"Prophecy"

Today I'm going to tell you all about a little film from 1979 called Prophecy. An evil paper company has bought up the rights to log thousands of acres of virgin forest in Maine, but a group of native americans has decided to try to stop them. The EPA decides to step in and investigate whether or not the logging operation is okay to go on. They bring in a fancy schmancy public health specialist from New York City along with his wife Maggie who's pregnant but hasn't yet spilled the beans. It becomes clear early on that something more than just logging is going on in that forest but no one wants to assume responsibility. A group of loggers has gone missing, along with the entire search and rescue team sent to find them. The paper company blames the indians saying that they're just trying to scare the other loggers. 
Right away our health specialist Dr. Rob Verne witnesses some really funky shit. When fishing on his first day in Maine he sees an outrageously large salmon that he just knows isn't naturally that size. Maybe because it's plastic, but who knows. Later that night, after he and Maggie eat his (normal sized) catch, an evil bloodthirsty raccoon with super human strength breaks into the cabin and tries to kill them. John is finally able to toss it into their fireplace and kill it. He decides that the cuckoo coon didn't have rabies so he sends it to a lab in New York.
The next morning he's approached by some of the Indians who want to tell him their side of what's going on. They walk to one of the elder's camps while they tell Rob and Maggie about how their simple fishing way of life has changed since the paper company came to Maine. They say that recently people in their village have developed strange disabilities and many of their women have been have miscarriages, still births, or mutated babies that they're forced to mercy kill. At the camp they see something strange in the water and fish it out, finding it to be a tadpole the size of a squirrel. It doesn't take our Robby long to figure out that the paper company has been using mercury in their operation and that the Indian population has been suffering from mercury poisoning and that the entire food chain has been affected.
Later that night a family is camping in the woods and is attacked by a giant plastic monster. We get ripped off when it comes to the gory fun stuff, all we get to see is this bloody hairless bear-like creature roar and open it's puppet mouth. As the youngest boy tries to hop away still zipped up in his sleeping bag the monster tosses him into a boulder. He hits the rock so hard that his sleeping bag explodes into a hilarious cloud of feathers (sans blood). At least now we know what we're up against. 
The next morning Rob goes to collect blood samples from the Indians to prove that they're suffering from mercury poisoning and the head of the paper company arrives with the police. He accuses the Indians of violently murdering the sleeping family to scare away his logging crew. The police insist on taking away the leaders of the Indian camp and putting them in jail. Rob goes the crime scene to collect evidence and Maggie stumbles upon two mutant bear cub puppets, one alive and one dead, laying in the river. They take the mutated cubs  with them as evidence of just how high the mercury levels must be in the waters near the paper plant. Maggie decides this is the perfect time to tell Rob that she's pregnant and that she fears that she may have a mutant baby now herself since she had eaten fish from the same waters that the Indians (and bear puppets) have.
The giant mutant mama bear arrives at the same moment looking for her babies and she manages to kill a couple peeps, maim some others, and scare the living turds out of everyone else before they escape to some tunnels below the camp. They find a car and try to escape but Mutant Mama finds them and tips the car over. One of the passengers who was injured before can't run off gets his head bitten off (off screen of course) leaving a headless and annoyingly bloodless corpse. The bear follows the the others as they swim their way across a lake. They reach the other side and look back to see that the bear seems not to be able to swim and they all celebrate as she drowns. Surprise! She didn't drown and pops back above the surface right in front of them. They run to the Verne's cabin and barricade themselves in but Mutant Mama rips the roof right off the place. They start shooting at her, Rob with a gun and the Indians with bow and arrow, but she manages to keep at her murderous rampage. Just before she picks Rob up to munch on him (off screen) he picks up an arrow and starts stabbing her in the throat to death until she dies. 
Oh happy day, Mutant Mama is dead (and so is everyone else). Robby and Mags jump a plane back to New York and Maggie goes into the hospital to give birth. No mention is made to whether the baby is healthy or not. Just as we think it's all over, back in Maine another mutant bear rears it's ugly puppet head just before the credits role. DUN DUN DUN!!!
The end. 


The moral of the story is pregnant women shouldn't eat fish from waters with high mercury levels. 

"Night of the Comet"

Today I'll be retelling the boring and poorly told tale of 1984's Night of the Comet. I don't quite understand the title. There is a comet but the movie takes place over the span of several days. I guess it's unimportant. It's almost Christmas in LA and an ancient comet is about to fly by the earth for the first time since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Everyone wants to be outside to witness the comet's trail through the night sky but some people get stuck indoors. poor Regina is working the night shift at the el Rey theater and her sister Samantha has a fight with their stepmother, runs away and stays in a storage shed. As the comet approaches the sky turns red and orange and everyone exposed to the strange light turns to dust.
The next morning the girls wake up unharmed but seem to notice that something fishy's going on and that no one's around anywhere. They notice that they can't reach anyone on the phone but that their favorite radio station's still playing so they go to see if they can find anyone. At the radio station they run into Hector, who spent the night indoors as well. He says that he had seen some scary looking survivors earlier in the day that attacked and ate a cat alive. Sam gets on the radio to signal to any other survivors and receives a call from some people claiming to be part of a research team in a bunker somewhere. When she goes to get Hector and Reg the phones go out and she loses them.  Before she got off the phone with them they did tell her to be careful on the streets and that some people who may have survived could be very dangerous. When they can't get anyone back on the phone Hector decides to go to San Diego to find his mother and leaves the girls to roam the city alone. Hector doesn't find his madre at home but instead finds a neighborhood kid intent on eating Hector for lunch. Hector is able to flee the scene unharmed just in time for a really awesome montage with Sam and Reg shopping their time away in empty LA department stores set to an incredibly terrible Cindy Lauper cover song.
Unfortunately our girls aren't alone during their shopping spree. A group of men are watching Sam and Reg over the security cameras and decide that they look delicious. They get to Sam first and use her as bait for Reg. They tie them up and start to toy with them. It's not polite to play with your food, and so, they have to be punished. Just as their about to start eating Sam and Reg, the scientists from the bunker arrive and save the day. Very convenient. They shoot the guys up and save our girls in the nick of time. They take Reg away to the bunker in a helicopter and let Sam stay behind to wait for Hector. While waiting for Hector to show up one of the scientists starts writing a note to give to him explaining what the fuck is going on. Thank god cuz I still didn't even get it. I have to say that it was at this point that I almost turned the goddamn movie off it was so terrible. I mean, valley girls + horror film + comet from outer space = awesome right? wrong. 
So apparently the people that weren't fully dustified by the light of the comet were slowly drying up from within because of the after effects from the comet's rays of light. I would think that there should be a lot more zombie comet victims roaming the streets but what do I know. The scientist goes on to say that even they were exposed and were slowly beginning to show symptoms. The reason they had found Reg and Sam was that they were looking for someone who might be immune to the effects of the event. Sam is showing symptoms so they leave her behind to be killed but she tells the doctor that she always gets a rash when she's stressed out. The doctor realizes that Sam isn't infected after all so she gives Sam a shot that puts her to sleep to make the others down in the Bunker think that she was killed. Then the doctor finishes the letter to Hector who's on his way letting him know of the other scientist's sinister plan. She confides in Hector that they plan to drain the blood of those unaffected by the comet and use it to find a cure. When Hector arrives he finds the scientist and a groggy but very much alive Sam. The doctor gives Hector the note and gives herself the lethal injection that was meant for Sam.
Reg, down in the bunker, gets the impression that something strange is going on. Other survivors seem to be brought into a operating room but never come out. Even some children are led into the room and Reg gets frustrated that none of the doctors seem to want to answer any of her questions. She breaks free from the room where she's being held and tries to find the other she saw earlier. Unfortunately she finds out just what's going on and that it's too late for most of the survivors. Above ground Hector and Sam show up to the compound and start fighting their way into to save Reg. Sam turns off the generator for the compound, creating poorly acted confusion and hard to believe chaos. Back below Reg walks in on some scientists just as they are about to put two annoying kids to sleep with gas maxes. Fortunately these kids, though terrible actors, are good listeners and remember an important lesson. "My mommy told me never to breathe anything from strangers." That's one lesson my mother neglected to teach me- Because she's an unfit mother obviously.
Anyways, Reg stops them in the knick of time, well kind of, since the gas wasn't pumping anymore anyway thanks to Sam. So Reg stops them and saves the kids and then Sam finds her and leads everyone up to the surface. Back up above Hector is pouring some fun gasoline on the cars at the compound. When Reg and Sam get upstairs he's all finished and he drives his own car to pick them up. When the other scientists reach the surface they get in their car and try to follow, but go kablooey instead. Great fun.
The ditzy survivors head back toward LA when it starts to rain, washing all the gross dead people dust off the streets and down into the sewer. Hector and Reg fall in lurv and plan to raise the kids as their own. Sam feels lonely and jealous but right as we think the movie is over a random blond surfer dude drives up in a car almost hitting Sam as she crosses the street. He tells her she shouldn't cross the street without the walk signal and after asking his name they all live happily ever after.
The end.
I implore you NEVER to watch this film. It took all the strength I possess not to turn it off half way and return it to Netflix. I knew it was my duty to finish- all for you. See what I do for you? You're welcome.

"Murder Party"

Today I'll be retelling the tale of 2007's indie delight, Murder Party. I have to say that I actually really enjoyed this movie. 
We open on the streets of Brooklyn as the sun sets on Halloween. An unassuming down on his luck dorky guy named Christopher is walking home from the video store when he finds an invitation to a "murder party" blowing down the street. He picks it up and carries it home but gets ready to stay in for the night with a stack of scary movies and a bowl of candy corn for trick or treaters. When his fat ugly ass cat wont get out of his chair so he can watch the movies he decides to google map the address of the party. He picks up his jack'o'lantern that some hoodlums have smashed on his front step and whips it up into a fresh raisin studded loaf of pumpkin bread, not wanting to crash without a bringing a gift. What a nice guy! Then he turns a cardboard box and some duct tape into a knight costume, drops the candy corn on the front step, and heads to the subway. He gets off at the Bedford L train stop in ever trendy Williamsburg and starts walking. At first his trip down Bedford is filled with slutty girls and crazy costumes but his directions lead him off into the industrial warehouse district up on the Williamsburg/Greenpoint border.
He arrives at a secluded industrial artist loft to find a small gathering of bored Williamsburg hipsters lazily sitting around in costumes. When they finally notice him they all jump to their feet and approach. They welcome him to the party and say he's just a little early. He notices that chainsaws, axes and rope are laid out neatly on plastic sheeting that covers the floor. A hipster named Paul snags his invitation and burns it in front of him while Macon, dressed as a warewolf, picks up an axe and sneaks up behind him. Just as he's about to bring the axe down on Christopher's head, the axe gets caught on a dangling light switch string. The light comes on and everyone sees the shadow of the axe behind his head and they jump him, wrestle him to the ground, and tie him to a chair.
Then this blundering bunch begins to bicker about what to do next. Sky, dressed as a zombie cheerleader, insists that they shouldn't kill him after all but should instead go to Cicero's party, which is only, like, 3 blocks away. While trying to convince the others she munches on some pumpkin bread. Lexi gets a call on her cell phone and announces that someone named Alexander is on his way over. Lexi insists that they should murder him according to the original plan, especially since he's a white male. She say's he's probably even a republican. Paul answers back that his murder isn't about politics, it's about art. 
Sky says she has a plan that might be arty enough without having to murder the guy but before she reveals it she notices the raisins in the pumpkin bread. She asks, "Are these raisins?" Our hero shakes his head yes. "Are they organic?" He shakes his head no. She says, "I'll be fine I just get really dizzy. I just need to sit down I just get really dizzy. It's preservatives. I'm allergic to them." As she goes to sit down she falls over and bashes her head on the sharp end of a pick axe. She stands back up and says, "Oops hehe." As blood starts to pour from the side of her head she say, "Smells like cut grass. What?" and she falls over dead. The rest of the group disinterestedly look over at her and Lexi says,"Sky just died."
The others all blame Sky's demise on Christopher and decide to kill him then and there. Macon picks up a giant jug of acid that someone brought along, and screams, "This is happening! What What What Motherfucker What? I want to hear the screaming!" and pours the entire bottle all over Christopher, but then starts crying, "Oh Oh Oh I'm so sorry! Oh I'm so sorry I did that! Oh Please forgive me! Oh Oh Oh I didn't mean to do that!" When nothing happens they notice that the jug is labeled Acetic Acid. Lexi looks it up on her cell phone and discovers that acetic acid is the scientific name for vinegar.
Lexi's phone rings and she screams and says, "Oh my god it's Alexander. He's here. He's gonna think we're a bunch of dildos." They all scramble to hide Sky's body before they let him in. Alexander enters with a dog dressed in a skeleton costume and a drug dealer named Zycho. He's dressed as a vampire and notices that Paul is too, so he makes Paul strip down to his underwear and says, "You're hairy. Hmm. Okay so, who is this dildo?"
It turns out that Alexander is offering a $300,000 grant to the person at the party who can come up with the most creative and artistic way to murder poor Christopher. They all scramble to rattle off their ideas, which range from using his blood to make paper mache to stapling a pancake to his face and shoving him in front of the G train.  Alexander is not impressed for some reason and decides instead that they should all order some pizza, shoot some sodium pentathol and play extreme truth or dare. With truth serum coursing their viens they all confess that they're all insecure and fear that their art isn't good enough. Then they say that they're kicking Bill out of the art collective because he's too good and they hate him for it. Macon confesses that he's in love with Lexi and would do anything for her. They inject Christopher too and he confesses that he's a meter maid who makes a living ruining peoples days, that if he died no one would miss him, and that he never told anyone he was coming to the murder party.
This is when things start to get really fun. Macon steps out side to have a cigarette but decides to try to smoke it through his rubber warewolf max. The max catches on fire and Lexi discovers him screaming outside a few minutes later. No one else takes notice though because Paul and Alexander are arguing about the legitimacy of Alexanders claim to have access to grant money. Lexi puts Macon's face out with a fire extinguisher and drags him inside. Paul finds the sodium pentathol and injects Alexander, who hadn't taken any before. Alexander confesses that he's actually a fry cook who lives with his grandmother in New Jersey, he has no grant money, and he came up with the idea for the murder party so he could murder all the artists and sell their artwork because it would be worth more after their deaths. Alexander orders Zycho to shoot everyone, and he kills Paul first and Lexi jumps on his back. They start fighting and Zycho tries to choke her. Alexander's dog eats a bag of drugs, attacks Alexander, and bites his mouth off.  Macon comes to and peels the melted max off his face to reveal a horribly burned and disfigured bloody mess. He grabs an electric chainsaw and cuts off Zycho's legs, freeing Lexi. She runs and frees Christopher and grabs her cell phone.
Still bitter about being kicked out of the collective, Bill picks up an axe and bashes Lexi's head in and then finishes off Alexander. Macon's lying on the floor and Bill thinks he's dead so he starts to chase after Christopher. Christopher runs to the roof of the building and starts jumping from rooftop to rooftop. Bill runs after him with the axe and Macon, back up, runs after him with the electric chainsaw and extension cord. Christopher inadvertently stumbles upon Cicero's party that Sky was talking about in the beginning and runs down the stairs to hide inside. He runs into a room where a bunch of naked women in body paint are doing a performance art piece and closes the door behind him. Bill finds him though and kills everyone else in the room before getting to Christopher. Macon finds the party too and starts screaming about avenging Lexi by killing Bill. He plugs the extension cord into an outlet on the roof but loses his footing and falls backwards, flying past an open window in the room where Bill is about to kill Christopher. Christopher reaches out and retrieves the chainsaw by the cord, which is still plugged in above, and saws it right into Bill's face. He leaves the room and grabs someones cell phone, dials 911, and hands it back to them saying, "It's for you." A bunch of art critics walk to the open door of the room where Bill and all the performance artists are lying dead and exclaim, "Still life as performance art."
Christopher walks home from the party because his wallet and metro card were stolen by the Zycho. When he gets home covered in blood he makes his damn fat ugly cat get out of his chair and pops in a scary movie.
The end.

"My Bloody Valentine"

Today I'll be retelling the tale of 1981's My Bloody Valentine. Recently this film was remade in 3D with the tagline "Nothing says date movie like a 3D ride to hell." I was previously unaware of this fact, so I'm rather glad that someone finally brought it to my attention.
This wonderful film opens in the dark spoooooky depths of a coal mine. Two ominous miners are walking through a tunnel wearing full gear complete with gas maxes so we can't see their faces which, of course, makes them scarier. The two miners stop and take a looksie at one another. One begins to remove their gear, revealing to the other (and the audience) that she's actually a beautiful lady- the kind with boobs. She takes off her max to let down her silky blond hair, and unzips her jump suit to show off her voluptuous tatas. The other miner steps closer and ogles her. Just as she's about to remove his max and commence their gratuitous copulation he grabs her by the shoulders, slams her into a pitchfork and makes her dead.
Next we head to the mouth of the mine where a happy go lucky group of young miners is finishing up for the day. They jump in the showers like a bunch of college athletes in the locker room. These guys are one happy healthy bunch in this group shower, which kind of makes me want to move to Kentucky.
Once scrubbed up they pile into their cars and speed off like they just won the big game. They race to town accompanied by some fiddle heavy getaway music and meet their best gals. The ladies are at the town hall decorating for the first Valentines Day dance in 20 years. The jolly group is soon joined by the mayor and sheriff. One of the lads finds a frilly heart shaped chocolate box for the mayor, who is giddy with wonder at who his secret admirer could be. He hops in the truck with the sheriff and opens the box to find not sweet sweet chocolate confections but a bloody human heart instead!!!
Later that night all the miners pile into the local waterhole where the bartender insists on telling them the tale of why there hasn't been a dance for the past 20 years. He warns that anyone who celebrates at the dance this year is a fool and should fear for their lives. He tells of a night in the mines twenty one years earlier when six miners were left underground while the other men ran off to the Valentines dance instead of waiting to be sure the others made it out safe. There was an explosion caused by a methane leak and the miners were buried alive. Six weeks later a crew was able to reach them through the rubble only to find that one man, Harry Warden, had killed and eaten the other 5. He was placed in a mental hospital for exactly one year, but returned to the the town the following year to seek revenge. He killed the supervisors who had left him below the year before, stuffed their hearts into candy boxes and left them at the dance that night with a warning to never hold a Valentines dance again. The bartender pleads with his patrons that the story is true and that by attending the dance they're putting their lives in danger. The slightly intoxicated crowd insist that the bartender is just a crazy old drunk telling tall tales.
The sheriff and mayor head to the town coroner to see whether the heart they'd received is real or if it's just the rowdy young miners playing a sick joke. The coroner confirms that the heart is the real deal, and that it belonged to a young lady- perhaps the beautiful one with boobs from the beginning. The three of them all fear that Harry Warden must have escaped from the institution and come back and enforce his warning.
The carnage ensues. The owner of the local launderette, Madame Mabel, is the first to meet her death. She finds a heart shaped box and a card that reads "Roses are red, Violets are blue, one is dead, and so are you." Which turns out to not only rhyme, but also to be true, because then she gets dead.
The next day the mayor finds poor Mabel slowly cooking in a dryer at her laundromat. Her heart has been cut out and replaced with a paper Valentine complete with rhyming poem. "It happened once, it happened twice, cancel the dance, or it'll happen thrice." Pure genius! THRICE! Instead of scaring me this ominous message makes me giddy.
For some strange reason the sheriff decides that they don't want anyone in the town to panic, so they tell everyone Mabel had a heart attack and keep the danger at hand a secret. They do have brains enough to cancel the dance (in light of Mabel's "natural" death) and forbid the town young folks not to have any parties. Not to be told what to do, the rebellious group of twenty somethings decide that they're going to have a party anyway. Where better to hold a party when the sheriff's got the town on lock down? The mines, of course!
The next night the sheriff still hasn't been able to find Harry the mad miner but decides its still best not to tell the community. The kids pile up to the mine's rec room for their party and hide their cars where the sheriff can't see them. I didn't realize until now that mines had rec rooms, but hey, what do I know.
The first to go gets drown and boiled at the same time when Harry finds him boiling hot dogs in the kitchen and stuffs his head into the pot. Gross! I hate boiled hot dogs.
Then Harry finds some sexy kids making out in the locker room and waits for the perfect time to strike. The guy gets up to go get more beer and leaves his gal alone. Harry terrorizes her and eventually slams her body into a pipe in the showers. The guy returns to find his gal with water spouting from her chest.
Meanwhile six of these geniuses decide to take a ride down into the mines. Their girlfriends want to check out the cart that takes them down. "It's like a roller coaster right?" This seems like a bad idea but maybe I'm just being paranoid. The idea is to ride down, turn around, and come right back up. Once down there though the girls want to have a look around. Of course the guys agree and they all split up to feel each other up in privacy.
Back up in the rec room the body of the hot dog guy is discovered just in time for the guy who found his girlfriend fountain to run in screaming. With two known deaths the party goers start to panic. Everyone runs to leave and one guy tries to call the police, but finds the phones are down. Most of the youngins escape in their cars, but two guys stay behind to help save the group that went down into the mines. One stays above and one goes down to save the others. He quickly locates four of the six people down there but while looking for the others people start to drop like flies. Flies with pick axe wounds in their foreheads.
With one dead and two missing the others decide to try to escape before it's too late, but they find that Harry has smashed the controls for the pulley carts that would otherwise carry them out to safety. So, they decide to climb a wet ladder instead, the girls in heels. Half way up they find that Harry has already strung up one of their friends and hung him from the ladder. They decide to go back and make their way to another exit. Along the way two more of them die. The remaining couple reaches the pulley carts and one manages to fix the controls. They get in the carts just as Harry finds them. They try to jump ahead from one cart to another with Harry in hot pursuit but he catches up quickly and they jump off the cart and flee down an air shaft. Harry runs in after them but his pick axe gets stuck in the wall so he pulls a knife. Before he can act, the girl pulls his max off and stuns him. It turns out not to be Harry at all but Axel, one of the guys who went down in the mine with them and was thought to have died. OOOooooOOoooooh! Surprise ending!! Big finish!!
At that moment the air shaft starts to cave in and the two escape leaving Harry, er, uh, Axel behind. The shaft falls in on him and the others find the sheriff and a rescue team waiting in the tunnel outside. The sheriff tells them that he heard from the mental institution that Harry had died 5 years before. Then they remember that twenty years earlier Axel's father had been one of the mine supervisors Harry murdered, and that Axel had witnessed the whole thing. They go in to retrieve Axel's body and find him still alive. He pulls himself free on the other side of the rubble and runs off down the mine shaft promising to keep Harry's promise and kill anyone who celebrates Valentines day in the future.
Scary stuff.
The end.

"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.