THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975)

Katharine Ross and her lawyer husband move from NYC to quiet Stepford, CT.  Low crime, lower divorce rates, tight real estate market.  From the outside, it appears to be Heaven on Earth (if you're into that sort of quiet life).  From the very beginning Katharine gets a bad vibe about the joint, but she can't quite put her finger on it.  It's like it's almost too perfect.  Over time, she begins to unravel the mystery (is there even a mystery or is it all in her head?) and what she finds...well, you'll just have to watch it for yourself.

I liked this film quite a bit and it has me very interested in reading Ira Levin's original novel.  And while we're on the subject of Ira Levin...ROSEMARY'S BABY.  Can you imagine how awesome and creepy THE STEPFORD WIVES would have been if Roman Polanski had directed it?!  Oh well, just a thought. 

I don't know how well it holds up after repeat viewings, but for a single viewing, it's definitely worthwhile and and very thought provoking.  I wasn't an adult back in 1975, but I bet this movie freaked some people out when it first came out and probably stimulated a lot of interesting thoughts and conversations.  I bet a lot of first dates were either turned awesome or awful by the opinions discussed after leaving the movie theater.

Very little violence, but the implied creepiness makes up for it.  Check it out!

Part 2 - Revenge of the Stepford Wives (1980)
Part 3 - The Stepford Children (1987)
Part 4 - The Stepford Husbands (1996)
Remake - The Stepford Wives (2004)

PARASITIC (2012)

A group of annoying douchers get trapped in a Florida nightclub after it closes (way too much time is wasted on explaining how this happens and it makes no sense at all).  Anyway, this one chick eats some bad fish then next thing you know she's barfing in the restroom and a tentacle pops out of her neck.  While this is happening, the remaining cast members are just sitting around in the dark club talking and talking and talking.  It's Hell.  The bad acting in this film makes me appreciate the bad acting in other films.  I mean this shit is painful!  Horrible delivery, stammering, bad timing, but it doesn't even matter because the shit they're saying is so badly written it wouldn't matter if you had Jack Lemmon delivering these lines it would still be garbage.

Some of the worst lighting of all time, lame kill scenes, torturous pacing, stupid explanations, acting that doesn't even qualify as acting.  The only thing PARASITIC delivers is suffering.  Skip it and never look back

MR. HUSH (2010)

MR. HUSH is the kind of horror movie that make me want to stop watching horror movies.  The film opens with a 10+ minute introduction to the family.  A husband, a wife and a young daughter.  The filmmakers are trying, I guess, to make you feel sympathy towards this family, but instead I just got weirded out cause the father is so goddamn Ned Flanders-style creepy that I thought he was a serial killer that had maybe kidnapped this woman and child and brainwashed them into happy slaves or something.  Dialogue example:

Husband: "Honey, sometimes you're a wigwam and sometimes you're a teepee."

Wife: "What?"

Husband: "You're two tents!"

Wife: "How can a doof be so cute?"

Husband: "Well I'm blessed."

Good grief.  Imagine an entire movie with that caliber writing.

Anyway, so eventually the doorbell rings and it's a vampire dressed as a priest wanting to use the telephone.  After being invited into the home, he kills the wife and kidnaps the daughter.  So for like the next 30 minutes we get to watch this no acting loser (the husband) mopes around crying about his dead wife and missing daughter.  Eventually he finds a woman desperate enough to put up with his bullshit and, hey, check it out, the doorbell rings again and ol' boy runs out into the living room to find his gf dead and her daughter missing.  It just gets worse from there.

I'm sure the filmmakers mean well, but unfortunately it didn't turn out well.  Zero budget, zero action, zero gore, zero scares, zero tension, zero fucks given about the audience, long dialogue scenes, long scenes of people talking to themselves, dream sequences with people talking, Billy Ray Cyrus hair, a long scene of a dude walking down a dirt road whistling "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall", probably the worst looking vampire of all time and honestly some of the worst dialogue I've heard in a long time.

Skip it.