Rabid Grannies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, and Susie's mother is Helen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What?

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

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

-A massacre can actually be dull.

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

Okay, I'm out! Later...

The Tooth Fairy

Why do we live in a world where there are 2 slasher movies about the Tooth Fairy? Is there something scary about her that passed me by? Or are we just running out of scary horror villains to feature in movies? Ponder those questions as we watch The Tooth Fairy...and prepare for SPOILERS!

The story begins in a peaceful small town in California, all the way back in 1949. 2 boys, Donny and his anonymous friend....let's call him "Fifi Kittenscrotum", for now...find themselves standing in front of the home of "The Tooth Fairy", a reclusive woman who supposedly gives the local children toys in exchange for their last baby teeth. Kittyscrote is afraid of her, but little Donny really wants the new bike the Tooth Fairy promised him.

When he enters the house, Donny demands to see the bike first. He sees it, and agrees to let her pull his tooth out with a string. He ties the string to his tooth, she yanks it out, and the pain sends him rushing to the door. The Tooth Fairy runs after the boy, and stabs him several times, splashing the door and windows with blood. His friend just runs away.

Now we're in modern times, and we meet a little girl named Pam, and her mother Darcy. They stop for gas, and to ask for directions to the nearest bed-and-breakfast. Both requests somehow provoke the redneck gas jockeys into nearly raping Darcy, and she and her daughter barely escape intact. That makes perfect sense!

Next, a guy named Pete moves some furniture. He hears a car pull up and rushes outside, expecting to see Darcy and Pam. Instead, there's a cab, and a woman named Star Roberts. I wonder if she's any relation to Star Jones. She's supposedly studying to be a vet, but she looks like a hairstylist from Vegas.

Star spots some hummingbirds, and shows off her knowledge about animals. Then a shirtless werewolf named Jacob shows up, and...wait, no, it's a local kid who does odd jobs, and his name is Bobby. Then Darcy pulls up, and she tells Pete about her scary encounter at the gas station, while she, Pete and Pam unpack their stuff.

Pete tells Darcy that the guys who tried to attack her have a personal grudge against him, because he found them living as squatters on the property he brought, and he had them removed via court order. Oh, and now we know them as the Hammonds. Yay!

Out behind the house, Pam finds several dusty antiques, and a little girl named Emma. Emma's a ghost, which is immediately obvious to anyone who has ever seen The Boogeyman, Darkness Falls, or any film since 1931. Pam, of course, remains clueless. But hey, she and Emma bond over the antique bicycle, so it's all good.

In the closest thing this movie has to a plot twist, Bobby puts on a shirt and does some carpentry. The girls ride past him on the fixed bike, and he looks up...but only sees Pam. She and her new dead best friend ride through the woods, and Pam discovers that Emma has never heard of Harry Potter, when they stop the bike at a "haunted" river.

Emma then warns Pam about the legend of the Tooth Fairy. After giving her the bloody details about the killings and the Tooth Fairy's disfigurement, Emma tells Pam that she has to get home before dark. As soon as Pam leaves, Emma fades away. Almost immediately after that, Pam is ambushed by the Tooth Fairy, and falls off of the bike. The fall knocks her last baby tooth out.

She returns home, moments after her parents wonder where she vanished to, and she shows them her tooth. That night, Pam tells her mother about her new friend, and asks her if witches are real. Darcy promises that witches aren't real, but lets Pam sleep with a light on, to make her feel safer.

Star brings one of her textbooks out to the front porch, where she finds shirtless Bobby working out. Her version of flirting involves reading a passage about pigeons to the young man. Bobby reveals that he wants to study electrical engineering when he goes to college. Then they smile and make googly eyes at each other.

The Tooth Fairy sneaks into Pam's room, and the young girl wakes up and screams. Pam runs out of the room, looking for her mother, and goes out to the porch, where she is assaulted again! It's not the witch, it's a kooky neighbor named Mrs. MacDonald. She warns the family that they will all die if they don't leave the house immediately. Then she leaves.

Bobby finds a wood chipper and repairs it, then tests it out with a board. As soon as he finishes, the Tooth Fairy sends him through the shredder, in gory fashion. From the house, Pam hears his screams and wakes up her parents. Pete explores the barn, and finds what's left of Bobby in the wood chipper. He calls the sheriff, while Darcy tries to keep their daughter calm.

Pete admits to Darcy that the death has him re-thinking the plan to run a B'n'B. She gives him a pep talk, but the next morning they find that the car was stolen. They visit the sheriff to report the theft, while Pam wanders away and runs into a certain scary lady wearing a red hood. Does this family have a streak of bad luck, or what?

Anyway, Pam somehow slips past her, and has another encounter with Emma. Emma tells her that she can protect herself from the witch if she can scare her away with her own reflection. Yeah, I'm sure that it'll be that easy.

At the sheriff's office, Pete and Darcy don't get much help. They leave, and miraculously find their car attached to a tow truck owned by the Hammonds. The Hammonds claim that they took the car because Darcy never paid for the gas she pumped, and then mention that the sheriff is related to them.

After a short fight, Pete gets the car back. When he and Darcy arrive back at the house, there's a couple waiting to greet them: Pete's old buddy Cole(a shifty, conniving musician) , and a groupie he's screwing, named  Cherise. They claim that they came to help Pete move in and fix up the place, but Cole later admits that he really just visited to ask for an $800 loan.

Later that same evening, the Hammonds sneak onto the property to steal Pete's car again. They also supposedly hired a female friend to help them by distracting the family during the intrusion. Gee, I wonder if she'll be dressed like a certain Tooth Fairy, and then folks will then die after a series of misunderstandings?

Cherise holds a seance, or a prayer ritual, or whatever the heck she's doing. Behind her, the bedroom door opens, and someone sneaks in. When Cherise finally sees her, she tries to escape through an open window, but the Tooth Fairy pulls her back into the room, then slams her back against a wall. Using a nail gun, TF pins the poor woman's hands to the wall, then nails her feet down as well. She finishes her off by leaving gaping holes where her stomach and face used to be located.

Cole and Pete hear her screams, and find the messy corpse pinned to the wall, At the same time, Pam has a close encounter with the corpse of the fake witch, then is nearly grabbed by the real one. Pam gets on her bike to escape, and screams for Emma to save her.

As she rides out to the woods, her parents try to find her in a truck. Emma appears, and tells Pam that they have to find TF'S tooth collection, to free the spirits of all of her victims. Meanwhile, Pete and Darcy visit the crazy lady next door, who tells them that they must burn the witch twice to permanently kill her.

Then we arrive at what is probably the funniest scene in the film. The Hammonds decide to set their plan in motion, unaware that the Tooth Fairy is lurking somewhere close to them. She castrates and slaughters one of the brothers, and the other one quickly finds him and demands, "What is your dick doing over there?" And then he gets killed as well. And the Oscar goes to...

Emma and Pam arrive at a graveyard, where the graves are filled with kids killed by the Tooth Fairy. She wanders out again, and her parents find her. She takes them to the graveyard, and asks Emma to show herself. The ghost makes a jar move, and tells Pam that adults can't see her. Emma can't move the jar again, but the other ghost-children use their collective power to make the jar move through the air, smashing it and releasing the candle inside. Pam's parents are convinced.

Cole and Star have a heart-to-heart chat, and remain the 2 most useless characters in the film. Cole then sinks lower, by screwing Star after recently discovering his last girlfriend's mangled body. Luckily, the Tooth Fairy decides to intervene. She kills Cole first, by slamming an ax into his neck/shoulder region several times, while pinning him face down on the bed.

Star then re-enters the bedroom, topless, and fails to realize that Cole is dead. She comes closer, lifts a large pillow off of his head, and finds that the pillow was covering just the neck-stump where Cole's head used to be. Then she faints, falling face-first into his bloody shoulders. Heh, that'll be fun to wake up on.

When they return to the house, Pete tells his wife and daughter to rescue the others, while he gets some fuel from the garage to burn the witch. Twice. Because that'll be a piece of cake, of course.

Cole's severed head comes rolling down the stairs, just as Pam and Darcy start to dry out from the heavy downpour of rain outside, Pete rushes in with the gasoline, and finds his friend's corpse, with Star still passed out on top of him. She wakes up and screams like a banshee. Pete tries to calm her down, then they rejoin the others.

The Tooth Fairy enters the house to grab Pam's tooth, and Pam leaps out of the bed holding a mirror in front of her like a shield. The witch runs away, but Pam chases after her, still trying  to hurt her with different mirrors. Then the Tooth Fairy meets Darcy, also holding up a large mirror. They force the witch to chase Pam outside.

As soon as the Tooth Fairy gets onto the front porch, Pete drenches her in gasoline, and then sets her on fire. Pam grabs the tooth collection when she drops it, and the witch chases her, with the flames gradually disappearing. With her face exposed, the witch looks like a cross between one of the hillbillies in the Wrong Turn franchise, and some of the early faces of Jason in the Friday the 13th films. Not terrible, but not very real-looking, either.

Anyway, she corners Pam once again, and Pete pours more fuel on the killer from behind. Pam places the tooth-box on Emma's tombstone, and the witch is set ablaze a second time when she goes to grab her treasure. As the Tooth Fairy burns for a second time, the ghost-children rise up and surround her, beating her body with sticks, and clubs. Then, at Emma's command, each child takes back the tooth that belonged to them, and they ascend to Heaven.

As the family walks away together, Pam runs back to the body one last time, and gets her baby tooth back. After they leave, the monster rises into the air, screams, then flies away. The final scene shows them selling the house, and saying goodbye to Star. They all drive away, and a closeup shot of an upstairs window reveals that the Tooth Fairy still haunts the property. THE END

Well, the kills were entertainingly nasty, I guess. The big flaw in this movie was that they couldn't seem to decide if the Tooth Fairy was a living killer or a supernatural one. I mean, one minute,she's teleporting and floating from place to place...the next moment, she's using the front door and grabbing weapons from the garage to kill folks with. At least with Darkness Falls, the killer was most definitely a vengeful ghost, no matter where she was. Eh, I'd say it's not quite a 3...let's give The Tooth Fairy 2.5 out of 5.

And what did this Tooth Fairy teach me?

-That a monster called The Tooth Fairy prefers to kill most folks in ways that have nothing to do with their legend or name.

-Ghosts just want to socialize.

-Rednecks take forever to plot revenge, then die with incredible ease.

No idea what my next SAW will be. I'm kind of winging it here, so it gets pretty random. See you sometime in the next seven days!

Wrong Turn 5

If at first you don't succeed, try 4 more times! That was apparently the philosophy behind Wrong Turn 5, yet another entry in a franchise that is in dire need of a mercy killing. The only audience for this stuff at this point must be some poor, unlucky doofus who blogs while watching awful slasher mov--uh, I mean, whoever has to watch these every week must be the luckiest bastard on the planet! SPOILERS ahead...

A helpful subtitle informs us that the town the mutant hillbillies live near is called Fairlake, and that it was established in 1814, only for the entire population of the town to suddenly vanish 3 years later. Wow, that was a quick movie! 5 killer trees out of 5!!!

Oh no, hold on, there's more. I'm automatically docking this film 1 point for dashing my hopes this early on. And for ripping off the legend of Roanoake for a stupid B-movie. Plus, it just bugs me that---whoa, hey now! Now it's a cheap porn flick! Perhaps I was too quick to remove that point...Aw-bow-chicka-bow-wowwww...

So, uh...hold on...having trouble concentrating on writing. Yeah, so this couple in a tent are making the beast with 2 backs, and someone is walking in the direction of the tent. 3 someones. And all are armed. They burst into the tent, these 3 disfigured stalkers, and Billy, the guy who was making love outta nothin' at all 3 seconds ago, punches the closest stalker in the jaw.

Turns out it was just Billy's friends, messing with the couple. Except for Billy, we don't learn any of their names yet, not even his girlfriend. We do learn that they are in the mountains of West Virginia to attend a music festival called Mountain Man. I guess Burning Man didn't want this movie's stank to spread. A female reporter provides exposition about the Mountain Man Festival, then wanders off as soon as she finishes her report.

Back at the camp, we hear Billy talk about breakfast, which is earth-shattering, then we see a female jogger racing through the woods. The reporter? Someone new? Do I care? Oh, and she's dressed like The Bride from Kill Bill. Mutant cannibals surround her, and she assumes that they're just festival attendees in costumes. She confronts 3 Finger(yup, once again, he's front and center...), and gives him the finger. He chops it off, and decides to keep it.

Screaming, The Un-Bride runs away, and now finds herself facing Pinhead from the Hellraiser films, Doug Bradley in the flesh! What, did he lose a bet? Anyway, he offers to help her when she tells him about her attackers. Yeah. Pull the other leg, Pinhead. Nevertheless, she chooses to believe that he just happened to be waiting for a damsel to rescue.

They scamper a few feet away, and hide behind a shallow incline of bushes, where they watch the mutant cannibals pass right in front of them. After they leave, the old man wraps her hand up, and climbs out of the shallow ditch to act as a lookout. He gets her to follow him, then swings an ax, exposing her intestines to good ol' fresh air. Then, in the best bit so far, he chops of her hand. It lands on the ground, and the fingers make up the "5" in the opening title sequence. This might not be as bad as I thought!

The old man's sons show up, and he orders them to give him "a hand". Heh. One of them even picks up her hand and offers it to him. The older man just walks away, letting the mutants take care of the corpse.

More campsite. We learn that the blond female of the group is named Cruz, and that's it so far for names. A stoner with a guitar regurgitates the nonsense about the mass disappearance of Fairlake's population, except that he claims that a band of cannibal hillbillies slaughtered and ate them all, because of some land dispute. Whatever...just start telling us your freakin' names!

The hillbillies are back at their shack, preparing the jogger for their next meal. Dad walks in, and angrily shows them her wallet and personal belongings, then lectures them about not leaving anything behind that could be traced by investigators. Uh, then they shouldn't have killed a local girl in the first place, right? Logic is this movie's Kryptonite.

Oh, and another thing: Dad refers to them escaping from the hospital in the previous film, and mentions being their father, but then says that he "found them" and took them in. Which is it? And how does Doug Bradley eventually become the old man from the original, who had hair and looked and sounded nothing like him? This is another movie that makes your brain hurt if you think about any of it.

Then we meet Deputy Biggs and his boss, a cute-ish sheriff by the name of Angela. Biggs is going on a trip soon with the sheriff's husband, who just so happens to call as they talk about him. He offers to bring her dinner, since she has to work late. Riveting stuff.

Our campers are now driving to Fairlake to explore, and we finally learn that Cruz is dating Billy. Yay, another character gets a name! As they all chatter about the usual movie nonsense, a figure appears in the middle of the road. They swerve to avoid the person, and slam the car into a tree, destroying the front end.

The 3 guys in the group leave to check on the person they nearly hit, who is now sprawled on the road. They didn't hit him, so why he's down is a mystery. One of them moves in for a closer look, and it's Cannibal Dad, who was playing possum until they got close enough to stab. After one of them is cut on the arm. they start kicking the old man. From the forest, the mutants prepare to kills the guys with arrows.

Fortunately, the sheriff arrives, so the execution is delayed. She gets all 3 of the young men in cuffs with the assistance of Biggs, then also arrests the old man. Then Biggs finds drugs in the crashed car, and Angela calls for another vehicle to assist with the arrest and gathering of evidence. Oh, and she leaves deputy Biggs alone with the vehicle, until they can send someone to tow it in. Well, he's a goner!

Almost immediately after he's left by himself, 3 Finger shoots 2 arrows into the deputy. Then the trio spring from their hiding place, slice off Biggs' ears, and one of them eats one of the ears in front of him. They finally silence his screams by plunging a knife through the top of his head. If their father had been around, he probably would have said something corny, like, "Ears to you!"

At the jail, a local doctor patches up the guy who was stabbed, and advises him to have the injury checked in about 3 weeks. He gets a name: Rick. Yup, the guy who does 1 scene gets a name faster than any other character thus far. Gimme a break!

Cruz panics over the arrest, worrying that it will affect her scholarship. Another female, wearing a sleeveless shirt is named Lita. Progress! Billy decides to be noble, and tells Angela that all of the drugs belonged solely to him. She appears skeptical, but agrees to release the other teens, so long as they don't try to leave the area. Papa hillbilly demands to be set free as well, and Angela reminds him that he cut Billy's arm with a weapon.

Billy watches his friends leave, then settles in for his new life as a drug kingpin. As his buddies all check in at the local motel, Angela runs a fingerprint check on Papa, and quickly discovers that he has a criminal history going back about 30 years. She makes a phone call, and arranges to have a U.S. Marshal pick him up in the morning. Oh, and now even HE has a name: Maynard Odets. At the same time, the teens call about their car, and discover that they'll have to wait until morning to see it.

In town, the dead reporter's film crew worry because she hasn't returned yet. The impatient cameraman tells the young female production assistant that she'll have to do the live festival report herself. He gives her a mike and starts filming before she can argue the matter any further. As the nervous young lady stammers through the intro, 3 Finger walks right past her, staring in awe at all of the random teens dressed like inbred hillbillies.

Maynard's boys use their truck to take down the town's phone lines. From his cell, Maynard just laughs at the sheriff's confusion. Meanwhile, the stoner guy is now named Julian. He arranges for Billy's father to come get them, because he's apparently some influential lawyer. Then, after getting off of the phone, Julian callously suggests that they all still go to the festival. What a giant douche.

The hillbillies then break into the local power plant, and start sabotaging the panels that keep  the juice flowing. The night shift employee manning everything sees them on his monitors, and assumes that the trio are just kids in costumes. He goes after them, then tries to back-pedal when he sees their weapons. They swiftly capture him, then hoist him up on ropes to be fried by electrical cables.

As the town goes dark, Maynard laughs again and promises that they will all die by morning. A drunk who was unconscious when Maynard was brought in, requests another cell. Then there's a silly little scene where a girl asks a deputy to help her get into the festival, because she made a "wrong turn". Isn't that clever AND hilarious?

Angela tries to contact Biggs, which she'd need a Ouija board for by now. She tries to hail the other deputies at the festival, and we see that one is busy screwing the girl he met earlier. Cruz leaves the motel, to bring Billy some food. Once outside, she senses the cannibals lurking around her, and quickens her pace.

Julian then decides to leave the motel too, and also visit Billy. As he makes his exit, we see Cruz run into 3 Finger, who stabs her in the abdomen. In a scene lifted right out of a Freddy Krueger film, 3 Finger grabs up the poor girl's entrails, and starts feeding them to her. Nasty when Freddy first did it, nasty today.

Julian arrives safely at the jail, and wonders aloud how he got there ahead of Cruz. Angela wants him to leave, but she agrees that the disappearance of Cruz is troubling. She allows him to remain only until Cruz arrives, at which point both can go back to the motel together. Then Julian quickly fills Billy in on the call to his father.

At the motel, Lita and Gus(Seriously? Our last couple to get names are Lita and Gus???) try out a new sexual position, apparently called Nose-to-Chin. Weirdos. They have a boring chat over whether or not to live together, then Gus proposes to Lita. She rejects him, then heads to the bathroom to take a shower.

Gus stays in bed, then hears a knock at the door. It's one of the cannibals, whom Gus mistakes for someone in a festival costume. He shuts the door, but there's another knock. This time, the trio of killers attack in unison, cut his throat, and drag him outside. After a very brief confrontation between Maynard and Billy, we see Lita trying to hide from the mutants. They nab her anyway. Then Angela's husband, Jason, arrives with the dinner he promised her. There's another man with him, but I didn't catch his name. Big surprise, right?

Gus is still alive, but probably not for long. His feet are tied to a tree stump, and his arms are connected to the chain in the truck. Before he passes out, Gus watches as the killers mangle and smash his feet and legs with sledgehammers. Then they drive him to town, and dump him in front of the jail, where they run him over.

Angela deputizes everyone at the jail, except for Maynard. She then breaks into a nearby hardware store, and steals a gas-powered generator and some gasoline. Back at the jail, they hear a gunshot, and Mike wants to leave. Julian calms him down, and they agree to wait 10 more minutes for the sheriff to return.

Angela, meanwhile, gets a radio working, and contacts a doofus all the was up here, in New Hampshire. She convinces him to get a message to the authorities, until he realizes that her signal is located at the Mountain Man Festival. Assuming that she's pulling his leg, Teddy the stoner assumes that the call is fake. Then another gun goes off, and Teddy suddenly isn't sure. When Angela abandons the radio to see where the shot came from, the generator shuts off, and the radio goes dead.

Mose, the other nameless guy who seemed to be with her husband Jason, fired a shot at Lita, but no one was hurt. Maynard then offers safe passage to the rest if they kill the sheriff for him. No one takes him up on the offer. Billy and Julian then arm themselves, and decide to go looking for Cruz. They find her mangled body several blocks away, then hear 3 Finger cackling near their location. They get ambushed, then knocked out.

When they wake up, they find themselves up Shit Creek. Billy is buried in the ground up to his neck, and Julian is tethered to the ground by a chain around his ankle. 3 Finger then starts up a snow blower, and aims it at Billy's head. He misses the frirst time, but then grinds the head to mush on his second attempt. After that, he quickly shreds Julian apart, sending blood and flesh flying in every direction.

Angela and Mose leave the jail, so that Mose can safely reach the sheriff's truck, and ride to the next town to get help. As he drives away, Mose hits a trap laid out by the cannibals, and gets himself captured. He wakes up as the killers are stuffing him into a metal barrel. They seal it up, then plan to set the room on fire, roasting Mose alive.

Lita is approached by Maynard, who suggests that he'd let her escape if she opened his cell. Then they all hear Mose screaming as he burns, and Angela tries to rescue him. The building explodes, and Angela is knocked off her feet by the blast.

Lita lets Maynard out of his cell during the confusion, and he repays her by stabbing her eyes with a letter opener. Angela bandages her eyes up, and shoots Maynard to slow him down. She has a chance to finish him off, but backs down. She leaves the jail yet again.

This time out, she finds her husband bound and gagged in his car. She opens the door, which triggers a booby trap, and she sees her husband get dissected right before her eyes. She gets captured as Maynard horrifies Lita with stories of torture.

Angela is tied to one of the jail cell walls. Maynard attaches a shotgun to her feet, that will be triggered if she  merely steps down. The barrel is duct-taped to her chin and mouth. Maynard and his boys set the jail on fire, and Maynard tells Angela that how she dies is up to her: She can burn to death, or get shot to death. As Maynard climbs into the truck with his brood, he hears a gunshot and he smiles.

Lita is left wandering down the road, staggering and blind, when a vehicle pulls up. She thinks that she's been rescued, but 3 Finger leads her to the truck. THE END

Man, that was bleak! The effects were better than they were in the last couple, so that was an improvement. But how about we stop with the prequels? And add more than just the same 2-3 cannibals into the mix. And give 3 Finger a rest for a movie or 2. I'll be generous here, and give this movie 4 killer trees out of 5...I just want something new next time, that's all.

And what did I learn from watching Wrong Turn 5?

-You can set a movie at a music festival, and never show even a nanosecond of the actual festival.

-You can make a 5-movie franchise with cheap rubber masks, and lots of plaid.

-Death by fire or shotgun isn't much of a choice at all. I choose death by snu-snu!!!!


No idea what my next movie will be, as Netflix is currently giving me a hard time over a billing issue. We'll see what happens. If worse comes to worse, the movie will have to wait an extra week. Hope to see you soon!

Dark House

Once in a lifetime, you view a piece of art so magnificent, it changes you. It puts life in perspective, and you realize that maybe--just maybe--there is beauty in everything we experience, and wonders to behold around every new corner. It makes your entire existence better for the experience.

Dark House is not any of that. Get ready for SPOILERS...

The movie starts off with many, many images of baby dolls and stuffed animals, all piled up together. It's like an orgy scene out of Toy Story. Then blood begins to spray the dolls, followed by a scream. More blood. And some praying.

Then the story begins "14 years ago", before the Texas Doll Saw Massacre, I guess. a trio of little girls ride their bikes to a creepy old house. One girl mentions that it's a foster home, and all 3 suddenly hear a scary cry coming from inside. One girl spontaneously decides to show off, and enters the house, even as her friends beg her to turn back.

Almost immediately, the girl finds the bloody body of a battered boy. Boo-yah! She finds more corpses further in, and all look like recent kills. Moaning sounds lead her into the kitchen, where she finds another body, and a woman drenched in blood, mangling her hand in a garbage disposal. Sure am glad that I had a big dinner tonight!

The little girl hears something in a nearby pantry, and looks through the keyhole. Another eye stares back out at her, and the girl stumbles back, and hits her head on the kitchen floor. She blacks out.

Then we see a young woman, holding the same pose that the girl was in, but resting on a bed. She wakes up from a nightmare, and scurries to the bathroom, to look for some pills in her medicine cabinet. Later, at a meeting with her shrink, he accuses her of not taking her medications nearly enough for them to be effective. Oh, and her name is Claire.

Claire explains to her doctor that the pills dull her emotions, and that's an obstacle to her becoming an actress. When he suggests that her nightmares are tied into repressed memories of her being in the big, scary murder house, Claire reveals that she's tried to return to the property, but is too frightened to even open the front gate. Oh, and the house has a name as well: Chuck. Nah, just messin' wi'chya...it's known as the Darrode House.

At Claire's acting class, her instructor has 2 students, Bruce and Eldon, improvise a conversation, mostly where they just bust each others' balls. Then a guy named Rudy replaces Bruce, and makes a lot of jokes about how Eldon is whiter than he is. Then Eldon is replaced by a bitchy blond named Ariel, who reveals to the class that Rudy has a crush on Claire.

Claire then replaces Rudy, and she and Ariel nearly have a brawl onstage. Claire is replaced by her friend Lily, who quickly comes to Claire's defense, then announces that the entire exercise is useless bullshit. Amen to THAT! Can we get to something resembling a plot now?

Right on cue, an older gentleman enters the theater, and interrupts the class. Yay! He's played by Jeffrey Combs, the Re-Animator himself, in the flesh! I'm elated until he opens his mouth, and announces with a horrible theatrical voice that his name is "Walston Ray"...Really??? All you did was reverse late actor Ray Walston's name! If you're Walston Ray, then I'm Presley Elvis.

Anyway, back to a movie that lost all of my goodwill in the last 10 seconds. Wally reveals that he specializes in running profitable haunted house attractions, and that he plans to open a new on in the local community. Gosh, I wonder if the Darrode House is the place he's going to use? That's a real brain-stumper.

Of course it's the house he's talking about, and he offers each student $300 for 1 day of work, to "scare up" publicity with 2 reporters who are coming to the attraction for a preview performance. If it generates enough publicity, he'll even pay them to do the entire season. They all turn up their noses at the thought of doing a cheesy funhouse-type job, until Claire convinces them that the prospect of working in front of a live audience every night would be valuable acting experience. Because they're all mindless sheep, the suddenly agree to do it.

That evening, Claire does an internet search for the phrase "dark house", which Wally kept using. She gets varied results, and starts to read up on the tourist attractions. She also watches an old news clip about the massacre, and the on-air reporter claims that there were 7 children killed that day. Seemed like more, but whatever. She scrolls through a series of nasty crime-scene pictures, then is grabbed through the screen by the ghost of garbage-disposal lady. Wait, what was she grabbed with, did the mangled hands grow back?

The group of students all arrive at Darrode House, and just gawk at it at first. Then they go in, even poor Claire, who still hears ghostly children all around her. Inside the house, they encounter a strange Val Kilmer/Johnny Depp hybrid, named Moreton, but he quickly abandons them. This movie is constructed like a Mad Libs game.

Luckily(I guess), Wally shows up. He re-introduces them to Moreton, who is some sort of computer whiz; and they also meet Sam, a female assistant of some sort for Wally. As everyone's getting to know one another, Claire wanders off to look at some of the other rooms on the ground floor. Everywhere she turns, she literally sees ghosts of the past tormenting her poor memory.

When she gets to the kitchen, Wally stops her from doing any further snooping. He gets the group to follow him upstairs, and announces that they are about to enter something called a "Corridor of Blood". It's actually a pretty mundane-looking hallway. Seeing that they all remain unimpressed, Wally dares Rudy to start to walk down the hall.

Soon enough, a clowny mashup of The Joker and Harvey Dent is conjured up. And he has an ax. Rudy taunts him, until they're just about toe-to-toe. Then the clown swings the weapon and de-materializes.

It turns out that he and the other ghosts are state-of-the-art holograms. And they further claim that the holograms are triggered by stress and fear emanating from the patrons.

What a load of gibberish. Wally leads the students to a basement-level control room, where a techie named Harrison is monitoring the rooms of the house, as well as tweaking the scary holograms. He reveals that he openly dislikes his boss, and Wally quickly ushers everybody out of the room. Oh, and Claire is still hearing murder and mayhem in her head.

She stops in her bedroom to calm down once more, and has a vision of the crazy killer whipping a child on the bed. The ghost seems to be aware of her, so Claire grabs a sheet, and covers the mirror.

There's a goofy, melodramatic scene, in which Wally talks to the students about how their job of scaring folks is both noble and cathartic. Now, I usually love watching Combs chewing the scenery in any movie, but honestly...he makes me cringe in this one. I don't know why, but I just can't get into his character at all. Geoffrey Rush did it better in House on Haunted Hill.

Oops, now we're back in the control room with Harrison. The computer program controlling the holographic effects is bugging out, and the whole system is glitching up! Somehow, a virus has infected the program.

As Harrison stares at his monitors, one screen fills up with a pair of eyes staring out at poor Harry. A face forms, and it speaks his name. Dumbass leans closer, and the monitor explodes, sending shards into Harrison's face and throat, and killing him in an instant.

Wally meets with the pair of reporters(one male, one female) doing the article on the Darrode house, and he fixes them drinks while they all talk. The male reporter implies that Wally is in real financial trouble if the Darrode attraction is a flop. Then the female reporter questions the decision to exploit the massacre of several children as entertainment. Wally points out that she's doing the same thing to sell issues of her magazine.

Then the preview tour commences. Wally watches from his office with his assistant Sam, as the journalists meet their "tour guides" in the front hall. Claire and Moreton introduce them to "The Shroud", who looks like a magician at a birthday party. He promises to frighten them in extreme ways, then he becomes a swarm of bats.

Wally and Sam then witness all of their monitors go to static as the clock strikes midnight. At the same time, the reporters are brought to "The Corridor of Blood", which is the only way to get to "The 6 Rooms of Doom"...which means I don't know what.

A demonic woman appears at the opposite end of the hallway, with some elongated, funky fingernails. Moreton whips out a comically huge crucifix and approaches the she-demon, and she impales him with her fingernails. More than once, in fact. Thinking that it's just part of the act, Claire leads the journalists past his corpse. An unseen entity drags the body into a room, the door slams, and there's a brief, terrified scream.

In the next area, Eldon is playing a demented mortician named Thaddeus Payne. the "corpse" on his slab has its eyes and mouth sewn shut, apparently to keep the evil soul within from escaping. Eldon removes the stitches from the mouth of the body, and several entities comprised of smoke and light fly around the room. Claire and the reporters exit the room, while Eldon cackles like a loon.

As Wally continues to fret about not being able to watch how the tour is going, Claire leads the reporters into a literal slaughterhouse area. Various body parts are hanging from hooks, with the severed heads begging to be rescued. the butcher is in the room as well, but his back is turned. The killer finally decides to pursue them, and they beat a hasty retreat.

The next area has a prison cage and police tape. Claire warns the pair not to step over the tape, and a group of savage vampire women lunge at them when they do. Eh, kind of tame after everything else so far.

Next up is a torture chamber. A guy is strapped inside an iron maiden, several victims are tied to chairs, and a woman is stretched out on a rack. The torturer gives the reporters the ability to vote on the fate of the one in the iron maiden, by giving a simple "thumb's up" or "thumb's down" to closing the spikes on them. The female reporter votes to spare the guy, so naturally, the torturer goes with the other vote, and kills his victim.

In the following room, Lily plays the role of some kind of clairvoyant or witch, named Zimba. She instructs them to step onto a pentagram on the floor. When they do as she asked, she predicts that they will both die in terrible ways, and then she vanishes.

Female demons surround the pentagram, and begin to dance and shapeshift. At the same time, the computer security program crashes, and announces a system failure. No big deal.

I guess it really wasn't, because Claire leads the journalists into yet another room. This time, they watch as a mad doctor experiments on a patient using corrosive acid to open them up. After the acid tears open the man's stomach and kills him, Claire gives the male reporter a flashlight, so that he can examine the wound up close.

As soon as he does, the doctor splashes a beaker of the acid all over his face. Claire realizes that it isn't a trick, and screams at the female reporter to find some staff to help. The reporter runs out crying, while Claire just stares helplessly at the dead man next to her on the floor.

The female reporter encounters a horde of spirits at a staircase, and tumbles down the stairs, snapping her neck. Rudy sees it happen, and leaps off of the couch. At the same time, Claire's screams bring the other students to her location. Everyone helpfully points out that holograms can't harm people, so Claire provides a compelling counterpoint: "Look at his face!"

Back at the stairs, Wally fantasizes about how much publicity these new deaths will bring to his tourist trap. The other group is still upstairs, because the torturer hologram now has Bruce in the iron maiden. The torturer lets them vote for his fate, but then just slams the device closed, killing Bruce with no warning. Then the killer turns into Miss Darrode, right before disappearing again.

They run downstairs before anything else can appear, and accuse Wally of being the mastermind behind all of the murders. Then they discover than none of their phones work. Amazing how those things always malfunction in these movies...

Eldon rushes for the front door, but it won't budge. The next enemy shows up behind him, though...a scary-looking knight, ready to bash Eldon's head in with a mace. As Eldon continues to evade the crazed attacker, Claire and Rudy try to force a door to open, but it's sealed tight.

Unfortunately, Eldon mistakenly assumes that he can win in a fight with the knight, so he grabs a sword mounted on the wall. The knight obliterates Eldon's head with his mace, leaving just a neck-stump geysering blood. As cool as it sounds, the CGI is pretty bad.

Sam grabs Ariel's hand, and urges her to abandon the rest. She leads the girl to a bathroom, claiming that a window in there is always unlocked. Why would Sam just let her escape? These are literally the 2 most under-developed characters in the movie. Oh, it turns out that Sam wants to "do" Ariel. Classy.

Claire tells the rest that the deaths are being orchestrated by Miss Darrode's angry spirit, but none of them are listening. Wally, in the meantime, is angrily pounding on the locked bathroom door and cursing at Sam. Is there still a script at this point? Was there EVER one?

Ariel helps Sam to open the window, but it slams shut again. Then a shrieking succubus appears in the tub, and coughs a steady jet of green smoke at them. As the room begins to fill up with the smoke, both women begin to choke on it.

Wally then remembers some sort of back-up fusebox on the second floor. Claire, upset that she's not the center of attention for 10 seconds, tells the others that she was in the house the day that the massacre happened.

That unleashes The Wrath of Lily, who blames Claire directly for all of the killings. Wally disagrees, claiming that Harris is behind it all. Oh, and get a brief glimpse of Sam and Ariel gasping for breath on the bathroom floor.

On the next floor, Wally reveals that the second control panel is behind a painting at the end of a long hallway. Rudy volunteers to open and disable it, and is told to remain calm, so as not to incur the violent nature of the holograms. Right, because they can detect your fear. I forgot about that entirely logical revelation.

Anyway, Rudy begins his journey to the end of the hall. Of course, a holographic monster shows up behind him. It's that scary clown, missing one half of his face. And holding the same monstrously big axe. Not a bad make-up job, to be honest.

At first, Rudy has no idea that he's being stalked. Until, naturally, everyone at the other end of the hall begin to yell and scream at him. Nice way to keep him calm.

After Rudy unscrews the panel in the wall, he glances back and spots the clown. Just as he starts to loosen the red wires, the clown throws his weapon, planting it in Rudy's spine. Then the lights go out. Well, at least if the power's out, then the monsters are no longer a threat, right?

As they stand around in the dark, Wally remembers another open window in the attic. Lily decides that she's going up to the attic by herself, since she no longer trusts Claire. She leaves Claire and Wally, who wander back out to the first floor staircase, as she starts toward the attic.

As soon as they split up, the electricity comes back on. Lily has a brief fright provided by Moreton's body. Then, as she starts her ascent, a hulking soldier shows up in the room. Liliy has just enough time to realize that "war is Hell", before the soldier shoots her to death.

As he begins to unlock the door to the control room, Wally is dragged away, kicking and screaming, by 3 grotesque lunatics. Claire flees into the control room, and uses an axe that she finds to destroy all of the computers and other machinery. The attackers come after her, but vanish as she destroys the computers.

Claire wanders the house, and her memories seem to be returning. When she gets to the attic, Claire sees a ghostly re-enactment of a torture session between Miss Darrode and a group of young kids sitting in a circle. She forces them, one by one, to recite biblical passages, then strikes each reader with a whip.

Then, Miss Darrode gets behind Claire, and accuses her of being possessed by a demon, and then killing the children herself. Claire runs away, and hides in the kitchen pantry. Deja vu, anyone?

She has another flashback, this time recalling that she convinced the other children to rebel against the abuse by burning their bibles. They build a fire, then each child takes a turn throwing a bible into the blaze. They don't realize it yet, but Miss Darrode is right behind them, watching and waiting.

When the last book is flung into the fire, Darrode screams, making all of the children jump. They all run deeper into the house, with the exception of Claire, who hides in that often-seen pantry. From there, Claire hears all of the other children screaming as they are being hacked to death.

Then the noise abruptly comes to an end. Claire cautiously sneaks up to the door, and peers through the keyhole. The psychotic old woman tries to draw her out of hiding, telling Claire that a demon by the name of Juvaar has possessed her young body.

Then Darrode sees all of the blood on her, drops a butcher knife into the sink, and turns on the garbage disposal. Remember this scene at the start of the movie? Well, we get to watch Darrode grind her hands up a second time. Anyone hungry?

Back in the present, Claire pleads with Darrode's ghost, accusing her of being the only sinner all those years ago. She faces the angry spirit, and challenges her, causing the ghost to vanish after being stabbed with her own knife.

The cops find Claire later, sitting on the kitchen floor, and smacking the knife into the floor. The cops decide that the trauma of being back in the house, added to perhaps missing her meds, most likely caused her to kill her classmates and the other haunted house workers. Heck, they even found her fingerprints on every weapon!

So that's that, right? Welllllll...not exactly. Claire is tucked away at a funny farm, and we meet 2 new characters, a young couple, and they're about to enter the Darrode house. Remember how Claire was hiding in the pantry during the massacre? Yeah, well, this character was the little girl who entered the house after her friends goaded her into it.

Now she's a young woman, and she's facing her worst fears by entering the house. Sound familiar? As she describes finding the bodies, an ominous black cloud floats past the couple, and heads upstairs.

She starts to relax, and the happy couple kiss. Then all of the windows and doors slam shut, and they scream. The final scene shows Claire in her padded cell, saying, "I didn't do it, I didn't do it!" THE END

Apologies for how long this one took. I've been overwhelmed with medical stuff lately, and it's been time-consuming and stressful. Hopefully I can catch up at some point, but I may just have to put stuff like this on hold, until I can get my health issues in order.

Anyway, enough about me. Back to Dark House. Much more entertaining than it looked, I have to say. Sure, it's a ripoff of House On Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts, but it was still goofy fun. I'll give it 3.5 killer trees out of 5. If they had renamed the Walston Ray character, the score would be higher.

And what did I get out of watching Dark House?

-Holograms are harmless creations of light. Except when they kill people. Which they can't do. Anyone else confused?

-Abandoning a college course to work on a haunted house attraction just seems like the smartest decision you'll ever make!

-Kitchen pantries are like panic rooms for poor people.

Next up:Wrong Turn 5...Wait, they had 5 of those things?

Christmas Evil

So, Christmas Eve I was floored by the flu, and was pretty much laid out until Friday. With that in mind, pretend that this is Christmas Day, and this movie still works just fine. Now, let's all go meet beneath the mistletoe, and exchange SPOILERS...

Okay, so Christmas Evil begins with a Troma logo(!), then tells us that it's Christmas Eve, circa 1947.  Santa drops down into the chimney of a house, then washes his hands in a bowl of water as 2 children spy on him. He then makes himself a snack and a drink, as Mom joins her kids. So Santa sightings were pretty common after WWII, I guess?

He puts presents under the tree, and starts filling up the stockings. One of the boys begins giggling, so Santa finishes his work, then disappears. And so does the family, literally speaking. POOF! Crazy, huh?

The 2 boys, Billy and Harry, then argue over whether it was actually Santa, or just their father. Well, let's look at the evidence: Does Daddy slide down chimneys? Does he have warlock powers that allow him to teleport himself and others from room to room? Wait, he DOES??? Oh crap kids, your dad's Satan!!!

Anyway, still convinced that Santa's real, Harry hears a noise and sneaks back downstairs to check it out. He finds Mommy being touched and kissed in the fa-la-la's, then he rushes upstairs to calm himself down. Instead, he smashes a snow globe, the picks up a jagged shard of glass from the mess. He cuts his hand, and the credits begin.

As the movie resumes, Harry is seen as a middle-aged man with a serious Santa fetish. His pajamas are a Santa suit, his bedroom is decorated for the holiday 10 times over, and he even pauses before his morning shave to admire his shaving-cream beard.  Imagine the creepiest pedophile-guy you can imagine, then multiply the creepy level by infinite, and you've got Harry.

No wait, our pal Harry just got creepier. He went up to his roof with a pair of binoculars, and watched children through their apartment windows, to determine which ones were naughty or nice. Yeah, nothing abnormal there...Aw geez, then he writes it all down in a journal. He doesn't have a human head collection somewhere, does he?

As it turns out, creepy Harry spends his days working at the Jolly Dreams toy factory, building toys on an assembly line. And not even fun toys, but piles of plastic with no movable parts. I'd go crazy too, if I were in his place.

Harry starts to get tense and frustrated, and cuts his hand with a toy's sharp edge. At the end of the day, he decides to go to a bar called The Odd Couple Lounge, and throw back a few with Felix and Oscar.(See, kids, there was this comedy called The Odd Couple, and--oh, just go look it up!) I guess the cut wasn't serious enough to get it checked out... Before he even gets in the front door, he hears a co-worker bragging about how he duped Harry into working late. Harry rushes home to have a tantrum, then has flashbacks to his childhood, while being a peeping Tom at someone's house.

The next morning, Harry gets lazy, and watches the Thanksgiving Day parade while having breakfast on the couch. He calls his brother, and tells him that he has plans for Christmas. Then Harry hangs up on Billy to watch Santa appear at the end of the parade.

He steps into the bathroom to start putting on the Santa outfit, as city worlers are shown cleaning up in the aftermath of the parade. As night falls, he even re-paints his vehicle to look "festive", and makes an ominous-sounding "naughty" list of potential victims. Let's hope he never reads my blog!

Harry stops at one boy's home, then rubs his hands and face in either motor oil or mud, and "marks" the house by leaving an imprint of his hands and face on the wall. As the boy and his mother rush out for Mass, Harry swiftly dives into the bushes. The boy, Mark, sees Harry, and decides to get a closer look. As he nearly gets nabbed and runs back to his mother, she slaps the boy for lying. Then they leave.

Harry returns home, revealing his own "workshop", where he makes weird toys. Then he goes to the annual office Christmas party. There, he discovers that the factory is donating their cheap-ass toys to hospitals. Harry storms out, then steals toys off of the assembly line, and fills a sack with them for his role as Santa.
He fills 2 other sacks with dirt. Oh, and he Super-glues his Santa beard to his face. Watch that for his super freak-out in the mirror.

Now totally crazy, Harry goes to young Mark's house, and leaves him a sack of dirt and a silly picture. Wow, that'll show him! Oh, and he vandalizes most of the gifts beneath the tree. Party animal.

Next up, Harry visits a hospital with Mark's gifts, A doubtful night watchman won't let him in, but several staff members buy into his Santa Schtick, and he leaves them smiling.

He sees several well-to-do people leaving a midnight mass, and a few closest to him mock his appearance. Harry retaliates by killing one with a long pick to the eye, and using an ax on the other 3. Then he drives away again as the rest of the crowd screams.

Harry eventually pulls his van over to calm himself down, and decides to walk for a while to clear his head. He finds a dance going full swing, and is ushered inside by some of those in attendance. So much for a clear head.

Several children surround him, so Harry gives them gifts. Then he dances for the group. Before he leaves, he tells everyone to be good, and they'll get good presents. But, if they get naughty, he promises to bring them something "horrible", which brings a tense silence to the room. He ends with a laugh, though, so it's all good.

Harry finds a ladder, and climbs up to someone's roof. He gets stuck in their chimney, but finally manages to squeeze his way back out again. He breaks in through the basement instead, and moves through the place until he arrives in the living room.

It turns out to be the home of the co-worker who made him work late, so he suffocates the guy with his bag of toys/dirt/whatever, then stabs the wife in the chest. Loud screams send him running away.

On Christmas Day, Bill and his wife hear about the killing spree the previous night, and assume it was Harry. After yelling about how best to deal with the situation, they still have no ideas. That whole scene was useless filler.

Harry goes back to the toy factory. Why? Because he wants to run all the conveyor belts at the same time. Why??? Well, because then Harry can watch as all of the crappy toys hit the floor and break. Perfectly logical!

The police arrange a line-up of killer Santa suspects. Totally not joking, I swear. Funniest scene in the damned movie. I wish this one scene could be a movie. "Number 3, step forward. Now chuckle like your tummy is a bowl full of jelly!" "Number 5, yell out 'Merry Christmas!"

Harry calls his brother, and rants and raves. Then he sees himself in a mirror. After a statement about dying, Harry heads out again. He finds a house surrounded by flourescent snowmen and reindeer, then begins to walk around among them.

A group of children see him, and their parents realize who he is. One angry father pulls out a switchblade, but Harry gets the weapon from him and escapes as the angry adults chase him. One old biddy even pokes him in the face with a brooch.

Somehow, the group end up with torches, and it becomes a Frankenstein-style pursuit. Harry barely escapes in his van, and goes to Bill for help. Angry at Harry for the trouble he caused, Bill strangles him until he passes out.

Bill panics, the stuffs Harry's body into the front seat of his van. Thing is, Harry wakes up and gets away yet again. With everyone chasing Harry again, he drives the van off of a bridge....where it flies away toward the moon. Literally. THE END

Well, that was....different. Not really a slasher, but not sure what genre it really fits. Odd. 2 killer trees out of 5, and one of those points goes entirely to the police line-up bit. Comic gold.

And what did I learn from Christmas Evil?

-Cars can fly.

-Santa prefers basements over rooftops.

-Toys made here are cheap plastic crap. Like most supermodels!

Next on my list is something called Dark House. Oooooh, scaaaary!

Chopping Mall

Today's SAW, Chopping Mall, is also known by the title Killbots, in some regions. THE END...Wait, what? I still have to watch it? Fine. But you guys are paying at least part of my therapy bills. Oh...and "SPOILERS"!

The first scene shows a thief preparing to steal all of the treasures that Link fetched for Zelda over the past few decades. He smashes the display case to smithereens(Yay! I got to use "smithereens" in a sentence!), then grabs handfuls of jewels, and stuffs them away. He boldly walks away with a huge shit-eating grin plastered on his face, until a voice orders him to stop.

The voice belongs to a security robot, which I while now attempt to describe: Imagine Stewie Griffin's head encased in metal, KITT the talking car's red front panel as the "eyes" of the robot, and Johnny 5's body from those Short Circuit movies. That monstrosity is a Killbot, ladies and gentleman, in all of its' 1986 glory. Forget it, yer payin' for ALL of my therapy bills!

The dumbass thief shoots at the robot, but aims at the place where it would have feet. Yeah, because you wouldn't want to shoot out it's electronic eye, or its' claw-like hands. Hell, just hopping on top of it and bashing it with the butt of the gun would cause more damage than what this guy did.

The guy  runs around a corner, passing a McDonald's and a nondescript "Vitamins" store. Irony, or coincidence? The robot shoots a taser into the back of the fleeing criminal, and we discover that the whole thing was a demo reel, in an attempt to try to sell the security guard robots to investors and mall  owners.

An attractive blond steps up to a podium, and introduces the audience to the president of the corporation that developed the technology, and he in turn unveils 3 prototypes that will soon be "guarding" the local mall they happen to be using for the demonstration. A skeptical couple in the audience refer to the robots as Moe, Larry and Curly.

Then there are concerns among the crowd over how the security 'bots would know the difference between, say, a thief and an average schmoe who just happens to be working late. One of the robots is activated, and the corporate guy uses an ID tag to identify himself to the robot. He then assures the crowd that "absolutely nothing" would cause the robots to go against their programming. Gosh, is that a note of ironic foreshadowing in the script?

Then the title and theme music start up. The scenes in the credits montage show how "wacky" malls can get: the film being sped up, meals getting spilled, a guy tripping on an escalator when several beauties in bikinis travel in the opposite direction. Yup, those malls sure can be zany locations, huh?

Anyway, the story resumes at the imaginatively-named "Restaurant". There, we meet Alison and Suzie, 2 blond waitresses. Suzie is trying to convince Alison to go on a double-date with her that evening, but Alison isn't too sure about going.

We leave them for a short bit of nonsense involving the technician who switched on the security robot earlier. After several lightning strikes, he tries to concentrate on a newspaper crossword puzzle, and is oblivious over the number of times the lightning hits near the mall and the mall's power lines. Nice job, man...you're going to live a long, full life.

His control panel begins to smoke. He freaks out and turns around, only to realize that one of the robots "woke up", and is ready to attack. It plunges a prod through him, and he exits the movie. Farewell, generic technician guy, your work here is done...

*moment of silence*

Okay enough of that nonsense, we need to return to the movie's nonsense. As more lightning strikes try to destroy the mall and the city it was constructed within, 3 more characters are introduced: Ferdy, Greg and Mike, a trio of young fellers who work in a clothing store. They also discuss a newlywed couple who are meeting up with them and their dates for an after hours party in the mall, Rick and Linda.

Speaking of Rick and Linda, they're stranded by the side of the road, because something's wrong under the hood of their pickup truck(According to the side of the vehicle, they operate an auto repair business together...). Rick tries to fix the engine, until Linda pushes him aside, then repairs it in seconds. They kid each other about who has the best skills to do the job right, then hurry off again to meet up Suzie and the  rest of the late-night revelers.

As the mall prepares to close for the night, Mike sneaks up on his girlfriend Leslie, and gives her an embrace and a kiss. She seems to like it, but her father is less than thrilled to see them together like that. Leslie lies to Dad, claiming that Mike was going to gallantly escort her to a birthday party for Suzie, but the old man still acts like a crab towards both of them. Dagnabbit! Consarnit! Flibberty-gibberty! Get off my lawn, you kids!

After a brief, unsatisfying scene in a womens' locker room, we see a guy in a lab coat walk into the security room, looking for Marty, the guy who was impaled. This is technician Nessler, and he's played by the grossly underrated Gerrit Graham(Seriously: check him out in CHUD II or the defunct television series Now and Again. He's a very gifted comedian.), who doesn't even look up as he enters the dark chamber. After eating the remnants of a doughnut that Marty had started on, Nessler sits down at the control panel to read and hang out.

That's followed by a long bit where Nessler gets paranoid, and looks around the room. This happens about 100 times in a row. Finally,  Nessler is killed by one the robots, when a taser gets him in the back of the neck, and yanks his head backwards. Ouch.

The mall party goes into full swing, and Alison and Ferdy are introduced to each other. They get all gushy around each other, and find a nice, dark spot in which to....make small talk. At one point, they almost get drowned out by their friends having sex. Ferdy offers to take Alison home, and she responds by removing his glasses, and cuddling up instead.

One of the janitors, Walter, is then seen mopping up the floor before leaving for the night. A pair of his co-workers walk by, and tease him as they head for the exit. Apparently, past a certain time, the mall doors are sealed automatically, and anyone left inside would have to wait until the next morning to get out again. Gee, that seems like a crappy design, at least for anyone working late.

Walter continues his mopping, unaware of a security robot approaching him from behind. The machine spills his bucket of water, then demands to see Walt's employee badge. Walt shows it, then gets electrocuted while standing in the filthy water puddle. For a brief moment, you can even see a cartoony, silly image of Walt's skeleton as he gets zapped. After he falls down as a smoking heap, Mike and Leslie debate over smoking after sex. Heh.

They get somewhat dressed, and Mike goes looking for a pack of cigarettes. At a cigarette vending machine, he is confronted by a robot, and quickly shows it his ID. He gets tasered, then the robot approaches his body. Leslie shows up soon after to look for her boyfriend, and finds him on the floor with his throat cut.

A security 'bot chases her down the corridor, and her friends hear her frantic screams. Just as Leslie gets back to the store, the psychotic machine blows her head up with a laser beam. Yeah. A laser beam. Then BOOM. Only then do her friends realize that something might be wrong. The surviving group run away, and the robots shoot out the glass storefront to pursue them.

The robots use their lasers to  blow up everything in sight: furniture, counters, lamps, televisions...it's like a Seagal film, but the robots are better actors. The teens run into the warehouse area, and then hear the security doors at the entrances slam shut for the evening. They pile as much heavy furniture as they can find in front of the door, then look for another exit.

They find an air duct, and the guys help their dates to climb up into them. Suzie gets claustrophobic, and the other girls try to encourage her to keep moving, lest the robots decide to roast them alive in the narrow space. That doesn't sound like much fun!

The guys, in the meantime, decide to get some makeshift weapons from a nearby sporting goods store. they break in, and go directly over to the handguns and rifles. We get a gun montage(MONTAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), plus they also grab a propane tank. One of them fires a couple of shoots into the air, then they wait for the attack to commence.

One measly robot shows up, but between the 3 of them, they can't seem to make even a dent in it. Ferdy rolls the fuel tank into the path of their opponent, and they aim for that instead. BOOM! goes the robot!

The women hear the ruckus, and Suzie loses her cool yet again. Didn't see THAT coming, huh? She decides to turn back, and rejoin the guys. Tired of listening to her, they all go back. One of the bots hides in a dark corner of the mall to wait everyone out, while the guys load up an elevator with gasoline and weapons.

The security bot that fell onto its' side, manages to get upright again, using its' extenders and gears to push off of the floor. As the 3 men try to rig up a trap in the elevator, the hiding sentry reveals itself to terrorize the women. Suzie continues to be loud and useless, tripping and spilling fuel all over herself. The robot sets her on fire, and they all run away again.

Alison shoots at the elevator, setting off a chain reaction where a tiny explosion occurs, the elevator plummets to the ground, and a much bigger explosion rocks them around. They find a resting spot, yell at one another, then decide to go back out and start the process over again. One of the guys is launched over a ledge, but the rest escape into a large department store. The robots try to trap them by choosing several access points.

While waiting to die, Alison proposes a new plan: Gather several mannequins together, and use them as a blockade to temporarily confuse the machines. The survivors then fire at the kill-bots from behind the mannequins, before running for the zillionth time. The main robots gets fried and blows up, but not before electrocuting both Mike and Leslie(I think). Awwwwwwww!

In the dark corridors behind the main mall, Alison and Ferdy sneak around in different areas, apparently looking for trouble. A robot advances on Alison, and she screams. The sound helps Ferdy to pinpoint her location. Grady shatters the thing's eye plate, and it tries to track him by sound. Alison watches Ferdy get cornered, and he is swiftly dispatched.

Alison hides beneath a display counter, and the killer bot goes away. She makes a noise, and tries to confuse the bot by hiding in a pet store, hoping that the animal noises will mask her own. Then she changes her mind, and decides to dangle on a railing instead. Her hand slips, and Alison crashes into a display beneath the railing.

She must have been injured, because she now limps her way into a paint store. She open many buckets of paint, creating quite a mess on the floor. She waits for the bot to follow her into the mess, then she escapes and lights a flare. After flinging it, the paint shop erupts into an inferno.

Alison stumbles her way to the exit, only to see Ferdy pop up again, very much alive. They exit together. THE END.

A mediocre horror-comedy, saved by a terrific, out-of-nowhere headsplosion. And, hey, it did have an impressive number of victims. Still pretty awful as a movie, though, so I'm giving it 2.75 killer trees out of 5. Bah humbug!

And what did I learn from Chopping Mall?

-Lightning is magic.

-Mannequins are easily mistakable for human beings, what with the similar body heat, range of movement, and all.

-When going to the Mall, remember to stop at the Vitamins Store, get a nice outfit from from the Clothes Store, then finish the day enjoying your meal at Restaurant. Low-budget is fun!

No clue what my next movie will be. Hopefully, it'll be somewhat more coherent than this one was.

The Silent Scream

Hey hey! Nope, I'm not dead, just been bombarded with appointments, Thanksgiving, and day-to-day hassles. It's probably just as well that The Silent Scream got pushed until after Thanksgiving...one turkey per week is plenty! Anyway, on with the show, my fellow masochists! Oh, yeah, I almost forgot...blah blah blah, SPOILERS!, blah blah blah.

The credits begin by informing us that Rebecca's Balding. Now, either that's the name of the lead actress, or these are the bitchiest credits in movie history. Somebody send Becky some Rogaine, on the double!

Anyway, after the cast credits wrap up, the title splatters itself in our faces, complete with some comical, over-sized drips of blood. In the background, a police car is seen, along with another car driving close behind. In dramatic slo-mo. Yeesh!

Everybody from both cars arrive at a house that looks like it would be occupied by Holly Hobby, if she were a cannibal. They knock, then bust in and discover bodies and blood upstairs. And then they go bye-bye, with no further explanation of what we just saw. Genius.

The next scene opens on some of the butt-ugliest women of the 1970's interrogating students during a college admission/orientation day. Seriously, there was an outbreak of the fuglies when this sequence was shot! It's not all bad, though: this scene also introduces us to our lead character, a cute coed with the improbable name of Scotty Parker. Hey, even with the weird first name, I'll take her!

Scotty is told that there is no on-campus housing available, so she goes around the city to see if she can afford an apartment. After a montage of dead-ends and rejections, Scotty drives out to the beach, to look for a room at the house we saw in the opening scene. Run away, Scotty, run away!!

As she drives toward the house, Scotty nearly runs over a young man who has the same hairdo as her. Gotta love that decade! Scotty keeps taking her eyes off of the road to gawk at the house, and thankfully, no one dies. Yet...When she parks her convertible, she climbs the porch to the front door in massive, exaggerated steps, like an astronaut hopping around on the moon. Is ANYTHING in this movie normal?

No one answers the door, so she starts to leave. Someone coming up from the beach calls out to her, and we're introduced to Doris, who already has a room at the house. She looks kind of like the "Pat" character from SNL, but she seems nice enough. Oh, and Scotty also discovers that the kid on the bike that she nearly ran over is Mason, the teen son of the homeowner, Mrs. Engels.

After learning all of this, Scotty sees another car pull into the driveway. It's driven by a male student by the name of Peter, also looking for a room. They prepare to fight over it, until Mason reveals that there are enough rooms for everyone. Oh, and there's also a tenant named Jack, but we haven't met him yet.

Oh, and as Scotty looks at her new room, someone is seen peering in at her through a small vent above the bed. Jack? An intruder? Leatherface? Oh, I hope it's Leatherface! And, before I forget, Mason tells Scotty that the room used to belong to his sister. Maybe her ghost is still there...

Mason goes to his room, and removes his shoes before sitting up on his bed. He turns his television on and finds a violent crime drama to watch, then looks like he's ready to have an orgasm. HBO would give this guy a fatal heart attack.

Scotty finishes unpacking her stuff, then knocks on Mason's door to ask if there's somewhere she can put her empty suitcases. He suggests the basement, but Scotty complains that her luggage might get damp. Boo-friggin'-hoo! Mason tells her that she can put them in the attic, as long as she doesn't disturb his mother. Geez, maybe his name should be Norman...

Scotty enters the attic, which is like Ground Zero for creepy shit, and admires the view of the beach from one of the windows. She puts her luggage away on top of some boxes, and then meets Mrs. Engels, a stern-faced woman who just stares her down until she goes back downstairs. Creepy, but at least she's real!

Peter and Doris make small talk outside while waiting for Scotty to get ready for dinner, and a long-haired blond dude pulls up on a motorcycle. This is the elusive Jack, and he introduces himself to Peter. Mason watches them from the shadows, and he looks pretty angry. Then, when all 4 of the tenants leave for dinner, we get an unguided tour of the house, revealing secret tunnels behind the walls. At the end of the passageway, a hand is seen frantically trying to make an opening in the wall...and it finally succeeds. Uhhh, I'm going to predict that this is probably a bad development for our main characters.

At a local hangout, the foursome get drunk and goofy. Doris tells a funny story about how several of the girls at her high school got nosejobs from the same surgeon, who gave them identical noses. That stinks, huh? (Oh, stop rolling your eyes...I know some of you at least giggled a little, right?)

Back home, Doris and Peter have a drunken squabble on the beach, over whether or not they're going to have sex. Jack escorts Scotty to her door, and they share a kiss while Mason watches them. In a moment that has to be seen to be believed, Mason's not just peering at them through a crack in the door; no, his ENTIRE HEAD is visible when the camera reveals him. And the best part? He's making a face like the "sneaky snake" office character from MadTV. This movie is cinematic gold, my friends.

Doris and Peter realize that the tide has come in fairly quickly, meaning that they'll have to get their feet wet to get home. Doris swiftly removes her shoes and starts walking, only to realize that he's not following. She returns to the spot where he sat down to take off his shoes, but only his jacket remains.

Scared, Doris decides to make a run for the house, only to have Peter pop up and frighten her. He laughs at her, so Doris slaps him and continues to the house. Peter just laughs some more, then falls onto his back in the sand. He wakes up when the water reaches him and backs away to a dry spot, only to be stabbed in the chest several times by an unseen maniac holding a biiiig kitchen knife. The killer then hides the body beneath a large sand castle sculpture, leaving one blood-drenched arm visible.

An autopsy is performed on the body, and the 2 detectives who escorted the uniformed officers in the first scene are there to watch. The larger of the pair, Manny, looks like a portly Groucho Marx. His partner, Sandy, looks like any generic television cop from the era. They talk about the case, then Manny leaves to question the houseguests. Wait, is an announcer going to pop up and announce that this is a "Quinn Martin Production" soon?

Nope. Okay, so we return to the house. The interviews go nowhere, until Detective Sandy talks to Mason. They discuss the tenants, his mother...and his mysterious sister. Despite his creepiness, the cops leave. Then he and his mother have a very brief, tense chat. Upset, Mason opens up a chest filled with his late father's belongings, and paws through all of it.

On the college campus, Scotty bumps into Jack. They start out flirting, until Jack suggests that they go for a swim later, on the beach where Peter was slaughtered. Scotty is understandably upset by his nonchalant attitude regarding the murder, but ends up going with him. In what universe does this seem like a good idea?

On the bright side, she looks great in a bikini. Too bad Peter towels her off like he's punching a side of beef. Meanwhile, the detectives are pressured to solve the murder quickly, by the victim's father. Then Scotty and Peter make out on the beach.

Mason finds the rapiest movie on the Rape Channel to get off on, while Scotty reads before bed. After another brief cop chat about a rape, Scotty finds Doris doing some laundry. After Peter sneaks up and scares her, Marty and he decide to snuggle.

While sitting with her laundry, Doris hears a noise. She explores the rest of the basement, and hears her friends having sex via one of the air vents. Their sounds of passion cover up her murder, which makes zero sense to me. But at least we know that Jack isn't the killer!

He returns to his own bedroom after the lovemaking, and puts on some headphones bigger than his own head, to listen to music(or signals from a distant planet, if the size of them is a factor in their signal strength...) Then the crazy, not-dead daughter is shown watching her mother sleep, posing in front of a mirror, and interacting with a corpse that I think is supposed to be Doris.

Scotty goes looking for Doris, but ends up wandering throughout the creepy house in the dark. She finds the secret passage, and is assaulted by the crazy sister, which wakes up the rest of the household. Mama and Mason hold down Scotty to silence her, as Peter goes in search of the source of the earlier noise.

Peter leaves the attic to look elsewhere for Doris and Scotty, and the Engels' panic over what to do. Oh, and the sister's name is Victoria. We find out in a flashback that Victoria tried to hang herself. Oh, and that Mason is her son. Ummmm.....okay.....?

Mason freaks out, leaves the attic, and knocks out Jack. Then he grabs his grandfather's military pistol. At about the same time, our lunkheaded detectives discover the truth, and race off to rescue Scotty and Jack. This is turning into a soap opera now!

Wait. It gets better. Mason returns to the attic, but now he thinks that he's his own father/grandfather, and is dressed in the military uniform. He decides to shoot Scotty, but he and his mother struggle over possession of the pistol. Several shots are fired harmlessly around the room, but the last one hits Mason's mother.

Mason approaches the body, then his real mother stares at poor, innocent, tied-up Scotty. Crazy Mama II picks up the butcher knife she used on her other victims, and creeps toward Scotty. Then, in maybe one of the few grimly funny bits in this monstrosity, she sets her sights on Mason instead, and makes a beeline for his back.

Scotty tries to shout a warning to him through her gag("Mmmmmphnnn!"), and he turns around, but his gun is now empty. He backs away to reload it, shoots Victoria, then kills himself with a bullet to the brain.

Jack comes to, just as Scotty frees herself. Then Victoria pops up again, and tries to finish off Scotty, who just barely bars her striking knife by slamming a door between them. Victoria bursts in at the exact moment that Jack breaks into the attic, and the 3 just stare at each other for a second or two.

Then Scotty pushes her into a wall, and the knife goes into Victoria's abdomen. The cops "rescue" Scotty and Jack, and the end credits roll over an image of dead Victoria. THE END

Well. That was...a movie. Yup. Let's just give The Silent Scream a nice, average, plain 3. It was the slasher version of vanilla ice cream. I did like Scotty, though. Cute actress.

So, did The Silent Scream leave me with ANY wisdom?

-Sand castles don't cover up corpses very well.

-Horny guys will swim anywhere, even in the middle of a crime scene.

-If you want to commit a murder, wait for someone to start having sex first.

My next movie is a cheeseball movie from 1986, called Chopping Mall. Or sometimes Killbots. Whatever. It's goofy by any name. Later!