Lucio Fulci's Gates Of Hell Trilogy

I discuss Lucio Fulci and Italian horror movies with Jon Cross of the After Movie Diner podcast. http://amdpodcast.blogspot.se/2014/08/episode-132-lucio-fulcis-gates-of-hell.html

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The Howling/Robocop 3/Horror Express

I discuss The Howling, Robocop 3 and Horror Express with Gary Hill on the Cinema Beef Podcast.

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Ms. 45

I discuss Abel Ferarra's 1981 rape and revenge flick with Moe Porne and Joseph Foley on the Drunk on VHS podcast.

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The Films That F'ed Me Up

There are some movies that I should not have been exposed to as a young boy...

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW

My dad wouldn't let me watch THE GODFATHER or PULP FICTION when I was younger, but a movie where Tim Curry is in drag and sings about being a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania? Oh that is just a-okay...

THE PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE

A 70's cult rock n' roll musical like THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE. This film was an update of the classic PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Directed by Brian De Palma (one of my favorite filmmakers), THE PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE is cool, funny, sad and utterly demented. I remember being both frightened and fascinated by this film as a kid.

DEAD HEAT

This bizarre buddy-cop-zombie comedy from 1988 seriously freaked me out as a kid. The scene where a woman rapidly decomposes was some serious nightmare fuel...

THE TOXIC AVENGER

I rented this classic TROMA movie on VHS when I was 11 years old. All alone! I can't believe the guy in the store would let me rent it! The cover made the film look like some sort superhero comedy. I watched the movie with a bowl of popcorn, and when the movie was over I went to the bathroom and puked. Thanks Lloyd Kaufman...

ROBOCOP

That damn toxic waste scene...

THE NINE LIVES OF FRITZ THE CAT

Older sister: "So, what have you been doing while I was gone?"
Me: "Well, I just watched a cartoon movie where a cat fucks another cat."

JAWS

I did not wanna go swimming in the ocean after I saw this movie. I still feel uneasy about swimming...

POLTERGEIST

"This house is clean" says the creepy midget woman. Their daughter is back and everything is fine... could the movie be over? Nope. We get an extra climax where skeletons comes out of the ground, and THAT was just too much for me...

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

Shot in black-and-white on a low budget, this seminal 1968 horror film about the dead coming back to life and attacking the living still packs a punch. Bleak, eerie, unrelenting, claustrophobic and dripping with dread and mood. Watching this film, late at night, I was terrified. From the very first frame, it feels like the world has ended...

PINOCCHIO 

Saw it once as a kid, and I have not seen it since...

SLEEPY HOLLOW

Headless Christopher Walken decapitating people left and right in this overly Gothic, gloomy, moody and gruesome horror movie by Tim Burton really scared the shit out of me. Another Tim Burton film that freaked me out was MARS ATTACKS! "Ack-ack-ack ACK-ACK!"

PLANET OF THE APES

As a kid I saw the seminal 1968 science-fiction film PLANET OF THE APES and its sequels on television. I found them riveting and terrifying at the same time. The bleak and dark post-apocalyptic world ruled by talking apes as presented in the first two films was particularly unnerving. In the sequel BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES we find out that there is an under-dwelling society of mutated humans with psychic powers that worship a nuclear warhead, called the "doomsday bomb". This bomb is activated at the end by a dying Charlton Heston, destroying the whole planet! The screen then fades to white, and the film ends with a voice-over saying, "In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead." The twist ending of the first film left me flabbergasted as a kid. The nihilistic ending of the sequel left me stunned and dispirited. Although the original film may look outlandish and dated now, the ideas still ring true... the concept of mankind destroying itself is no fantasy...

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.

Yeah, that's right...  Ed Wood's infamously bad film PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE actually scared me. But, y'know as a kid you don't criticize movies... you don't 'see' the bad film-making... so when I watched this 50's  black-and-white (which made it all the more nightmarish looking) horror film  about aliens robbing cemeteries and resurrecting dead humans as zombies at an early age, late at night, I was just horrified.Tor Johnson and Vampira freaked me out. I couldn't sleep that night!

ANY STEPHEN KING ADAPTATION

Fuck you.

Clive Barker

I discuss Clive Barker films with the wonderful Jon Cross! Check out his podcast: http://amdpodcast.blogspot.se/

Halloween Not Water and The Roaring Psychic Shark

Anyone else noticed how much Halloween H20: 20 Years Later parallels Jaws: The Revenge?

- Both movies are about a maternal, middle-aged woman (Laurie Strode/Ellen Brody) who is living in fear of a killer shark ("in baggy-ass overalls!") that killed members of her family. 

 - The female protagonist moves far away from her hometown but the killer shark follows her: amazingly drives/swims from Illinois/Long Island to California/the Bahamas in less than two/three days

 - The female protagonist has a son (John/Michael) and tries to convince him that the killer shark is after them and that he shouldn't be out on Halloween/the water. The son thinks she's paranoid and tries to convince her there is no danger.

- However the son eventually comes face to face with the killer shark.

 - The female protagonist has a charming and quirky but somewhat sleazy boyfriend (Will/Hoagie) who wants to bang her while she talks about her terrible past.

- Both movies features a Token Black Guy (Ronnie/Jake) who at some point appears to have been killed...

... but later reappears miraculously alive and quite well.

- "This time... it's personal" The female protagonist overcomes her fears and confronts, and kills, the killer shark.

So, yeah, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (original subtitle was The Revenge of Laurie Strode, btw) is just Jaws: The Revenge... ON LAND. What a rip off. :D

And, yeah, isn't Halloween H20 a stupid title? It was the 90s. I guess it was suppose to sound "hip" and "cool". Nobody (except for fans) would go see a movie titled Halloween 7. When I first came across H20 in a video store as a kid, I thought, looking at the title, "Water? Michael Myers stalks a submarine?" And that's what I thought (I didn't read the plot synopsis on the back, haha.) The image on the back cover totally fooled me. Looks like the window of a submarine door!

Instead we got Michael Myers stalking a school? Dammit. If Halloween Waters would have taken place in a submarine, we could have had possibly the best tagline ever: "Now, it will be a Red October!"

But, the "H20" in the title actually means "Halloween 20," not "water"... which, uh, means the full title of the movie is: "Halloween Halloween 20: 20 Years Later." 

The Powers That Be certainly exploited the "H20" in the title... one of the taglines for the movie was "Blood is thicker than water." Oooh... clever. Since this is about a woman who is haunted by something that happened in her past, which took place on a special day, and is stalked by a killer, maybe they should have just called the movie "I Know What You Did Last Halloween 20 Years Ago."