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Vinyl A-Z ch. 2: Alkaline Trio - Remains . A wonderful collection of b-sides, EPs, and various other compilations. First time listening to this in years. By its very nature not much of an “album”, but it’s full of great songs. . Highlights: Hell Yes, Jaked on Green Beers, Queen of Pain, Warbrain, Fine Without You, Don’t Say You Wont, If You Had A Bad Time. . Lowlights: Live versions of some songs from Crimson, otherwise the rest is solid. . . . #nowplaying #vinyl #vinylcollection #atoz #alkalinetrio #vinylcollector #vinylrecords https://www.instagram.com/p/B4ISjZun7GH/?igshid=1f0sjzxtsvnhm

#nowplaying #vinyl #vinylcollection #atoz #alkalinetrio #vinylcollector #vinylrecords

This record saved my life (not this specific record, it was a cd in 2003). . . . . . #mikesofinstagram #alkalinetrio #vinyl #nowplaying #goodmourning #allonblack #thankyou

#mikesofinstagram #thankyou #nowplaying #vinyl #allonblack #goodmourning #alkalinetrio

“The night will spark the enlightenment and I know you, you made a difference.” Thanks for all the music Scott, rest peacefully. . . . . . #mastersystem #dancemusic #vinyl #nowplaying #mikesofinstagram #newvinyl

#nowplaying #vinyl #newvinyl #dancemusic #mastersystem #mikesofinstagram

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 31: Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993)

He’s no Tarman zombie, but he’ll do.

I absolutely love Return of the Living dead. It’s a punk rock zombie party that’s pretty much perfect. I’ve never seen the sequels because I heard they were really terrible. After hearing an “F this movie!” (great podcast by the way) discuss this series and mention three as surprisingly good, I decided to hunt it down and close out the year with it.

Curt and Julie steal a keycard to get into the military base his dad works at. They sneak in and see an experiment being done with a dead body and the same gas that caused all the problems in the first movie. Not too surprisingly this ends poorly and the military plan to weaponize the undead fails miserably. While escaping on motorcycle, Curt and Julie crash, killing Julie. Curt can’t deal with this so he brings her to the military base and uses the gas to bring Julie back to life. I’m assuming because she died so recently, she doesn’t become a brain eating zombie right away. But she is most definitely a re-animated corpse and her hunger seems to increase by the hour. Curt refuses to let Julie go, the zombie problem gets worse, and the military is involved.

I really, really, really wanted to like this movie, but it’s just got too many problems to recommend. A sequel in name only, the only relation to the first movie I could see was the name of the toxic gas that makes the zombies. Which is fine, but they could have just called the movie “Romeo and Juliet: Zombie edition” and not disappointed anyone looking for something resembling the original RotLD. This movie looks like it cost $50 to make, crummy looking sets and lit light a soap opera. Performances are all pretty pretty poor with Melinda Clarke coming closest to giving us someone to care about with her portrayal of Julie. Some neat ideas here trying to give heart and a goal to the zombies, but just way too rough around the edges for me to care.

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 30: Edward Scissorhands (1990)

:: Starts sobbing uncontrollably ::

Not much of a scary movie, but it’s sadly the last time we get to see Vincent Price on screen and has inspired enough Halloween costumes, that I’m giving it a pass.

A miss-mash of The Little Mermaid, Frankenstein, and Beauty and the Beast. Peg Boggs goes to a creepy old house trying to sell Avon and stumbles upon Edward. With Robert Smith’s haircut, covered in scars, patched together with random pieces of leather, and of course scissors for hands. Edward was created by an inventor (the marvelous Vincent Price) but died before he could finish. Peg feels for him so she takes him home to live with her family. He gains some level of fame trimming hedges, dogs, and the odd gossipy women in town. Then Peg’s daughter Emily’s jerk boyfriend ruins everything.

A very, very Tim Burton-y movie and it’s probably my favorite of his (though several come very, very close). The pastel colors of the town, cartoon character townsfolk, a fantastic Danny Elfman score, and the brilliant costume and makeup for Edward. Johnny Depp was still trying and not the weird always kind of Jack Sparrow person he is now. The entire supporting cast is great too. Alan Arkin as Peg’s husband Bill gets consistent chuckles out of me and Anthony Michael Hall is a great villain. Vincent Price’s final performance is brief, but moving and sad. The whole movie is pretty sad actually, very funny at times, but melancholy in a way that plucks my emo heart strings. Usually watch this one alone so no one sees me crying.

Edward Scissorhands - Trailer

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 29: Scream (1996)

Worst cameo, best cameo, or worst AND best cameo?

The movie that I somehow haven’t done yet and the movie that saved horror movies in the 90′s only to eventually kinda ruin them again.

After Casey Becker and her boyfriend get horribly murdered and other high school kids get attacked, a small town has a murderer problem. Everyone in town is seemingly a suspect, so they close school and enforce a curfew in hopes to prevent further killings. At a party at an impossibly large house, kids talk about horror movies while doing horror movie things and the killer starts picking off kids. With so many kids knowing so much about horror movie killers, can anyone there figure out who it is before it’s too late!?

My last “Scream” memories are of the terrible Scream 3 and I hadn’t seen the original in many, many years. I’ve never loved this movie. I get why it’s good and why it’s important, and it is good. It’s tightly paced, keeps you guessing, and is surprisingly gory for a studio horror movie. It’s just that every horror movie after this movie blew up tried to be this movie. Maybe not in the “most meta horror movie ever made” sense, but in a script and direction sense. The Scream sequels, I know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty. And those are just the Kevin Williamson penned 90′s horror. It’s just a style of horror movie that comes across as a little dated for me. Glad I revisited it though, there’s a reason it inspired so many copy cats, it’s got a lot going for it.

Scream - Trailer

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 28: What Lies Beneath (2000)

So we break into Cyberdyne and blow the whole thing up?

I have memories of this movie being advertised a ton. I even saw this in the theater, which wasn’t super common at the time for me. A thriller with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer from Robert Zemeckis, what could go wrong? Lots apparently as I remember thinking it was stupid when I saw it before, let’s revisit and see if that holds true.

After Claire (Pfeiffer) and Norman (Ford) Spencer’s daughter leaves for college, Claire starts noticing strange things happening at their neighbors’ house. She goes full Rear Window and starts spying on them and even suspects the husband of murdering his wife. Claire starts seeing visions and seeing spooks all over her house. Doors opening and closing themselves, picture frames falling and breaking, your standard ghost encounters. Norman, a scientist, doesn’t buy any of it of course and suspects Claire is simply suffering because of her newly empty nest and convinces her to seek mental help. Then...well it kind of becomes a different movie. Possession, infidelity, long forgotten secrets, and twists you wouldn’t believe as this movie drags on for over two hours!

The first 40 minutes or so of this movie are pretty decent. Some not so subtle Hitchcock homages, good jump scares, and Michelle Pfeiffer is pretty dang convincing as all of this crap is going on in the house. Then this movie completely falls of a cliff and (17 year old spoiler warning.........) Harrison Ford’s character starts becoming a super villain of sorts! So we have ghosts and Ford overacting and completely changing characters and the movie just...keeps going. It should put us out of our misery at 90 minutes, but it somehow keeps going, really strange stuff. It’s almost so bad it’s good, and maybe with a group it would be, but I don’t think it’s fun enough to earn that recommendation even.

What Lies Beneath - Trailer

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 27: The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2017)

Bate’s Motel vibes.

Today we have the directorial debut of Oz Perkins, son of Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins. It’s real good.

At a girls boarding school, Kat and Rose are both there after everyone leaves for holiday break. Rose because she is afraid she’s pregnant and wants to avoid telling her parents, and Kat because Rose told her the wrong day. Rose tells Kat a story that the school is run by devil worshipers. Kat also has a terrible dream of her parents’ dying in a car crash, but that’s another matter. We cut away to Joan who is in New York having flashbacks of being in a mental hospital. She meets some seemingly nice people at a bus station who offer her a ride.

Boy did I like this quite a bit. It definitely borders on “style over substance”, but it’s got style to spare. It’s slow and methodical and at times has an almost dreamlike quality. Timelines jump around and there are unnatural pauses in conversations that let the movie’s score seep in and it all really gets under your skin. Performances are great all around, but Kiernan Shipka’s Kat really steals the show for me. It’s got some Suspiria, Shining, some John Carpenter thrown in, it’s one of my favorites this year. Check it out!

The Blackcoat’s Daughter - Trailer

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 26: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Live long and prosper (as a pod person)

I’ve gone through life pretty sure I had seen this movie before and I know I covered the original 50′s version of this movie in a previous marathon. Maybe I had just seen the famous final shot of Donald Sutherland pointing and screaming though. I was expecting to fill in blanks, but this was pretty much all new to me.

The story, which has been told in many ways over the years, involves aliens landing on earth and assimilating the human race. In this movie, the aliens are kind of silly looking bath bubble things. Luckily they aren’t that way for long. They land on the plants here, take them over, and form pods. These pods eventually start copying and replacing humans while they sleep. Elizabeth and Matthew work for the San Francisco Health Department and start noticing people aren’t themselves. They, along with a few other characters they run across are among the only people to discover the pod problem, but are they too late?

This movie has a reputation of being one of the few remakes that improves on the original and I think it does. It’s not the home run that The Thing or Fly remake is, but it’s pretty darn good. The first 2/3 or so before everyone figures out what’s going on is especially creepy. Random people with a vacant stare, not knowing who’s “real”, really great stuff. Once the cat’s out of the bag there are a few more action oriented scenes that could use some tightening up. It never feels boring or overly long, but there’s just some fluff and scenes that end up losing the suspense they’re going for. I also think it’s pretty lame that the only picture you ever see from the movie is from the very end and is a huge spoiler. I suppose it is nearly 40 years old so...spoilers are off limits. Worth checking out, especially if you still need your daily dose of Goldblum in your life.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Trailer

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 25: From Beyond (1986)

“And I thought the mall full of zombies was bad!” Ken Foree. (rim shot)

Despite loving Re-Animator, I never bothered to see it’s “sequel” (same director, writer, HP Lovecraft adaptation, some same cast/crew) until now.

Our movie opens with Dr. Pretorius and his assistant Dr. Crawford firing up “The Resonator” for the first time. Everything turns a bright purple and suddenly there are snake like creatures in the air. Crawford gets bitten by one and wants to end the experiment. Pretorius refuses and gets his head bitten off for his troubles. No one believes Crawford and he’s put in a psych ward under the care of Dr. McMichaels. She sees there may be some truth to the story he’s telling. Soon, Crawford, McMichaels, and a detective named Bubba go back to The Resonator to scope things out. Upon turning it back on everyone sees Crawford isn’t making stuff up and more worrisome, Pretorius is suddenly there again too, covered in goo, with his head again, and naked. Dr. McMichaels turns on the machine the next morning without anyone knowing and things don’t go very well for anyone.

I was about to go into a little more detail about the plot of this movie, but it was all starting to sound really stupid, which this movie is not. It’s not as fun or funny as Re-Animator, but it’s still a really great time. So many great practical effects here, even a little stop motion, and everything is covered in goo. Barbara Crampton, Jeffery Combs, and Ken Foree are all fantastic here and Ted Sorel is a good creep as Pretorius. He’s also in a comical amount of makeup for most of the movie which couldn’t have been fun. Fun sci-fi body horror movie I should have seen many years ago.

From Beyond - Trailer

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 24: Chopping Mall (1986)

“Yup, and then we’ll bring these BACK to the gas station and they’ll give us a new propane tank.”

Probably the last 80′s slasher of questionable quality for the year, soak it in everyone.

Not much meat on the bones as far as plot goes. The Park Plaza Mall has a major theft problem. It’s so bad they’ve installed a high tech security system that features three incredibly stupid looking security robots. These robots are programmed to find thieves and tase them on sight. After a lightning storm, the robots go haywire and they kill the human security in the control center. Meanwhile, eight teens played by actors well into their 20′s decide to stay in the mall overnight where one of them works. They do teen horror movie stuff and are eventually hunted down by the robots.

I feel like I say this often, not sure what it says about me yet. This movie isn’t good..but it’s kinda really good. Everything is just so preposterous and the movie moves at such a fast clip that you can’t help but get wrapped up in the nonsense of it all. Really bad acting, tons of nudity and gore, it might just be what you’re looking for.

Chopping Mall - Trailer

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 23: Wild Beasts (1984)

The real animal is...man, this man (and PCP).

Probably the last Italian zaniness of the year today. This one made me a little too uncomfortable to really get into...seven days left.

The premise itself is great. A shit ton of PCP gets into the water and the zoo animals drink it and go nuts. They break out of the zoo, decide to team up, and go on a murderous rampage through the city. That’s pretty much it as everything else that happens in the movie is pretty much in service to introduce us to more animal victims.

So, I know it was the 80′s and the way humans treated and understood animals was pretty different, but this movie is just a rough watch. We’ve got real rats, lions, elephants, cheetahs, your standard zoo fare all here not exactly being tortured, but definitely not being treated like you’d want to see an animal treated. There’s also some kind of borderline sexualizing of some kids and yeah...I just ain’t having none of that. Watchable purely as a novelty of it’s time for only specific and dedicated genre fans.

Wild Beasts - Trailer

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 22: The Devil’s Candy (2015)

Can’t Hardly Wait 2: Electric Boogaloo

When you’ve got 31 days and at least to this point can’t revisit movies you’ve previously watched, I’m happy to lean on good friends to make recommendations throughout the month. This is one of those movies, thanks Luke!

I feel like we’ve had a lot of parents getting murdered by their children in the opening scenes of movies this year. We get it here too when Ray is playing his guitar too loudly so he doesn’t have to hear “him”. His parents ain’t having it though and unplug and kill the music. That’s it for the parents, killed. He’s apparently not arrested for any of this though as we catch up to him playing guitar again in a crummy motel at some point in the not too distant future. At the same time Jesse, his wife Astrid, and daughter Zooey end up buying the same house all this went down in. Jesse is a starving artist who’s sort of in a creative rut when it comes to his painting. Things are all decent to good until Jesse starts hearing some voices and starts painting some creepy stuff. Ray checks in at his old house and the freshly moved in family are creeped out. Ray continues to be a creep, kills a kid and we see he’s probably killed a good number of people. Ray begins to terrorize the family and Jesse and Astrid work to keep Zooey from becoming the titular “devil’s candy” (what Ray calls his murder victims).

After the high praise I’ve heard from this movie I was really trying hard to like it, but ultimately I just couldn’t really buy into everything. It starts out super promising and I really liked probably the first 30 minutes or so up until they kind of settle into the house. None of the “starving and tortured artist” stuff landed for me and the plot line of the father being too consumed with work and neglecting his daughter felt half baked. Ray is a super creepy antagonist though and the acting in general is quite good. Ethan Embry sure has changed a lot, I didn’t even recognize him. The last 15-20 minutes or so is also pretty effective, I just wish I really cared about the characters a little more for it to have more impact. Apparently the Netflix version is about 12 minutes shorter than the “festival cut”, so maybe some of that story stuff gets fleshed out and I’d like it more.

The Devil’s Candy - Trailer

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 21: Pieces (1983)

The award for “Guy who does the worst job not looking like a killer” goes to this guy.

We’re right in the beginning of prime 80′s slasher movie here. An awesome poster with a mangled girl reads “You don’t have to go to Texas for a Chainsaw Massacre!” followed by “PIECES..It’s exactly what you think it is!” And you know what? It is!

Hopefully you’re not expecting too much in the way of plot. Timmy gets caught putting together a puzzle of a nude woman when he’s 10 years old. His mother is super mad, but instead of accepting punishment, Timmy kills her with an axe. Fast forward 40 years and we see who we assume to be Timmy unbox the same puzzle and start putting it together. He horribly murders a woman with a chainsaw on a college campus and afterwords adds more pieces to the puzzle. Murders continue, police and college administration are stumped.

This movie is a ton of fun! A perfectly “right kind of dumb” slasher movie. Loads of ultra violent and creative kills, gratuitous nudity, oblivious law enforcement, and make sure you stick around for the ending.

Pieces - Trailer

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 20: Kong - Skull Island (2017)

Calamari ala Kong

Like crazy Italian horror flicks, my horror marathons need a good monster mash thrown in for good measure too. The second movie in the questionably (though accurately) named “MosterVerse” is up for today!

In the early 70′s, the US government leads an expedition to the mysterious Skull Island. Because the US government is involved, they start dropping explosives in an effort to map the island. Because the island is named “Skull Island”, King Kong really disapproves of this and starts smashing stuff. The survivors of the attack end up meeting some local natives and Hank Marlow, who’s plan crash landed there in World War 2. They discover there’s much more going on on this island and much more to worry about than Kong.

King Kong is great and I don’t care what anyone has to say about it. The 70′s reboot is so dumb and the 2000′s reboot is painfully long, but it’s King Kong...something about it is just fantastic. This Kong doesn’t have the heart of those Kongs and pretty much all of the characters outside of John C Reilly’s Marlow are paper thin. Still, it’s brilliant looking and there’s some great action to be had. It also does a pretty good job of setting us up for the inevitable Kong vs. Godzilla encounter down the road. Not a home run, but I had a lot of fun with this.

Kong: Skull Island - Trailer

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 19: Blue Sunshine (1978)

No, YOU took a bunch of weird LSD in college and lost your hair and killed a bunch of people.

In the “buy every marginally looking horror movie from Best Buy” years, this one sat on my shelf longer than any other. In fact it sat so long that it never got watched...until now, and not that DVD but on a streaming service.

The plot here is lean and mean. At a party one day this guy suddenly freaks out and kills some people at a party. Jerry is wrongly accused of the killing and works with Alicia to prove his innocence all the while more killings occur. They discover an unlikely cause to all the madness. Some folks took an experimental form of LSD in college called “Blue Sunshine” are losing their hair and becoming unstoppable murderers ten years later.

This is a “Mike” kind of horror movie. It probably wouldn’t be defined as good by most movie watcher, but it’s got the right mix of things going for it that I really dug it. It’s never really scary, but it’s actually fairly suspenseful in some parts and I think it’s a sort of clever premise.

Blue Sunshine - Trailer

Horror Marathon ‘17: Day 18: Split (2017)

So...is it OK to like this guy again?

How do you come back from a combo like Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth? To be fair, I haven’t seen Airbender or After Earth, but to say Shyamalan’s star had fallen would be putting it lightly. Then he makes a little found footage movie named The Visit in 2015 and is apparently not that bad at all (I haven’t seen it yet, maybe soon?). And now today’s movie made nearly $300 million on a $9 million budget. Is Night back!?

The movie opens with Casey, Claire, and Marcia getting kidnapped by Kevin Crumb while leaving a restaurant. Kevin has multiple personality disorder and in his mind, there are 23 (maybe 24) different people that all wait for their turn “in the light”. Kevin traps the girls in a basement of sorts and the girls figure out his condition and try to use it against him. Meanwhile Kevin’s doctor, Karen Fletcher, continues to try and work with the “real Kevin”, but there are troubling signs that some of the more harmful of Kevin’s personalities are taking control.

As much as I appreciate the work going on in this movie, I really have a hard time recommending it. All the leads do a pretty good job here. James McAvoy is great, if a bit too over the top and cartoony. But there’s a certain...disingenuous feeling I got through this whole movie, I never was able to get wrapped up in the yarn that it was trying to spin. Still, and I hate to say this because of the director’s reputation, but the ending of this movie ALMOST completely redeems it. It brought a smile to my face.

Split - Trailer

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