Showing posts with label Tobe Hooper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tobe Hooper. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

BODY BAGS (1993)

Made by Showtime as a test run for a "Tales from the Crypt"-style horror anthology show, BODY BAGS has horror legend John Carpenter dressed up like a corpse in a morgue.  He greets the audience and tells some fucking horrible jokes.  It's pretty bad.  Cheesy jokes are forgivable though as long as the stories are dope.  They're not...

"The Gas Station" The best thing I can say about this one is the main actress, Alex Datcher, is a good actress.  Unfortunately, the script gives her nothing to work with.  There's barely even a story.  She reports in for her first night as an overnight attendant at a secluded gas station.  Random people show up...including a serial killer.  That has the potential to be scary, but nothing here is even remotely scary.

"Hair" Stacy Keach (who's performance is the highlight of the entire movie) plays a dude who is super sad about his thinning hair.  He tries various concoctions, but none of them work.  Eventually, he goes to a hair growth doctor he saw on TV and before you know it, he's hairier than Cousin Itt's ballsack. 

"Eye" Luke Skywalker is an up and coming baseball player on his way to the big leagues.  Unfortunately, he can't drive for shit and while looking for a B-52's cassette (of all things), he wrecks his whip and ends up with piece of glass in his right eyeball.  The hospital replaces his damaged eyeball with an eye from a serial killer.  You can guess what happens next.

Book-ending the stories and sprinkled between them are more bad jokes by John Carpenter about drinking formaldehyde and stuff like that.  It's pretty easy to see why this was never made into a TV show.

BODY BAGS is more watchable now than it was in 1993, because when I watched it back then, it was just lame and the stories all drug on forever...but nowadays, it's an interesting time capsule full of 90's as fuck fashions and hair, a truly impressive cast of genre legends, Barney the Dinosaur on the cover of TV Guide, vintage electronics and so on. With a runtime of 91 minutes, there should have been four stories instead of three. Also, bump up the terror and blood. Three scary stories and one campy one. Or a mixture like in CREEPSHOW.

Sunday, April 10, 2016

POLTERGEIST (1982)

"They're here."

The Freelings are a normal American family in a normal American suburb.  Dad smokes weed while reading a book about President Reagan, Mom cheerfully watches her teenage daughter being verbally harassed by construction workers (including Sonny Landham from PREDATOR and Lou Perryman from TCM 2), the dog eats a waffle, teenage daughter fondly remembers the fun she had at the Holiday Inn, kids throw food all over the place, the youngest daughter talks to ghosts inside the TV.  Say what?! That's not normal.

It appears that the Freelings have a ghost problem on their hands: a killer tree in the backyard, toys that float in the air, a ghost hand reaching out of the TV, chairs that move around the kitchen and worst of all...their youngest daughter has been sucked into the ghost world and can't get out.  Instead of calling the cops (who would have probably just stole the weed and then shot the dog before calling it a day), the parents call in some paranormal investigators.  What happens next is...kinda blah.

The best way to watch POLTERGEIST is to watch it as a kid back in the 1980's.  I saw it back then (as a kid) and it was a trip, but watching it now as a stunningly handsome adult I was underwhelmed.  The story is alright, but it just never grabbed me like it did back then.  It might be because I don't believe in ghosts or it could simply be that this film is dated and not very exciting anymore.  The creepy steak scene was still creepy (although why the guy was being quiet as to not wake up anybody when he was about to grill a fucking steak was kinda odd) and the special effects are nice, but I still found my mind wandering during the final act when, if this was a truly timeless 80's thriller (like say THE THING or ALIENS), my eyes should have been glued to the screen.

Despite it's flaws, POLTERGEIST is still mandatory viewing for anybody interested in 80's popular culture.  Solid acting, nice pace, Dexter's mother-in-law looking good in those shorts, James Karen being as awesome as always, Craig T. Nelson topless, tons of moments that have been referenced endlessly in other movies and TV shows, lots of STAR WARS merch.  Check it out.

Part 2 - Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)
Part 3 - Poltergeist III (1988)
Remake - Poltergeist (2015)

A GUY NAMED JOE (1943)

I'm guessing this is a nod to producer Frank Marshall.

GO FOR BROKE! (1951)