20 Horror Movies for $7.50 — Part XI of XX.

The action starts immediately on The Raven in a storm of the kind that caused us to lose the Minnow.  A man yells, “They’re going to kill us,” and another man helpfully lends him credibility by breaking a 2 x 4 across his back.

His wife scrambles across the slick bow trying to escape, but she gets into a girl-fight of her own. Eventually one of of the men gets thrown over the side and we flash . . . well it’s not clear whether it is a FlashForward, flashback, or flashsideways.

At a fancy 20th anniversary party on a yacht (and, really, what other kind of party would there be on a yacht than fancy?), Katie is assuring her friends she will not miss the depositions and legal work during during the month it will take to sail first to Somoa with her husband the judge during their 3-month cruise.  3-month cruise.

The “gruff” judge looks much older than Katie, but only has 6 years on her according to IMDb.  Katie is played by the sexiest of the original Charlie’s Angels . . . no, not her . . . no, the other one . . . no. seriously, Kate Jackson.  She was pretty cute, plus I subscribed to the smart-is-sexy school of thought.  Until Cheryl Ladd came along — then I transferred to  the smoking-hot-blonde-in-a-bikini school of thought.^[1]

At the party, she awkwardly runs into an old affair who is still won’t accept that she is devoted to her 20-year marriage and family.  Hmmm, I wonder if that 20 second scene will come up later.

Once out on the sea, Katie doesn’t seem to be having fun.  That night, during an elegant dinner in a dining room that seems far larger than the outside of the boat, Guy suggests some hanky and/or panky under the stars.  Their plans (or, at least his) for eating al fresco is interrupted by a radar signal from a ship which seems to be abandoned.  They find The Raven messier than my condo and it seems to have been abandoned in a hurry. Down below, they find Nick and Eliza alive, but in bad mental, physical and smelling condition.

They were 2 weeks out of Bali when they ran into something that tore off their propeller. Eventually, the crew went crazy from the sun (apparently not realizing there was a nice below-deck area), turned on them, and they threw the scalawags overboard.  Guy calls the Coast Guard to come pick up the derelict ship.

Katie spills the beans about an affair she had with a lawyer she works with.  It doesn’t help that that night they can hear Nick (Bruce Greenwood) and Eliza going at it.  Guy can’t help but notice that Katie and Nick have some close moments on deck as she teaches him how to sail.

Nick asks about the death penalty and Guy says it is too serious too discuss.  Eliza is worried about what they did.  Justice being blind, Guy can’t seem to make the connection.

The set-up has a lot of potential.  The strained relationship between Katie and Guy, psychological problems Nick has due to an abusive childhood, Eliza’s manipulation of Nick, Katie’s competing manipulation of Nick’s weakness, Eliza being a psychopath, the claustrophobia of being alone at sea, and a medical vulnerability of Eliza that Kate takes delicious advantage of.

Just like Hush, there is a lot of cat and mouse over the next hour, a battle of wits in a confined area.  It starts out being strictly a Lifetime TV melodrama, but it does consistently pick up steam.  It never reaches the level of Dead Calm, but who expects it to?  The director just did not make enough of a mark, leaving it mostly point-and-shoot with a score that I don’t recall a note of.

The leads all do a fine job.  Oddly, it is the bit parts that seem awkward.  The man she had the affair with doesn’t exactly exude alpha-maleness in his 20 seconds of screen time.  And their daughter is pretty much a non-entity who got her looks from her father.

Not great, but everyone gets their job done.

Post-Post:

• [1] Truthfully, the hottest of the Angels was Shelly Hack.  Sadly, by then the show had run it’s course and no one cared.  She should have had a much greater career.
• This was 2 years before Bruce Greenwood was in the excellent, but ironically, given the plot, forgotten Nowhere Man.

20 Horror Movies for $7.50 — Part X of XX.

Please, for the love of God, stop scoring your movies with guitar ballads.  I have yet to see it work once in these box-sets.  I know, I know, your buddy that has a band wants to help out with your movie. Just say no.

Another tip:  If you have a prologue where a very thin brunette hottie wearing wearing a tight green tank top gets killed, don’t start your main movie with a different almost identical very thin brunette hottie wearing wearing a tight green tank top.

So far, 12 minutes in, I got guy and girl going to meet his parents, and there is some sort of friction with the father.  i.e. It ain’t grabbing me.  It doesn’t help that these two are really mediocre actors.

The couple stop at a closed gas station for the nameless dude to take a leak.  Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I saw a closed gas station. They have been 24-hour longer than CNN, and more trustworthy as well.  As no-name dude gets back in the car, he is carjacked with a pistol pointed to his head. Carjacker tells no-name to start driving.  On the plus side, he fits right in, also not being much of an actor.

He directs them to a barn and commands them to get on their knees and take off their shirts in front of a camera (a half-measure in her case).  He binds the dude to a pole and asks if he knows what it’s like to watch a loved one die.  Then he starts whipping the dude with his belt.

The only thing moderately interesting up to this point besides Girl’s snappy body is that the Carjacker really doesn’t seem very into this; he seems bored, like he is doing it for a payoff.  I’m not into it either, but at least I’m maintaining my amateur status.

He gives Girl some water and forces something in no-name’s mouth.  Then we get a series of ill-advised jump cuts. They contribute nothing, and are never used elsewhere in the movie, but if each of them is cutting 1/24th of a second out of this film, I’m on board. I think I’ve got that their names are Steven and Erika, so we are making progress.  And Carjacker.

Erika has a chance to kick carjacker in the balls and does so.  She and Steven make a run for the truck, but another car turns its lights on them and takes off. Carjacker demands to know who it was.

Carjacker orders Erika to get naked and ties them both to a pole where he lashes Steven again with his belt.  After seeing another man and hearing a gunshot, they run to a nearby cabin.  Well, Steven gets as far as the porch when he sprains an ankle, but  Erika makes it to a nearby cabin.

The couple living there are pretty strange.  The woman pretends to call the police, and the man is interested in if she is a virgin.  Soon, Erika is tied up again, this time in a basement with Carjacker who is also tied up.  Carjacker says he works with Steven, or at least in the mailroom at his firm.  Also, sells drugs to all the attorneys.  He also says Steven is paying him $30,000 to do the carjacking and tape them.

There are a few twists, but honestly this is not a very good movie.  I discovered that Carjacker is named Daniel Fanaberia, and admit I was too quick to judge.  His acting actually was pretty good in this once I figured out what was going on.  And I think the screenplay, while maybe needing another pass, was greatly undermined by poor direction and mediocre work by the other actors.

And, please, do the director a favor and tell him to go easy on the gratuitous jump-cuts.

Post-Post:

• Title Analysis:  Behind Your Eyes would have actually been a much better title for Salvage.  Come to think of it, Salvage might have been a better title for Hurt.
• Not being one to nitpick, but when Carjacker tells the girl to get naked, she leaves her drawers on.  You just can’t let hostages get away with shit like that or pretty soon they’ll own you.
• A user on IMDb claims the girl on the cover is the one that is killed in the first 5 minutes,not the one who stars in the movie.  They are so identical that I can’t confirm that — at least without watching it again, and that’s not going to happen.

20 Horror Movies for $7.50 — Part IX.

Alicia Silverstoney young Claire ends her shift at the Starfire Express Mini-Mart and walks down the highway to a guard rail where she waits for her ride.  She sees her boyfriend Jimmy roll up in his truck, stands to greet him, and naturally chew him out for being late even though she just got here herself.

She gives him the universal sign WTF sign language with her arms.  “God Jimmy, you’re late again!  I told you I got class!”  She sees it is not Jimmy driving and says, “Who are you?”

He creepily responds, “My friends call me Duke.  Jimmy couldn’t make it.  He sent me to pick you up.”  This couldn’t be more suspicious if it were happening on MLK Blvd, so she pulls out her phone — no signal.  True to her look-alike, she cluelessly gets in the car with the stranger, despite the additional warning flag that he bears a strong resemblance to Bill Paxton.

He must be a better actor than Bill Paxton, though, because his ruse has worked.  He clearly is no friend of Jimmy; or of Claire, for that matter.  He tells her she is the prettiest girl he’s ever seen, confirming his superior acting skillz, then he gets a little touchy-feely, and when she objects, calls her a cunt.

Claire stupidly directs him to her house rather than say, a police station, or some public area; like a police station.  He does let her out with no struggle, though.  She runs inside to call Jimmy, but of course has to leave a message.  There is a knock at the door which she answers rather than calling 9-1-1.  Smartly, she does not open the door until she sees him pull out of her driveway.

Well, someone pulled out (there was a suspicious looking tarp in the back of the pickup, but I assumed it was Jimmy), because she notices the back door is wide open.  She rushes to close it, then turns to see Duke with his toothpick-chewing Bill Paxton grin punch her right in the face.

Then, WTF, she is back at the Starfire Express closing out her shift.  We can sense that there is something amiss about the timeline by the her lack of bruises and scars, and presence of her teeth.  She walks to exactly the same spot, and the same truck rolls up.  But she sees Jimmy’s smiling face this time.  She seemed a little apprehensive, so I’m lost until she reveals that it was a dream — the first 11 minutes of the movie.

Jimmy drives her home, and even though there is talk of a 3-way with her best friend (JImmy: yes, Claire: no), he doesn’t even get a kiss goodbye.  She goes inside for a snack and sees on the floor the star earring that she dropped — in the dream.

That night after a shift at the store, going to class, and making out under the bleachers with Jimmy, she takes a bath.  As she drifts off, her dream resumes with her being dragged screaming  to the basement by Duke.  He kicks her in the face with his boot. She gets dressed and looks around, but finds nothing but her mother standing mysteriously in the dark basement.

The next day she takes a shower, and we see a man’s shape outside the curtain.  We can be sure nothing is going to happen, though, because it is clear NO ONE is going to see this girl naked.  As her mom drops her off for her shift that night, mom mentions, to Claire’s shock, that she has a date; and to Claire’s disgust that she might not be home that night.  Just some guy from work.  Hmmmm, I wonder . . . .

Claire falls asleep at work and her dream continues with Duke being chased through the woods by the police, then showing up at work at strangling her.  Strangely, she also had a bit of this dream in her earlier shower.  Was she sleeping standing up like a horse?  I thought I had this thing figured out until this scene.  If I’m still right, there is a big problem.

The police respond to her alarm and show her that there was no one attacking her, she was just asleep.  Not only that, the man who is after her — Duke — was killed by police a week ago.  The gulf is widening.  Either I am REALLY wrong, or this movie was serious logistical issues.

As the police drive her home, she falls asleep in the back seat and dreams of Jimmy being killed.  WTF, she awakens back in the pickup as Duke is throwing Jimmy’s body in the back.  Then Duke  punches her in the face.  Then just as on the first day, they go to her house and he drags her down to the basement.  He tells her that “All this is bullshit.  The only thing that’s real is what you are feeling.”  And then he kicks her in the face . . . and does something really gross, but not sexual.

There is, of course, a monster twist (well, figuratively a monster), and one I had not seen before.  In fact, it took a few message boards for me to really get some of the nuances. It even applied some logic to minutia like Claire’s weird mother and that hazy reflection in the mirror.

It did, however, give me enough of an understanding to question some of the structure.  I won’t sat it’s wrong, but I think I would have to diagram it out to prove to myself that it was logical.  And I’m working on a time schedule here.  It’s clear that thought was put into this, so I give them the benefit of my doubt.

I can think I can salvage a B out of this one.

Post-Post:

• Can a 90 pound girl push a pickup truck down a driveway with a 5% grade to clutch start it?
• No big deal, just strange to see a big Arby’s box in Claire’s basement.
• Rinse, repeat.

20 Movies for $7.50 — Part VIII

I’m dubious due to the gimmicky title, but Zombeavers turned out to be pretty great. However, Zombeavers was not in the big $7.50 box o’ horror.  It also lacked the jet-like marketing response velocity to parody a title made 35 yeas ago. Coming next, Citizombie Kane? Bringing Up Zombie?  A Zombidy of Errors?

Failed comedy writer Gus hasn’t had a paying job in 5 years, but is still married to a wife Deborah who was possibly still in this league 5 years ago.  He blows his first interview in years and decides to go out drinking with his wife’s best friend Gwen.  I was shocked — shocked, I tells ya — to see it was Teri Garr (especially after the butt-shot).  Then I was shocked again — shocked again, I tells ya — to find out it was not Teri Garr, but lookalike Wendy Jewel.

They go back to Gwen’s place and Gus gets all nuded up expecting some of the sex.  Turns out to be the old surprise party gag, but the two women are pretty cute was they witness his revelation of what he has done.  He uses the old “I was drunk” excuse that never works driving, so I’m not sure why it is expected to be a valid excuse elsewhere.

Deborah moves into a house in the country, near her uncle.  She walks in to find the place run down, but full of good memories as she lived her as a child.  Well, except the memory of someone rolling a body into a grave — that one seemed to sneak up on her. As does Gus, who suddenly appears outside and thinks he’s going to move right in.

She agrees to take him back, but he is going to have to do all  the work to fix the place up, then be Mr.Mom when they have kids.  He will stay at home to write his masterpiece and she will go to work; for Donny — an old flame.  She goes in as a business partner with Donny.

After berating the plumber for his use of the word “retard,” Gus begins digging up the septic tank.  A couple of feet down, he strikes Zombie.  The body sits up in the pit and looks around but doesn’t stand for a couple of minutes — cuz it really does take a while to get your bearings back.

Gus shrewdly gets the zombie, with a Quinto name-tag, to continue digging the hole for him.  Now that’s good original stuff!

While the dead man is digging the hole, Gus is working on new comedy, material.  He tells the zombie to stop digging and watch his stand-up comedy routine, which is awful. The zombie just stares at him with dead eyes as he performs.  Although, to be fair, a living audience would have given the same dead-eyed reaction to the material.

The next day at work, Deborah drops some files and her boss gives her the rest of the day off, a trick I will try on Friday.  Seeing Gus and Quinto still working on the hole (well, actually Gus is standing above work-shopping some awful new material), she takes them some lemonade.  She drops the tray and runs screaming when she see’s Quinto’s face; or maybe she heard some of Gus’s act.

Deborah is understandably frightened of Quinto, but Gus plays the liberal card, getting all pouty admitting that maybe he went too far hiring a homeless man whose face was dark and scarred from life in the elements, a mere day laborer just trying to make a few bucks, and to provide a little bit of confidence and self-worth to this poor soul by giving him the job.  Waaaaaait a minute, that’s the conservative card!  A liberal would have just given him someone else’s money and booted him off their land.  How did that get in a movie?

Then he accuses Deborah of being a racist.  OK, we’re back on track now.  My world makes sense again.

The movie takes a weird, I hope, short-lived detour starting with this scene.  In the next scene that are at a pool party (where Deborah looks awesome even fully clothed) and he tells a reverend that he is working on a book to be titled “How to Get to Heaven Even with Capitalist Consumerist Values.”  Later in the car, Deborah jumps on him for failing to not be a dick for even one night — he had promised “no dirty jokes, no political rants, no Christian bashing.”

When she points out that the man he offended — the reverend — is a very religious man, Gus responds, “What does that even mean?  He has the right to judge everyone and everything around him?”  Well, no, that right is given to him by the 1st amendment, dumbass — something a comedian ought to be a little bit familiar with.

Kudos to the beautiful Deborah for pointing out that he is describing himself.  I swear, this could be her audition tape for Fox News.

She then criticizes him for an argument about global warning and depopulation^[1], and how we are all going to have to eat bugs. With a 5 year old.  This was played out for laughs and was funnier than anything in his act — mainly because of the kernel of truth in the indoctrination of little kids.

Distracted by her idiot husband, Deborah runs down a man i the road.  Luckily it was Quinto, so Gus convinces Deborah to just let him slither away.  What could be the harm?

Disappointingly, lovely Deborah has the sex with Gus that night.  Although it is some weird version of sex that requires remaining fulling clothed, and wearing a miners head-lamp.  It’s all fun and games until Quinto suddenly show up in the beam of the head lamp.  Although, the non-sequitur that he is carrying a tire is pretty amusing.

Gus pushes him down the stairs, and Deborah finally realizes that he is a Zombie.  There is a fairly amusing scene when it is revealed that Gus was touching the dead man’s wiener when he wished for a help — it just so happens that 30 years ago, Deborah’s Aunt Ellen had warned her about just that unlikely event:  “Witches wart and demon’s mole, you get one wish on a dead man’s pole.”

Seeing that Gus appears to have been bitten, Deborah flees to her Uncle Pete’s house.  When she sees him through a window sitting with a bottle, a rifle and his pants around his ankles, she doesn’t know what to think.  And neither do I.

Despite some good scenes trying to kill-kill Quinto, the guy just won’t stay down.  Gus turns their barn into a comedy club, and Quinto shows up in the audience.  Somehow, he is a hit.  By the time they get in the car to go to the hospital, though, Gus goes full-zombie and begins chasing Deborah.

In an goofy, but foreshadowed, event the film abruptly ends.  Of course this solution could have been used at any point in the film.

Overall, I have to say I enjoyed it.  I really didn’t care for David Kemker as Gus, but he wrote and directed it, so I respect him for that.  Plus, any lack of interest I had seeing him on screen was more than offset by Shauna Black as Deborah — who should be a huge star.  The other most featured player is David Sparrow as Quinto.  He and the make-up crew created a character that evoked whatever was needed in any particular scene.

There were several funny scenes, just not necessarily the ones where Gus was doing his comedy.  It also looks great, even in an iffy cheapo transfer.  And the camera work was often creative.  I am a complete sucker for scenes showing action occurring simultaneously inside and outside of a window, and Kemker pulls that off beautifully.

My only non-Gus complaint is the use of certain music as the score.  The music with the vocals just didn’t work.

It was fun.  This $7.50 box set is turning out to be much better than the $5.00 box set.  You really do get what you pay for.

Post-Post:

• Gus — not good with his hands.  Figuratively, as he paints a window frame bright red without taping the glass.  Also not good with his hands literally as he is wearing a thumb ring.
• ^[1] I don’t think most liberals care about depopulation as it mostly occurs in civilized countries.  The less of us privileged, scumbag, colonizing, racist oppressors, the better.
• Uncle Pete was Diane’s psychopathic blind date Andy Andy on Cheers.

Just Because:

20 Horror Movies for $7.50  — Part VI.

Well this is strange.  I just discovered that I already saw this film on 12/22/10 (yeah, I keep track), but remember absolutely nothing about it.  One purpose of this blog was to force me to watch a lot of new films and especially old TV shows.  But I guess I set the precedent as a completist with the Night of the Living Dead rewatch, though, so here goes.

Herman has a girl in the basement who tries to escape while he’s eating breakfast.  She is is sad shape, bloody, scarred, crying, various bondage devices hanging from the ceiling.  As he goes to open the chained titular basement door (a chain which could have been kicked down by my grandmother), she jabs at him with a stick through the crack.

He stupidly goes downstairs and manages to get in a position where she can get behind him with a baseball bat and bash his head in.  She takes a few good whacks, but stupidly does not finish him off.

She runs to the top of the stairs into the kitchen and stupidly stops to take a look around; possibly for some Pop-Tarts, the brown sugar cinnamon ones probably would have hit the spot (just speculating). Possessing an extraordinarily hard noggin, Herman catches her in the kitchen,

She beats him again with the bat, but stupidly she does not finish him off.

She flees the house, struggling with a broken ankle and manages to go to the most desolate area possible in urban Los Angles — the cement Los Angeles River.  When she goes up the other bank, she is stupid enough to be hit by Herman in his car (still wearing his jammies).  He puts her in the trunk, and that’s it for her.  He wraps her in plastic and buries her in the woods.

There is a key word in each section above.  Maybe I was being generous when I gave this film 2 stars on NetFlix almost 5 years ago.  Five minutes in, the shaky camerawork and choppy editing are almost unwatchable; luckily, I give a movie at least six minutes to hook me.

The girl seemed liked she was giving a great performance despite the horrendous camerawork and editing.  Of course, she is dead now, so unless that was a flashforward, she is out of the picture.  And the location — the only one not subterranean — looked great, but there was just too much shakin’ going on.  But at least the director knows a good performance when he sees it.  And it did pull no punches with the end of that opening scene.

Maybe Herman’s not totally stupid as this time he constructs a cage in the basement to hold his next victim.  He captures his next guest Rudy after following her home drunk from a club.

And that’s most of the movie.  Oh, there’s a bit with a tampon, there’s a bit with a hose, there’s a bit with her roommate. there’s a bit with a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but basically it’s chick in a box.

And if you are keeping a girl captive, why are you keeping her in a box where most of the viewing has to be done through 2-3 inch gaps?  There’s a reason why cage dancers in 1960’s strip clubs were not working behind bars like picket fences.

Even when Rudy’s roommate is abducted and gets a chance to stab him, she stupidly blows it.  Then she gets a chance to whack him repeatedly with a baseball bat, and stupidly does not finish the job any better than Rudy.  As punishment, he puts the roommates arm in a vice and tightens it — an effective piece of horror sadly ruined by epileptic camera work.

In the kitchen, Herman tells Rudy that he will kill her roommate if she doesn’t return.  Luckily, Bob Villa here didn’t remember that a vice isn’t a ratchet — it goes both ways. The roommate surprises them.  Oh, did I mention Herman has a nail half sticking out of his chest that he doesn’t seem to mind — Rudy pounds it the rest of the way into his body and down he goes.  Do they smartly finish him off?  Of course not.

They run through the house.  They recoil at the sight of two Jehovah’s Witnesses, as we all do; until they realize they are dead.  He kills the roommate, then Rudy gets the idea to put on a wedding dress he inexplicably keeps at the house.  She manages to maneuver Herman into the cage and walks away from the house in the wedding gown.  Leaving the keys on the floor within reach.

Who doesn’t like bloody brides?  Kill Bill, Rec3, etc.  So at least that is a great ending shot — just ruined by some of the most godawful heavy metal music ever recorded.

It really is a shame because this simple concept is all it takes to make a decent movie.

Post-Post:

• After 8 years, a sequel, Cellar Door 2: Preymates, has been announced.  Cellar Door: Playmates — that might have been something.
• I get the feeling they were going for something by naming the captor Herman, as in “her man”.  It is even carved above the cage in the basement.  But it is really more a case of “his girl” not “her man” so it really makes no sense.