar. Bye, sorry we barely got to know you...

Oh look, Nat lives! She finds herself flat on her back, unable to move much. Mia is by her feet, sniffing and apparently "tasting" her. When she gets closer to Natalie's upper body, she growls that she can smell her soul, then she bites Natalie's hand like a rabid dog. After cutting into her own tongue, Mia then kisses Natalie, making her ingest blood. Anyone hungry?

David opens the basement door, and yanks Nat to safety. Before he traps Mia again, she tells him that his sister's soul is "being raped in Hell". He slams the trapdoor shut, then nails the door down for good measure.

As the storm outside picks up, Eric gets the bright idea to burn the evil book. Nice try, but the tome remains intact, showing no visible signs of damage in the least. Then Eric tells David everything he's read in the book so far.

Okay, so apparently a demon wants to be restored to his full power, so that he can come to Earth to conquer humanity. The ritual to make that possible requires 5 human sacrifices. Gee, I wonder who the victims might be?

Natalie examines her wounded hand in the kitchen, and now realizes that it's possessed. She does the easiest thing possible, by preparing to sever her arm off to save herself. Meanwhile, Eric and David have to figure out whether or not killing Mia will put an end to the ritual.

Natalie runs water over the hand, trying to disinfect it. It twitches uncontrollably, and now she knows that the demon infection is spreading. She picks up an electric knife, sawing through the monster arm. When Eric and David find her in the kitchen, Natalie announces that she feels much better, then stands up...while her arms plops to the floor.

Dave and Eric continue to brainstorm a plan, when the trapdoor flies open once more, unhindered by the nails. Our favorite demon-girl shows up, armed with a nail gun. She attacks the men, shooting Eric a handful of times in the arm. Then she corners him against a wall, damaging his face, legs, arms, torso, etc. with a bunch of nails. No, wait, the attacker is Natalie, because Mia is still down below.

After another bloody battle, the guys defeat Natalie. Eric needs assistance to escape, so they limp away together. Then David returns to the house to destroy it with fire. As he prepares to drop the match into the gas-soaked house, he gets another idea.

He readies a syringe, then heads back down to the basement, where there is now extensive flooding. Mia leaps out of the water to take David down, but Eric shows up and shoots her.

Eric injects himself, and he seems to be himself again. David digs a grave for the demon-Mia, and she tries to get into his head with her words. David apologizes for never being supportive enough, then finishes with the burial. After the demon supposedly leaves her body, David makes several attempts to resuscitate her. They all seem to fail.

As David finally surrenders and steps away, he hears Mia calling his name. They hug, and he apologizes for never being there for her. As they pack up to leave, David gets mauled by Eric, who damages his neck and throat. David urges Mia to escape, but she refuses.

David forces Mia out of the room, then faces Eric for their final brawl. David sets off a spark that ignites a gas leak, and the entire cabin(in the woods) goes up.

Mia wanders around outside for awhile, and demons attempt to grab her. She gets to the car, but they pursue her. She gets back to what's left of the house, crawling through some tunnels, as demons try to grab her the entire way.

They walk on ceilings, crawl beneath the floors, it's like a bug infestation. Finally she gets a chainsaw out, and then hides under one of the vehicles. She uses the chainsaw to remove the stalker's legs, but the demon is strong enough to lift the car off the ground. Mia nearly escapes, but the car lands on top of her hand. As the demon crawls closer, Mia manages to completely tear her hand off, grab the chainsaw with her good hand, then split her friend in half, right down the middle.

Mia walks back toward the ruins of the cabin,picks up her amulet, then staggers away into the woods. The book can be seen on the ground, and, as the movie ends, the pages rapidly start to flip. THE END, with the exception of an incredibly brief scene of Bruce Campbell, looking into the camera and saying "Groovy!"

Eh. Was expecting much, much worse from this one, but it was average. The gore was good, but it felt like the pace was off. They should have just funded Evil Dead 4 instead. Still, it wasn't the worst remake ever, so...let's say 3 killer trees out of 5 for this one. An average movie.

Oh, and what did Evil Dead teach me?

-Originals rock.

-"Possession by puke" is a bad way to go.

-DON'T READ THE %@!$ING LATIN!!!

Okay, that is all. Next up is either Miner's Massacre or The Wraith. Don't know much about either one, so it could be a mixed bag. See ya!

Rabid Grannies

So, this one's a movie I originally saw years ago...thus, I barely remember it. It's a weird, gory comedy called Rabid Grannies, and the title more or less explains itself. So, sit back, enjoy, and get ready for messy SPOILERS!

The opening scene concerns a pale, nervous priest asking a superior for permission to attend a family gathering. The kooky title appears, then we meet the family as they arrive at a country estate for the gathering. Errr, well some of them get as far as a pub, I guess. Oh, and the grannies sniff a lot of cheese. And pray. Perhaps we should all pray that we survive this one...

Then we meet a nervous young servant named Alice/Ally. The immense, overbearing  head cook demands that Ally help her pluck some birds for the dinner. As she grills the helpless younger servant for gossip from town, feathers go flying every which way. Man, it sucks to be a bird in the countryside, huh?

Up next is an obese man and his lean wife. I assume that this is the Bizarro-world's version of Jack Sprat and his spouse. I haven't caught wind of their names yet, so he's now Jack Fatt, and his wife is now Virginia Slim. It's times like these, where I can't decide whether I love this crap or hate it.

Anyway, onto an even more anonymous family at a gas station. The bratty boy and girl in the back seat are fighting over a box of cookies, and their mother is quickly losing control of the situation. After their father finishes pumping the gas, he gets in the driver's seat, grabs the cookie package from his children, and shoves the rest of the cookies in his own mouth. Awesome. Okay kids, fight over a bottle of rat poison next!

There's a brief scene between an unidentified (*sighhhhh*) weapons manufacturer and his assistant Michael, then we see a spinster, dressed all in black, and riding a bike. Just as I'm about to blow my top over her not having a name either, a younger guy speeding down the road recognizes her as a relative named Bertha. Being an ass, he runs her bicycle off of the road.

We see Ally in a maid's outfit, trying to get the guest bedrooms ready for the family reunion. The larger servant just watches her do all of the work. Is it too early to start wanting to see some of these folks dead? Most of the characters we've seen thus far are major ass-hats.

Now we meet a pair of lesbians who work together at the same magazine. They agree to keep their relationship a secret from the Grannies, who are far more conservative than the rest of the clan. Then we're dropped back into the mansion, where a servant named Radu is assuring a matronly-looking woman that everything is ready for the guests.

Most of them arrive at the same time, and poor Radu is forced to lug around their bags from the ground floor to the bedrooms. Jack Fatt is close behind him, with both of his beefy paws shoved into his pockets while he acts pompous in front of Virginia Slim and the other relatives. His death better be a good one!

Radu then leads the rest to their rooms, and everyone unpacks and prepares for dinner. I'd describe the 2 brief scenes that occur between guests before the dinner, but what's the point? Until these generic stereotypical people are mentioned by name, it's all meaningless.

Anyway...the dinner scene. Alice and Radu serve each guest their own lobster, and the alcohol begins to  loosen some of the guests up as well. The old weapons dealer is named Harvey(...1 down...), and he doesn't take it well when he is criticized for what he does for a living. The woman doing the complaining is Heather(2 down! Yay!), and one of the not-yet-rabid title characters takes her side.

Then the twitchy priest, Percival(3 characters named in less than a minute!Let's party!!) is drawn into the debate. Then there's another guest at the front door, so Alice is ordered to see who it is. She afraid of the dark, but no one gives her a choice in the matter. She trudges outside, and begins the endless hike to the front gate, which looks like it involves changing time zones several times. Let's all chip in, and buy Alice a golf cart!

Alice trudges out into the cold, dark air, and finds a woman outside the front gate who looks exactly like Frau Blucher(*horses screaming*). She stares straight ahead like a zombie, and repeatedly demands that Alice needs to open the gate. She then somehow opens the gate herself, and gives Alice a mysterious package, making the young servant promise to give the gift to the elderly birthday girls as soon as possible. Alice quickly heads back to the estate, and tells her "boss" everything that happened.

In the dining room, Jack Fatt's wife reveals that their marriage is pretty much a sham, then one of the grannies distracts everyone with the strange gift that was just delivered. Mousy Bertha gets the old biddies excited for opening birthday presents, and Radu is sent out to gather the rest of the gifts. For some reason, they decide to save the gift that got them all worked up in the first place for last.

Then, they finally open the envelope that came with the package. It contains a letter from someone named Christopher, who apparently is the black sheep of the family. His letter promises that the gift he sent was heartfelt, and that it will be memorable.

Just the mention of his name causes a furious uproar among the party guests. The young playboy, Gilbert(I'm guessing his name, using the cast list from IMDB, and eliminating the names we definitely know thus far...), reveals that Christopher was shunned by the family for being a practicing Satanist. He even served prison time, for allegedly desecrating a graveyard for one of his mysterious rituals.

Anyway, the package is opened. It contains a creepy-looking carved box, but the birthday cake is brought to the table before we can see what the box contained. The candles are blown out, then a song is sung, and no one seems to notice a weird smoke floating out of the creepy box.

Harvey makes a toast, and it appears that the 2 old ladies drink up the mystery smoke, which collected in their glasses. At the same time, the servants are separated. As the dinner guests start up a playful chant, asking Radu to bring them a knife for the cake, no one seems to realize that the old women are slumped back in their chairs, undergoing some kind of transformation. Underneath the table, their hands are becoming razor-sharp claws, and their faces begin to tear apart and become monstrous.

One of the Rabid Grannies stretches an arm out like a tentacle, and impales the large guy's wife. Screaming, the rest of the party leap away from the table to escape, just as Alice comes in with a knife for the cake. One Rabid Granny sends her crashing through a window, where she slams into the hood of a car, and seemingly dies.

Percy tries to get upstairs by crawling, then finally figures out how to run. The last 2 servants are just sitting in the kitchen, calmly sipping at bowls of soup and scarfing down bread. One of the demons howls, and the old lady stops eating long enough to decide that it sounds like a bad case of indigestion.

Heather, Jack Fatt's wife(name!!), and one of the older men lock themselves in an upstairs room, just as Percy bangs on the door. He begs them to let him in, but none of them are certain it's even him out in the hall. It actually is him, and they let him in after a ridiculous amount of time has passed.

In another room, a weepy Bertha listens as Jack Fatt claims that the transformation and the resulting deaths were hallucinations. He leaves the room to prove it, and a scuffle is heard. When he comes back in, scratched up and shaken, he admits that the rabid grannies are authentic.

One of the rabid grannies then stalks What's-Her-Face and Gilbert. She leaps through a painting to scare them, then shows off her Freddy Krueger-looking fingernails. Off they go running! One, two...Grannie's after you...

They get down into a water-filled tunnel, and the rabid granny ambushes them a second time. This leads to an outdoor chase, and the couple trying to get away in a car that won't start. They get the engine to turn, but the evil granny breaks into the car, slaughters Gilbert, then kills his "girlfriend" by running her over right after she exits the vehicle.

The little girl is now named Susie. Her mother has just now realized that she excused herself to use the bathroom before the attack began. Uh, anyone want to volunteer to venture out and find her? Yeah, me neither.

As luck would have it, Susie just now returns, calling out for her Mommy. A disembodied voice lures her further down the corridor. Susie finds a rabid granny in a dusty, dark toyroom, and is gullible enough to sit on the lap of the monster.

Oh, and Susie's mother is Helen.

Helen and the others in the room leave to rescue the little girl, and Percy chickens out. They find Susie with the possessed grannies, and she appears to be the main course of a feast they're having. The rescue is abandoned, and the group returns to their room, where I discover that Gilbert was actually Susie's brother, not the road hog. He is now a demon too, and he bites his mother's fingers off of one hand.

Rachel and the real Gilbert(confused yet? I am!) lock themselves away, and the rest of the now-possessed family taunt and frighten them. Then Percy's faith is tested by John, the father of Susie and Gilbert.
John then runs out to join the larger group,who squabble over what to do next.

They venture out into the kitchen. The large servant is dead, and Radu is curled up in a corner, crying and unable to work up the courage to escape. Then Fatboy gets stuck in a tunnel, and is discovered by the rabid grannies. They eat him right there, and the one who tried to help him out, Harvey, returns to face down the crazed killers.

Harvey grabs a powerful shotgun, and hunts for the rabid grannies. After shooting several rounds at one of the grannies, Harvey uses the weapon to club her several times as well. One down, one to go...maybe?

If only the second monster went down so easily as the first! The other possessed woman marches in, wearing a suit of armor. The ammunition bounces off of the armor, and she attacks Harvey with a sharp blade, chopping pieces of him apart.

Radu tries to escape, and slips on some slippery entrails. The resulting fall cuts his face apart. Then Percy is cornered by the monster grannies. They yell at him until they convince him that suicide will save him from further torment. Uh, doesn't his religious training contradict that?

Bertha finds Percy, and screams at the possessed grannies. Then she convinces Helen and Gilbert to let her join them. I swear, these "Let me in!" scenes are 95% of the entire script. Then Bertha destroys the box that started the whole curse, and that seems to destroy the rabid grannies.

During the investigation and the aftermath of the attack, it's revealed that Bertha became possessed, and she kills a cab driver. THE END.

What a terrible waste of 90 minutes. Nothing more to say. 0 out of 5. Anything I see beyond this has got to be better than this film. See you next time.

What?

Oh, okay fine...and what did I "learn" from viewing Rabid Grannies?

-A good writer mentions who his characters are early in a story, especially when there are a billion to keep track of in that story.

-A massacre can actually be dull.

-"Rabid Grannies" are actually "Possessed Aunties"...get it right, movie!

Okay, I'm out! Later...

Body Parts

This week's movie was supposed to be last week's movie, but the DVD was cracked. Anyway, it's called Body Parts, and stars Jeff Fahey. I saw it when it first came out, but remember very little about the specifics, so we'll have to see if it's as good as I don't remember it.  SPOILER zone up ahead!

The movie begins by showing criminal psychiatrist Bill having a session with a violent inmate named Ray. It seems that Ray attacked another inmate that week, and is in prison for murdering his signifcant other. When Bill asks him why he attacked them, Ray bluntly admits that he simply likes killing people. Gosh, I hope he's the hero...

Bill goes home at the end of the day, to a young, hot Kim Delaney. Hubba. She plays his wife, Karen, and their first scene together involves them having a melodramatic chat about whether or not he's any good as a shrink. Yeesh.

The next morning, Bill is stuck in traffic, talking on a huge phone(Early 1990's gadgets, aren't they a hoot?) about all of the activities on his schedue. While distracted, he nearly gets wiped out by another vehicle, only to have a truck plow into his car, hurtling it around the road like a pinball. Imagine what would've happened if texting had been invented by then!

At the the hospital, Karen  anxiously wait to hear any news about his condition. She meets his surgeon, Dr. Webb, and learns that Bill's arm had to be amputated, all the way up to the shoulder. While Karen reels in shock, Webb also informs her that she can replace his arm with a donor arm, but that the surgery must be done immediately for the best chance of success. Karen hesitates, but eventually signs the conent forms.

Bill is brought into an operating room, and appears to be having the best trip-out since Woodstock. He sees the donor on an operating table across the room, surrounded by armed police officers wearing scrubs, gloves and surgical masks. Dr. Webb comes over to reassure Bill that beverything will work out, then she goes to the other stretcher to begin sawing off the donor's arm. As Bill is given anesthesia and begins to nod off, he sees that Dr. Webb didn't start by taking the arm, but that she decapitated the patient instead. If Bill wakes up with one arm and 2 heads, I'm giving this movie an automatic 10 out of 10 and turning it off right then and there!

Bill wakes up with just his one head, alas. His new arm is being elevated by some kind of sling and pulley. Both Karen and Webb are there when he wakes up, but he doesn't seem to really acknowledge either one of them. Besides, he has a breathing tube taped over his mouth, so he can't exactly respond to them even if he wanted to.

Later, looking more like himself again, Bill gets his first good look at the arm with all of the bandages off. it's pretty cringe-worthy. Then the surgeon asks him if he can move his new arm at all, and he manages to makes it twitch up and down for a few seconds. Webb seems impressed.

At physical therapy, Bill tries to lift a small weight. He manages to bend his arm up twice, then needs a rest. While he's just standing there, the arm suddenly shoots forward with the weight, then down again. The physical therapist looks impressed, but Bill just looks frightened. After that incident, his new arm seems to get much stronger, and soon, Bill is exercising on every machine like a powerhouse.

When the day comes for him to finally check out and go home, he thanks Webb for performing the miraculous surgery. As Bill and his family leave the hospital, a throng of reporters are waiting outside to ask him about the procedure. He humbly suggests that they should focus their microphones and cameras on Dr. Webb, since she was the surgeon who gave him the new arm.

When he gets home, Bill sits the kids down, and fills them in(sort of) on what happened. He then shows them his new arm, in all of its' Frankenstein-y glory. After that awkward moment passes, they all go outside to play in the front yard.

Later that night, Bill watches his hand as it caresses Karen, and they wind up having their Best Sex Ever. It must have been historic, because the next morning finds them making out as he heads out to his car. The kids just laugh like rabid chipmunks on an acid trip.

It's revealed that Bill now teaches instead of meeting dangerous lunatics in prison. Or maybe he does both these days. His class is packed, and the lecture is about what motivates a criminal to perform acts of violence. Twice during his lecture, Bill has brief visions of injuries and violence, and many students notice these lapses.

At home he cuts himself shaving, and swears up a storm in front of his wife and daughter. Then he has another session with Ray, the unapologetic killer. Ray mentions seeing the news about Bill on television, and observes that he looks disturbed and tired.

Bill tells Ray to trust him, and extends his new arm out to the convict. Ray sees a tattoo on the donor arm, freaks out, and tells the shrink that the specific tattoo he has is only worn by prisoners on death row. Then he just yells and screams for help until the guards come back to escort him to his cell.

Bill leaves the prison to pay a visit to the police department, where he heads to the Criminal Records division. He has a friend there run a fingerprint scan on his donor arm, only to discover that it once belonged to Charles Fletcher, a criminal who committed multiple murders, larceny, you name it. The day he was executed matches up with the day a "donor arm"became available.

Bill lies awake in bed that night, having more and more visions of violence. His wife finds him the next morning sitting up in bed, smoking and nervous. She tries to get him to talk about it, and they decide that he needs to see Dr. Webb again.

Dr. Webb tells Bill that it's silly to think that the arm is controlled by anyone else but him, and she suggests that he should talk to a fellow shrink. He discreetly tails her to the Physical Therapy area, and finds a file listing all of the patients who were given implants from the executed criminal.

He visits the apartment of Remo, an artist who was given the killer's other arm. Remo sees the visions too, and paints them on his canvases for a tidy profit. He tells Bill that the violent pictures have made his career flourish, and that his paintings are selling almost faster than he can paint them. When Bill insists that the killer's influence on his work is dangerous, Remo kicks him out.

Bill returns home, and starts writing down everything in his study. Karen walks in to remind him that they're going to a party for one of his colleagues, and scares the ever-lovin' crap out of her husband. As he yells at her, she retorts that he's benn Hell to live with lately, and she walks away.  They should've called this Body Parts: Waiting for Something to Happen.

Bill visits the cop who arrested Fletcher, and learns that Dr. Webb's transplants were very experimental and hush-hush. She even bribed people to get the prisoner into the OR faster than normal. Also, it turns out that the cop was one of the armed men Bill saw surrounding the other stretcher before his procedure.

A very weary and frightened Bill heads home, where his son surprises him by leaping on him from out of nowhere. They wrestle on the floor for awhile, until the son climbs onto the couch and body-slams his dad right in the new arm. Bill violently flings thge boy across the room, and Karen sees the whole thing. As Bill continues to writhe around on the floor, his wife tells him never to lay a hand on the children again.

Bill does more investigating in the morning, and finds another body part recipient, a young jock named Mark. Mark was given a new leg,and suddenly, his basketball skills are amazing.  maybe it's just me, but everyone else besides Bill seems to be enjoying success with the new transplants. Maybe his arm got all the crazy in it?

Bill follows Mark from his car, and sees the young man suddenly begin to drive in an erratic manner in a crowded intersection, So, it appears that the leg also has a will of its own. Nice of the movie to tell me that right after I speculated that the posession angle was a dud.

Anyway, Mark pulls his car over to calm himself down, and Bill approaches him. They discuss the transplants, and Mark admits that he doesn't always seem to be in contol of his new legs. Bill hands Mark his business card, then drives home for the night.

As they sleep in bed together, Bill's hand starts to touch Karen while Bill sleeps. When the fingers squeeze around her neck, Karen wakes up and screams. Bill is forced to move out, and he tells the kids that he'll return when he's no longer a danger to them. He checks himself into a seedy motel, and begins to hang out with the other transplant patients at a local bar.

As the 3 drunk men talk about whether or not the limbs could contain evil DNA, another patron tries to eavesdrop on them. He demands that Bill show him the hand, and a bar fight breaks out. It's pure chaos. And still, no body count.

After the fight ends, Mark Draper buys a bag of groceries and goes straight to his apartment. His new legs seem unusually week, and he barely makes it inside. He places a call to Bill, but is attacked early into the chat. Bill arrives too late to save the young athlete, and finds the body violently torn up, with the lower half torn off in pieces. Meaty, chunky pieces.

Bill calls the cops, and the lead detective is the same one who apprehended Fletcher. He finds it extremely odd that Bill would be at th scene of such a gory crime, and tells him that he'll need to come in for questioning. I imagine that Bill says yes, because the scene abruptly ends there.

We next see red smears flying onto a plastic sheet. Oh, it's just Remo, getting his Jackson Pollock vibe going on strong. As he admires his latest gory masterpiece, Remo senses that someone may be in the apartment with him. He does a search, but finds no one.

As Remo returns to painting, a figure leaps out at him, and pushes him out of the nearest window. Remo clings to the window, but the killer tears his new arm right out its' socket, sending Remo falling to the street below. In slo-mo, of course. Damn, I was hoping that Brad Dourif would have more to do.

A squad car pulls up to the building as Remo is plummeting to his death, and his body crashes through the windsahield. On the bright saide, that pretty much clears Bill of the murder, as he was with the cops at the other crime scene. That probably doesn't help Remo, though.

The detective tells Bill that he plans to be his personal bodyguard until the killer is caught. Bill doesn't seem to be very confident, but goes along with the idea anyway. Oh, and they're being tailed by Dr. Webb and one of her colleagues. I need a scorecard or some kind of chart just to untangle  this  mess of a plot...

Bill and his "bodyguard" pull up to a stoplight, and neither one sees a car approaching theirs. It pulls up next to them, and the driver is FLETCHER??? Well, I guess that somebody got a head transplant after all, as stupid as that sounds. Fletcher slap a handcuff onto Bill's wrist, and they're forced to speed along with the killer so that Bill's new arm isn't wrenched out of its' socket.

They drive like maniacs, struggling to avoid concrete barriers, orange construction barriers, other vehicles...Hell, at one point Bill even climbs through the car window to fight with the psychopath. In the end, Bill just grabs the detective's gun, and shoots the chain that links the handcuffs together.

They watch the killer speed off, and Bill decides to steal the police car and chase the killer down, leaving the detective looking befuddled by the side of the road. The killer pulls his car over when he hears the police siren in the distance, and begins gathering up the various limbs he's collected so far. At this point, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be scared or laughing, but I'm going with laughter. This movie's so ridiculous, I can't help myself.

As soon as the killer escapes with the limbs, the car he crashed explodes. Somehow Dr. Webb finds him, and she seems to want to reattach all of the limbs to one body again. I'm willing to bet that this movie is epic when you're high. I'm still laughing, though.

Bill takes a time-out to write a farewell letter to Karen. In it, he tries to apologize for his recent erratic behaviour, and lets her know that he still loves her and the kids. Then he mails it, and walks the rest of the way to the hospital.

In the operating room, Bill sees all of the various body parts in a tank, and some are moving and twitching. Dr. Webb arrives, and asks him to give the arm back. When Bill refuses, she makes a silly speech about how easy it is to do transplants now, even human heads. Bill still says no, so Fletcher sneaks up behind him, and knocks Bill out. Why the heck would Dr. Webb side with the killer?

When he wakes up, he's on the operating table, and Webb is just about ready to sever the arm again. Bill sits up and screams, right before delivering a knockout punch to the surgeon. Fletcher enters the room as Bill struggles with the anesthesiologist, and the killer accidentally fires his shotgun at the wrong person, blowing the medical professional's head off his shoulders.

Then Bill and Fletcher fight over the shotgun, and Bill nearly gets shot in the face during the struggle. He finally gets the, uh, upper hand, and manages to snap Fletcher's neck. The killer crumples to a heap on the floor, and Bill uses the hospital phone to call the police. He tells his detective friend that he killed Fletcher, only to have Fletcher raise the gun one last time, to shoot Dr. Webb. Bill kills him yet again.

Bill writes in his journal that, after Fletcher died, the arm never had any weird impulswes again, and the visions stopped. He and his wife sit under a tree in a park while the credits roll. THE END

What a mixed bag! Great gore, good actors...but the silliest plot and dialogue I've seen in a long time. Ande why so few victims? No wonder I couldn't remember the details from seeing it before--it was a goofball movie! Oh, and let me know if anyone ever watches it while high...I have a strong feeling that it gets much better if you do. Middle of the road this week: 3 killer trees out of 5.

And what did I learn after watching Body Parts?

-Transplants are a piece of cake! Even head transplants.

-When playing with your kids, throwing them into walls across the room is a no-no.

-The best way to tell if something is wrong with your new arm transplant? It makes love to your wife better than you do.

Later this week, I'll be torturing my eyeballs with I'll Always Know What You Did 
Last Summer. I hope the movie is shorter than the title! See ya then...

Happy Hell Night

So, this time around, I'm getting a serious deja vu vibe.The movie, Happy Hell Night, sounds very similar to another movie I saw for this blog, Prom Night 4: Deliver Us From Evil. Both films involve a mental patient going after a quartet of teens, and both mental patients happen to be evil holy men. Weird, huh? Get ready for plenty of SPOILERS, and let's see if this one's an original or not....

The movie begins on your typical dark and stormy night, inside an insane asylum. A guy who looks like the missing link is peering out of his cell through some bars, as a pretty female walks down the middle of the hospital corridor. She peeks in on the neanderthal, and he screams at her. I guess they aren't a couple.

As she runs down the hallway, we see several shots of random doors, which makes all the sense in the world. Hell, it's probably the same door, shot at different angles. Anyway, she stops and meets a co-worker, an angry black guy with a flashlight. He tells her about a patient that most of the staff avoid like the plague, then orders her to look through the window at him.

She nervously complies, then breaks down in hysterics. The black guy glances inside the room, and sees a pretty big insect crawling on the hand of the patient. Through their conversation, the coworkers reveal that the patient has been institutionalized for the past 25 years, and has been mostly catatonic during that time.

That leads to a dreaded flashback, specifically to 25 years ago. A young man(played by Sam Rockwell) holding a sharpened crucifix wakes up a priest, begging for his help. Then a perky deejay is heard playing a song dedicated to a group of fraternity and sorority pledges. Then we get back to the priest, who now has a flashlight, and is looking for....I don't know, some sort of plot? A coherent script?

The priest sees a pentagram drawn on a wall during his exploration, and on the floor beneath it are a few dismembered corpses. As the frightened priest continues to use his flashlight to look around, he finds a bald, albino priest staring at him, and showing that his hands are drenched in blood.

The albino priest, Father Malius, says something that sounds like "No teeth", and the other priest runs outside. And that ends the incredibly uninformative flashback. Thanks, movie...that really helped to clear things up.

Then we see a guy in a bandanna invite a girl to a fraternity Halloween party. It's now 1991, at a place known as Winfield College. Anyway, the guy explains that the party is for "Halloween Hell Night", which probably would have made a better title for this thing.

Bandanna Guy meets up with Denim Outfit Guy, in what is easily the worst superhero league EVER! Denim guy is named Rob, and he apparently wants the other guy, Jay, to let him pledge his fraternity. Jay doesn't want to let him, but eventually agrees to let him come to the party to prove himself to the other frat brothers. Then Jay gets Rob to buy him a beer.

At a local hangout, 2 women are having a discussion about something that sounds serious, but neither actress seems to know how to make a "serious" face. While they work on their acting techniques, 2 guys playing darts are shouting back and forth to each other about how one guy's brother, Sonny, is supposed to be arriving back in town soon.

The guys ask the bartender to turn on the television, and a guy who looks like Weird Al is "reporting" on the Hell Night festivities. The bar is a hangout for the fraternity that was mentioned earlier, and Sonny seems to be the one person they want at their stupid-sounding party.

The girls leave, and the guys all discuss what sort of initiation activity they want to make Sonny perform that night. The general consensus seems to be that they want to have Sonny ride his motorcycle around the campus, sans clothes.

Then Barry, the "reporter" from TV, walks in and announces that he's thought up the best possible Halloween stunt to win the Hell Night competition. He reads a newspaper clipping about the murders that happened in 1966, and proposes that they have their pledges spend the night at the asylum where the albino killer is reportedly still locked up. Barry convinces the frat boys that, if one of the pledges can take a picture of the killer priest, then the frat is a shoo-in to win the contest.

At a motel one of the women with the hard-to-control facial expressions, Liz, meets up with the Sonny, who just pulled in on his bike. It seems that Liz and Sonny were having a clandestine relationship, even while Liz was seeing his brother. Yeesh. For a slasher film, this sure seems more like something out of a soap opera.

The sheriff arrives at the frat house, which looks like a hotel. He asks 2 of them if they've seen someone named Ned. It figures that a character with an actual name in this thing isn't even onscreen. Thanks for the help, movie.

Anyway, Ned's in trouble for stealing the files relating to the murder spree. Wait, wasn't that guy named Barry? Is he Ned now, or is Ned a new character? You know, watching a moronic movie like this shouldn't be this difficult. I tried Wikipedia for a better plot synopsis and character list, but there isn't one. Okay, new rule: after this week, any movie without a subtitles option or a webpage with info like the cast/character names is going back to Netflix unfinished. I shouldn't have to jump through hoops to simply be able to tell who's who in a movie like this.

Okay, done venting. The sheriff takes a huge icepick off of a trophy wall, then advises the frat boys to re-think pulling any crazy pranks this year. Then one of the guys, Eric, gets a call from his father. Through their chat, it is revealed that Eric is Sonny's brother. So this guy is the one that Liz has been cheating on...Nice.

Darren McGavin plays Eric and Sonny's dad. He calls Eric, and asks him for details about Hell Night. Eric doesn't reveal anything, but when he asks his father if he knew anything about the old murders, dear ol' dad has a major flashback. Or he crapped himself.

He was apparently the Sam Rockwell character seen during the flashback. Dad tells Eric that he'll call him right back, then places a call to arrange for a driver to pick him up. Then the scene just wheezes to a stop.

Okay, so the guy I thought was named Barry is named Ned BARA. Glad that got cleared up. The driver, Eric, sees his brother's bike at the motel, and decides to surprise him with a visit. He sees Liz and Sonny making the beast with two backs through a motel window, and Liz sees him as well. As usual, nothing else happens, the scene just cuts off abruptly at that point. They should have called this Happy Nothing Ever Goes Anywhere Interesting Night.

So that random event somehow brings us to "STV", the dorky little studio where Ned Bara does his annoyingly expositional broadcasts. Nothing happens, of course...nother ever does. Instead, we get whisked away to the Hell Night party, in full, disinterested swing. Nerdy Ned arrives, Sonny walks in. He starts to drink a beer, until Eric confronts him about Liz, then punches Sonny in the face.

After the punch is delivered, Eric announces that Sonny needs to break into the asylum to get a picture of our favorite sunlight-challenged monk, Malius. He brings along a guy named Ralph, who seems like he's there just to be a clumsy, loud oaf as they sneak around.

They find a door that leads to a security station, where a bored-looking nurse has obviously been watching the movie along with us. A patient wanders in, and starts rambling about a television, so the nurse makes him bend over in front of her TV(!), then shoves a syringe into his butt cheek. As the patient drifts off to La-La Land, Sonny and Ralph sneak into the main hall of the psych ward.

They wander around for a bit, until they find themselves in a section that looks like it belongs in a sewer tunnel in the 18th century. Sonny uses a match to see by, which is like fighting a fire with a drop of water. Then they find a door marked "AA 19", and has a heavy crucifix shoved through the latch to bar it from being opened. Dumb and Dumbest, of course, remove the cross from the locking mechanism. Idiots.

They hear a noise behind them then, and both turn around to look. When they turn back to the door, Brother Malius waves a hand at them that looks like it belongs to E.T. Then the boneheads open the door to enter the cell. As Sonny checks to make sure the nurse is still distracted(she's actually asleep now...), Ralph enters the cell to take the picture.

Ralph then starts screaming when he sees the face of the monk, so Sonny goes back in to quiet him down. He finds Ralph on the floor, minus his right hand. Malius stares at Sonny, then says something that sounds like, "No pity."

Then we switch over to The Bobbsey Twins, Liz and Whats-Her-Face. They almost run over another priest(how many different priests and monks live in this town???), and they talk about how creepy it is that he lives next to a cemetery. Boy, I sure am glad that they interrupted a key scene in the movie to tell me that!

After the crazy holy man presumably finishes killing Ralph and Sonny, he decides to kill the sleeping nurse next. He turns up the volume on her stupid wrestling/boxing/whatever show, then stabs her through the hand when she reaches for the remote. While she screams like a ninny, Malius slasher her throat, then says, "No TV."

Somehow Sonny got away, because we see him racing on his motorcycle to warn the frat brothers. Then he does what any person who has a maniacal monk after him does...he pulls over, gets off the bike, and decides to collect his thoughts. A female cop finds him, and asks him why he stopped. Sonny makes up something about a fight with his girlfriend, and the cop decides to ask for his license.

Back at the party, Liz finds out where they sent Sonny, then abandons her friend to go find him. Eric then hooks up with a cute brunette at the party who looks a bit like Sarah Sidle on CSI. Liz pays a visit to yet another priest, named Father Cain. When she tells him about Sonny's "assignment", the elderly man goes apeshit. He tells her to hide, then he has a flashback, revealing that he was the young priest who Eric's father woke up on the night of the original killing spree.

Father Cain goes to the church to pray, then sees the crucifixion statue above the altar come to life. Jesus writhes and moans on the cross until he forces his hands free of the nails, then his body falls to the floor of the church, shattering. Uhhhhh.....okay....

Ned is still watching porn at the frat house, which is a completely appropriate way to follow the previous scene, I'm sure. Ned hears someone in the hall, but no one appears when he calls out, so he returns to his viewing.

Sonny finally gets his license back, and decides to continue to the fraternity. Meanwhile, A bondage chick seduces a student named Jake, while Eric finishes literally screwing around. Then bondage chick winds up handcuffed to a bed, Sonny continues to race home, and one of Ned's cameras is discovered.

As Ned watches a woman taking a shower on one of the cams, Eric finishes having sex. I'm positive now that this girl is Jorja Fox from CSI, but damn, she sure looks young in this. And hot.

The second that he leaves, she starts to quickly get dressed. Then the handcuffed woman hears someone, and assumes that it must be Jake. Jorja Fox leaves a note with her phone number on it, then rushes out to her car. She gets into her car, where Malius drives a pick axe through the roof, right into her skull. He then says something that sounds like, "No botching." Would it have killed the casting director to look for an actor who could speak clearly?

Malius shows up at the shower-girl's room, but her bathroom mirror is cracked, so she thinks that the albino is just her boyfriend, possibly wearing a mask. He actually manages to speak clearly, says, "No sex!", then murders her too.

Ned, never the sharpest knife in the drawer, somehow misses seeing the girl in the shower get killed. The power goes out, so Ned gets up to see what the problem might be. If Ned lives, I'll lose all faith in humanity.

Bondage girl sees the albino monk--actually SEES him!--and still doesn't think that anything might be wrong. Did they all take their stupid pills that day? She thinks he might be Jake for some reason, but when he stabs her through the foot, she guesses that he might not be a good guy after all. Her screams are heard by everyone in the house, but no one comes to her aid. Of course. Malius then holds up her bloody earring and says something that sounds like, "No war." More? Whore? Bore? Beats the shit out of me.

Liz returns, and finds the main floor in shambles. She then discovers her first corpse, and runs away shrieking. At the same time, Darren McGavin enters the church, and finds Father Cain up on the cross. Then Liz is seen following a trail of sticky gore and blood, which ends at a blood-filled sink, and several body parts thrown into some kind of netting.

She finds someone alive, then kills him with her voice. Poor fella. Ned is assaulted by Sonny, who informs him that Ralph was also killed. Ned wriggles out of his grasp, and tells Sonny that he needs to get the power back on before the big lug can finish choking him to death.

When the power is restored, both men see the killer on the monitor. Sonny rushes off to rescue Liz, after warning Ned not to leave the building. Liz, of course, has already come face-to-face with Malius, but she ran away before he could get her. Then she is found by Eric, who tries to calm her down. Sonny walks in as they are hugging, shoves the picture of Malius at his brother, then informs him that Ralph was murdered.

Ned interrupts to call in on a walkie-talkie that he sees someone moving around on the floor above them on his monitor, so they decide to get in gear. They find "Susan"(hey, at least she now has a freakin' name!) in the attic, and tell Ned to continue watching the monitor to find more survivors. Despite his whiny grumbling, Ned stays where he is and complies.

Liz then complains that Sue is holding onto her hand too tightly, before she sees that Sue in not even next to her. Somehow Sue got to a rocking chair, where Malius beheaded her, all without the other 3 hearing or seeing a single thing. Yeah, riiiiiiiiiight. The trio scurry back downstairs, so that Ned can guide them out of the house.

Ned sees the crazy killer walking the halls, but when he warns them, nothing is there. They step into another room, where a mannequin nearly frightens them to death. Then Ned claims that he sees someone in the room with them. Of course, they assume that he sees the dummy, but Malius pops up behind the mannequin, stabs Sonny in the hand, then grabs Liz.

Somehow, Malius gets propelled through a window and someone off to the side pushes Liz to safety. Now, since the two brothers were together looking at Sonny's hand, I have no idea how any of that happened. Who pushed Liz? Malius is seen on the ground below, apparently dead. Then Darren McGavin shows up, to explain the entire plot.

Apparently, when he was young, Dad made a satanic deal for great wealth, power, and happiness. As he explains how it all went down, Ned decides to start a live recording, and turns on the video equipment. As he begins to speak to his "audience", Malius drives the pick into his eye, then says, "No STV."

Then dad says that Malius was possessed by a demon, which is why he went on his killing spree back in the 1960's. As the story wraps up, Malius shoves the pick through the door, into the back of their father, who dies in such a dramatic way, it would make Bill Shatner blush. They cover him with a sheet, then start the demonic ritual again, in an attempt to exorcise the demon from Malius.

As they prepare to escape through the window, Darren McGavin's hand is seen trying to reach up toward them. Sonny, the last to exit, turns and realizes that his father's body is missing. He goes deeper into the house to find his father, which makes him the dumbest character by default.

He eventually sees a figure in a nother room, moving under a sheet, with the pick axe on top. Sonny slowly picks up the weapon, then plunges the blade into the body under the blanket. The body sits up, revealing that it's Dad, who has now been stabbed in both the front AND back. Matching scars, nice.

Then Eric and Liz begin the ritual to send the demon back to Hell. Sonny gets caught up in a snare, where he is dangling by his ankle upside-down, as Malius sees him from a window. Malius tries to kill Sonny with his pick axe, but then the possessed priest starts to feel his essence being ripped apart.

Eric and Liz hear a howl of pain, and Eric leaves the protective circle they drew on the floor to check on his brother. Malius, in the meantime, falls backward on a ladder(picture the same scene in Animal House, with Belushi watching the girls undress), while Sonny cuts the rope with his knife. Oh, and Eric falls in a graveyard, where the possessed monk finds him.

Liz hears the screams get closer, only to find Malius behind her, holding Eric by his side with a long, spear-like weapon. Liz turns back to the altar to resume the ritual, but then Eric vanishes. When the scared girl tries to start up the ritual yet again, Malius creeps up behind her and holds a knife to her throat.

Sonny saves the day on his motorcycle, and knocks Malius to the floor, where he gets caught in a bear trap. With Sonny's help, Liz finds Eric, and all 3 escape to the graveyard. Then Liz and Sonny go back to the altar to finish the spell, while Malius tries to reach a scalpel he spotted on the floor.

He must be a master at surgery, because when Liz and Sonny look back again, he's gone, minus his newly severed arm. The demonic holy man attacks Sonny, and now the 2 are handcuffed together. They grapple for a minute, then Sonny stabs Malius with the cross, and a blast of holy light breaks a hole in the ceiling. Another hole opens up under the priest, and he howls in pain again as he sinks into the ground.

Liz leaves the church as police and paramedics arrive, and sees them load up everyone in the ambulances. As she climbs into one to reassure Sonny that he's going to be fine, the driver turns out to be Malius, who says, "No problem..." THE END

Geez, what a stinker. A killer whose kill lines were mostly botched, a rather tame series of murders(although the statue that came to life was at least a surprise), and the few people who were recognizable were under-utilized. 2 killer trees out of 5for this one, and it still feels generous.

And what did I learn after seeing Happy Hell Night?

-Bald, albino priests are bad news.

-If you look like a cross between Weird Al and Jeff Foxworthy....you should die first in a slasher film.

-Darren McGavin is one tough hombre to kill, man.

Some of the movies I have coming up on my queue: Pieces, which I still need to finish watching for the blog; Cheerleader Camp, which looks like a cheesy good time; and Whisper, about a kid who compels people to hurt themselves, according to what folks have told me. Yay!

Oh, and Happy New Year!!!!

The Fear: Halloween Night

The Fear was a surprisingly watchable film: The antagonist was creepy; the characters were mostly likable; and the women were all pretty hot, which is always a plus. So, hoping for a good sequel, I moved The Fear: Halloween Night to the top of my rental queue. Was Morty just as scary the second time around? Read on to find out! (As always, MAJOR SPOILERS, as I ruin the whole movie for ya!)

In terms of plot, there's a lot of deja vu here. Both films deal with facing fears, and both have a protagonist who has a traumatic event in their past that bites them in the ass during the present. Also, both movies feature a creepy wooden statue-puppet, named Morty. But there are also differences.

As I mentioned, the story begins with a flashback: The main character, as a young boy, was travelling with his mother to a costume party on Halloween Night--he as a skeleton, and she as a witch--when she spots what appears to be a car accident. She pulls over to offer assistance, and sees a man murdering a woman with an axe. He chases our unlucky witch and proceeds to kill her in front of her son. As he turns the corpse over, he realizes that he just killed his own wife.

Distraught, the killer grabs his son, Michael, out of the car and shoves him in the trunk of his own vehicle. He then uses his wife's corpse as a speed bump and flees the scene. As the car speeds away, Michael grabs a glow-stick and uses it to see his surroundings, bringing him face-to-face with our favorite Indian mannequin, Morty. Sort of.

Okay, so I'm going to pause the movie here to vent a little. We're about 5 and a half minutes into the movie, and there's already a problem. The dummy is NOT Morty...or, at least, not the SAME Morty. He's played by a different actor in this one, and the 2 look nothing alike. Now, I have no problem with another actor assuming a role played originally by another person, but why not hire someone who at least RESEMBLES the first guy? Is this supposed to be a different Morty? How many ancient Indian puppet-statues named Morty could there be in the world???

So since the characters are all different, as is the house they keep Morty in, I'm just going to assume that there ARE 2 entirely different possessed Indian puppet-thingies named Morty. As Jamie Kennedy and David Arquette said in Scream 2, let's move on....

Well, apparently my rant took awhile, because it's now "20 Years Later", according to the movie. Michael is bringing his friends up to the family's house for a fear-themed Halloween party: Everybody invited has to wear a costume that represents their greatest fear. Guests in attendance include Chris, a horny Dane Cook wanna-be; Peg, Michael's girlfriend and Chris's sister, who resembles Anne Hathaway; Lisa Ann, a girl who feels that her looks get in the way of people taking her seriously; Jennifer, the "Velma" of the group; Ned, who looks like Harry Potter; Mams, Michael's grandmother played by Pamela Voorhees herself, Betsy Palmer; Crow, an American Indian friend of the family; Gramps, who is Michael's grandfather(lucky guess, huh?); oh, and Mitch and Trish, who arrive late.

Before they arrive at the home of Michael's grandparents, there's some small talk about the origins of Halloween, and a brief discussion about a local legend in Michael's hometown, Hackett...seems that several years earlier, there was a gruesome serial killer on the loose in the town, The Highwayman. Gee, I wonder if Michael knew him?

As introductions are being made, Mams decides to make Chris wet his pants by giving him the wrong directions to the john. I hope he poops in your kitchen sink, you bat! When Michael hangs up his jacket, he has a brief flashback of his mother getting struck in the face with the axe again. Oh, and as he reunites with grumpy Gramps, Michael spots a hilarious family photo of his father wielding his axe in mid-kill. Nice!

Up in the attic, Michael meets up with his childhood friend Crow, and the new Morty. At this point, we learn the reason for the party and its' theme: Crow is performing an ancient, sacred ritual designed to cast away everyone's fears and bring them cleansed souls. Morty will absorb their fears and then be set on fire, to symbolically eradicate evil, or something. Oh, and since Michael is "leading the ceremony", he has a Morty-mask he must wear. And Morty has a flask of raven's blood around his neck...as long as he wears it, the "evil's held". Whatever. Just get started already...Why is everyone still alive?!?

Chris and Peg come up to the attic to see what's keeping Michael so busy, and he introduces them both to Crow...and Morty. Chris behaves like an ass by mocking Crow's heritage and saying "Morty" about 300 times in a row. Oh, and as the rest become distracted by the arrival of the 2 late guests, Chris steals the flask-necklace from around Morty's neck. Good thing this isn't a horror film, or that might be a bad idea...oh yeah, this IS a horror flick! Guess they're boned, huh?

So at dinner Michael finally gets the ball rolling. He tells his friends about the ancient ritual...they, as a group must form a "fear circle", and dress as the fears to symbolically cast them off, or something. Blah blah blah. When they seem into it, Grumpaw storms out of the room to angrily clean the dishes. I swear, this guy was the ORIGINAL "Grumpy Old Man". After some horsing around and my impending coma from the lack of ANYTHING going on, Grumps drops some plates at the mention of The Highwayman. He cuts his hand, causing Lisa Ann to go into what a high school Drama Club student might do to show a fear of blood. She ain't no Meryl Streep.

As the others crack jokes, Michael admonishes the group for not taking the whole thing seriously, and takes a walk outside, clutching the Morty-mask the entire time. He comes to a clearing and staggers as more memories assault him. These traumatic memories eventually cause him to pass out. While he's out playing with his inner Morty, Trish decides to have a heart-to-heart with Peg about the tension she senses between her and Michael. See, Peg doesn't know that The Highwayman was also his dad, so she thinks Michael's fear about becoming his dad is a fear of commitment. Deep, huh?

Anyway, after Trish plays amateur shrink with Peg, Peg decides to go find Michael. She does eventually, crouched next to the grave of his father with his face in his hands. She begs him to talk about things with her, and he stands up, revealing that he's wearing the wooden mask. YIKES! Startled, Peg tells him it's not funny, and he responds that it wasn't meant to be.

In the most surprising twist so far(*YAWN*), Michael tells Peg almost everything about his troubled past: How he saw his dad kill his mom; watching his father become an alcoholic; and eventually how his dad committed suicide. He also reveals to her that he's been having night terrors, hallucinations, etc. Wake me up when something scary happens.

When Peg tries to show him compassion, he reacts badly. Michael tells her that no one can empathize with him if they haven't been through that kind of trauma themselves. He attacks his father's gravestone with a stick, and Peg leaves. As he follows her, blood starts pouring out of the gravestone. As we watch, Morty starts rocking in a chair on the porch, mostly due to the wind picking up. When more blood streams out of the grave, one of Morty's arms moves. Hmmmm....

Michael walks into the house just in time to referee a fight over pumpkin-carving. As pumpkin-guts go flying, he goes upstairs to speak to Peg about what happened between them by the grave. Instead of speaking, they begin a bout of passionate lovemaking. Ned passes by the door, hears them makin' whoopie, and runs downstairs to tell the others. Geez, it's like this script was written by 12-year-olds on Ritalin or something.

A loud crash makes the group rush upstairs again. They find Chris on the floor, mouth full of blood, with Morty on top of him. Even Michael and Peg rush out, still fully dressed. Dammit. As expected, Chris jumps up to scare the group. Crow examines Morty, and discovers that his arm is damaged, leading to an insincere apology from Chris. Crow and he exchange a few insults.

As Crow carries Morty away to repair the damage Chris caused, Michael and Peg start arguing about her brother and his lack of maturity. Chris decides to get involved in the discussion. A short scuffle ensues, followed by Peg accidentally being pushed down a staircase. Chris panics and rushes to her slumped body, only to have her sit up and mock him. Psyche! She even takes a bow, reveals that the whole argument was a ruse designed to prank Chris, and everyone claps. Well, almost everyone. Reminded of his mom's death yet again, Michael decides to go to the porch and sit in the same rocking chair Morty was in about 5 minutes earlier. When Peg joins him, he reveals that the whole scenario was a little too close to what happened to his mother. Still upset, he seeks out Crow.

Crow is repairing Morty. I love how, in these scenes, not one person, Crow included, has noticed that the sack of blood is no longer around Morty's neck. Anyway, Michael goes to the stables, and apologizes to Crow for fooling around, then tries to back out of the ceremony. Crow responds by showing Michael the mask he found in the cemetery. He also tells Michael that his father was both a good man, and a bad man, as all of us are. Deep, dude.

Crow assures him that he's as ready as he can be, before revealing his own greatest fear: horses. I sure hope he doesn't get killed in the stable while repairing Morty...Grumpy Grampy shows up to threaten Crow. I guess the ol' geezer just LIKES being a grouchy douche bag.

Mike's Mams tells him to fetch Grumplestiltskin for lunch. On the way to the barn, he hears the voice of his father calling out to him. The voice tells him that something's coming for him. As Mike has a fleeting vision of Crow being attacked, he faints again.

Crow FINALLY realizes something we knew ages ago...the blood-pouch is no longer around Morty's neck. He looks for it and finds some feathers on the floor. As he examines these feathers, a bale of hay swings toward him, knocking him through a stable door. Crow tries to get to his feet, but a horse traps him, while another horse uses a hoof to kill him..

Mikey wakes up in the hay. He finds blood on his hands and washes them off, right before Mams scares him half to death. She tells him to go back to his friends. Oh, and she's holding a broken plank of wood. hmmmm...

Trish finds Ned being a voyeur and flirts with him. She hints that she could go for a nice dip in the pool, and he reveals that water happens to be his phobia. They are briefly distracted by Peg, who is hauling a bag of trash around or something. She tells them that Mike is getting ready for the ritual. We then get treated to a scene involving Jennifer and I don't know, Chris(?) maybe, walking in the forest. They see a large white wolf, causing Jen to dart the other way, toot-sweet! Chris gets nervous about being lost in the woods and tries to take off after her.

Michael, meanwhile, is setting up a place for Morty to sit in the attic. After seating the mannequin, he puts on the Morty-mask again, and checks himself out in the mirror. To his shock and horror, he sees the mask transform him into Dear Ol' Dad. He pulls off the mask and smashes the mirror, then turns around and takes a swing at Morty too. He's like the George Foreman of fighting inanimate objects. Geez, the only skill less useful than that would be watching and spoiling cheesy horror flicks once or twice a week...

So now we switch over to Lisa Ann, the girl who feels that her looks get in the way of people taking her seriously. She's walking with some British guy whose name escapes me, and she reveals that her two biggest passions in life are religion and politics. Yeesh! The British guy goes along with it, and it's getting annoying not remembering his name yet.. Sure, I could look it up or something, but do I even care at this point? Nope. Unless someone says his name, I'll just call him Hugh Jazz. Anyway, Hugh tells Lisa that she has inner beauty as well as the only kind of beauty guys really care about, outer. Oh, and she asks him about his relationship with Trish, so I guess that makes him Mitch. THANK YOU, stupid movie.

Mitch and Lisa meet up with Jennifer and Chris at the edge of the woods, just in time to hear someone shrieking. They find Ned and Peg cornered by a huge, mutant snake. Ned cuts off Snakezilla's head, and it twitches for awhile, probably a happy-dance that it gets to exit this boring-as-hell movie. Somehow, during the scene, Trish showed up and managed to climb up a tree without anyone noticing. She begs Mitch to help her down, and his "help" consists of telling her to jump. He's afraid of heights, so he makes a dorky attempt to climb up one branch, then falls so he doesn't have to keep climbing. Trish gets down (rather easily, for someone who just 2seconds ago couldn't do it), and Peg announces that they should begin putting on their costumes for the ceremony.

After the "rescue", we see Mams in the kitchen, most likely making a stew out of all the camp counselors she killed in Friday the 13th. YUM! Peg rushes into the kitchen dressed as a clown, and practically gives her a heart attack. She tells Peg that she has a costume on as well, even though it looks like any normal black outfit. When Peg guesses it's a witch dress, Mams tells her that it represents "darkness", her greatest fear. As Peg sets the table for dinner, Jennifer comes downstairs wearing a box. She admits that her greatest fear is claustrophobia. The girls share a laugh over the costumes and find Ned in the kitchen with Mams, wearing a shark costume. He tells them that the movie Jaws traumatized him as a young child, and the fear stuck with him through the years. Chris walks in dressed in a sheet covered with words and question marks. His fear? Making decisions.

Ugh. This movie's giving me a headache. Can we just skip it this week? Whattaya mean, "NO"??? Okay, fine, but one of YOU readers are paying for the asylum I wind up in after I finish watching this thing.

Next, Lisa Ann and Trish enter. I have no friggin' clue what Trish is supposed to be representing(unless her blazer is made out of snakeskin, looks like a normal jacket to me), but Lisa Ann is dressed in a slinky red dress, representing her fear of blood. Mitch comes in screaming, to make everyone jump, but is not wearing a costume. He tells the group that he isn't afraid of anything, but they point out to him that he reacted badly to climbing the tree. I guess a costume representing acrophobia would've been pretty tough to convey. Jazzed for a party, they all get seated in the dining room and wait for Michael and Gramps-zilla to appear. Oh, and Morty is seated as well, at the head of the table.

The lights suddenly go out! Aww, it's just Mikey being a melodramatic a-hole as usual. Nice way to scare your grandmother, you douche. When he turns them on again, everyone can see that he is dressed in a tuxedo. Great, his greatest fear is waiters? Nope. He gets down on one knee and proposes to Peg. Before she can say yes or no, the lights go out after a fuse blows. Mams lights a few candles before recruiting Mikey to go to the basement with her to check the fuse box. Everyone else gets up from the table, except Jennifer who is trapped by her bulky box costume. Comedy gold. These guys must've written for Henny Youngman too.

Mike and Mams make their way to the fuse box, and find Crow's corpse on the floor. While Michael is reeling from the discovery of his friend's body, Mams reveals that she found him in the barn and "took care of it", implying that she did the same on the day Michael's dad died. Wait, what was that last part? Michael tries to run away, but flashbacks and another headache make him stumble, and he passes out.

When Mike wakes up, he is back in the dining room. Peg and the others find him, and help him to get up. They begin talking and realize that Jen is gone. Uh oh. Even worse, her box is in the corner, dripping with mysterious red stains....

They open the box, revealing Jennifer, wrapped up in her own intestines. Well, at least she doesn't seem to be claustrophobic anymore! Michael does the most rational thing he can think of: he tells the group that Morty has been possessed by the ghost of his dad, and is killing people. Sounds rational to me!

From here on in, the accusations begin flying! Crow is blamed, until Mike and Mams(wasn't that a talk show in the '90's?) admit that they found his body. Then everyone speculates that Grumpy-Gramps must be the killer(he has my vote, too; wasn't Crow killed IMMEDIATELY after Gramps argued with him???), which Mams scoffs at. Michael suggests that it is Morty, who has come to life to kill them all. That leads the others to the conclusion that it's Mike himself doing the killings, seeing how weird the place makes him and all.

Mike insists that the killer IS Morty. Peg stands by him, and, after a brief discussion, the others agree to help search the house. Lisa Ann and Mitch go to their bedroom. While Mitch is trying to calm her down, Lisa Ann opens a closet and comes face-to-face with Morty. She screams like a howler monkey on acid. Then she faints.

Off by themselves, Michael and Peg find the blood-pouch that Morty was wearing before the ritual. That seals the deal for Mike: he fully believes now that Morty is the one killing everybody. He tells Peg that finding Morty will prove it, and she placates him by agreeing to continue the search.

Lisa Ann wakes up. She stares right into Morty's eyes and screams again. Mitch pops up and reassures her that Morty is quite harmless. Lisa Ann gets turned on by the adrenaline rush that all of these frights are giving her, and she seduces Mitch. Morty continues to stare at the couple as they make out. He looks bored. Hey Morty, welcome to MY world.

We switch back to Mike and Peg. Feeling insecure, Peg tests Mike's love by asking him a "relationship" question...you know, like, if you were stranded on a desert island, who's the one person you'd want with you? Well, Mike fails the test. When he finally gets the point of the question, he answers it the "right" way. She hugs him. Geez, your boyfriend just failed to name you as the first person he'd want with him in a crisis, and you're HAPPY??? These 2 idiots deserve each other.

Anyway, she kisses the big dumb galoot, and as he resumes the search down the hall, we see a hand grab her. Mike realizes after a few steps that she vanished, and as he's calling her name, a montage of death scenes starts up: We see his mom getting killed by his dad; we see Lisa Ann drowning; Mitch falls to the floor somewhere, with blood coming out of his mouth...Mike gets overwhelmed by the onslaught of visions and falls over again.

It turns out that Peg was snatched by Chris and Ned. They try to convince her that Mike's a killer, but she won't buy it. They give up reasoning with her, and simply drag her away. Nice friends.

While Mike's eating floorboards, Lisa Ann and Mitch are bumpin' and grindin' like there's no tomorrow. As they frolic, Morty FINALLY decides to come to life. He slooooowly begins shambling toward the bed, and Lisa Ann freaks out when she sees him. Mitch turns and thinks it's Mike in a costume, and Morty gives him a good whack with his wooden arm. While Mitch is struggling to get up, Morty even pulls a "Freddy", and quips, "Going down!" as he throws Mitch out of a nearby window.

Lisa Ann screams and runs into the bathroom as Morty chases her. She locks the door, but he breaks it easily, and catches her. To quiet her down, Morty bashes her forehead into the side of the toilet, then he drowns her. Yuck.

Ned takes Mitch's pulse, but of course he's dead. They all move away from the body, but the action cuts abruptly to Mams and Trish walking into Lisa Ann and Mitch's room. They find Michael there on the floor, wearing the Morty-mask. Trish sees the others outside and tells them that Lisa Ann is dead, and Michael is with them. The trio head back inside just as Michael wakes up.

Michael sees the carnage and blames it all on Morty. He runs out of the room to find the wooden statue, and Trish follows, convinced that Michael is on a killing spree. Personally, by this point in the movie, my bet is on Mams. She DID kill all those counselors at Crystal Lake, after all!

Michael makes his way down the hallway, and a sudden noise convinces him to go up to the attic. As he heads in that direction, Peg pursues him. She calls out his name, and he passes out before he can respond.

When Mikey wakes up, his tuxedo has more blood on it, and there's a trail of blood leading to a dark corner of the attic, hidden by a curtain. He approaches the curtain, only to find Peg hanging by a noose. He gets her body down, but before he can do anything, a locked wardrobe begins shaking. Maybe he's got a lion and a witch in there!

Nope. It's the Talented Mr. Grump-Paw. Michael tries to confess to the murders, but Grumps won't let him. He claims that he saw Morty moving himself, and that the wooden statue also locked him up in the wardrobe. He tells Michael that he must go through with the ceremony. If he can overcome his fear, he can defeat Morty. They cover Peg up with a dirty sheet, then go off to begin the ritual.

In the front yard, Ned, Chris and Trish decide to try to stop Michael before he can kill anyone else. As they debate whether to try to rescue Peg first or stop Mike, Morty shows up in Peg's clown costume. Once again, Morty speaks, telling the others that they're not all right. He then proceeds to knock the trio around like rag dolls, before he tears off the clown suit.

Mike and Grumps find themselves trapped in the attic. Morty either nailed the trapdoor shut, or locked it. Either way, they're going nowhere fast. Gramps reveals to Michael that one of the reasons his dad was a killer was because he tried to face his own fear as well, but failed to conquer it. Grampy's words help Michael, and together, they decide to work at getting the trap door open.

Morty, in the meantime, is still doing Freddy-isms. Y'know, one of the great things about the first movie was the fact that Morty was a bit of a mystery: a silent, ambiguously menacing figure. The keyword in that sentence: SILENT. Here, he's like a cartoon character. Anyway, as Gramps and Michael start to bash open the trap door, Morty stops hitting Chris and vanishes. He magically teleports inside the house and bursts into the attic.

Gramps and Mike start to defend themselves, but Morty pulls a devious trick on Michael: he transforms himself into Mike's dad. As expected, Michael falls for the ruse. When Grumppaw tries to warn Mike that it's a trick, Morty tells him to stay out of it. Morty offers his hand, and Michael takes it. Grumps, afraid for Mike's soul, decides to break them apart. Using an AXE.

Too bad Morty wasn't born yesterday. He anticipates the attack and goes after the old man. During the scuffle, the 2 men bump into Michael, and he gets thrown downstairs. Gramps hurries over to the trap door to see if Mikey's okay, and Michael sees that Morty has dropped the illusion and looks like himself again. Mike tries to help his grandfather, but the trap door gets slammed in his face before he can climb up again.

Gramps and Morty struggle over the axe. Morty finally remembers that he's made of wood, and starts pounding the old man with his wooden fists and a wooden knee to the face. While Grumpy is laid out, Morty summons a pile of rats that climb onto and attack the old man. As Michael peers through a crack in the trap door, it appears that the old man has a heart attack and dies.

Frantic now, Mike rushes through the house. To his surprise, he sees what appears to be Peg with her back to him, staring out a window. She sees him and he suspects that she might really be Morty. Peg tells him that she woke up and searched through the house for him, but avoided the attic. Mikey ain't convinced. He picks up a chair and holds it out like a lion-tamer. Peg asks him to let her prove who she is, so Mike asks her the "relationship test" question she posed to him earlier. She gives him the same silly answer he gave earlier.

Mike removes the blood-pouch from around his neck, puts it around hers, and they embrace. They leave through the front door, and Morty decides to chase them. Somehow, Morty found a way to grow teeth, which are pearl-white and visible as he sneers at the couiple. Mike and Peg get into the car, where Chris is behind the wheel, and they urge him to run Morty over.

Bad plan. Morty morphs into a tree, and they crash into it. Morty becomes himself again and strolls over to the wrecked car, where everyone is knocked out. He plucks Ned out of his seat(still in his shark costume), and throws him into the swimming pool. Then he attacks Chris, and preys on his indecisiveness: Morty handcuffs him to the car's rear bumper, lights a trail of gasoline on fire, then gives him the axe. I think Morty's been moonlighting as Jigsaw! (and by the way, does this mean the Saw movies ripped off dreck like The Fear???)

Anyway, Michael wakes up while Morty is handcuffing and taunting Chris. He gets Peg out of the car and carries her away. Unfortunately, Morty sees them and decides not to watch Chris die. Mike tries to club Morty in the head, but Morty grabs his weapon and sends him flying. As Mike tries to recover, Peg attacks Morty as well, but a smack across the face with a heavy wooden hand knocks her out.

Morty morphs into Mike's dad yet again, and tries to kill Michael with a knife. But, as it turns out, he just wants Mike to become his worst fear: a killer, like dear ol' dad. He tries to force Michael to stab Peg, and his strength seems to make it inevitable. With a quick plunge of the blade--

--Michael stabs the ground next to Peg's head. But he PRETENDS he stabbed her, long enough to trick Morty. Peg wakes up, and they start running away again. In one of the funniest scenes in the movie, Michael finds Chris. He begs Mike to chop his hand off to free him, because he can't bring himself to do the deed. Mike quickly grabs the axe, Chris screams like Dakota Fanning....and Mike simply cuts the chain linking the handcuffs together. Nice, lol. They run away in slo-mo as the car explodes.

At this point, Mams and Peg show up in another car. The survivors all share a Hallmark moment, until Morty leaps between Peg and Mike. Morty tells Mike that he still has plenty of fear for Morty to exploit, which gives Mike an idea. He grabs a thick stick and lights it on fire. Turning around, he tells Morty that he knows the mannequin's greatest fear. As Peg douses Morty with kerosene from a torch, Michael throws the flaming stick, and makes good on his threat. Morty staggers around, giving new meaning to "Burning Man".

As the group watches Morty burn, they all do a symbolic forehead slap when they realize they left Ned in the pool. D'oh! They rush to the pool, only to find Ned calmly wading in the shallow end, still in his shark outfit. He is very calm...apparently, being thrown into a pool by an Indian statue is very cathartic.

As a group, they all agree to stick to a story: a maniac broke in and started attacking the party. As they all file out of the house, Michael stops and stares for some time at the picture of his father. He takes the blood-pouch necklace back, and places it on his dad's picture. As they walk out together, the photo gets a closeup, and we see the dorkiest special effect of the film, as Michael's face slowly replaces his dad's. THE END

Wow, what a wasted opportunity this was! You have a relatively low body count, a ton of red herrings(like: making Gramps look like the killer, or dressing Peg up min the clown suit again after Morty tore it up), a killer who manages to make Freddy Krueger seem "deep", and an ending with no real surprises or scares. But the biggest disappointment was Morty himself. I can understand having another actor in the suit, but why change the look of the character? Seriously, my guesses about the grandparents or Mike being the killer were better than what actually happened in this mess. 2 out of 5 trees, just for wasting my time.

What did I learn from The Fear: Halloween Night?
-If you can't swim, dress like a shark. It allows you to float and be rescued just in time.
-Ancient Indian monsters love wisecracks.
-Don't always assume that having Jason's Mom in a horror movie makes it a scary movie.

Next up: Friday the 13th Part III: The Saga of Shelley!!(okay, that's not a real subtitle, but I liked Shelley, he was a fun dude.) Have a scary weekend!