"The Thing"

Today I'm summing up a wonderful little John Carpenter gem from 1982 called "The Thing"
It's got Kurt Russell AND Wilford Brimley in it sooo...
During the opening credits of this film we get a glimpse into the amazing wonder of special effects before CGI. A beautiful model spaceship goes spinning past, heading toward the earth. It rushes away from view and, reaching the earth's atmosphere, bursts into a brilliant red ball of hand painted flame.
With the credits over, our film opens on a snow covered landscape in Antarctica. A helicopter is chasing a dog and firing at it from above, conjuring images of a wide eyed grinning Sarah Palin wielding a sawed off shot gun and a clay jug of moonshine. The dog runs toward an American Science camp stationed on the frigid island and the helicopter lands, throwing grenades and firing wildly at the doggy. The pilot of the craft accidentally drops a grenade in the snow under the helicopter and hurriedly tries to recover it. Too late, he goes kablooey along with his copter, but the other passenger manages to escape. He chases after the cute little pup firing his gun like a maniac. The dog runs toward the American camp and the gun wielding lunatic accidentally shoots an American scientist in the leg and misses the dog. The other men scatter and one man manages to shoot the unidentified mad man before he can harm anyone else.
The scientists realize that the helicopter came from the Norwegian science camp stationed nearby. Two of the men, one being Kurt Russell- called Mac in the film, hop in their helicopter to go find out what is going on. The other men take the poor innocent dog inside with them and prepare for a quiet evening. At the Norwegian camp Kurt Russell and his companion discover the building is completely destroyed. There are holes in the facade of the building, the power has gone out, and the inside of the camp is covered in snow and ice. They find several frozen mangled corpses along with the smoldering charred remains of a horrific plastic sculpture that looks almost like an anguished set of siamese twins.
Later that night with everyone home they decide to stick the traumatized dog into the cage with all of their dogs. The moment they step away from the cage the dog stands up and his head splits open like a gross bloody flower. The dog sprouts insect legs and shoots out stringy tendrils that look like blood soaked crazy straws. He tries to kill the other dogs, who all start barking like mad. The whole team runs in and discovers the hideous monster and start shooting at it. One of the men runs in with a flame thrower and finishes the creature off. The leader of the camp orders Wilford Brimley to perform an autopsy on the anguished monster and he decides that its some sort of shape shifter that can take over other creatures bodies.
Kurt Russell and a buddy go to investigate an area they know the Norwegians have been frequenting lately to find out if it may have anything to do with these strange goings on. They find a huge spaceship buried in the ice and see that the Norwegians used explosives to blow off the layer of snow covering the ship. They go back to camp and tell their cohorts what they've found.
Good ol' Wilford runs some numbers through his computer and determines that the likelihood of the creature infecting one of his cohorts is 75%. He asks one of the men how long he was alone with the dog before they put it in the cage. He says he was only alone with the dog for an hour or two but nothing happened. Some other men in the group go out to a supply shed, where the creepy remains of the siamese twin kabob they found at the Norwegian camp is stashed. One of them pops into another part of the shed to look for something, while the other looks around in the same room as the dead body. The first man returns to the room to find his friend has been sucked in toward the half burnt remains and they're surrounding him with bloody tendrils. He runs back to the camp to get Kurt Russell and when they return their friend has escaped through a window. They manage to hunt him down rather quickly because he hasn't fully transformed and has difficulty running. He falls to the ground to reveal gory unhuman arms. Kurt Russell knocks over a barrel of kerosene at the monster and fires a flare into it, setting him ablaze. They all decide to drag the other half charred alien corpses out to the blaze and finish them off as well.
At this point Wilford Brimley goes loony and starts bustin' up the joint. He gets it in his head that they can't kill the aliens so he needs to make sure no one can escape to infect the rest of the earth. He rips out all the controls in their helicopter and their snow tractors. Then he goes inside and takes an axe to the radios. To prevent him from doing any more damage they tie him up in a storage shed outside.
As if by magic a ferocious snow storm settles in over the camp. Great. At this point no one in the camp trusts anyone else, everyone suspects that everyone else is an alien. One of the men find Mr. Russell's uniform torn to shreds and covered in blood out in the snow. He himself is not aware of being infected, but all the other men are sure that he is. Who's to say? All the men rush to kill him but when they try he insists he's not infected, that he's been framed, and threatens to blow up the whole compound if they go near him. He throws one of the men into a storage shelf so violently that he dies. The camp doctor tries to revive him using the electric defibrillator paddles, but once he does, the man's chest splits open to reveal a lovely plastic mouth equipped with "terrifying" plastic fangs. The doctor falls forward as the chest cavity he was leaning on opens up, and the chest fangs bite his arms off. It's at this point in the movie that I realize this is probably the best thing I've ever seen in my life. Ever.
The alien creature pops up out of the chest cavity in a stringy blood covered tower at the top of which is a duplicate head of the man it popped out of. The head is covered in blood, appears tortured and anguished, is screaming and menacing, and looks completely and utterly ridiculous. It blows my mind that someone spent days designing this "monster." Kurtypoo blasts the alien with his flame thrower and the creature starts screaming in anguish. The man's head (The "real" one at the top of his shoulders) begins to stretch off away from the burning torso and falls off the table while no one is watching. It uses it's tongue to pull itself away and under a desk where no one can see it sprout legs like a spider and eyes like a crab. The smaller new creature, balding bloody man head as body, spindly bloody hairy spider legs, and bulbous purple crab eyes turns and tries to run from the room. Someone spots the absurd creature and signals Kurt to turn his flame thrower on it. Thankfully he burns that stupid piece of shit up too.
Mr. Russell then rounds everyone up in another room and starts tying most of them up. After watching the detached head separate from the body and try to escape, he's got an idea. He decides that every part of these alien's bodies are separate entities and that if you harm any part, even the blood, it will react. He starts cutting the thumbs of all his buddies and collecting their blood in petri dishes. He uses his own blood first, and with a metal wire heated by flame, he tests the blood to see if it reacts. He proves that he is not affected and then starts going through the list of others in the room. About the fifth man he gets to, the blood screeches and tries to scurry away. Then the man it was taken from begins to violently shake and pulsate. He's tied to a bench with two other men, who are screaming and wailing for their lives as they watch the man sitting next to them burst and bubble from the inside. Unfortunately Kurty's flame thrower stalls and he's unable to torch the monster as it tries to make it's escape. It jumps to the ceiling and drops in front one of the other men equipped with a flame thrower. Before he's able to use it, the monster's head splits open revealing huge ridiculous fangs which chomp down on the other mans head. Kurt finally get's his flame thrower to work, but too late. The first monster, engulfed in flames, bursts through the walls of the room into the snow storm. Mr. Russell tosses a stick of dynamite his way and the monster goes boom boom. Kurt returns to the room, torches the other guy who got his head chomped, and finishes testing everyone's blood. Wilford Brimley is still tied up outside though, and one of the scientists, who went missing earlier, isn't accounted for yet.
With only three men left, they go out to test ol' Mr. Brimley's blood and find that he's gone missing. They notice one of the floorboards in the shed is loose and they take a peek underneath. There's a tunnel below the shed, and when they investigate they discover that Brimley used the helicopter and tractor parts to build a small spaceship under the ice. Then the power goes out. The men decide that the aliens think theres no way out now and they want to freeze and go into hibernation until a rescue team arrives. The don't want to let that happen so they decide to blow the whole complex up and burn it to the ground. While in the basement of the complex the alien manages to nab two of the men, leaving Kurt Russell the last man standing. The alien comes at him from under the ground, and Kurt tosses a stick of dynamite at it. The whole complex goes up in a giant explosion but Kurt manages to get outside unharmed. The last missing scientist returns and the two sit down and have a little chat before they sit down in the snow and wait to freeze to death.
The end.
I apologize that I don't possess the language skills to properly paint a mental picture of the monsters I saw on the screen in front of me today. I normally would never ever recommend watching one of these films, but this is one you may need to see. If only to witness these monsters, I think you'll thank me in the end.

"The Gate"

Today I'll be summarizing a wonderful little film from 1987 called "The Gate".
We open on a cheesy late 80's suburban housing development full of faux fancy homes that predate the McMansions of modern day Amurica. Young Glen, Stephen Dorff, has a nightmare about being in his tree house when it's struck by lighting and wakes up to find a crew of landscapers removing the fallen tree. When he goes to investigate he finds a geode lodged in a hole in the trunk. He calls his friend Terry over to see it and Terry insists that they can get rich ($100!!!) if they find more geodes. Since the first geode was discovered in the tree trunk, there must be more below the ground where the tree once stood. Of course this logic makes perfect sense, so the duo dig a hole and actually do find a geode much large than the first.
At dinner that night Terry's parents tell him he's grounded for digging the hole and and make him promise to fill it back in. They also say that they're (conveniently) going out of town for the weekend and Glen's older sister Al will be in charge. The second her parents are out the door she hosts a huge party. Glen has Terry over also and the two crack open the geode they found. When they're finally able to open it a puff of smoke and flash of light are released and some mysterious writing is scrawled on Glen's etch-a-sketch. The two read the words, and all hell breaks loose. They run downstairs and they party has turned into a round of light as a feather stiff as a board. The radical party goers ask Glen to join in and he floats up above their hands and can't seem to get down. He grabs onto a light and rips it out of the wall, falling to the floor.
Once everyone's gone Terry and Glen go to bed. Terry wakes up in the night to go the bathroom and finds his dead mother calling to him in the foyer, backlit with a smoke machine stuffed up her dress. When he goes and hugs her, she turns out to be the family dog, who's now dead. Glen wakes up in his room while Terry's gone and sees that his walls are moving and have apparently turned to thin sheets of rubber with a bunch of hands trying to play touchy feely from behind them. They scream and wake up Al, who doesn't believe their stories and passes off the death of Angus the dog to old age.
The next day Al's friends come over during breakfast and plead with her to go with them to the beach leaving Glen behind alone. Glen insists that Al can't go because of the spooky goings on of the previous night but her friends say otherwise. Glen calls one of Al's friends a fag (gasp!) and runs out of the room, leaving another of her friends to unenthusiastically proclaim, "Trez uncool", and they leave Glen to fend for himself.
Meanwhile Terry is back at home listing to some delightful 80's death metal. The music stops and the singer tells a tale of a gate in the earth behind which evil demons are trapped waiting to be released. When he looks at the album art he sees the same inscription as the one they read the night before. Terry runs off to tell Glen, summing it up with the simple and concise phrase, "You got demons."
That night Al invites two of her girlfriends over and some demons break in through Glen's window and start to terrorize the house. When the kids run out of the house they find their parents have come home. Glen runs to his father who screams, "you've been baaaaad" and tries to choke him. Glen squeezes his fathers face, which breaks apart and was apparently filled with milk. Then a hoard of cute lil' 18 inch tall claymation monsters tries tor rush the house, but Al closes the door- stopping them in their tracks. The kids find a bible in the house and go out to the hole in the ground to read from it. The hole actually begins to close but before he finishes reading Terry falls in and drops the book (because he's an idiot). Down in the hole he's surrounded by the adorable demons who start biting him. Al and Glen throw a rope down to him and succeed in pulling him up. They read a bit more from the bible but eventually get bored with it and throw the whole book into the hole which bursts into flames and closes up. Believing the worst to be over Al's friends go home and the other kids go about their business like nothing ever happened. While watching a movie in the basement a dead man bursts from the wall, takes Terry, and disappears back into the wall. The cute lil' demons come back and try to get Al and Glen but again are unsuccessful because Al closes the door on them. While trying to find their fathers gun, the dead man bursts through the wall again taking Al. With two human sacrifices under their belt, the demons are able to summon their master. This guy, while rather large, is actually pretty adorable as well. The big daddy demon picks Glen up and looks at him like a fresh baked cookie but for some reason puts him back down and leaves the house. Glen notices though that the demon leaves a fun eyeball in the palm of his hand. Glen goes and gets a toy rocket launcher from Al's room and stabs his hand eyeball with a piece of glass to summon the papa demon back. He fires the rocket into the demons chest, which for some reason actually does the trick. There is a pretty pretty fireworks display in the sky above the house and Terry, Al, and Angus the dog return from the unknown. The family home still destroyed however, and the film ends with the three children gleefully hugging one another on the steps of the smoldering house.
I learned two important messages from this film. I believe that you could call them the morals of the story. 1) Don't leave children home alone for the weekend because they'll accidentally release evil demons to destroy the earth. 2) You won't find a solution to life's problems in the bible, toy rockets are the only sure fire answer.

"Them!"

This week I'll be walking you through 1954's Them!
The film opens on two policemen driving through the deserts of New Mexico with a small airplane flying overhead. The plane is radioing to the officers in the car that he's spotted a small child wandering through the desert alone and that they should go save her. When they intercept the small girl she stares off into the distance and doesn't seem to respond to their presence at all. She's carrying a broken porcelain doll and appears to be in some sort of shock. Even this early in the film we are able to learn some very important lessons. One- child actors in the 50's were even worse than the child actors of modern times so they weren't allowed to speak. Two- New Mexico policemen in the 50's wore the cutiest lil' bow ties.
The officers put the little girl in the squad car and begin to drive back to town but on the way they find the remains of an airstream camper that appears to have been ripped open like a tin can. No one is around but they do find blood as well as scraps of fabric that match the little girl's dress. After having an ambulance pick the little girl up they head down the road to ask the nearest shop owner if he may have seen anything unusual. When they get to the shop they find it to be torn to shreds just like the camper. They look around and find a shot gun that is bent completely in half, a cash register left completely untouched, and the store's sugar has been torn open and ravaged. They later find the shop owner's bloodied body at the bottom of the basement stairs. A strange animal foot print is found in the sand near the trailer and an autopsy of the storekeepers body reveals a high concentration of formic acid. These clues stump local police so the FBI is brought in. The FBI finds a specialist from the Department of Agriculture, an eccentric little man named Dr. Medford, who brings along his beautiful daughter, Dr. Pat Medford. It can only be assumed that Pat was brought along to fill the film's hitherto lack of sexy dames.
The Dr. Medfords inspect the evidence and begin asking questions about when the last atomic bomb testing was done in the area. They then go to visit the little girl in the hospital to ask her some questions but find that she has still not spoken a word. On a hunch Dr. Medford passes a vile of formic acid under her nose and she springs from her chair screaming, "THEM! THEM! THEM! THEM! THEM!" The police take the Dr. Medfords into the desert to inspect the site of the destroyed trailer. Once there it becomes clear that the doctors have a good idea of what has been doing all the damage, but they are very reluctant to reveal it. When Pat wanders off into the desert alone she is attacked by a giant... a giant... a giant... ANT! Yes a giant ant! Scary Scary! The giant 8 foot tall furry ant puppet just bobs from side to side rather than moving forward to snatch Pat, giving the police plenty of time to shoot at it. Dr. Medford Sr. screams that they should shoot the ant's antennae to disable it since it's exoskeleton is too thick for the bullets to penetrate. HeHe. I said penetrate. They manage to kill the adorable ant creature that's meant to look terrifying and save poor beautiful Pat.
With their worst fears realized- those fears being that nuclear bomb testing in the desert in 1945 created a race of radioactive carnivorous giant ants- the Medford doctors urge the police to help them locate the ant's nest. Flying over the desert they quickly locate the giant opening to the giant nest where the giant ants live. Giant. Then they devise a plan to set bombs (regular bombs not nuclear- or is it nukeular?) off in the entrance of the nest and then release cyanide gas into the tunnels to finish the job. With this done two police officers, along with the gorgeous Pat, grab some flame throwers, put on some gas max, and go down into the nest to see if they were successful in exterminating the entire colony. Of course, when they get down into the holes they find that some of the ants are still alive. Duh. Luckily the ants are no match for the flame throwers, nor are the eggs they find in the queen's chamber. Pat notices though that tow of the eggs were hatched very recently and this worries her so she snaps a few photos. Dr. Medford Sr. finds that those two egg cases had belonged to queen ants who may have had time to escape the lair and venture off to form their own colonies.
One of the queens enters a cargo ship at night while the crew is away and begins to build her nest. Somehow no one aboard the ship notices a gigantic ant nest filled with huge ant eggs before the ship sets sail. The eggs hatch while the boat is at sea and the crew is able to signal the navy before they're all killed. Thankfully the Navy is able to sink the ship before it reaches land, but there is still another queen at large.
Near Los Angeles bodies start piling up and freight trains carrying sugar start reporting overnight break-ins. Finally the other colony is discovered to be based in the sewer system beneath the city. The press is assembled and martial law is proclaimed. Members of the press start shouting their questions and one reporter dares to ask the brilliant question, "has the cold war gotten hot?" The mayor of LA explains to the press and the public just what the problem is and chaos breaks out. The military is brought in to keep the peace and help fight the evil mutant ants. There is a slight chance that two children ran into the sewer to hide from the ants (not knowing that's where they live) and an even slighter chance that if they did run into the sewers that they're still alive. So. rather than trying to set the sewer systems ablaze or fill them with cyanide gas to save the entire city of Los Angeles, some members of the military drive into the sewers to find and rescue the children who are more than likely to already be dead.
Of course, the children are found, alive, along with the egg chamber and central hub of the nest. They find that no new queens have been hatched yet and that other new nests forming elsewhere is not likely to happen. They set the nest ablaze with more flame throwers and the threat is believed to be over.
An army officer begs the question, "If these monsters got started as a result of the first atomic bomb in 1945, what about all the others that have been exploded since then?" Dr. Medford wisely responds, "Nobody knows. When man entered the atomic age he opened a door into a new world. What we eventually find in that new world nobody can predict."
Cue music. The camera turns to the ants being burned alive.
The end.

"Orca: The Killer Whale"

This week I'll be summarizing 1977's Orca: The Killer Whale.
This film was created in the height of the Jaws era and was meant to try to capture some of the hype. Appropriately the film begins with some aquatic scientists diving off the coast of Newfoundland and being stalked by a great white shark. At the same time the shark is stalking the divers, it is also being stalked by a group of fishermen. One of the divers falls off of his boat and the sharks barrels forward to snatch him up. Suddenly an Orca appears as if from no where to intercept the great white and kill him. Witnessing the strength and ability of the Orca sparks an interest in the fisherman who was trying to catch the shark.
The fisherman, Nolan, decides to try to catch a live Orca to sell to a theme park even though he has no experience catching live sea creatures and really knows next to nothing about whales. He builds an enclosure to keep the whale once he's captured it and heads out with his crew. They stumble upon a pair of Orcas swimming along and decide to harpoon one to get it up onto the boat. They miss the male Orca and instead hit the female. The harpoon does much more damage to the female than intended and she goes berserk. When they're finally able to pull her up onto the deck of the boat and see how much blood she's loosing, she gives birth to an underdeveloped plastic whale fetus.
Seeing his wife and until then unborn child murdered in front of him sends the male Orca into a murderous rampage. The whale starts ramming himself into the bottom of the boat and the crew scramble to stop him. One of the men climbs out to cut the rope holding the female on deck, releasing her body back into the water. The whale uses this opportunity to jump out of the water and snatch the crew member from the pole and kill him. Then the Orca pushes his dead female's body along and follows the boat back to the bay. Once he finds where Nolan lives he starts terrorizing the little fishing village. He goes around scaring away all the fish, bashing holes in boats, and even setting fire to the harbor's dock complex. (That's right- the whale set the docks on fire) The other fishermen demand that Nolan go out to hunt to Orca down and put an end to this chaos. Even a wise old Indian man comes and says that the whale must be killed.
Before he's able to make up his mind, the Orca starts terrorizing Nolan's other crew members. He knocks down the house, which unfortunately is built on stilts above the water, of a female crew member played by Bo Derek, and bites off one of her (beautiful) legs. Nolan piles his remaining crew into his boat and heads out to sea. The Orca leads the boat to the icy north, picking off crew members along the way. Once very far north the whale pushes a small iceberg into the side of the boat causing it to capsize. Nolan rushes out onto a sheet of ice to flee the sinking boat but the whale starts punching holes through the thin sheet. The whale tips the sheet up and Nolan falls in the water and tries to escape death by grabbing onto the Orca's tail. The Orca flips his tail suddenly forward, pitching Nolan into an iceberg, killing him. Nolan tumbles down into the water and the Orca swims happily away.
The end.

"The Car"

It's been a few weeks and I figured it was high time for another spoiler alert. This week I'll be summarizing 1977's The Car.
The film opens with two young people with their lives ahead of them riding their bikes down a winding mountain road. They're having the time of their lives, which turns out to be their last, when a mysterious black luxury car appears to terrorize them and eventually run them off the road and over the edge of a cliff. When the car starts knocking off a cast of bit characters, including an annoying hitchhiking horn playing hippie and an elderly policeman, the law gets involved. After interviewing a wise old indian woman the town sheriff, Wade, learns that the killer sedan appears to have no driver. Wade, who's canoodling the town music teacher, gets worried and tells another officer to cancel the marching band practice. In a state of shock the officer forgets to pass the order on to the music teacher and the practice goes on as scheduled. When the evil black car arrives on the scene of the practice chaos ensues and the teachers usher all of the children into an old cemetery (for some strange reason) This is when we find out Wade's lady friend, Lauren the music teacher, has balls of steel. When the car doesn't enter the graveyard she begins to taunt and tease the car, challenging the driver to get out and show their face. The car is visibly aggravated but never enters the cemetery. The law arrives at the parade grounds and the car flees the scene and the police pursue. One officer is tricked into following the car up a winding road and turns a corner to find the car facing him. The car moves forward and nudges the police car off the edge of the cliff. Somehow, perhaps in anticipation of the impact, the police car bursts into flames the moment it goes over the edge. Back at the base of the cliff the car meets more police and flips itself over, rolling over the police vehicles causing them to burst into fire. The car lands on its four wheels and drives off unharmed. The car next meets Wade, who's waiting beside his motorcycle with his gun drawn. He aims and fires at the demon vehicle but is unable to make a dent no matter where he fires. The car pops it's drivers side door open and coaxes Wade to come peak inside but when he reaches the car the door swings open knocking Wade unconscious on the side of the road. With Wade in the hospital and the rest of the force trying to find a way to stop the evil car Lauren goes home to rest. While on the phone with Wade in the hospital the evil car gets his revenge for Lauren's taunts by crashing through her living room window and killing her. Wade and the other officers decide that since the car wasn't able to enter the cemetery, hallowed ground and all, that it must be pure evil and it must be stopped. They round up all the plastic explosives they can and begin to run around town gathering all the tools and supplies they'll need to, well, Get 'R' Dun. While rummaging around in his barn, Wade finds that he isn't alone, that somehow the car has gotten in their with him. He jumps over the car and onto his trusty hog, narrowly escaping with his life. A chase ensues but the other officers have already started driving out to ready the explosives. Wade and another officer use themselves as bait and trick the car into driving off the edge of a cliff, at the bottom of which are a huge quantity of explosives. When the car hits the bottom and the bombs explode the face of pure Evil with a capital E is visible in the flames.
The end.

"Black Roses"

Okay. Here we go- Another stupid day, another stupid movie.
Today I'll be summarizing a wonderful little film called Black Roses. That's two movies in two days folks- now thats devotion- I hope you enjoy yourselves.
Black Roses takes place in a quiet midwestern town called Mill Basin. All the teenagers in the town really love this totally tubular rock band called Black Roses, but all the square old people and town leaders think that the band is EVIL!!! Black Roses decides to play four consecutive nights in Mill Basin to launch their very first tour and all HELL breaks loose! The parents and church groups and civic leaders in the town try to protest, insisting they are tools of satan and conduits of evil, but all the kids insist that the band is like so totally righteous and radical to the max. The mayor steps in and says that the concerts will go on as scheduled, but with the concert dates getting nearer and nearer, strange things start happening in Mill Basin- you know- when one of the rowdy teens decides to paint the town red, the can of red paint he is going to use mysteriously bursts into flames when he opens it- that kind of thing.
The night of the first concert the mayor and many of the parents and teachers decide to check out the band to see just how demonic their performance will be. The band comes on, plays some pretty tame generic cock rock, and satisfied that the band isn't as menacing as they expected, the parents leave. They next day the usually peaceful town continues to see strange occurrences and behavior. The students seem lackluster and even sometimes violent, record players start turning themselves on and off at whim, rubber monsters start popping out of stereo speakers and eating parents, stuff like that. The night of the second concert the band holds a satanic ceremony in their dressing room before the show and afterwards the kids are totally out of control. They start running around smashing windows, getting into fights, even kissing one another and using foul language. A few of the youngsters even start going around seducing their elders and murdering their parents.
The town's English teacher begins to suspect that Black Roses' music must be behind the suspicious behavior, and decides to go to their third concert and see what's really going on. Unfortunately he goes to the library first to do some research on devil worship and falls asleep. The mayhem continues. The town's young girls keep dressing like common tramps and trollops, and all the kids keep going around killing people. When the teacher wakes up the next day he realizes that one of the students in particular has been committing some really heinous acts. Julie used to be his prize student, but now she's gone and killed her stepfather and the teacher's ex-girlfriend. When Julie shows up at the teacher's door, he invites her in and starts to ask her what's wrong with her- but she has other ideas. She decides to try to seduce him and when he refuses she turns into a really ugly plastic demon. He beats her head with a tennis racket and then stabs her in the chest with a table leg. Now he knows somethings up!
The teacher goes to the gas station, fills up a portable gas can, and takes it with him to the fourth concert. He succeeds in sneaking the into the concert- but somehow gets caught when, in clear view of the entire audience, he starts dumping the gasoline on the stage. The band members grab the teacher and hold him back as the leader singer, Damien, reaches back and pulls off his mullet wig to reveal that... he's BALD!!! Then Damien turns into a demon, along with the rest of the band. For some reason making the transformation to a plastic demon takes a quite a while, leaving the teacher ample time to set the spilled gasoline ablaze. Damien and the rest of the band catch on fire so- they pick up their instruments and start playing instead of trying to escape. As the band goes up in smoke, the town's youngsters snap back to their senses and run out of the theater, not remembering any of the evil deeds they've committed over the past few days.
All seems right with the world and we thank our lucky stars that the teacher was able to burn the evil band alive, but then the film fast forwards six months. Some of the survivors in Mill Basin are watching the news and an entertainment report comes on announcing that after a six month hiatus the band Black Roses will be playing Madison Square Garden in New York City before continuing their tour in Europe. Heaven help us!
The End.

"Black Sheep"

I really want to keep at this summary writing. The problem is that after the first few films, I've been having a hard time finding "horror" films that are as badly written/acted/filmed/etc as I'd like. I'm looking for something thats not only poorly done but also humorous (intentionally humorous honestly works better for my purposes) Something that hopefully includes lots of poorly executed jokes, ladies with their tops off, and maybe even a musical number or two. Since my first two summaries (Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter and Thankskilling) I've had a hard time finding films that are up to par, although this next film may put me back on track. Most recently I wrote about Poultrygeist. It honestly met most of my criteria but it was waaaay too gross to write about without offending people, and had waaaaay too much going on throughout the course of the film to summarize without sounding scattered and rushed. So- to those of you familiar with Troma films- they're out. I understand and even enjoy the humor- but I can't stomach the level of gross that they aspire to.
If anyone can recommend a film I haven't already written about and that isn't from the Troma lineup please please please let me know...
Having said all that I think I'm back on the right path- today I'll be summarizing a little film called Black Sheep. I hope you enjoy my summary of it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
The film opens on a picturesque landscape and a bunch of cute little sheep grazing on the rolling hills of New Zealand. Cut to a family of sheep farmers- a father working in the fields- and two sons. One of these sons immediately establishes himself as a sick and twisted little bugger- who murders his little brother's pet sheep in cold blood, skins him and hangs his bloody carcass from the rafters in the barn, and wears his still bloody skin- all in the hopes of scaring his sweet little bother shitless. The younger brother walks in and is successfully terrified, when their housekeeper walks in to tell the boys that there has been an accident with their father...
Fast forward 15 years. Some dirty hippie vegan animal rights activists sporting a Meat is Murder bumper sticker are meddling on the fields of the sheep farm. You can just smell something bad coming from their shenanigans. Nothing good ever comes from vegan hippies in a horror movie... The younger of the two brothers, Henry, is returning to the farm in a cab, where he finds his older brother, Angus, preparing a speech he's going to give on the wonders of genetic engineering in modern agriculture. Angus makes fun of the sheepish (hehehe) Henry, who is apparently now terrified of sheep. Meanwhile the trouble making tree huggers stumble upon a laboratory where they find a cooler marked "for disposal". One of the peaceniks steals a jar from the cooler and the two run into the woods, but the first one trips on a root and smashes the glass jar, releasing a live, yet horribly mutated, sheep fetus. The fetus crawls on the hippies back and bites him on his ear, which is apparently made of rubber. Terrified, he bashes the sheep against a tree to get it to release its grasp. The fetus crawls away to the fields to infect the healthy flock, leaving the vegan moron cowering and crying in fetal position. Back at the farm, Henry's cousin Tucker offers to take him up to the fields to help him get over his fears. Along the way they bump into the other hippie, named Experience, who's looking for her partner in crime. While looking for him they stumble upon a farm house billowing with smoke. Once inside they find a kitchen spattered with blood, and Experience notices that the room, gasp!, has terrible feng shui!!!
Meanwhile, in the woods, the bitten hippie, Grant, is sitting up and trying to pull himself together when he spots a cute lil' bunny wabbit. Being a vegan tree hugger, he picks the little cutie pie up and starts petting it and assuring it (and himself) that everything is going to be okay. Suddenly his eyes glow red and he snaps and bites the fuzzy lil' bunny, eating him raw. Hillshire Farms- GO MEAT!!!
Back at the smokey farmhouse Henry, Tucker, and Experience find, and are chased by, a vicious blood thirsty sheep with huge bloody teeth. They lock themselves in a bedroom but the sheep busts his horrible little head through the door and they have to shoot it in the head a few times before it finally dies. They flee the house and hop in their truck, Experience and Henry in the back, Tucker in the front. Before they can get away another evil sheep gets into the cab of the truck and begins to attack poor Tucker. Tucker punches the sheep in the nose (but not before he's bitten on the foot), stunning the lil' guy, and buying him enough time to crawl out of the cab through the back window onto the truck bed. The evil sheep takes the wheel and starts driving the truck like a lunatic. In the back the bumbling trio notice that the sheep is driving them right towards a cliff and jump off the truck just in time to save themselves. The sheep in the cab isn't so lucky and with a wide eyed look of "Oh Shit!" goes plummeting off the cliff. The trio decide they have no choice but to make their way back to their farm even though there are evil sheep all along the way. They stumble upon the lab on their way and run inside to escape from a stampeding flock of evil barnyard animals.
At the same time Angus is on his way to the lab but bumps into the no longer vegan Grant, who has begun to turn into what can only be described as... DUN DUN DUN!!! A big scary Were-sheep!!!! Yes folks, that's right, a were-sheep... Grant bites Angus on the hand and scurries off into the fields, leaving Angus to drive to the lab and find the protagonist trio. Once there Angus escorts his brother and Experience outside and the mad scientist woman responsible for the sheep fetus injects Tucker with some sleepy time medicine. Outside the evil flock of sheep charge at Henry and Experience, and they fall into a disgusting pit of rotting gross that the scientists have been dumping their failed experiments in. Experience lights a geranium aroma therapy candle to calm her nerves. Through the entire film she has been exasperatingly unimpressed by the danger at hand, but rather has kept on point with her inane environmentalist ramblings- modern agriculture rapes mother earth, methane from sheep farts cause rises in levels of green house gases, etc. Once down in the pit I'm hoping a genetically mutated sheep fetus will jump out and kill the bitch, but no such luck. Henry finds a tunnel/cave and they head off to find a way out.
Back in the lab the scientist sees the bite mark through Tucker's boot and removes it to reveal that his foot has turned into a hairy cloven hoof. Instead of a reaction of horror, she is delighted and thinks this may be her great break through with her research. Henry and Experience are crawling on their stomachs to get out of the cave when they are suddenly attacked from behind by one of the evil sheep. They hurry and scurry and find an opening, narrowly escaping through the hole which the sheep can't fit through- so -they toss the aroma therapy candle at the struggling sheep, which bursts into flames as though soaked in gasoline. Now- I don't really believe sheep to be so highly flammable, but what do I know? Once out of the cave they find that Grant has turned into a full fledged giant sheep person. He charges at them and tries to attack when Experience notices blood on Grants snout, and starts asking him if he's been eating meat, and if the meat was even organic. Grant pauses, perplexed, just long enough for Henry and Experience to escape.
Back at the lab, Tucker has almost completed the transition himself and the mad scientist lady is delighted. She gives him an injection which turns him back into a human, and cackles with glee as she proclaims that she'll be able to further her research with this serum. She gives him another dose of sleepy sauce and leaves to join Angus at the speech he was preparing for when he met Henry so many scenes ago. Unfortunately she is attacked by killer sheep and never quite makes it.
Back near the farm house, dozens of local farmers and industry experts have gathered out doors to hear Angus' speech about the wonders of genetic engineering. Henry and Experience arrive at a clearing just in time to witness a giant flock of evil sheep barreling right for the gathering. From afar they witness the entire group get devoured in a wonderfully violent blood bath with more than a hint of humor.
The housekeeper pulls up in her car just in time to save Henry and Experience. They head back to the house and lock themselves in to find that Grant has beat them there. Experience successfully paralyzes him using a match stick as an acupuncture needle, but not before he is able to bite Henry. Then they find that Angus is there too, and has also begun to turn. He confesses that in the lab they had combined human DNA, Angus' DNA in fact, with sheep DNA to create this new breed of sheep they'd been working on. He insists he needs to save his research and since he hasn't become violent yet he leaves them in the house as he runs out to try to reach the barn and fly to safety in his Cessna airplane
Outside, the house is surrounded by killer sheep, and many of the people attacked at the speech have turned into were-sheep as well. Experience and the housekeeper escape out the back and reach her car. With the housekeeper driving and Experience brandishing a shot gun and standing through the sunroof, they drive down the road shooting as many of the evil sheep and were-sheep people as possible. Henry is able to move safely through the herd, as he's been bitten. He is following Angus and trying to beat him to the barn before he is able to fly off. Angus reaches the barn first and starts the plane, but before he's able to climb in he turns into a full were-sheep. Henry reaches the barn and he and Angus begin to fight each other. They leave the barn and take their fight into the field, the unmanned airplane begins to meander through the field as well and Henry is able to back Angus up into the planes propellors. Tucker, now awake and no longer a were-sheep, thanks to the mad scientist's serum, arrives on a four wheeler just in time to inject Angus before he is able to retaliate. Human once again, Angus falls to the ground and bleeds to death in the field. Tucker gives Henry the shot too, and they regroup with Experience and the housekeeper. Using a sheep dog they round all the evil sheep together. Apparently the sheep are strong enough to kill and devour human beings but are still afraid of a sheep dog. The group is trying to figure out what to do with the evil sheep, as there isn't enough serum to cure them all, when they notice the sheep are all farting (probably because their stomach's aren't used to so much raw meat???). Experience reminds the group about how methane from animal farming adds to green house gasses, and they decide to use the methane to their advantage. They toss a lighter toward the flatulent flock, and Kablooey!!!, the whole bunch of them explode in a fire ball!
Next we see the survivors on a beautiful sunny day injecting the remaining were-sheep with the rest of the serum and turning them human again. Henry, Tucker and Experience decide they're going to keep the farm, but run it organically from now on. The house keeper arrives with a delicious batch of mountain oysters she just whipped up for the gang to enjoy, but Experience is the only one to indulge, admitting she does eat a bit of sea food every once in a while. Henry leans in and whispers that mountain oysters aren't seafood at all, but fried sheep testicles. Experience spits out her mouthful of balls and they all have a good laugh.
The end.