The Final Terror

Okay, so I was going to watch a movie called Dead Wood using On Demand(thanks to NetFlix not sending me my next slasher yet), but I was having trouble with my digital box. So instead, I'm watching a movie on YouTube called The Final Terror. I saw this movie waaaaay back in my mid-teens, and all I really remember about it is that there are a number of people in it who were VERY early in their film careers when they made it. So, sit back and enjoy, as I SPOIL the heck out of this one....as usual.

Okay, so the movie starts out in a forest. Big help. Bambi is drinking from a stream with his cousin, Bambette, when they hear something. "Something" turns out to be a motorcycle, driven by what may actually be the world's worst driver. He and his girlfriend crash, and his leg is injured. His name is Jimmy, hers hasn't been mentioned yet.

She helps Jimmy to hop over to a tree that he can rest against, then runs off into the forest to get help. Wait, do woodland creatures have medical training? As Jimmy continues to be useless, the music turns scary, then....nothing happens! Sheer genius. I hope Bambi eats him.

Jane Doe finds a house with a gigantic "6" on it. Hey, maybe it was painted by that British guy who used to paint enormous numbers on things on Sesame Street. You know, the guy who later became a neighbor of The Jeffersons? No? I'm the only person who remembers shit like that? Damn.

Wait, this movie is still on. Oops. Jane Doe knocks, then starts to jog away. Again...sheer genius. She runs back in the direction she started from, while we watch a deer drinking more water. Hey, wouldn't it be sort of awesome if the animals started cranking up chainsaws? Somebody write that movie, so I can watch it.

Jim has vanished. She calls his name about a dozen or so times, then walks around in the clearing. When she's standing still again, Jim's body falls out of a tree, hanging upside down. For a guy with a busted leg, Jim sure is acrobatic! Oh, nope...he's dead. Being upside down was Jim's kryptonite, I guess. I'm thinking it was a suicide.

Jane Doe starts screaming her head off, because that's a surefire way to keep hillbillies in the woods from finding you. As she starts running again, she triggers a tripwire on the ground, and gets 2 branches to the face. Roll opening credits.

As mentioned before, this movie has a handful of people in it who went on to bigger and better things. For example, there's Rachel Ward, who gained recognition in The Thorn Birds; Daryl Hannah, star of such diverse films as Splash and Kill Bill; Joe Pantoliano, who was in both of the Fugitive movies, as well as numerous roles in other crime dramas...

And Adrian Zmed, star of....uh....well, he's in this!

Oh, and another thing I noticed: the movie has a different title. On YouTube, it's called Carnivore. Weird. Maybe the movie killed someone, and needed an alias. Wait, did I get distracted again?

Okay, so the credits finally wrap up, and we see Adrian Zmed's character, Marco, planning how he's going to spend all of his immense wealth after TJ Hooker becomes a smash hit. Wait, no, he's reading a magazine. Probably "Highlights for Children".

A weird redneck pops up behind him, and puts Marco in a headlock. He's some kind of authority figure or co-worker, and no one likes him. One guy goes so far as to pull a switchblade on the a-hole, and even Marco threatens him with a baseball bat.

Then we get a random scene in a dining hall. There's a group of forest rangers discussing a weekend party, then the scene switches back to the guy no one likes, now known as Eggar. He's listening to a radio news report about the couple we saw earlier, who are listed as "missing". If this guy could figure out how to rewind the film, he'd be a hero!

Eggar tries to warn one of the rangers not to take the newer recruits up to their intended destination, a place called Mill Creek. It's also where that couple died. He gets angry when the ranger refuses to listen to his warnings, but it leads to nothing.

A bus picks up the rangers, then they also get the girls. We then have to suffer through an awful, tone-deaf version of "3 Blind Mice". As they settle down to discuss the route of their camping hike, Eggar keeps taking his eyes off of the road to turn and stare at the group. Uh, maybe someone else should drive?

Sure enough, Eggar gets riled up. He tells them that he knows of several people who have been hurt in the region, then nearly crashes the bus into another motorist. The bus drives past a mental health facility, and some of the rangers imply that Eggar used to live there. Hmmm...

They park and unload the bus, and Eggar freaks out when several canned goods fall out of the back of the bus. So now Eggar's stealing food as well? Why? And if he's the main antagonist of this film, are they revealing it way too early? Probably.

At a stream, the group stops to collect firewood and fresh water. Marco asks Eggar if he knows of any marijuana fields growing in the woods, and Eggar finally snaps. He tells the group that he once brought another one of his antagonists up to the woods, tied the person down, and left him there. Then he lashes out at 2 of the rangers, before cackling like a loon and running away to parts unknown. That Eggar's a wacky guy!

Later that night, around a campfire, a guy named either Reg or Rich tells a scary story. In his tale, a logging business was in the area. A young teen girl, 14, was abused by her uncle, who ran the logging business after her father(the original owner) passed away. Anyway, the uncle supposedly got shitfaced one night, and raped his niece, which drove her insane. She was put into that mental institution that was seen earlier, where she had a baby.

She was deemed unfit to care for a child, so the baby was taken away. Then, nearly 2 decades later, her son showed up to take her home. They went home together, but she proved to be too crazy for him to properly take care of her, so he eventually let her loose in the forest, to roam as she pleased. Of course, the story ends with a jump-scare, then Eggar shows up again.

He lectures the group against discussing things they know nothing about, then stomps away again. Then the group beds down for the night, and Eggar is seen driving the bus somewhere. Marco has gone off with 2 other guys, Nate and Boone, to look for marijuana, and they need him to be their lookout. They offer him a 20% profit on anything they find, then up it to a full third of the profits. Marco agrees, then they tell him to howl like a wolf until they return. They don't plan to come back, of course, and he's dumb enough to fall for their lies.

The next day, a girl named Melanie wakes up the rest of the group in the main campsite. They notice that Marco is missing, and it's revealed that the other 2 guys were pranking him. They form search parties to look for him, with the leader of the camp, Mike, forcing Boone and Nate to lead him to the spot where they abandoned Marco.

They don't find him there, but they do uncover something that looks like a bloody animal carcass. Mike tells the other 2 to report back to camp, then he lingers behind to search for Marco some more. As he wanders deeper into the woods, it looks as if something might be following him. Or maybe the camera crew were just complete tools.

Next up, we get a montage of random characters yelling yelling out Marco's name in various parts of the forest. Pretty thrilling stuff, I know. It would be awesome if some random character shouted "Polo!" at some point during the scene. Mike spots a stream, and decides that it would be the perfect time to remove his clothes and take a dip. There's a dip all right, but it seems to be in charge.

A group of searchers take a break, and Rachel Ward's character, Margaret, tells one of the pranksters that he's pretty much a dipshit for losing Marco. After he yells at her to mind her own business, then tries to start a brawl with Nate, one of the women notes, "I think that guy's psychotic." Gee, ya think so? I forgot, did this one win the Oscar for Best Screenplay?

Back to Skinnydipping Guy. He's leaning under a tree trunk, just sitting there like the useless lump that he is, when a menacing bare foot appears over his head. It belongs to a cute female whose name I didn't catch(surprise, surprise....), and they start making out, upside-down-Spider-Man style. Except that she's Spider-Man in this context. Okay, so my analogies suck. Sue me.

Wake me when the killing starts, okay?

Hey-hey, the couple decide to have sex! As they both "arrive", a figure standing behind them is seen, and he's holding a hooked blade up over his head. He repeatedly plants the blade into Mike's back, then he drags the girl out from under the corpse. Finally, something actually happened!

Nate and Boone find a cabin and a raft, as well as a makeshift grave. They poke around the property, with Nate looking outside and Boone investigating inside the cabin. Nate hears something, and goes inside to look for Boone, only to be attacked by a hillbilly in drag! Oh wait, it's just Boone, horsing around. As they both resume checking out the cabin, they find several cans just like the ones Eggar was trying to hide earlier.

As they continue to search, they find Eggar's cap, along with numerous items that had been stolen from the ranger school. They congratulate each other for cracking the case, then discover that he keeps an animal's severed head in one of his supply cabinets. That find helps them to decide to leave the premises.

Outside, they both break into a sprint to find the others. They must run pretty slowly, because the next scene takes place at night. The remaining members of the group note that Mike and Melanie, haven't returned yet. I'm going to assume that they were the ones killed during sex at the stream.

They decide to pair up, and take turns guarding the camp. Almost immediately after they fall asleep, a mysterious figure dressed in animal skins approaches the camp. He hovers over Marge and strokes her face, which causes her to wake up. She screams, and everyone else comes running to the rescue. It's revealed that no one saw the stranger, including the idiot who was supposed to be guarding the group.

Unable to sleep, they all sit by the fire. A noise at the edge of their site causes everyone to freak out yet again, and they all see a figure approaching the camp. A flashlight beam reveals Marco, alive and well, still howling. He reveals that he's been busy looking for the mythical marijuana plants, and has brought several back with him. He also claims that he's been exploring the forest, unaware of the search for him that the others undertook.

The black chick, who is named Vanessa(I think), gets pissed off that they all worried about Marco for nothing. She stomps off toward the outhouse, shrugging off the suggestion of bringing someone with her. Odds seem pretty good that Vanessa's days are numbered.

At the outhouse, she covers the toilet seat with paper(like Finch in American Pie), then finds what's left of Mike keeping her company. She goes hysterical, and the others arrive to see the body for themselves. Then they decide to start playing Eggar's game against him, by camouflaging themselves and trying to use stealth to hunt him instead. Yeah, I'm sure that'll work out just great.

They creep over to the cabin that was discovered earlier, and loudly demand that Eggar faces them. When there's no response, they break in, and find a frightened bird in a closet. They also find body parts in jars, as well as torn-up clothes that are covered in blood. Oh, and Daryl Hannah's character finally gets a name: Windy. Not Wendy. I actually looked it up, to verify what I was hearing. Windy. Yeesh.

Melanie, who has been kept alive, can hear them, but her captor has her in the basement, with his hand over her mouth. As the group leaves and prepares a raft to make their escape, Melanie is shown being terrorized and tortured by her assailant. Sucks to be her, huh?

As the raft makes fairly good progress, the killer drops Melanie's mangled body onto them from the trees. They continue down the stream, until it gets too shallow for them to paddle anymore, and resume hiking. Oh, and they bury Melanie. Screw the eventual investigation, let's sabotage a crime scene!

They finally discover the bus again, but agree to wait until night falls to approach it, in case there's a trap. When they finally check the bus out, they find that the engine is sabotaged, so they decide to sleep on the bus, after eating some food that they found in a cooler. They even make smores. So much for caution...

During the night, the bus is attacked. As they all scurry to escape, it looks as if Vanessa is the next one to bite it. They rush back into the woods, and Windy somehow gets separated from the rest. She calls out their names, but no one answers her. The group even looks for her, and only locate Windy when she begins to scream.

She's injured, so Marco and Nate run back to the bus for a first aid kit. Windy gets stitched up, and it starts to rain. As the group continues their journey, Boone becomes unstable. He's stoned out of his gourd, and decides to leave the group to stalk Eggar by himself. He even makes spears and traps. Then he climbs a thick tree, to look for his prey.

Marco tries to draw Eggar out, by promising to hurt him badly when they find him. Eggar springs up behind Marco, and chokes him with a rope. As Marco gasps and tries to poke out Eggar's eyes, the rest of the group leap up from camouflaged hiding places, and begin to retaliate against him.

Boone climbs down from his tree, and finds the group attacking Eggar like savages. They beat him, kick him, bash his face into the ground....it's not pretty. Then Boone gets stabbed from behind by someone else! He screams, and the hikers stop hurting Eggar to face the new threat.

It's Eggar's mother, presumably the rape victim from the campfire story. She runs forward with the curved blade that was used earlier raised over her head, howling like a cavewoman, and sets off one of the traps, a log suspended by ropes, covered in sharp spears. Her body is impaled and pushed through the air, as the survivors watch in stunned silence. As we see some random shots of the forest, the credits start rolling. THE END

Wow, talk about an abrupt conclusion. There were some pretty good kills though, and more suspense than these things usually have, so that was kind of a treat. But it's funny how much films like Wrong Turn and Cabin Fever(among many others) seemed to be "inspired" by many of the plot elements and set pieces in this one. Maybe it's just coincidence, but they sure do have a lot in common with The Final Terror. I'm giving this one 3.75 killer trees out of 5, mostly for the nostalgia of seeing it again after so many years.

And what did I l learn from The Final Terror?

-There was a period of time when the name "Adrian Zmed" was given top billing in a movie. Who knew?

-When you find out that someone you care about has been murdered, you should always tamper with the evidence and bury the body in the middle of nowhere. Screw the next of kin and investigators!

-When you decide to go out in a strange forest in the middle of the night to take a dump, bring along a friend. Otherwise, you get what you deserve!

Up next, hopefully, is Pieces. It looks pretty insane, so this should be a fun week. See you soon, if my luck with movies doesn't fizzle!

HellBent

Well, this week I'm watching a movie an old friend suggested. It's a gay-themed slasher flick called HellBent, and all my friend would say about it was that it would definitely qualify as a cheesy slasher flick, so there ya go. SPOILERS ahead!

The movie begins with a drunk guy carrying balloons through a forest at night. Riiiiiiight. Balloon Boy trips and falls, then starts calling out the name George. He hears someone nearby, gets himself worked up, then has a panic attack when someone(George, apparently) leaps at him from the darkness. Then they pop most of the balloons. Yup, this all seems perfectly logical.

Back in their car, the couple start going at it, and again, there's a noise outside. While George remains in the car, the other guy decides to hoist himself out the window to look around. From a distance, a shadowy figure watches them. As George starts to take advantage of his lover's awkward position(by, and this is not a joke, tickling his feet), the killer passes by the windshield unseen by either of the men. Then the dude hanging out the window gets decapitated.

George doesn't realize it at first, so he tugs on his friend to get him inside the car, then sees the bloody stump where a human head used to ne attached. He also spots the killer, and tries to start the car. The killer smashes his window with a scythe, then the credits start up.

When the movie resumes, we see a cop named Eddie going through mugshots on his computer. He prints them out, then a cute female cop drops some graphic crime scene pictures on his desk. The other guy who was killed was named Mike, according to her. She sees his printouts, and starts to tease him, then their boss asks Eddie to step into his office. The lieutenant asks Eddie to pass out flyers about the murders when he goes out that evening. Oh, and the female cop is Eddie's sister.

Back home, Eddie decides to use his dad's old cop uniform as his Halloween costume. He even goes to a costume shop to purchase a plastic badge. When he leaves the shop, a transvestite who resembles Shrek compliments his uniform. Yeesh.

What follows is a "handing out flyers" montage. Then Eddie stops at a tattoo parlor. He watches a guy get a tattoo on his shoulders, and sees a trail of blood dripping down the guy's back. Flustered, he drops his papers, gathers them up again, and quickly leaves.

Bored, Eddie finds a trash can, and practices tossing crushed cans into it. He stops when he realizes that a guy on a motorcycle is watching him. They discuss the murders, then the guy on the bike takes off. Eddie then interrupts his roommate, Chaz, having a three-way in a car. They discuss the murders, then go to lunch.

At their favorite diner, they meet up with Toby, another friend who happens to be another unconvincing transvestite.. They go looking for yet ANOTHER friend, named Joey. He's in the employee area of the diner, trapped in some kind of leather outfit. Apparently, he got "stuck" in the leather. Um, not that I'm homophobic or anything, but wasn't this supposed to be a slasher film? What happened with that?

Well, the killer must have heard me, because we see him next, sharpening his blade while recalling his previous murders. Then the 4 friends pile into a jeep and head out for some Halloween fun. Along the way, they tell Toby that they won't be going to a tranny bar, because none of the others are into it. Then they spot a couple in masks on a motorcycle and wave. Yeah, this is SO much better than getting to the point. They could have at least thrown in some lipstick lesbians to keep me interested, dagnabbit.

They pull off at the crime scene, where Eddie tells them about the gruesome crime scene pics he saw earlier. He goes into graphic detail, and Toby asks if he can open a window. As he goes on a rant about how he would kick the killer's ass, a hand grabs his throat. It turns out to be Joey, who grabbed him from the back seat. Then they decide to walk to the party, through the forest.

Everyone decides that they need to pee, so they each pick a different tree. Some noises in the woods startle them, then Eddie sees something moving around in the bushes nearby. He alerts the others, all of whom come back, except Joey. When Eddie catches a glimpse of a guy in a devil costume, he insists that Joey should join them.

They see Devil Guy darting behind trees, and theorize that perhaps he's disfigured, and ashamed of his appearance. Or that perhaps he's just shy. They try to lure him out by calling over to him, and see that he looks like a bodybuilder. Devil Guy then starts to move his hand back and forth, and they assume that he's jerking off, but he reveals that he's getting his murder weapon ready to use. Finally!

Assuming that he's joking, they all moon Devil Guy. Then he vanishes. While they wonder where he went, he pops up next to the quartet, and raises his arms above his head, scaring them strai--um, well, just really scaring them, at any rate. In the distance, they can see the lights from the Halloween celebration, so they keep moving.

When they arrive for the festivities, they notice Devil Guy again, watching them. Toby approaches him and tries flirting, but gets no response. They all go "trick or treating", and then complain that the candies they were given are all the same flavor: pineapple. Eddie reveals that he was also given a green condom. Uh, good for him? I guess? Seriously, is this even a horror film? NOTHING IS HAPPENING...

They decide to get drunk. Yay for them. Wish I was. Then 2 guys dressed as firefighters try to pick up Eddie, but Chaz scares them off. Eddie sees the guy he was talking to earlier in the day, the dude on the motorcycle. When the biker walks into a club, Eddie hesitates to follow him, so the others decide to go with him. As they walk in, Devil Guy watches.

Then we get a nightclub dancers montage, because, obviously, this movie needs more padding. The denizens fall into 2 categories: those who look like they belong in boy bands, and those who look like they belong in a Marilyn Manson video. Great choice....is there a Door #3?

Anyway, Eddie decides to try talking to Gay Fonzie. Despite Eddie's attempt to be friendly, the guy shoots him down. Speaking of shooting, Eddie reveals that the reason he got stuck behind a desk was because of an injury to one of his eyes. Wow, that's much more interesting than watching a suspense-filled sequence where a killer stalks his prey. Thank you, movie.

Then we switch over to Joey, the younger friend. Chaz saves him from an uncomfortable encounter, as the killer watches. They wander over to the main stage, where a guy is singing some unintelligible song. He pulls Joey onto the stage, but Joey gets dragged away by 2 security guys. Then he is pushed onto a table, while they pretend to use chainsaws on him. Well, I guess a fake killing is better than none.

After the song, Eddie introduces his buddies to the biker, who is named Jake. Everyone starts to leave the club, but Joey spots someone he likes and wants to stay. Chaz decides to stay as well, to keep an eye on him. Joey tries to talk to the guy, but he's not interested. Chaz asks Joey how it went, and Joey announces that he needs to puke.

In the bathroom, Chaz waits until everyone else leaves, then asks Joey if he's okay. He gives Joey some privacy then, and waits outside. Unfortunately, a guy catches his eye, so he follows him instead of waiting for Joey. Want to guess who shows up?

Joey tries to wash the stage blood off, and Devil Guy is right behind him. He disappears again when Joey stands up, but Joey hears him. He checks 2 bathroom stalls, then is scared by the jock he wanted to meet earlier. They start to make up, then make out. The jock leaves, and Devil Guy shoves a treat bag over Joey's head, before slashing his throat open. He drags Joey into a stall, and shoves the corpse onto the floor, revealing that he actually decapitated him. As Devil Guy leaves, 2 other partygoers find the body. Yay, something happened!

Outside at the Halloween Carnival, Eddie, Jake and Toby are just aimlessly walking around. It's like a metaphor for the script. Toby eventually decides to mingle, and tells the others he'll meet up with them later. He ends up at a bar, ordering a cocktail and chatting up another cross-dresser.

Eddie and Jake try their hands at a shooting gallery carnival game. Jake turns out to be a virtual gunslinger, while Eddie has all the depth perception of Mr. Magoo. They catch up to Toby, who is drunkenly trying to win another game. Then they also see Chaz, who reveals that he ditched Joey. Chaz tells Eddie to lighten up, then leaves with his "date". Devil Guy bumps into Chaz, but Chaz fails to realize the danger he might be in.

Eddie and Jake leave to go find Joey, and Toby decides to stagger around for awhile. A couple of straight guys try to pick him up, until they see that he's a he. Toby then convinces a guy to take his picture, only to realize just how ridiculous he looks in his costume.

At the club, Toby is spotted by Chaz, who gets his attention. As Chaz tries to reach him, Devil Guy looms nearby. The lights begin to strobe, and Chaz gets high off of a pill he took earlier that night. Devil Guy appears behind him, then stabs him several times, without anyone noticing. As he feels the blade slice him up, Chaz looks at the long cuts all over his body, then the killer decapitates him, and leaves his body on the dance floor. Y'know, as bad as this movie is, the kills are actually pretty gruesome. I could almost not hate this one, if it weren't so damned cheesy.

Anyway, back to Toby. He's in the alley behind the nightclub, puking his guts out, when Devil Guy appears. I think Devil Guy missed his true calling...he should be a ninja. A big, homosexual, horn-wearing, scythe-carrying ninja. Or not.

Toby tries to stand up straight, and finds Devil Guy observing him. Oddly enough, Devil Guy makes no move to kill Toby. He just leaves him alone. Toby, being the Mayor of Stupidville, follows the maniac. He also tries to ascertain what Devil Guy's motives are, but Devil Guy is a man of few(or no) words.

Toby switches tactics, and starts to undress. The killer exits the area, so Toby follows him. Finally, Toby thinks of one last way to get Devil Guy's attention: he tosses over his driver's license. When Devil Guy sees that Toby is a guy, he finally turns around. He drops his severed head collection, stands before Toby and then chops his head off to add to the collection. Uh, couldn't you figure out he was a guy before now?

Back at Club Meat(wow, that was subtle), Eddie and Jake see a lot of cops, as well as crime scene tape. The cop at the entrance turns them away, so they try to find an alternate route. Both men climb over a high chain-link fence, then sneak into the building. As he wanders around in the empty building, Eddie realizes that Jake now seems to be among the missing.

He goes back outside, where he sees Jake getting ready to leave on his bike. As Jake tries to convince Eddie to go with him, he sees Devil Guy sneaking up on the young cop. He tries to warn Eddie, but Devil Guy manages to cut Eddie's face before he can dodge out of the way. In an attempt to save his new friend, Jake begins to climb the fence again, but the killer gets in one quick cut, and Jake falls back to the ground.

Eddie gets back on his feet, then heads into the club again. He runs into a dead end, and finds a hiding spot just as Devil Guy appears. He sees the hulking killer searching for him, so Eddie locks himself into a cage that barely keeps him out of Devil Guy's reach. Frustrated by this turn of events, Devil Guy takes another swipe with his weapon, and the tip of the blade scratches Eddie's eyeball. Ouch! The cops hear the commotion and show up, just after Devil Guy etches his scythe across the eyeball.

Back at the police station, Eddie gives his statement, then asks his sister to make sure that the facts in the case aren't altered for sensationalism. Before she leaves, she spots Jake, and gives her brother a high-five about as discreet as an explosion at a dynamite factory.

Eddie goes into the nearest restroom, and fixes his glass eye's position. Unfortunately, Jake walks in, and sees the eyeball out of whack. Eddie explains about the accident that caused him to lose the eye. When Eddie talks about ending the night early and finding his friends, Jake talks him into a ride on the motorcycle. They return to Eddie's apartment building at warp speed.

Eddie finds the building he and his friends live in empty, so he heads to his own apartment last. Jake has already let himself in, and the two start to undress. When Eddie finally gets a look at the tattoo Jake was getting earlier, he is told only that it has something to do with the ending of a relationship.

Then Jake starts acting weird. He shies away from Eddie's advances, then tries to get Eddie to share a cigarette with him. When Eddie does it wrong somehow, Jake takes another puff, and blows the smoke into Eddie's mouth. Then he asks where the bedroom is. Could he possibly be the killer? Do I care at this point?

Once they get to their destination, Eddie asks Jake to turn around while he undresses. Jake complies, looking at other areas of the room instead. He notes a drop of blood on Eddie's license, then gets distracted by noise from outside. He looks out of the window, but nothing seems unusual. When he turns around again, he sees that Eddie has taken his shirt off.

Jake handcuffs Eddie to the bed, then Eddie asks him to use a condom. Jake heads toward the bathroom to look for one. In the hallway, he turns to look at Eddie. Then he enters the bathroom to find the condoms. Once there, he seems to be putting off his return to the bedroom, exploring the room.

As Eddie begins to lose his patience, Jake spots an open door. Inside that room, he sees numerous trophies, pictures and sports memorabilia throughout the room. He decides to return to the bedroom, but a loud banging sound catches his attention. Jake sees that it came from a partially open window, and nearly walks into Devil Guy. Devil Guy then stabs him.

Eddie hears Jake being butchered, and gets frightened. Then he sees Devil Guy, and REALLY gets frightened. As Devil Guy prepares to decapitate the young cop, Jake manages to stab the killer from behind. Then Jake collapses to the floor, right next to you-know-who. Ha!

Eddie finally manages to get himself free, and runs to the living room to find his phone. When he locates the damned thing, Eddie calls 911. Unfortunately, Devil Guy gets up once more, and Eddie hears him go after Jake yet again. Gee, Jake really pisses this guy off, huh?

Eddie then rushes to the kitchen, and grabs something from a drawer to use as a weapon. Oh, and he finds the severed heads of his friends right after that. Y'know, normally this is where I'd make a joke about "giving head", but with this film, that just seems a little too on the nose.

Devil Guy then bursts in unannounced, and the chase resumes. After much effort, Eddie manages to run into the bedroom, shut the door, and lock it. Of course, Devil Guy tears through the door like cardboard. Eddie gets himself and Jake onto the fire escape, and then he and Devil Guy fight over his gun. Desk cops get guns? Well, I guess so.

The gun falls to another part of the fire escape, and Devil Guy licks Eddie's fake eye. Yeesh. Devil Guy then flings him over the fire escape, but Eddie manages not to fall the entire way to the ground. He gets the gun again while dangling from a railing, and shoots Devil Guy in the forehead. While he climbs back up to check on Jake, Eddie gets a bystander to call for an ambulance.

Eddie watches the ambulance take Jake to the hospital, then sees his sister taunting Devil Guy, who is being loaded into another ambulance. When Eddie realizes that the killer is still alive, Devil Guy opens his eyes, then reveals that he has Eddie's glass eye in his mouth. THE END

Man oh man, where to begin...first off, the slow pace killed this thing long before the killings started to ramp up. And while the deaths themselves were fairly graphic, they were also monotonous. I mean, did he really have to decapitate every victim? But the biggest missed opportunity was not fleshing out the killer a bit. A cool background story or motive would have gone a long way toward making this one less painful to sit through. 1 and a half killer trees out of 5, and even that feels generous.

And what did I learn from HellBent?

-Well, if you ever get attacked by a maniac, be sure you bring along a glass eye.

-Transvestites NEVER look like women. Except to other transvestites. And crazy killers.

-A killer being taken away on a stretcher is allowed to keep his mask on. I mean, hey, identifying criminals is waaaaay over-rated, right?

Next up is a pretty old one called Pieces. Please God, let it not suck...

R.S.V.P.

Well, this week's "gem" stars Jason Mewes and is called R.S.V.P. That's pretty much all I know about it. Hopefully it'll be watchable, if not outright entertaining. As always, beware of SPOILERS beyond this point...

The story begins with a mysterious figure roaming the streets in the wee hours. He hops on a fire escape and climbs up to an apartment where another anonymous guy is sleeping. The figure also sees a woman in bed, and he attacks the couple. As the female victim screams, her spouse/lover is thrown at a wall-mounted mirror, breaking it.

The police arrive after the fact, and the detective leading the investigation sees messages on the apartment walls, scrawled in blood. One merely says, "Why?", and another is "WHY Did the quick brown fox Jump over the Lazy dog", with random letters capitalized.

In the next scene, an Irish-accented college professor(played by the late, great Glenn Quinn, of Angel and Roseanne fame), Hal Evans, is discussing the murders with his students. He mentions that the crime scene, which was in Las Vegas, was compromised by lazy, inattentive cops. The killer, who was dubbed "The Fox", got away, and committed 11 more murders before being caught.

After the class, 2 students, Nick and Jimmy, debate the professor's theories about mass murderers versus serial killers, and how easy it would be to get caught. Then we see Nick tell his friends that he and Jimmy are going out for drinks with Hal, but that they'll be at some sort of party later.

At the bar, Nick, Jimmy and Hal decide that a great mass murderer would be going after the "right" victims. The list includes lawyers, traffic cops, umpires and politicians. The list is pretty extensive, and it ends with mimes, so I'd go along with it. After the teacher leaves, Nick tells Jimmy about the Hitchcock movie Rope. which is about 2 men who kill a friend, stuff his body in a trunk, then throw a party and see if any of the guests can figure out what they've done. Gee, I wonder if this is foreshadowing?

After a brief scene showing that the film Rope was inspired by a pair of real-life killers, Leopold and Loeb, Nick realizes that he's been wasting his afternoon on the internet(me too, dude...). Nick finishes reading about the pair of killers, then sets up for the party. He hears a knock at the front door, and it's his first guest, Terry(the character plazyed by Jason Mewes). He's half an hour early... Snootchie bootchies, Jay!

Terry struts in, and we find out the names of the other characters, at least...Cricket, Leigh and Jordan. Terry whips out a bag of weed(of course...where the heck is Silent Bob?), and admires Nick's new chest in the living room. Geez, why are tthey drawing us a diagram this early on? Do the film's creators really think the audience is THAT slow?

Nick leaves the room, after telling Terry not to touch anything. Naturally, Terry starts drumming every object in sight, making a ton of noise in the process. In the next room, Nick opens a closet and starts to examine a series of rifles, before settling on one. He rushes at Terry and points the weapon at his frightened face, only to reveal that the "gun" is actually a bong.

That leads directly into a "bong-packing montage", which has to be a first in the history of montages. After it's revealed that the house belongs to an Uncle Atticus, there's a subtle suggestion that perhaps Nick killed him. Then another guest arrives, and Terry leaps at the intercom to make weird heavy-breathing noises. The person at the front door has a sexy female voice, so Nick and Terry sprint to the front door, each wanting to be the first to greet her.

It's Jordan, Nick's ex. Oh, and she happens to be dating Jimmy. Awwwwwwkward! They all proceed to get high and drunk, and then the others arrive. They brought along another guest, a Matthew McConaughey look-alike with the improbable name of Skyles, and a black dude named Garrett. Jordan greets them at the door with a sword and a weird skull that looks like it came from the game Grim Fandango.

After the group explores the house, Nick makes his first revealing mistake, by revealing that Uncle Atticus WAS eccentric, pretty much confessing that the old man is dead. He's either a really dumb killer, or the screenwriters were doing this script while half-asleep. Either way, no one seems to notice his faux pas.

As the party kicks into "high" gear yet again, Jordan worries about Jimmy not showing up. Then Nick scares Cricket by sneaking up on her with a scalpel, as she's looking for a coathanger on the closet floor. Nick ushers her out of the closet, then viciously kicks something that looks a lot like a dead body wrapped up on the floor. Uncle Atticus? Jimmy? Kid? McCloud? Columbo?

While everyone's getting tanked, there's a sequence showing Hal driving past the casinos in Vegas. He looks pretty dazed, but the movie shifts gears back to the party without any further explanation. Hey, didn't that killer from the first scene kill some folks in Vegas? Hmmm...

More guests arrive for the party, and everyone decides to hide and "surprise" them. Everybody. As in, who the heck is going to answer the door? Damn, these folks are stupid. This movie is a great anti-drug public service announcement.

The "guests" turn out to be related to the still-missing Jimmy...his uncle Walter, aunt Mary, and his younger sister, Leigh. Terry tries a pick-up line on Leigh, and Garrett informs him that she's only about 13 years old. Whoops! Aunt Mary notices that Jim hasn't arrived yet, but Nick promises that he will soon "pop up".

Uncle Walter mixes a cocktail at the bar, and asks Leigh to bring it to Mary. She carries it into the living room, but decides to drink it herself. The women all discuss Jim's fidelity, and Leigh plays devil's advocate, by implying that his long-distance job may cause him to be unfaithful. Then Cricket breaks the tension, by joking that she and Jordan will share him on alternating weekends.

Walt, in the meantime, bonds with the guys, by showing them how to make a Manhattan. He makes a toast to their future endeavors, and they all enjoy the drink. Then Mary asks the younger women to get her a joint. The scent of it reaches Jay--uh, I mean, "Terry"--and he goes in search of the source of the smell. Garrett joins him.

Before too long, Nick and Uncle Walt are alone at the bar. Can you believe that this thing has been on for half an hour, and we haven't seen a single death since the flashback sequence in the opening credits? I mean, a good slasher film needs about 1 death every 10 minutes or so. And the disappearances of Jimmy and Atticus don't really count, because their deaths haven't been confirmed yet. The production team on this one should take a class on how to set a steady pace in films.

Anyway: Nick and Uncle Walt. Nick makes another verbal slip-up, by admitting how much he's going to miss Jimmy. That sets off an alarm bell in Walt, who seems to be putting the whole plot together. Hey, maybe he saw Rope!

Later, everyone gathers at the dining room table, so that Mary can tell their futures. She predicts wild adventures for Terry; fame for Nick; and nothing else. Then it's mentioned that Jim is about 2 hours late, so Mary gets up to call his cell. As she finds her way to the study, Nick grabs a sword and follows her.

In the study, Nick stands behind Aunt Mary, trying to decide which angle would be best to impale her. She turns and sees the sword, and nearly has a heart attack. Nick leaves the room, then sprints past the other party people to crank up the stereo. Uncle Walt sees him getting flustered, and starts to put 2 and 2 together.

As predicted, the music drowns out the sound of Jim's phone. Jordan and Skyles are sitting next to the trunk holding the corpse, but when Skyler hears the faint ringtone, she dismisses it as part of the song. Then we get the least-talented dance montage ever put on film. From across the room, Uncle Walt continues to watch Nick with some suspicion.

After the song, Mary and Walt decide to head home. Before they leave, Nick makes another leading comment about Atticus. Serioiusly, if these numbskulls don't put the plot together soon, I'm going to crash the party and draw them a picture.

Then the doorbell rings yet again. It's not Jim, of course...it's Hal. As Hal meets the other guests, Nick follows the elderly couple out the door, armed with a cane. At the elevator, he asks Walt what came after slim. Then he beats them both to death, wraps the corpses in plastic, and shoves them into a nearby room.

When he gets back to the party, Nick sees Leigh about to leave. Apparently, when Walt and Mary left, Mary forgot her tarot deck...or "magic plastic", as Leigh calls them. Magic plastic? In what universe does this movie take place? If I wanted to see some magic plastic, I'd just Google "Britney Spears boob pics"...

It takes a little effort, but Nick convinces Leigh to stay. They rejoin the others, who are playing a game of I Wonder What Happened To Jim?, the hottest game since Wheel of Fortune debuted. Of course, being a toothless, lame movie, none of that game is shown to us. It's a shame, because it might've been fun to see Nick squirm.

Then we get a long, dull conversation on bullfighting. The word that best describes the scene begins with "bull", but doesn't end with "fighting". It rhymes with "spit", if you know what I mean. As the scene winds down, Leigh gets up to use the bathroom.

Seeing an opportunity, Nick follows her. They make out, then Nick snaps her neck. He drops the body into the tub, then pulls the curtain to hide her. Just then, Jordan needs to use the toilet, so Nick concocts a story about a plumbing problem, and encourages her to use the other bathroom down the hall.

Back at the party, Hal learns that most of Nick's friends are in a rock band together. To stir the pot, he tells them that it's easier to gain fame through murder, and they all name their favorite murderers. When Nick rejoins them, he mentions Leopold and Loeb again. Then Terry gets up to use the can, while Skyles decides to attack the drunk professor. He knocks Hal to the floor, delivering punch after punch.

After the fight breaks up, Nick gets Hal a wet towel for his face, then gives him Mary's tarot deck. Nick hears Garrett and Cricket getting ready to leave, so he grabs a nail gun and follows them into the hall. After "nailing" them, he wraps the bodies up in more clear plastic, and drags them in with the others.

Then the elevator opens. It's a cute neighbor, Callie, who decided to join the party after hearing all the noise. Nick introducesher to the remaining guests, then has a spat with Jordan over their breakup. When Jordan stomps away, Nick apologizes and convinces her to stay.

Back in the penthouse, Nick fakes a call to Jimmy, as the rest of the group decide to play a game of Twister. Nick tells Jordan that Jimmy will be arriving shortly, then we get to suffer through a freaking Twister montage. While Skyles spins the arrow, he instructs the others on where to place their hands and feet.

Skyles then takes a break to use the bathroom, and Nick freaks out. Skyles never notices the dead body, and he and Jordan decide to go smoke up on the rooftop. As they leave, Nick sees Terry pouring drinks, and decides to poison at least one of them. Callie refuses her drink, and Nick watches everyone else with a nervous look on his face.

On the roof, Skyles vents about Hal, while Jordan tries to calm him down. Nick keeps watching the rest of the group drink their poisoned wine, then leaves to polish off Skyles and Jordan. Skyles tries to make a move on her, but Jordan leaves to return to the party.

While Skyles has his back turned, Nick strangles him. Then he leaves the body there, and tells the others that Skyles stormed off. When he tries to incorporate the almost-kiss that Skyles tried to give Jordan, she decides to leave. She is followed by Nick into the kitchen, just as Terry starts to feel the effects of being poisoned.

Callie sees Terry being dragged toward the bathroom, and decides to return home. Nick reveals to her that she was supposed to drink the wine, then he bashes her head with a pan, slams her face into the countertop, and drowns her in a pot of boiling liquid on the stove, before stuffing her into the oven.

Then Jordan and Hal yell for him to call 911. When Nick fails to respond, Jordan decides to call the paramedics herself, only to discover that the phone has no batteries in it. She confronts him about the phone, and Nick plays it cool. Hal walks in, and after hearing what their conversation was about, he realizes what Nick has done.

Jordan starts to leave, so Nick chases her. He dials Jim's number, and Jordan freaks out when the cell phone can be hear ringing in the chest. She finds Jim's body, and Hal starts to make a timeline of events, and we get a flashback of Jim's murder. After getting drunk, Jim had let Nick take him back to the penthouse. There, Nick tricked him into getting into the box, then trapped him in there. I'm not entirely sure how that killed the guy, but I also don't care at this point.

When Jordan demands to know why Nick murdered his friends, he tells her that he did it because he could. Hal tells him that he won't get away with it, but Nick reveals that he planted evidence in the college professor's pockets, so that he'd be blamed for the killings.

Hal, upon hearing this, decides to use a new tactic. He tells Nick that he wanted Nick to do this, and that he had been "training" Nick to become a killer, using the class lectures to give Nick ideas. Nick fires a gun at both of them until he runs out of bullets, and the pair run into the master bedroom.

While Nick reloads, Hal urges Jordan to help him find a weapon. Instead, she finds Uncle Atticus, just as Nick shoots the lock off of the bedroom door. Nick stabs Hal several times with the glass shards of the bong, as Jordan runs out of the room. She then discovers the bodies while running away, and escapes to the roof. Oh, and someone lived, because a hand grabs a weapon from Hal's body.

On the roof, Nick tries to shoot his ex, but Jordan jumps to another roof. Nick follows her, and she is cornered when she stops to try a maintenance door. She climbs a ladder to a higher level of the roof, where Nick has her trapped yet again. He reminds her that he has 1 bullet left, then takes aim.

The mystery survivor turns out to be Terry. He gets Jordan's attention, then slashes Nick's achilles tendon. Nick is then pushed off the rooftop, and crashes into the roof of a car. After a lingering shot of his corpse, we see Terry brag about how the numerous drugs he's taken made him immune to the poison. He and Jordan share a joint, and the closing credits roll. About midway through the credits, we see Hal open his eyes. THE END(?)

Yeesh. This one was just annoying to watch. 300 montages, terrible dialogue, bad dancing...this was horrible. 1 and a half killer trees out of 5 for R.S.V.P. from me.

And what did this week's movie teach me?

-Well, Jason Mewes is immune to death.

-Vegas is the easiest place in the world to kill people in.

-Pseudo-intellectual babble is pretty much the same as regular babble.

Next up, a gay-themed slasher film called HellBent. An old friend recommended it, saqying that it was bad enough to be entertaining. Let's hope so...see you soon! Oh, and I'll be trying to post it either today or tomorrow, to make up for the weeks I lost over computer crashes.

Candyman

Well, on this end of things, it's been a crazy few weeks! First, the day after I posted my last SAW, my laptop went haywire, resulting in me getting the motherboard replaced. Then, the same day it was fixed, both the audio and the Internet went bye-bye.(note: the laptop crashed 2 more times after this sentence was typed...both crashes took 3-4 days to resolve) But thanks to the awesome folks at Dell(it's an Alienware), I'm back in action! So, let's curl up together and watch a pretty good one this week, Candyman...and yes, there will be SPOILERS aplenty...

The movie starts out with a soundtrack that sounds like it came from The Omen then we get to see a swarm of bees rise up over a city skyline. The Candyman himself then talks about blood and murder, before the story switches over to Helen, who is relating to us the story of yet another person, named Clara. Confused yet? I am, and I've seen this before.

Anyway, Clara is babysitting for a family, when a guy named Billy rides up on a motorcycle, looking to make out. He's supposed to be a rebellious, bad boy type of guy, but he's played by Ted Raimi, so I'm guessing no one in the casting department has ever heard of Rebel Without A Cause(Hint: Ted Raimi ain't it.)

So, where was I? Oh right, Geek Fonzie and Clara are about to get hot and heavy, but she decides to tell him about Candyman first. Yeah, nothing sets a sexy mood like a guy with one hand "sawn off"(her phrase) who murders people because they know his name.

According to Clara, you summon him by saying his name 5 times while standing in front of a mirror. 5 times? What, does he need the extra time to use Google Maps to find your house? If he doesn't arrive until the 6th time, is your next murder free? I'm starting to get dizzy from the excessive eye-rolling I'm doing here!

Ay-yi-yi, so they make a big production out of the shirtless girl's boyfriend saying the name...4 times. Clara then tells him to go downstairs and wait for her, while she gets completely undressed for him. The second he gets to the couch, she says "Candyman", at which point a slash mark appears in the ceiling above the couch, and blood starts splashing the boyfriend. Uh, say what now? He only said the name 4 times, and she said it once. Neither one of them actually completed the full 5 times by themselves, so how does that work? If I say "Candyman" once, then 4 other people across the world say it once, which one of us does he kill? We're 5 minutes in, and I'm already tired of this film...and this was one I used to love.

In a classroom, Helen hears 2 other classmates discussing a story about a person who was so high, they roasted an infant because they thought it was a turkey. Why the heck are so many of these slasher flicks centered around urban legends? After being told that our film takes place in Chicago, the setting changes to another classroom in which people are talking about urban legends. The legend THIS time is the old chestnut about alligators living in the sewers of major American cities.

Helen sits down, and the class ends about a minute after that. Short lecture. As Helen makes her way down to the professor, it's revealed that they happen to be married. Wow, it gives new meaning to "easy A"! Helen gets jealous over a female student with what may actually be the world's most perfect butt, which is crazy, because Helen is Virginia Madsen, no slouch herself in the looks department.

As it turns out, Helen is angry mostly because she thought her husband would delay his urban legend class until she finished writing her thesis. She storms off to begin typing up the Candyman legend, which is dictated on a tape recorder. As the story gets to the part where his name is said 5 times, a cleaning lady interrupts to tell Helen that she has more details about the killer. For instance, he supposedly lived in Cabrini Green, a rundown area of the city that's dangerous to enter. When the cleaner mentions that her friend knows of a murder there that Candyman committed, Helen asks to speak with the friend.

Instead of calling the friend or scheduling a time to go to Cabrini Green, the cleaning person steps into the corridor and shouts over to another woman that Helen wants to interview her. What're the odds that they all just happened to be within 10 feet of each other? Small world, my ass.

The 2 custodians introduce themselves to Helen as Kitty and Henrietta. Kitty, the one with the story, tells Helen that some woman heard a loud banging noise while she was in the tub. The woman called 911, but no one believed her. Afterwards, she was found murdered, and the supposed murder weapon was a hook. The 2 women tell Helen that the story was in the paper, but that no one really believed that the killer was actually Candyman.

Excited by this new bit of information, Helen decides to verify it by searching through the newspaper archives. She finds articles mentioning over 20 different unsolved homicides, all with a vague connection to Candyman. So much for narrowing down her search.

One pointless research montage later, Helen and her friend Bernadette decide to meet up. When Helen shows Bernie her research into the legend of the killer, she also reveals other strange things. For one thing, Helen's trip to the library revealed that her fashionable apartment was once a rundown tenement building. The grungy walls were plastered over, the exterior got a minor makeover, and the building went from slum to luxury nearly overnight.

Then there's another weird feature in Helen's apartment: the medicine cabinet in her bathroom allows her to access the empty apartment next door. Her theory is that Candyman used secret passages like the one in the bathroom to claim his victims. To drive her point home, Helen has Bernadette stand in front of the mirror with her, and re-enact the Candyman summoning. After the 4th repetition of the name, Bernadette chickens out, but Helen completes the chant. Uh oh...

Later that evening, Helen is woken up by a strange sound. She realizes that the bathroom light is on, then is attacked in the bedroom by someone wearing dark clothes. Oh, it's only her husband, behaving like a jackass. He's drunk, so after a quick apology for scaring her, he passes out.

The next day, Helen and Bernadette decide to check out Candyman's old stomping ground, a slum called Cabrini Green. Bernadette tries to convince Helen that Cabrini Green is much too dangerous to visit, but Helen insists on going there, to prove that she isn't afraid to do what it takes to complete her paper.

Their arrival is noticed by several unruly teens, who assume that the women are cops. They ignore the catcalls and sexual comments and walk up to the floor of the building where most of the news items took place. Helen takes out a camera to photograph the graffiti on the walls, including 1 particular phrase that catches her eye: "SWEETS TO THE SWEET".

They find an apartment where one of the murders took place, and the layout matches Helen's place, right down to the hole behind the medicine cabinet. Helen snaps a few pics of the other apartment behind the cabinet, then decides to crawl through and explore. Frustrated, Bernadette just sits down to wait for Helen's return.

Helen, meanwhile, is off on an adventure. She keeps discovering holes in walls, and she continues to step into them. The last hole leads into a room with a pile of candy on the floor...oh, and the hole has been painted around to form a screaming mouth in a giant face. Freaky. As Helen examines the candy and discovers razor blades in the wrappers, Bernie finds a creepy, discarded baby doll.

As they meet up again, in a lame jump-scare, they see another woman watching them. Her name is Anne Marie, and she actually heard Candyman committing one of his murders in a nearby apartment. She also tells Helen that she lives in fear of Candyman

That night, Helen, Bernadette and several members of the college faculty dine at a ritzy restaurant. A pompous professor wants to mock Helen's thesis, but she replies that her Candyman research is going to blow him out of the water.

The fat, pompous professor then bores everyone with Candyman's full origin story. which began in 1890. Candyman was the son of a slave, but he was raised among the wealthy, because his father made a fortune from an invention he mass-produced. Fascinating, Spock.

Anyway, Candyman was an artist, and he was often hired to do portraits by the local, wealthy families. One such painting was going to be of a landowner's beautiful, young daughter, but she and Candyman had a secret affair. When her father found o8ut about the affair(she got pregnant), he paid some thugs to saw off the young man's right hand, then smear him with honey, so that an angry hive of bees could sting him to death.

Helen tries to visit Anne Marie again, but she's not home. A young boy named Jake knows what happened to her, but is afraid that Candyman will kill him if he talks to her. Helen talks him into showing her where Anne Marie is, and on the way he points out a mountain of garbage that will allegedly be a bonfire.

Jake points out a small brick building, and says that it's where one of Candyman's victims was found, a mentally disabled boy who had wandered away from his mother to use the toilet. The boy began to scream, so a bystander went in to rescue him. When the Good Samaritan found the boy, his penis had been sliced off, and there was blood everywhere. Oh, and supposedly the rescuers hair turned white from the frightening scene.

Helen decides to photograph the tiny restroom, and the boy promises to wait outside for her. Once inside, there's graffiti, as well as an odor that makes her gag. She opens each stall, discovering nothing in the first two. The third toilet is disgusting. Written in what I assume is feces, is the phrase SWEETS TO THE SWEET. Inside the toilet are a multitude of bees.

Outside the toilet, someone approaches Jake, and Jake calls him "Candyman". As Helen obliviously keeps snapping pictures, the bathroom door opens, but it's not Candyman who enters, it's a quartet of local gang members. They beat the crap out of her, then leave her there for Jake to find.

This is followed by Helen picking her attackers out of a lineup. The cop who helps her also informs Helen that they believe that the same gang killed everyone who had supposedly been murdered by Candyman. They hope that, with Helen's testimony, the Candyman killings will now be over and done with.

Jake isn't as convinced. He's pissed about Helen making a police statement, because he firmly believes that Candyman will come after him next. Helen tells him that it's over, but he doesn't look too sure of that. Then we get a scene that I guess takes place several days later, because Helen's injury is almost gone as she has dinner with her husband.

Bernadette welcomes her back to the campus, then gives her a gift. The gift turns out to be the roll of film they had taken at Cabrini Green. Bernie also tells her that a publisher has expressed an interest in publishing her findings.

After a successful return to work, Helen is walking to her car and examining some pictures and slides while she walks. Candyman calls her name, then appears in front of her. He tells her that, by having the gang members arrested and charged, she was weakening the strength of his legend. As such, he promises her that he will go after "innocent" victims, and that she will suffer. Helen passes out.

When she comes to, Helen finds herself in Anne Marie's apartment. Helen is in her bathroom, covered in blood, and Anne Marie can be heard screaming and wailing in another room. After checking to see if the blood is her own, Helen leaves the bathroom.

The severed head of the family dog is waiting to be found in the hallway. In a move defying logic and sanity, Helen sees the murder weapon in a pool of blood, so she decides to pick it up. Brilliant deductive reasoning, Helen. Maybe you should spit on the dog and tear some of your hair out, in case they need DNA evidence to go with your fingerprints.

Helen opens the door to the baby's room, and finds Anne Marie in there. She chases Helen into the kitchen and pushes her to the floor. Anne Marie starts bashing Helen's head into the floor, so Helen fights back, until she manages to straddle the other woman. Grabbing the bloody meat cleaver off the floor, Helen holds it above her head...until a small army of cops arrive on the scene, to corner and arrest Helen.

At the police station, Helen sobs and undresses while a stern female cop collects her clothes for evidence. After that, Helen asks to speak with Detective Valento, the cop who helped her earlier when the gang members beat her. He reads her the Miranda rights, then describes to her, in detail, what they think she did: Anne Marie came home from work, found the dog beheaded, and the baby missing. At that point, Helen came in, armed with the cleaver and covered in blood. They ask her where the baby is, but Helen still insists that she doesn't know anything about the missing tot.

Helen asks for her 1 phone call, but Trevor isn't home. She leaves a message, but then finds out that it's 3 a.m. She freaks out in her cell, then has a disturbing vision of Candyman, keeping the infant in his lair. Hey, at least the kid is still alive! Probably.

Hey, Trevor finally arrived! He posted bail, brought Helen some clothes, and also hired a lawyer. Wow, pretty nice work for an unfaithful husband. You better hope Helen doesn't ask where you were at 3 a.m., dude...

Helen tries to help the lawyer with her defense, but her memory is about as fuzzy as a hillbilly cheerleader's armpits. In the tub, Helen asks Trevor where he was when she called him from the station. He lies through his teeth, saying that he slept through the sound of the phone ringing. He leaves, and Helen poses seductively in the tub for a few more seconds. If time travel is ever developed, I'm going back to meet, young, seductive Virginia Madsen...and about a hundred other actresses from the same time period. Hubba.

Helen, oblivious to my leering, wanders into her kitchen and decides to look at her developed slides once more. She drags everything into the living room, draws the shades, then sets up the projector. One picture in particular draws her attention, an image Helen snapped of herself in a reflected window. She improves the focus of the picture to enhance the reflection, and realizes that she captured an image of Candyman in the photograph.

After sipping some coffee, Helen decides to do something unbearably stupid: Sher heads to the bathroom, to try to summon Candyman in her mirror. Before she gets the chance to try it, Candyman plunges his hook-hand through her medicine cabinet, scaring her out of the bathroom.

Helen runs through the apartment and races into the hallway, but Candyman is waiting there for her. She rushes back inside, but he teleports in right behind her. Candyman makes her an offer: if she will allow him to kill her, he will return Anne Marie's baby to her. He even reaches for her with his hook, scratching her neck enough to draw blood.

Then Bernadette shows up. She knocks and rings the bell, but Helen begs her to leave. When Bernie enters anyway, and Candyman pretty much disembowels her. Before we get to see that though, we get a repeat of the previous crime scene. Helen wakes up on the floor holding a knife, the cops find and arrest her, Helen cries, has a vision of Candyman and the baby, then passes out.

When Helen wakes up again, she's in the psych ward. They strap her to a bed, lock the door behind them as they leave, and Helen is left alone with Candyman. He's hovering over her bed, promising her that he will take her soon. Then Helen is given some Happy Juice, and goes for a Happy Nappy in Dream Land...

When she wakes up again, Helen is brought by a pair of orderlies to her doctor's office. The doctor, named Burke, informs her that she has been out of her gourd for about a month. They've been dosing her with Thorazine, which is why she has no memory of her time in the hospital.(Fun Fact: Thorazine not only gives you memory loss, but it also cuts your hair, as Helen is shown with a shorter hairdo than she arrived with. Neat.)

Dr. Burke then shows Helen a security tape, showing the night she was admitted to the psych ward. When they get to the part where Candyman was floating above Helen, she can clearly see that there was nothing above her. She watches the tape in disbelief.

Helen tells Dr. Burke that she can prove her sanity, by summoning Candyman. Uh Helen, quit while you're ahead...Nope, she insists on doing it. Facing a mirror next to her, Helen starts the Candyman chant. She says the name three times, then Candyman stabs Burke through the back, and looms behind him while his body spasms.

Wait, 3 times? What happened to the legend of having to say it 5 times? By this logic, I should be able to summon him just by saying "Can". Oh, and if you watch this one with me, pause on Helen's face after Burke is stabbed. She looks like he just let out a Godzilla-sized fart. It's comedy gold, that expression.

After making Burke flop around a bit more, Candyman tells Helen that he will finish her off that night, then he uses his hook to cut the straps holding her arms down. She does what anyone would do after summoning a ghost to murder her shrink--Helen steps out onto the window ledge, and starts sliding around the building to look for another window to enter.

She finds one and bangs on it with the palm of her hand, and a woman in blue scrubs opens the window for her. Helen is so grateful that she knocks the woman out(or maybe kills her), then steals her clothes. Helen gets into an elevator just as the search begins for her, and somehow gets outside.

She runs back home, and finds everything covered in plastic. A young woman is repainting the walls, and Helen startles her. As I predicted, Trevor had a mistress, and he wanders in from either the bathroom or the bedroom to confirm as much. Me am smart. Trevor does a double-take when he sees his wife, and tries to get his girlfriend to call the hospital. By the way, the actress playing the girlfriend is so bad, I honestly can't tell if she's laughing or crying in this scene.

Helen puts down the phone, then begins to sob over her marriage crumbling. She leaves Trevor and his bimbo, and Trevor immediately calls someone, to alert them about Helen's visit. Helen stands on a bridge as Candyman tries to convince her that she is alone in the world.

She makes her way back to Cabrini Green, and crawls through the passageways to Candyman's home. She finds a hook and grabs it, becoming "Candywoman", I guess. She finds yet another hidden room, filled with murals and other artistic representations of Candyman, before discovering the killer himself, taking a freaking nap.

Helen prepares to kill Candyman, but he wakes up and she misses her chance. Then she faints, and he carries her, Frankenstein-style, to a grungy-looking sacrificial altar. She begs him not to kill her, and he responds by puking bees at her and revealing that his body is covered in them.

After giving Helen a bee kiss, Candyman grabs the abducted baby. Then Helen wakes up and finds a sign that Candyman wrote on one wall:IT WAS ALWAYS HELEN, along with a drawing of her face on the wall. Candyman seems to be trying to pin his crimes on her.

She makes her way outside, then realizes that Candyman placed Anne Marie's baby on the bonfire. She climbs the mountain of trash to get the child, unaware that Jake is watching part of the climb. Since Helen is partially obscured by trash, Jake thinks that he's seeing Candyman, so he decides to set the structure on fire, to protect himself from the scary killer.

Helen grabs and rescues the baby, as others gather, and help Walter soak the trashpile with gasoline. Before Helen can get away, Candyman grabs her. She accuses him of lying to her about letting the baby live, and Candyman responds that it doesn't matter, because she will die soon either way. Helen's response is to impale Candyman with a flaming stake, then attempt to save the baby.

A burning pile of debris knocks Helen over, and she crawls, while aflame, to Anne Marie. As Helen burns from head to toe(literally, because her scalp is on fire now too), Helen manages to give the baby back to Anne Marie before she dies from her injuries. Inside the bonfire structure, Candyman also burns to death.

In the days following the bonfire, Trevor, his mistress, and 2 other members of the college faculty hold a funeral for Helen. As the funeral comes to a close, Trevor is shocked to see a huge crowd of mourners marching toward them, led by Anne Marie and Jake. At the grave, Jake drops a large metal hook on top of the casket.

At home, Trevor's bimbo is concerned when he locks himself into the bathroom. She eventually goes into the kitchen, and Trevor remembers Helen in happier times. Trevor starts to cry in front of the bathroom mirror, and thnere's a sudden power outage...but only in that room.

The light in the bathroom flickers like lightning, and Trevor sees Helen's vengeful, bald visage in the mirror glaring at him. He turns and nearly bumps into her, and Helen kills him with the hook she was given. Then the bimbo girlfriend finds his corpse in the tub(and most of his blood everywhere else) and screams. As the credits roll, the scene switches back to the alter where Candyman gave Helen his bee kiss. On the wall, he has painted a mural of Helen, looking angelic. THE END.

Well. 3 computer crashes and about 2 weeks late, I finally managed to finish Candyman. It definitely wasn't as good as I remembered it, but the unintentional laughs were worth it. I don't remember if there were 3 movies in the franchise or 4, but I'm pretty sure they don't get better after this one, so it'll be entertaining to make fun of those as well. I'll give Candyman an average 3 killer trees out of 5.

And what did I learn after watching Candyman?

-I have the hots for Virginia Madsen.

-You can say a ghostly killer's name as many times as you want to, he'll show up regardless of what his rules are about the summoning. Heck, you can even have more than 1 person say it!

-If you live in a city apartment, look for a tunnel behind your medicine cabinet. It's there!

The next slasher coming in is something called R.S.V.P., and I have no advance knowledge of it at all. As long as my computer remains stable, I should be able to post it in a few days. Hope to see you guys soon!

Prom Night(1980)

Well, it took Netflix 5 days, but they finally sent me this week's slasher flick, the original Prom Night. The recent-ish remake was so dull and bloodless, it felt like a Lifetime Channel movie. Will the original manage to be more interesting? Man, it better! SPOILERS beyond this point...

The film begins by showing an abandoned-looking brick building. As we see countless windows and doors, children can be heard chanting, "The killer is coming, the killer is coming!" Nice game, kids. I'll bet that, instead of playing "House", these little demons play "Manson's House"...

Anyway, now we get to see several random shots of the interior of the building. Is this a movie, or a screensaver? Ah, here's a group of children. A long-haired female faces a wall and counts, as the rest run and hide. After the other kids find hiding spots, the blond girl announces that the killer iks coming to find them.

Inexplicably, the movie decides to switch gears, and we see 2 young girls and a boy walking through a field of tall grass. WTF, movie? Are these new kids, or the same ones, but shown at a different time of day? 2 minutes in, and I'm already confused. That has to be some kind of record. Oddly enough, the boy and one of the girls are dressed in matching outfits. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dummer. The girl, Tweedle Dum, points at the building, where it appears that one of the other kids is standing on a ledge on the second floor. Jump! Jump!

The kid on the ledge is named Nick, and the girl walking with the Dum Twins waves at him, clearly to distract him and make him plummet to his death. Nick just waves her away, and gives her the international sign for, "Shut up, Dumbass, I'm pulling a prank on someone!"

Anyway, the girl dressed differently, Kim, tells the other 2 kids, Robin and Alex to continue home without her. Alex tells Robin to go home with him, but she decides to linger at the building instead. As Robin walks to the front entrance, the credits begin to roll. In addition to Jamie Lee Curtis, this thing apparently also features Frank Drebin himself, Leslie Nielsen!

Robin puts down her schoolbooks, then enters the building. While wandering the halls, she accidentally knocks a door to the ground, and makes a frightened face so exaggerated, it would make blind folks say, "That looks weird."

Another girl, in pigtails, ducks around a corner to hide. Robin nearly finds her, but decides to go back the way she came instead. Robin runs upstairs, and finds another girl sitting on the floor in a gross restroom. Can we give some of these kids names please? Robin runs down another corridor, then hears something crash nearby. She returns to where the girl in pigtails was hiding, only this time she spots her.

A small chase begins, and Robin somehow backs into another hiding kid, a guy in a baseball cap. He loudly alerts the other players that he has Robin in front of him, and all of the children surround her. As they all chant "Kill! Kill!", the frightened girl gets pushed by all of them, until she escapes into the hallway again. They pursue her yet again, until she reaches a dead end.

The 4 others hold hands to form a wall, preventing her any access to another escape route, and Robin backs away, seriously frightened now. She climbs up onto a shelf and pushes herself against a window, only to discover that the window swings outward. Before she can brace herself, Robin falls out of the window, and is killed when she lands on some type of metal frame on the ground. The 4 kids all stare at her corpse in shock.

The 4 kids-Judy, Kelly, Nick and Wendy make a pact, swearing never to tell anyone about the role they played in Robin's death. As they quickly leave the crime scene behind, another pane of glass falls, stabbing the corpse several more times. Geez, it suvcks to be Robin, huh?

Well, maybe not...as the kids are getting away, a shadow passes over poor Robin, and someone inside the building stares at her killers through a window. The mystery person then walks away.

Hey, it's Leslie Nielsen, and it looks like maybe he was the one who found the body. The police are there as well, restraining a woman who Is apparently Robin's mother.

Robin's headstone(her last name is Hammond, by the way...I guess it's a good thing she never met and married a guy named Walter Eggs) gets a nice closeup, and the movie tells us that it's now SIX YEARS LATER!!! Wow, the subtitles are incredibly subtle...like a brick to the forehead. Robin's mother is at the gravesite, delivering a nice floral arrangement on the anniversary of her daughter's death.

Leslie Nielsen's there too; surely, he must have solved the case(No he didn't, and don't call him Shirley!). Also at the grave are Kim and Alex, who were Robin's siblings. Oh, and the Leslie Nielsen character is their father, as well as the principal of their high school. Wow, this movie is like that 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" game! Except that the game is actually fun and interesting.

Well, now that we've pruned the Hammond family tree, let's watch them at home. Dad's consoling Mom, while Kim is trying to convince her brother to take her friend Jude to the prom. He reminds her that he won't be much of a date, because he was put in charge of the audio equipment for the prom. Hey, let's leave these dorks behind and check out the school!

Through the magic of wish-granting, we find ourselves transported right outside of Alexander Hamilton Senior High School. While the Hammonds enter the building, Mr. Sykes, the school groundskeeper is whackin' his weeds. Alex and Kim mention to their father that Sykes frightens them, but he dismisses their worries without even a second of hesitation. After they enter the school, Sykes raises his tool, looking even more like a lunatic.

Then there's a montage of rotary phones and cables. I shit you not. Someone actually sat down at a typewriter, wrote a movie script, and exclaimed, "Hey, this movie NEEDS several shots of telephones and telephone cords at extremely close angles! YESSS!"

The anonymous caller decides to contact Jude first. In a raspy whisper, the stalker asks her to come out and play, then promises to see her at the prom. Nope, nothing wrong here! Heck, Jude even smiles at her mother after the call, like she won the lottery or something. Weirdo.

As she leaves home, Jude encounters a fat kid in a van. Apparently, Jude was never warned about guys in vans, because she has a chat with him. His name is Slick, although I would have guessed that he was Willy, and HE needed "Freeing". Defying all logic, Jude gets in the creepy kid's van, and asks him to take her to Hamilton High. I have a feeling that her face might end up on a milk carton by the time the movie ends.

Another of the kids, Kelly(the one with the pigtails as a child), gets a call from the stalker. He doesn't toy with her, simply telling her that she's going to die that night. After the call, her doorbell rings, so she decides that it would be smart to put herself in danger right after somebody just threatened to kill her.

No one's there, of course(of course!), so Kelly shuts the door and backs away, right into the arms of her boyfriend Drew. He looks like Owen Wilson, so I doubt he'll survive the evening. After assuring Kelly that the caller wasn't him, they go to school.

Up next on the killer's call list is Nick, but he refuses to answer his phone. He tells his dad that the call is from his ex-girlfriend, Wendy, who apparently has a stubborn streak. They both laugh over his girl troubles, while the stalker slams the phone down in frustration.

Then we get a flashback. In this one, we're shown that a suspect in Robin's death was found, but was badly injured during a car chase that ended with the suspect on fire. The doctor who treated him believed that they had the wrong guy for the crime, but the cops disagreed.

After that, the deranged patient, named Leonard, escaped from the mental hospital he was sent to, and remained missing. The cop, promoted to lieutenant, asks the doctor if he believes that Leonard might be capable of carrying out his revenge for what happened, but the conversation is interrupted by a phone call: the body of a nurse Leonard had taken as a hostage was found, and she was mutilated.

Next up on the revenge list is Wendy, who thinks that the caller is a prankster that she knows. She tells him to get lost, hangs up, then leaves for school. She seems kind of bitchy, so maybe we'll get lucky, and get to see her die first.

At school, Jude tells the other girls about her van ride. Then Kim catches her maybe-ex kissing another girl, and she refuses to hear his apology. Granted, every 5 feet or so, there seem to be people making out, so maybe that's just how they say hello in this school.

Next up is a crime scene. The lieutenant asks about the body and evidence, Then the cop and another man on the scene discuss whether or not to keep the murder quiet. It's like that scene in Jaws between Chief Brody and the mayor, except that it doesn't make as much sense. I mean, why wouldn't you want people to be more alert when a killer is on the loose?

Back at school, Kim is practicing her dirty dancing all alone. She stops when a spotlight is put on her, by the bitch-queen, Wendy. Wendy tells her that Nick belongs with her instead of with Kim, and they nearly have a classic 1980's catfight-brawl, like the characters on "Dynasty" used to have. But alas, no such luck.

The stalker is then shown cutting the pictures of his victims out of a yearbook. Then we get more jibber-jabber in the school cafeteria about how cool the prom decorations look. A guy in a ski mask then assaults Kim in the lunch line, so Alex steps in to punch the guy out. They fight, and another kid helps the one in the mask by strangling Alex. The fight is eventually broken up by faculty members, who unmask the attacker, who looks like some generic thug. One of the adults calls him by name, something like Farmer or Fowler, but there are no subtitles on this particular DVD, so damned if I know who the heck he is.

The principal calls the thug Lou, so I'm going with that. Lou accuses the principal of going easy on Alex because they're family, but the principal reprimands both of them. Hey, is it just me, or does this movie seem to have a lot of filler? I mean, we're 30 minutes in, and besides the opening murder, the only other person who has died so far was killed offscreen, and discovered later, also offscreen. When do we get to the friggin' prom???

More yammering on about the killer and his motives, followed by more recycled footage. Then we see Kim and Alex talking about how stressful the prom is, since it falls on the anniversary of their sister's death. Alex tries to open up to Kim about his own inner turmoil regarding the death of their sister, but Kim abruptly leaves before he can say a word about the murder.

At a drive-in burger joint, Lou is treated to lunch by Wendy. They seem to be in cahoots to sabotage the prom, or maybe Wendy is just trading sexual favors to greasy men for fast food. Either way, this movie is giving me heartburn.

On a tennis court, Vicki flashes her ass at Sykes. Still no death scenes. Then the girls shower up, and no one dies. This is what a slasher flick written, directed and produced by Buddhist monks would look like. I can't fathom how this monstrosity spawned 3 sequels AND a remake!

Wendy finds a picture of her yearbook photo inside her gym locker, placed by the killer. Yay. Nothing happens, until Kim and one of her friends are scared by someone shattering the wall mirror in front of the sinks. A long, jagged piece of the glass is missing.

While rehearsing something for the prom, Kim and Nick are brought onto the stage. While they practice being crowned King and Queen of the prom, the janitor is seen sweeping up the broken mirror's shards. I hate to say it, but this movie is putting me to sleep. Is the killer stoned or something?

After the rehearsal, Kim thinks she is being chased down the hall. Her two female friends find pictures of themselves in their lockers too, attached to shards of the mirror. Then we FINALLY get to Prom Night. I feel like I've been watching this interminable snoozefest for months.

Kim and Alex compliment each other on how sexy they look, which is kind of pointless and icky, given that they're siblings. Then the doorbell rings. Thank God. It's Nick, who seems mesmerized by a picture of Robin. Then Wendy is picked up by Lou, who also brought along 2 other thugs to tag along.

The prom is very..."disco", for lack of a better description. The murderers are there, the cops are there...Hell, even Slick made it! Yup...a fat kid with a van has now had more screentime than the killer. Wendy and Lou are spotted by Kim, who decides to show them up by putting on an elaborate impromptu disco dance routineandFORFUCKSAKEWILLSOMEBODYPLEASEBEMURDERED?!

Okay, I got it out of my system. I'm better now. The idiotic song they're dancing to is called Prom Night, and just like the film, it meanders and seems endless. Also, and this is just a random thought that occurred to me, but isn't it kind of weird that Kim's brother and her boyfriend look so similar? Makes you wonder if maybe she ever made out with the wrong one.

Yeesh, that song goes on forever. The lieutenant gets an update on our escaped Crispy Critter, and the gist of it is that there is no update. So why the heck did we need that scene in the movie then? Anyway, Kim and her friends decide to check their makeup and hair in the restroom, and have an inane chat about dancing. Was there even an editor for this thing?

Bitchface and Thugboy dance, then she just sort of wanders away. Hilariously, Lou continues his weird caveman gyrations for several more seconds before realizing that his dance partner has vanished.

Then we see 2 teens, Drew and Kelly making out. It all comes to a crashing halt, however, when Drew tries to pressure Kelly into giving him oral sex. He stomps off to find a girl with looser morals, and she stays behind to try to get dressed again.

When he leaves, the stalker finally shows up.He sneaks up behind Kelly, then uses one of the shards of glass to slit her throat. It's about time, man. In a nice touch, the screen goes red, which segues back to the prom.

Out in Slick's van, he and Jude are making the beast with 2 backs, if you catch my drift. The killer waits outside, until Slick exits the van to pee. After peeing, Slick lets Jude talk him into moving their lovemaking session to "the bluff". They do, and the killer follows.

Slick hears a twig snap, and suggests that they return to the safety of the van. While Slick shows Jude his hiding place for pot, the killer gets closer and closer. As the unlikely couple promise to remember prom night for the rest of their lives, the killer, dressed head to toe in a black body suit, swings open the double doors of the van, and Jude's heads falls back. The killer swings a mirror shard at her neck before she can even react.

Slick pushes the killer out of the van, then hops in the front to drive Jude to the hospital. The killer regains his footing, and grabs the open window next to Slick. As Slick swerves around to try to shake the killer off of the van, he crashes the van over a cliff. Hilariously, the van starts to burn up BEFORE it hits the rocks below the cliff. I guess the van was suicidal.

In the sickest, most inhumane, perverse moment of the film thus far, we're forced to watch and listen to more Disco Fever crap. Then Wendy enters the restrookm by herself, to re-apply her makeup. Someone else slips in as she's distracted...hmmm, I wonder what will happen?

The killer shuts off the lights, then sneaks up on Wendy with an axe. He misses, and the weapon gets stuck in the countertop next to the sink. Wendy runs away, and the killer pries the weapon loose before chasing her. Wendy tries calling out for help, but the music in the auditorium drowns her out, so she decides to keep running.

She ends up in a dark gymnasium, then gets to a stairwell. The killer spots her, so Wendy dodges into a classroom, some kind of science or health class. When she sees the killer's shadow outside the door, she swiftly ducks under a desk and waits.

The killer opens the door, gets the arm holding the axe inside the class, then changes his mind. He backs away and shuts the door, so Wendy stands up and decides to walk backwards to the rear exit of the class, if there is one. She backs herself right into an anatomy dummy, and it crashes to the floor. Great. She's not just bitchy, she's also dumber than a sack of doorknobs.

The noise brings the killer running back in, and Wendy rushes through the other exit. After another chase down the stairs, Wendy finds herself in the school's auto shop class. She tries a set of doors that lead outside, but they're locked tight. Then she searches for an unlocked car, finds one, and ducks under the steering column on the floor of the vehicle.

For a few seconds nothing happens...then, the killer enters the area. He begins to examine each vehicle, before using his axe to shatter the passenger window of the car Wendy is hiding in. She tries to get away yet again, but with all the locked exits throughout the school, her choices are limited. As she stands in a janitorial supply closet, we see almost subliminal shots of a red stain on a white floor. Weird.

She waits for the killer to either pass by the closet or find her, and then she sees the red stain on the floor too. A red trail ends at the dangling, bloody arm of what used to be Kelly, and Wendy screams her head off. She flings open the closet door to escape, and the killer is right there, waiting with his axe. He swings the blade, though most of her death remains off-camera. Damn.

The lieutenant meets another cop, who informs him that the escaped mental patient/burn victim was apprehended. They both celebrate, and the lieutenant leaves. Then Kim is told that it's almost time to crown the King and Queen of the prom, but her father has gone missing. In a nice bit of irony, the song playing is the disco classic, "I'm Still Alive". Heh, maybe the writers deserve more credit than I gave them.

Well, before anyone is given a chance to worry about the principal's disappearance, it's time to begin the crowning ceremony. If the procession music is more disco, I'm going to do what the hero did in that Val Kilmer crapfest a few weeks ago, and shove sharp object into my ears. Oh, and Lou pulls his 2 thugs aside and tells them that it's time to start their sabotage. The pair sneak backstage and knock out Nick, and Lou prepares to take his place. Wait, was that the entire plan? Geez, this is the most unambitious film ever made.

Also waiting backstage is the killer. As both Lou and Kim wait at opposite ends of the stage for their cue to step out, the killer gets right behind Lou and decapitates him, sending the crown in one direction, and Lou's severed head in the opposite direction. I actually paused the film on that exact moment to write this paragraph, and the special effect is really phenomenal-looking. I'll bet that this scene was where most of the effects budget went.

Kim walks onto the stage, and Lou's head rolls out beside her. The crowd flips out, and everyone starts running and screaming. Kim goes backstage again to find Nick, who is woozy, but alive. They stagger off the stage toward an exit, only to be blocked by the killer.

The frightened couple back away, then fall on their asses. As Nick and the killer struggle over possession of the axe, Kim tries throwing a chair at the maniac. The killer cuts off Nick's oxygen by pressing the handle of the weapon into the poor guy's windpipe, so Kim decides to jump on his back. He throws her off, but also loses the axe, which goes sliding underneath a table. Kim scurries under the table to find it.

With Kim distracted, the killer decides to finish off her date first. They roll around on the dance floor, until Kim returns with the axe. She hesitates, then swings the blade at the killer's face. He weakly crawls away, as Kim checks on her boyfriend.

They watch in horror as the killer staggers back to his feet, and turns to face them. He glares at Kim for several seconds, and she gets a sinking feeling about his identity. Then the killer runs away. Being idiots, they follow him outside.

Luckily, the cops have arrived. The killer sees the frightened crowd, the cops, and Kim, and begins to have flashbacks to the day of the cover-up. Kim asks them not to shoot, then catches the killer as he collapses. Removing the mask reveals that the killer is actually Kim's own brother, Alex(my money was on their father). He begins to sob, explaining to his sister that the others deserved to die for what they did as children. Then, as Kim holds him, Alex dies in her arms. Nice downer ending. THE END

Well, that was pretty terrible. Almost nothing happens for the first hour, then we get an ending that manages to be depressing as heck. Plus, we never did get to find out where Kim's father went. Was he killed? Did he get bored and go home? They should do a second remake, up the body count(or at least put a few in the first half of the film), repair all the plotholes, and get rid of the disco. Now THAT would make for a good Prom Night film! 2 killer trees out of 5, and the only thing that earned it the second star was the rush of kills in the last half hour. I hope they learned something about pacing and timing from this one.

And what did I learn after watching Prom Night?

-Disco is cruel and unusual.

-Having a van is the quickest way to get laid. In other news, I'm buying a van.

-A killer who has a specific vendetta in mind always has time to kill a few random nobodies as well.

Coming in later this week is Candyman, featuring the great Tony Todd. That one should be good, the character didn't really start to suck until around the third film.. See ya then!

Sleepaway Camp

This week's slasher is one of the more infamous ones in the genre, Sleepaway Camp. As always, I'm giving you my usual warning about SPOILERS...However, the ending is probably the most famous SPOILER in slasher history, so chances are that you won't need the warning this week.

Anyway, the film begins with a shot of the camp, and the most annoying theme music I can remember in ages. Oh hey, look, the nerdy guy from The Langoliers is in this. Other than him and Felissa Rose, I don't know any of the other actors in this.

The annoyingly, loud music continues. Clearly, the killer believes in deafening his victims before killing them. Small snippets of dialogue fade in and out, but so far, the campground seems pretty dang empty. The credits end on a closeup of a sign...it's a "for sale" sign for a property called Camp Arawak.

Then we see a family on a boat. 2 annoying children are yelling at each other, while their father looks like he wishes he had used 2 condoms at the right times. As he chats with them, we see a couple in a motorboat speeding along, as a frightened girl is water skiing and begging them to slow down. The guy at the wheel, Craig, tells his girlfriend, Mary Ann, that he can't let her have a turn at the wheel, even though she's begging for it. Craig's a lifeguard, and the boat's not his, so I can see his point.

The little kids see their dad standing on the edge of their boat, so they figure it would be fun to push him into the water. "Pushing" consists of standing there and sort of giving Dad an ass-grab, until all 3 just sort of throw themselves toward the water. Yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds.

Craig gives in to his girlfriend, and lets her have the wheel. At the same time, Dad is told by another guy that he needs to meet some family members for a meeting soon, Aunt Martha and Ricky. The kids seem excited, until they learn that Ricky is spending the weekend with his father. Behind the kids, you can see the motorboat heading straight for them. Uh oh! Gosh, what do you think is going to happen?

The water skier tries to shout a warning to her friends, and the dolts both turn around to look at her. There should a version of the Darwin Awards for characters in slasher flicks. Dad tries to get the kids out of the way, as Craig and Mary Ann FINALLY watch where they're going.

Craig grabs the wheel and turns, but it's waaay too late for that. The boat uses Dad as a ramp, and goes ricocheting off of his body, as everyone is screaming at everyone else. Fun times for all!

The story picks up 8 years later. Angela is now living with Ricky and Aunt Martha. Where's the brother? Wait, was he the one who died? No, because then Angela wouldn't be an orphan. Hell, I dunno...maybe they BOTH died! I better re-watch that sequence again.

Aunt Martha hands Ricky a bag filled with "goodies", and she's yelling to beat the band. Seriously, was this a horror film intended for deaf folks? Anyway, the kooky aunt declares that she forgot something, then proudly displays a string she tied around her finger to remember it. Um, I don't think her elevator reaches the penthouse, if you know what I mean.

She comes back, holding some medical records for them to bring to summer camp. They leave for camp on a schoolbus, and find an army of screaming kids waiting. Two middle-aged guys are yelling instructions to all of the running maniacs, but they pretty much drown each other out. Behind them, some of the staff look on with expressions of abject misery on their faces.

One of the workers, Art, makes a comment about the female campers being too young to have pubic hair, and an elderly black man cracks a joke about his "interest" in young girls. Art doesn't say much else, but grins as more young girls run by. Geez, 10 minutes in, and I already feel dirty for watching this.

Angela and Ricky encounter a boy who knows Ricky from a past summer. Before he leaves them, the kid tells Ricky that the girl he had a crush on the previous summer has, uh, "developed" in the chest region. Angela just stands there like a statue, not saying a word. A very flat statue.

Ricky shows Angela around the camp, then encounters Judy. She's definitely developed, but she's also become a major ice queen. She and Ricky have a short, tense chat, then Judy enters the same cabin that Angela entered. There, we meet some of the counselors, Meg and Susie. Megb is just an older version of Judy, but Susie seems nice.

Angela watches Judy unpack, and her zombie-stare freaks the other girl out in a big way. Before tensions can escalate, The counselors we just met defuse the situation. Awww, I wanted a chick fight!

In the mess hall, Meg summons one of the head counselors, Ronny. Angela won't eat, she just keeps sitting like a lump and staring at everything. Ronny turns on the charm, and takes Angela to the kitchen to see if she can find another meal that she might like.

In the kitchen, Angela is introduced to Ben and Artie. Ronny leaves her with Artie, who takes her into the food storage area. Once they're alone, Artie almost rapes Angela, but cousin Ricky saves the day. After the cook threatens them not to tell anyone what he tried to do, they run away.

As the kitchen staff start to close up shop later that afternoon, Ben leaves Artie in the kitchen alone. Somebody unseen sneaks in, and they quickly hide when they hear Artie coming back into the kitchen.

Artie uses a small stepladder to peer into a large cooking pot, and stirs in some ingredients. The unseen killer sneaks behind the portly cook, and shoves him roughly towards the boiling pot of water. Artie manages to grab onto a shelf before getting too off-balance, and asks the unseen attacker to help him stand up. The killer responds by kicking the small step away, then just yanking it, causing the portly cook to pull the boiling container onto himself, and toppling to the floor. Artie, now horribly scarred by the boiling water, screams until Ben comes running in to see what happened.

An ambulance is called, and Artie is still screaming as they take him away. Ben gets promoted to head chef, as long as he and the other kitchen staff agree to stay silent about what they saw. Yay, a promotion! Ben, you have no soul.

The next scene shows some kids playing a prank on another boy, in the guise of a magic trick. It ends with his face in some other kid's ass. This somehow transitions into a baseball game with more betting than Atlantic City on any given weekend. Ricky manages to psyche out some of the players on the other team, most of whom look at least a decade older. Ricky and our protagonists win, but there are grumblings about "payback" overheard.

That night, there's a dance. How bad is it? Well, Angela is approached by a couple of the guys. When cousin Ricky overhears them mocking her shyness, a brawl ensues. The fight gets broken up, and a boy named Paul decides to try to befriend her. He tells her that he and Ricky are close friends, and he starts telling her wild stories about their past exploits. When a counselor tells Paul that it's time to go, Angela speaks her first bit of dialogue so far, wishing him a good night.

After the dance, a group of counselors go out for a late-night swim. 2 of them, Leslie and Kenny take a canoe out to a remote area. Kenny decides to prey on Leslie's fears, first by mentioning all of the creatures in the water that could bite her, then rocking the canoe from side to side. Clearly, Kenny knows the way to a woman's heart. The canoe tips over, dumping both of them into the lake, and Leslie swims back in the direction of the camp.

Swimming under the tipped boat, Kenny seems unaware that Leslie has left. Someone bobs up in front of him, and Kenny recognizes the person, but seems perplexed by their presence. The person grabs Kenny's head, and holds him under the water.

As the other male counselors mock both Leslie and Kenny from the shore, they leave as a group. One stays behind, and approaches the overturned canoe when Kenny stops responding to jeers and taunts. Then the scene just crashes to a halt, leaving us to wonder whether Kenny was discovered, the other lunkhead maybe died, or if perhaps the movie just ran out of steam. And what about Leslie?

Nope, no answers here. The next day, one of the counselors finds the dock trashed. As he's complaining about the lack of discipline Mel has over the counselors, he inadvertently uncovers Kenny's watery body. The authorities are called, but Mel tries to keep the incident as quiet as possible.

Angela watches the other girls play volleyball, and Paul strikes up another conversation with her. He asks her on a date, and Angela agrees to meet him later that night. The other girls(well, mostly Judy) get catty while watching them chat, of course, and one of them tells her off. Then Susie comes to her rescue.

That evening, after whatever festivity was held, Paul gallantly offers to walk Angela back to her bunk. Judy decides to follow them, even after Ricky attempts to talk her out of it. At the cabin, Paul gives Angela a quick kiss, then another, before she scurries inside. Judy stops Paul before he returns to his cabin, and teases him.

In the boys' cabin, a prank leads to a knife-fight, and it gets disrupted by a counselor named Gino. This somehow leads to a scene where Paul sneaks up behind Angela, after swimming, holds his clammy hands over her eyes, and makes her guess who it is. Geez kid, at least towel off! Judy tries to mock them, but Paul deflects her ridicule.

As soon as he leaves, Meg approaches Angela. Her method of "reaching" Angela involves insulting her, shaking her like a rag doll, then screaming in her face. Ronny comes to the rescue yet again.

Later, Angela is harassed even further by Judy. Susie and Judy have an altercation, then Angela leaves. She walks over to the boys' side of the camp to find Paul, and some of the boys hurl sponges at her from the roof. Ricky sees the incident, and the shouting match brings out Mel. He penalizes the boys on the roof, but also Ricky.

The sponge-flinger. Billy, goes back to his cabin, and announces that he needs to take a dump. Fascinating. He goes into a stall, and we see someone jam the door shut with a broom handle. As the camera slowly pans up, a hand holding a knife cuts through the window screen in the bathroom. As Billy gets annoyed by the distraction, the killer uses a branch to drop a nest of bees into the stall with Billy, who eventually keels over, horribly scarred and bleeding from his injuries.

His death leads Mel and Ronnie into a debate over whether or not to close the camp. Apparently, many parents have already pulled their children out, and Mel worries that these "accidents" will force them to close up forever.

Angela is wandering around late that evening, and Paul scares her when he comes up behind her. They run to the lake together, and begin making out. Angela makes him chase her for a bit, then they fall into the sand, and really start to go at it. This causes Angela to have a flashback.

In the flashback, Angela and her brother are giggling. Apparently, Dad was gay, and his "friend" in the first scene was his lover. Angela and her brother are then seen in bed together, with him pointing at her. When the flashback ends, Angela runs away from Paul.

The next day, the small group of campers left are divided into teams, to play Capture The Flag. Angela tries to cool things off with Paul, and he doesn't take it well. When she walks away, Judy steps in, hinting to Paul that she knows something about Angela that he doesn't.

Ricky catches up to Angela, and gets her involved in some kind of scheme to win the game. When he and his cousin split up, Ricky spies Judy kissing Paul, in an attempt to seduce him away from Angela. Angela also sees them, and runs away before Paul can explain the situation. Wait--is this Sleepaway Camp, or General Hospital?

Back at the lake, Paul tries to apologize to Angela, but she's back to clamming up. Judy also turns up yet again, and starts to hint at having a physical relationship with Paul. Angela seems like she's about to explode, but she manages to remain still until the Bitch Queen leaves.

Mel talks to Ricky about the way most of the campers have left early, and Judy and Meg return to taunt Angela together. Meg grabs Angela and hoists the screaming girl over her shoulder, the plan being to throw her into the lake. Geez, they should rename this place Camp Majorlottapsychos.

When cousin Ricky hears Angela, he tries to help her, but Mel grabs his arms and keeps him from interfering. Also, Mel accuses Ricky of committing the murders and attacks on people, since he was present every time that Angela was humiliated by the victims. Angela gets pushed into the water and begins swallowing water and flailing about, until a lifeguard helps her back onto the dock. As the other 2 girls laugh, the lifeguard calls Meg a peckerhead. Good call.

As usual, nothing else happens that day, so the next scene occurs that night. The counselors have an informal meeting, and Meg is given the night off, along with some guy named Jerry. Another counselor, Eddie, is assigned to be in charge of a large group of children who will be camping outside that evening. Meg, being herself, tries to proposition Mel, and they make a date for later that night.

Meg tries to take a quick shower, but there's a long line of girls before her. She picks up her outfit and towels, and announces that she's showering elsewhere. Angela watches her exit the cabin, and practically begins licking her chops.

The next time we see Meg, she's in a shower, lathering up. Yay! Someone else enters the empty cabin, and they appear to have a knife. Double yay! As Meg leans away from the water, the killer stabs her several times through the shower curtain, and Meg contorts and makes an "Ugh!" sound every time. Then the killer reaches into the shower, washes off the knife, and shuts off the water.

Eddie, stuck with a small group of brats, tells them to set up their sleeping bags and supplies while he searches for firewood. At that night's dance, Angela bumps into Paul outside, and they reconcile. After making up, they see Judy leaving with another boy, and Paul makes a snide remark after she leaves.

Eddie is woken up by a couple of boys who want to go back to their cabin. He gives in, and offers to drive them. Then someone enters the clearing, and fixates on the axe. Subtlety is definitely not this movie's strong spot.

Mel shows up at the dance, and starts asking about Meg. Mel tries to find her, but he ends up with Judy instead. She pretends to be reading a magazine until he leaves. Then her date, who was hiding under the bed, also leaves.

Mel goes to the empty washroom to find Meg, and her body falls out of the shower at his feet. Mel is convinced that Ricky murdered Meg, and runs off to find him. That doesn't stop the old perv from taking another long look at the naked body, though.

Judy is busy with a curling iron when the entrance to the cabin opens. The figure silhouetted in the doorway looks like either a little boy or girl, hard to tell. They approach Judy, knock her unconscious, then use the curling iron to do things to her nether regions that make even ME cross my legs.

Eddie gets back to the kids he left in their sleeping bags, and discovers that they were all slaughtered in their sleep. He pukes, then runs back to camp, screaming all the way. Back at the main camp, Ricky tries to enter the dance, but a counselor named Jeff stops him. After pleading that he's starving, Jeff shows pity and lets Ricky go in for some food.

Inside the mess hall, the lights go out, and Ricky comes out with 2 handfuls of candy bars and other junk food. On the way back to his cabin, a hand grabs him by the neck. Buh-bye, Ricky. It's Mel, and he's apparently lost his mind. He throws the boy to the ground, accuses him of murdering Meg, then starts slapping, punching and all-around flailing at poor Ricky.

A brief scene where Ron is looking for Mel is shown, then we go back to Mel murdering a child. Nice. When he calms down, he stumbles back to camp, and finds himself on the archery range. He sees the camp killer holding a bow, then Mel gets shot with an arrow to the throat.

The police come to the rescue, and Ron has every surviving counselor divide into pairs, to search for all of the missing folks. Paul meets up with Angela by the water, which is now deserted, and she suggests that they should go skinny dipping. Paul gets started taking off his clothes, moving like a Tasmanian Devil on PCP.

The cops find Ricky, who is still alive. A the same time, a female counselor finds Judy's body, and runs outside, sobbing and screaming. A cop who ran in to have a look, comes back out looking like he's been shell-shocked.

As Ronny and Susie look for more missing people, they find Angela sitting on the ground, naked as a jaybird. She's running her fingers through Paul's hair. As they call Angela's name, one last flashback starts up. Aunt Martha is welcoming "Angela" home, but it's not her, it's her brother. The Aunt dressed him as a girl, and brainwashed him into thinking that he was a she.

Then Ronny and Susie see Angela stand up, and as she makes this spooky face and a weird animal growly sound, we get a full shot of her penis. Okay, okay, we get it. She's a dude. THE END.

Wow, that was a mind-bender, huh? Some pretty good kills, though, and one of the best surprise endings in horror film history. 4 and-a-half killer trees out of 5 for Sleepaway camp.

And what did I learn from my time at camp?

-Guys only think about 2 things: Sex and committing murder.

-Never live with your aunt. She's kink-ay!

Summer camps only have enough time in the day for 1 morning activity, and 1 night activity. No more, no less...

Later this week, I have the original Prom Night coming in, the one before all of that "Mary Lou ghost" nonsense. Now, I never actually attended my own prom, so I'll be wearing a tuxedo as I watch this one. You should wear a prom dress! And send me the pics! Heh, see you later in the week!