329. Curdled (1996)

August 21, 2014

'Curdled' was a surprisingly interesting movie. It was about a girl who developed a strange obsession with death after she saw a dead body as a child. She became even more obsessed with following the path of a serial killer known as the "Blue Blood Killer" who killed and decapitated wealthy, married women. The girl took a job with a crime scene clean up company, cleaning homes for people after particularly violent crimes took place. One of the killer's victims tried writing his name on the floor with a sharpie before she died and the killer couldn't clean it up before the husband came home. When the clean up crew got to the scene, the girl found the name on the floor and kept the information to herself. She eventually came face to face with the killer in the film's bizarre climax. I do recommend this movie, as it was very entertaining. The only problem I had with it (and maybe this was just the copy I watched) was the sound was very quiet when people were talking and then extremely loud whenever music played. That makes it hard to watch a movie late at night when other people are sleeping...

328. Frankenhooker (1990)

August 21, 2014

One of my two favorite movies of all time (the other being 'Fade to Black'), Frank Henenlotter's 'Frankenhooker' is such a fun movie. My wife is planning on going as Frankenhooker this year for Halloween, so we watched it again to get some costume tips. When Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) builds a remote control lawn mower that inadvertently kills his fiancee, Elizabeth (Patty Mullen), he becomes a full-blown mad scientist and devotes his life to putting her back together again. The problem is he needs more parts, so he goes to the city to find some. He meets some hookers and tells them to get a big group together so he can pick the best ones for a party. The girls get their hands on Jeffrey's 'super crack' and start smoking it and it ends up blowing them to pieces (which is exactly what he needs)! He collects the pieces and builds a perfect body for Elizabeth and in typical Frankenstein fashion he brings her back to life. Unfortunately for Jeffrey, she takes on several characteristics and key phrases of the hookers and she goes back to the city to work the streets. Obviously upset about losing his girls, Zorro, their pimp, goes looking for Jeffrey while Jeffrey tries to bring his creation back home, culminating in a battle between scientist, pimp, and spare body parts the likes of which have never been seen. On the VHS cover, a quote from Bill Murray says, "If you only see one movie this year it should be Frankenhooker," and I believe that to be true of every year. If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. Or better yet, let me know and I'll watch it with you!

327. Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

August 19, 2014

What an unbelievably stupid movie. I guess you could say it was an ambitious effort but that doesn't change the fact that it was just awful. Keanu Reeves starred as Johnny, a guy in the distant future of 2021 who could carry data in his head like a hard drive, only his hard drive had a maximum storage capacity of 160GB (which, if you don't know, isn't very much by today's standards - although it was in 1995). Anyway, he had to transport more data than he could fit in his head, so he lied and pretended he could carry more, knowing full well that could kill him. The Yakuza wanted the data from his head as well, so Johnny spent a lot of the movie running from them. It was worth it to see Dolph Lundgren as some kind of barbarian preacher, though.

326. Brainscan (1994)

August 16, 2014

Every once in a while, a movie comes along with the potential to blow your mind to tiny little pieces and then shatter those tiny little pieces into even smaller pieces. That movie, for me, was 'Brainscan'. For years I had gone under the assumption that I had already seen 'Brainscan', and I'm pretty sure I was confusing it with 'Evilspeak' for some reason (the two movies are nothing alike, aside from their respective titles being two words squeezed into one). Even certain scenes from 'Brainscan' were vaguely familiar, but I am positive that this was the first time I'd ever actually watched it in its entirety. Edward Furlong stars as a high school kid obsessed with all things horror who stumbles upon a new virtual reality computer game being advertised in a Fangoria magazine. When he gets the game and it gives him the realistic sensation of violently killing a random person and getting away with it, he thinks it is the greatest game ever created. That is, until he sees on the news that the person he killed in the game is dead in real life with the same gruesome details from the game. He tries to quit playing the game, but a trickster demon shows up and convinces him that the only way to make it all stop is by finishing the game. He does what the trickster says and continues to play the game for fear that everyone he loves is in danger if he doesn't, all while a detective (Frank Langella) gets closer and closer to solving the case and all while every minute he spends playing the game makes his life more miserable. The ending felt a little convenient and didn't really fit the overall tone of the rest of the movie, but it was still an awesome film that you should definitely check out.

325. Dead in Tombstone (2013)

August 13, 2014

I had no expectations for 'Dead in Tombstone' aside from an ineluctable silliness that did not disappoint. Danny Trejo starred as the leader of a gang of bank robbing thugs in the old west that lived by a code and vowed never to kill anyone unnecessarily. After a prosperous robbery, Trejo's bandits killed the local sheriff, turned mutinous and killed Trejo. Sent to hell to be tortured for eternity by Lucifer himself, Trejo made a deal with the devil to let him go free if he could kill the real bad guys and send their souls to hell for Lucifer to feed on. The rest of the film was basically Trejo being his own undead avenger and dispatching his former comrades in full bloody detail. It had the effects you'd expect from a direct-to-video action flick, but thanks to Trejo it felt like it had a little more heart than average. So for that, I will say I recommend it, but you definitely have to be in the mood for something like this.

324. Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1986)

August 10, 2014

I've always been intrigued by the cover art of 'Mountaintop Motel Massacre'. The crazy old lady on the poster peaking out from behind the door with the bloody fingerprints has kept this movie on my radar for a long time, but for some reason I had never gotten around to watching it until now. Like most movies from the same time period, the poster was way cooler than the actual movie. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy it, because I did, I'm just saying it could have been a better movie. For starters, a motel in the middle of nowhere with no guests suddenly gets a coincidental surge of visitors to stay there right after the crazy lady who runs the place kills her daughter because she is involved in some Satanic worship stuff that she doesn't approve of. The old lady then has a kind of psychotic breakdown and tries to kill off her guests by placing various creatures (snakes, rodents, bugs, etc.) in the rooms via an underground tunnel below the motel that connects each room. The guests band together to try to stay alive, and eventually figure out the source of their problems and try to put a stop to it. It was an alright movie that could have benefited from a few changes in the script.

323. Jodorowsky's Dune (2013)

August 9, 2014

'Jodorowsky's Dune' was a fantastic documentary about possibly the greatest film never made. Alejandro Jodorowsky took over the rights to make a film adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel, Dune, in 1975 and immediately began amassing an impressive group of incredibly talented people to work on it including artists H.R. Giger (pre-Alien), Jean Giraud, and Chris Foss, as well as Dan O'Bannon for the special effects, Pink Floyd for the music, and featuring a bizarre collection of actors including Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, David Carradine, and a bunch more. Not only was the cast and crew unprecedented, the script was apparently immaculate. It was close to 1000 pages and filled almost entirely with beautiful artwork for set designs and concepts. Ultimately and unfortunately the film was never made, due primarily to backers pulling out because they didn't feel comfortable with Jodorowsky's strange filmography (Fando y Lis, El Topo, Holy Mountain) and they thought audiences wouldn't be interested. The script was sent to every major studio, however, and was purportedly the inspiration for many of the films we know and love today (including Star Wars).

322. The Past Is A Grotesque Animal - A Film About of Montreal (2014)

August 8, 2014

When my friend Brett told me an of Montreal documentary was coming out soon I got really excited. My wife and I have seen them in concert five or six times, and they get better every time. Then when I found out the film was going to be released on Oscilloscope's label, I got even more excited because I'm in their "Circle of Trust" (you can be too, just click here), and it was destined for my DVD shelf before the street release date. Anyway, the documentary was good. It was a mixture of concert footage and front-man Kevin Barnes' self-destructive need to create art, which often alienated the people closest to him. As can often be the case when you get an up close and personal look at someone you've admired from a distance, I realized I preferred to see Barnes through the rose colored glasses and maybe I didn't need to see just how volatile he can be. That said, I did enjoy the film, and I recommend it to anyone who'd like to know more about the band. It does make me apprehensive to watch another documentary that is coming out soon - 'Mistaken for Strangers', a film about The National. Maybe I should just stick to the music.

321. Jonah Hex (2010)

August 3, 2014

I avoided 'Jonah Hex' for as long as I could. I never heard a good review, and until recently I've tried to steer clear of Megan Fox movies. With that in mind, it wasn't really that awful. My guess is that my expectations were so low that it couldn't have disappointed me if it tried. Anyway, Josh Brolin plays the titular character, a Civil War soldier who refused to burn a hospital down and for some reason (I can't remember why), he had to kill his best friend who happened to be the son of the general who gave him the orders to burn down the hospital. That general (John Malkovich) took offense to being disobeyed and having his son killed, so naturally he burned Hex's house down with his wife and child still inside and made him watch. After being forced to watch his family brutally murdered, and facing his own near-death experience, Hex gained certain powers (including being able to touch a corpse and wake them up for a short time to get information out of them), and he went after Malkovich. The ensuing hunting and fighting scenes were far-fetched to say the least, but they were entertaining. I'd say give it a watch if you're interested in more obscure, gritty, fun comic book movies.

320. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

August 2, 2014

There aren't words to describe just how fantastic 'Guardians of the Galaxy' is. Like most people I went in expecting very little (despite the fact that James Gunn directed it and Michael Rooker is in it so it had to be good) and I was completely taken by surprise by the sheer spectacle of it all. Chris Pratt plays Peter Quill, a human who was abducted as a child and taken to another planet after his mom died. 26 years later he tries to steal an orb for a wealthy collector, only to be ambushed by the powerful assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana). The two of them chase after each other for a while and then get targeted by a couple thieves, Groot (a tree-person voiced by Vin Diesel) and Rocket (a genetically enhanced raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper). They all end up getting arrested and sent to a maximum security prison where they meet the dimwitted but extremely strong Drax and they join forces to escape and fight together against a common enemy and, eventually, to try to save the galaxy from the certain destruction that would occur if the orb they were after fell into the wrong hands. Easily the best Marvel movie ever made, and possibly my favorite movie of the year, if you haven't seen it yet, do it now.