October Movies - Week 3

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,
 
It’s October!!! You know what that means… Izzy goes a little crazy with decoration for the house so that two humans, three cats & a sh*t ton of rats, ladybugs and box elder bugs can see them because we’re socially distanced (and nobody wants to come visit anyway). We’ve also decided that we’re going to try to watch 31 horror movies in the month… though we’re not restricting ourselves to new horror movies like other people out there. Izzy’s not a fan of gore and… we just watch a bunch of movies already. No time to waste on crap unless it’s something we wanted to watch for a long time… or rewatch. So on that note, here’s how the second week of that has gone thus far…
 
Oct 15 – My Boyfriend’s Back (1993)
 
I remember commercials for this when I was a kid, but I had never seen it. Luckily, Diana with Happily Ever Aftermath podcast invited us on for a future episode… so we had to check it out! Basically there’s a nerdy high school kid (played by a 23 year old) who’s been in love with this super hot chick (25 year old Traci Lind) since they were little kids… but he’s never done anything about it & she’s going out with the quarterback (babyfaced Matthew Fox in his feature debut). Well, one day he gets the idea to enlist his buddy (who looks like Jonah Hill & Miles Teller had a baby) to pretend to rob the convenience store she’s working at, so that he can jump in & save her… and they go to the dance. Hijinx ensue, he gets shot by a REAL robber, roll credits. Just kidding, he comes back as an unexplained zombie… and holds her to what she said as life was leaving his body, that she’d go to the dance with her… enter random cameos from Philip Seymour Hoffmann & Matthew McConaughey… and the movie goes kinda bananas after this. The tone was… crazy… but I really loved it! The nerdy kid’s parents are super supportive of their zombie son, most people are pretty f**king cool with it… and for more on it, check out the episode on your favorite podcatcher under Happily Ever Aftermath!
 
Rating – 8/10 – I was expecting this to be a 4… but it was just crazy enough to catch me!
 
Oct 16 – Rats: A Night of Terror (1984)
 
Izzy wanted to see a movie that she vaguely remembered from her childhood called “Rats” but… basically all we knew was that rats were in it & it was horror. So we looked it up on Amazon Prime… and I think we may have found it for a future watch… but this one was streaming on Amazon Prime free… and was an Italian post-apocalyptic movie about Mad Max knockoffs being killed by rats… so obviously we watched this one immediately!!! Fun fact: I f**king LOVE Italian post-apocalyptic movies… and will gladly watch them whenever offered. I’d probably prefer them to a Marvel movie honestly. So yeah, this one, bikers show up to an abandoned town… and then rats. There’s weirdly sexual moments, ridiculous dummy kills, “science” and a tremendous ending!
 
Rating – 10/10 – Did I mention that I love these movies?!?
 
Oct 17 – Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018)
 
We were invited on an upcoming episode of No Highway Option Podcast, which if you don’t know is a podcast where they compare a movie to the 2004 seminal masterpiece “The Pacifier” starring Vin Diesel, and the movie to compare is picked by the previous guest… and for us, it was this 3rd installment of a CG-animated Adam Sandler movie about monsters running a hotel. No… I feel like I’ve seen the earlier installments, or at least parts of it, or heard it in the background at my brother’s house or something… but I knew Adam Sander was Dracula & Selena Gomez was his daughter… but I didn’t know that Kevin James, David Spade & all the other guys were in it too… so mostly in one ear & out the other however I saw them. This installment, Dracula needs to get laid… er, I guess date because it’s been nearly 20 years since his wife died… and his daughter buys him (and all his friends?) a cruise to the Bermuda Triangle to see the Lost City of Atlantis to relax? That’s the plot… I thought she was doing it to have him meet women… but nope, just he works too hard… and the thought of him dating somebody makes her violently ill or something? Whatever… it’s a kids movie & you need conflict… besides him falling in love with the great-granddaughter of his sworn enemy but… check it out if you want! I actually kinda liked it for a kids flick.
 
Rating – 8/10 – I’m not really into kids flicks, but this one was okay!
 
Oct 18 – Mikey (1992)
 
Izzy has an irrational fear of Elijah Wood… or perhaps she just senses something we don’t know about him? She has had this fear since seeing him in “The Good Son” and he wasn’t even the bad kid in that movie. Macaulay Culkin was. Apparently she just doesn’t like bright eyes & dark features on any human being, so keep your shadowy/smoky eye look away from her if you want to be trusted. Well, around that same time was this killer kid movie… and I’m sure that I had seen it before (or just knew exactly how the story & dialogue was going to play out instinctually) but it’s about a kid… who in the opening scenes videotapes murdering his family… but then goes into the adoption system & gets adopted by a creepy sweet couple… and hijinx ensue. The biggest star in this movis is the girl from the first two Hellraiser movies & the kid who’d later play Alexander in Star Trek: The Next Generation… but I kinda liked this stupid killer kid movie. The kills were cheesy & violent, the acting was okay, and sure in the real world this kid would’ve been beaten to crippling day one by literally anybody in the movie… but still I enjoyed it.
 
Rating – 9/10 – The only drawback is the suspension of disbelief that anybody would’ve gladly killed that kid the first time he even hinted at wanting to do me harm.
 
Oct 18 – Curse of the Chippendales (2021)
 
Okay, this one isn’t a super cheesy David DeCoteau film about a haunted set of cuffs & collar as I first thought… but rather it’s a documentary series (like 3 hours total) about the epic rise & fall of the original Chippendales. Now you may be thinking “Oh whoopedy doo, it’s about a bunch of glorified gigolos making money & then getting caught up in pure 80’s cocaine & hijinx ensue” and you would… well, you wouldn’t be wrong, that’s for sure. That being said, when a documentary basically starts with Playboy & the Dorothy Stratton murder, betrayal, old talk show footage, murder plots and interviews with the people who were actually there (at least those that survived the 90s) then I would recommend checking this out! Also, Izzy & I were casting a movie telling the story of this… and if Mark Ruffallo doesn’t play Nick DeNoia then somebody is dropping the f**king ball…
 
Rating – 9/10 – Great documentary that was better than I was expecting honestly.
 
Oct 19 – Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)
 
We were searching HBO Max for horror movies… and this one came up. Now, we’d seen a few board game horror movies in our day, but not this one from director Mike Flanagan who also directed Oculus, Gerald’s Game & Doctor Sleep which we loved… so gave it a shot. Holy crap! Why didn’t anybody tell me this Ouija movie was actually good? From the 70s throwback effects like opening credits & “cigarette burns” to the actresses and suspenseful story, it all just f**king clicked for me. Essentially it’s a prequel (more on that later) that tells the story of a single mom & her two daughters who are fortune tellers/grifters but their house is about to be foreclosed on… when the youngest daughter has a new imaginary friend… and hijinx ensue. No more spoiling, but go see this movie now!!! Also, the youngest daughter is played by Lulu Wilson… and I thought to myself, “this girl is reminding me of that Matilda / Mrs. Doubtfire daughter” from the 90s… and then I was like “Wait… wasn’t her last name Wilson?” I looked it up… and yes, it’s actress Mara Wilson… but NO, they are not related… and oddly enough nothing came up on the internet asking if they were… so apparently this is my first independent thought in a while.
 
Rating – 10/10 – Seriously, go check it out!
 
Oct 20 – Ouija (2014)
 
Which leads me to our next watch, because we say that the 2016 movies was 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it was a prequel to this 2014 movie which was 6% on Rotten Tomatoes… so you KNOW what we had to watch it to find out how it could be so different. Well… I’d say it’s better than 6% but more in the twenties is all. This is what I figured the other was going to be… a bunch of teenagers that I want to die before they even start doing stupid white people sh*t have a friend who commits suicide, and apparently the week before she was rambling about this Ouija board game… so they HAVE to play it because otherwise the movie is about a bunch of teenagers doing nothing of importance WITHOUT people dying off… and yeah, it’s rough. How does it tie into the prequel? There are a few nod here & there (which oddly enough seemed out of place in Origin of Evil) and one of the characters ends up being the oldest daughter but even that was apparently abandoned in the new movie… so yeah, watch at your own risk. Instead watch Origin of Evil again maybe?
 
Rating – 5/10 – I’m being generous with the 5 here… but I’m a generous guy & if you like Blumhouse movies, you might enjoy it more than “7 in Heaven” or something.
 
Oct 21 – Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
 
So I went to my brother’s over the weekend to see the family… and while I was there he told me that he had a new favorite movie of 2021. He went on & on about how the new Venom movie is amazing, action packed & MUST be seen in a theatre… in fact, he was going to go AGAIN later in the week to experience it. Now, I kind of enjoyed the first Venom movie… and that was only seeing it at my other brother’s house on their TV… and I was questioning the movie after seeing Woody Harrelson with Ronald McDonald’s hair in the end credits of the first one… but he’s a good actor. The sequel is directed by Andy Serkis, the mo cap master of the last 25 years… but he also directed “Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle” which if you haven’t seen on Netflix (since it never went to theatre despite a $250+ million budget) is… frightening in all the wrong ways. Anyway, it had my brother’s seal of approval and he’s rarely wrong when it comes to superhero movies… but holy sh*t was this movie rough. It’s the timeless story of an alien symbiote goo & an inexplicably famous San Francisco beat reporter who combined in the first movie & at the end of it, now they’ve decided to defend the planet… even though the alien symbiote in the comics is a villain. Don’t worry about it. Sony doesn’t have the rights to Spiderman (his hero nemesis). Anyway, a serial killer is being executed but wants to be interviewed by the reporter… but because he got bit or something, now he has an alien symbiote & is even more powerful… but also pure evil… except for his girlfriend from the insane asylum… so it’s like “Natural Born Killers” meets “The Odd Couple” and… okay, the action scenes were pretty good… until they get absolutely ridiculous. The humor is… bad. The plot is… well, you just heard it & that’s without throwing in all the stupid lack and/or abundance of pointless communication to fill out the 80 minutes of movie. The fact that this is 60% WITH THE CRITICS and 84% with the audience on Rotten Tomatoes AND the biggest opening weekend in a while makes me think there’s some shenanigans going on. I LOVE bad movies… but this is just horrible & hard to finish… EVEN AT 80 MINUTES!!!
 
Rating – 3/10 – The action scenes were still pretty cool… until they weren’t.
 
Sorry to end on a low note but... I assure you there are some great ones coming up in the next entry with new releases like "Halloween Kills" and the highly anticipated "DUNE"!!!

Until then,

Steve