Mirror Mirror 2: Raven Dance

Watched July 13, 2015

1994
Starring: Tracy Wells, Roddy McDowall, Mark Ruffalo, Sally Kellerman

I was blown away to find the not that great movie Mirror Mirror has a sequel, but it was a surprise VHS find. 

Marlee (Tracy Wells) and her younger brother Jeffrey (Carlton Beener) are recouperating at a nunnery after the death of their parents. Marlee's much older step-sister Roslyn (Sally Kellerman) wants to get the money that was left by Marlee's parents. Roslyn has been working with Dr. Lasky (Roddy McDowall) to keep Marlee sedated until a certain date, I'm not completely sure. 

Marlee is not sedated the whole time, she invites a grunge band to come play in the nunnery's dance space but the mirror doesn't like them and they are all burnt to a crisp but Marlee and Jeffrey survive.  This only adds to Marlee and Jeffrey's state of shock.

Roslyn hires a crazy groundskeeper to torture Marlee so that she seems unfit to inherit the money. The haunted mirror is in Marlee's room. After the band was burned she lost partial sight, but when she looks at the mirror it's perfectly clear. She begins to dance again, her passion,  for the mirror and she falls in love with the mirror. This makes them mirror demon do her bidding. Jeffrey seems autistic a first, playing his violin, but he's fine and it turns out he's the only pure one the mirror demon can't touch. 

A young man, Christian (Mark Ruffalo) shows up randomly and starts hanging out with Marlee. The nuns explain that he's a former orphan. It seems that there are only there are only two nuns in the whole place. After a ton of dancing around by Marlee, the mirror demon goes berserk. It takes Dr. Lasky into the mirror zone, kills the groundskeeper with acid and makes Roslyn look old, her worst fear. The mirror then tries to kill the blind nun, but Jeffrey stabs it. This makes the demon come out to attack, but Christian takes one for the team and stabs the demon with a special knife. Marlee then wishes none of this happens and it takes her back in time to the trade places the very first woman who interacted with the mirror.

I found Mirror Mirror 2 to be long and boring. The plot of the older step sister trying to get money from Marlee didn't make a lot of sense. It makes the first Mirror Mirror look fantastic. There is too much dancing from Marlee, but it's kind of fun to see Mark Ruffalo in an early role. Overall it's really slow and dull with a very strange soundtrack.

Scarecrows

Watched May 22, 2014

1988
Starring: Ted Vernon, Michael Simms, Richard Vidan, Victoria Christian

It begins with a dramatic slow zoom to the face of a scarecrow, as the camera gets closer it seems as if the scarecrow will come to life. That doesn't happen and it rightly sums up the action that will unfold in the movie. Jump to nighttime, in a cargo plane four men and one women have taken a father and his teenage daughter hostage. The father is flying the plane and it's vaguely explained that the hijackers are also robbers who've stolen 3 million dollars from somewhere and they're trying to get the plane to Mexico to escape. One of the robbers is a traitor, he throws the money out of the plane, jumps out with a parachute and throws an activated grenade back in the plane. With the some quick thinking the robbers get the grenade out of the plane but are pissed that their colleague has stolen the money that they stole. 

On the ground, the turncoat robber cuts free of his parachute that got caught in a tree. He is in a field that has a lot of scarecrows. He still has his walkie talkie headset on so that all the other robbers can communicate with him, they keep talking to him but he doesn't respond. He finds an abandoned house, luckily he has night vision goggles that lead him there. In the house he finds a strange taxidermy crow and an old framed photo of three men. On the wall a flyswatter mysteriously turns into a key, the key to the truck outside. He gets the truck started and begins driving around looking for the money. Out of nowhere the truck stalls and he checks under the hood, but there's no engine in there! What is going on? That's when he is attacked and killed by a scarecrow. After this guys is killed the generator starts that turns on all the lights in the old farmhouse.

The rest of the robbers demand that they land the plane to get their money back. Once landed they take the teen daughter as hostage but demand the dad to stay in the plane. Luckily, they all have lots of guns and night vision goggles to make their way through the field. They find the same house that the traitor robber found and they poke around and scare each other. They start looking around the field, but the scarecrows have magical powers. They find the traitor's parachute and it looks like he's tangled up in it. They got to get it out of the tree but once they cut it free it's just a bag of blood. The scarecrows manage to separate everyone as they look for the money which is now scattered all over the field. The scarecrows kill everyone except for the teenage girl and cigar smoking robber. They make it back to the plane, as Kellie's dad is already dead. Kellie gets the plane in the air but then her zombie dad tries to kill cigar robber. Cigar robber grabs a grenade, blowing up Kellie's zombie dad and cigar robber. There is a voice over at the end the explains that Kellie flew all night until she got to San Diego, she landed the plane but was in shock and couldn't explain what happened to the hijackers and her dad.

I didn't have many expectations but it looked like it could be a fun movie. Instead it was really slow and strange where the same shots are used over and over again. The scarecrows were creepy but I didn't understand why they wanted to kill everyone, were the robbers trespassing? Did they need human blood to run their farm?  They didn't seem like vampires or anything, they just wanted to kill. Some of the deaths were pretty cool, but there were surrounded by super slow scenes of night vision. Plus the set up was very vague, I had to read the box several times to remind myself what these people were doing. They didn't introduce the character names well but instead they all did have some specific characteristic that helped tell them apart like Cigar guy, Harmonica guy, The lady robber, etc.

The Fear

Watched February 16, 2014

1994
Starring: Eddie Bowz, Darin Heames, Leland Hayward, Anna Karin, Monique Mannen, Heather Medway, Antonio Todd, Erick Weiss.

Richard (Eddie Bowes) is a grad student who proposes an interesting experiment to his professor. He plans to takes several people, mostly couples, to his uncle's cabin for a weekend of fear therapy. He wants to discover the fears of each person and help them work through them, including his own.

All the couples pile into a van and head into the woods. Once they get to the cabin they start poking around. They quickly discover a life size carved wood mannequin. Richard laughs it off, even though it's a strange thing to discover. Everyone has fun posing the mannequin and they even put him in their therapy circle. Each person goes around and begins talking about their fears. Leslie (Ann Turkel) fears aging, while her younger brother Troy (Darin Heames) seems to just be constantly rejected by women, but that's not a fear. Mindy (Monique Mannen) has a fear of heights or flying, I can't remember. Richard himself has several fears and they manifest in the cabin because as a child he witnessed a terrible tragedy that he has been trying to forget ever since.

Richard's uncle who runs a Santa's Village park nearby shows up with his much younger wife Tanya. It turns out that they need to use the cabin. Richard is a little hesitant because of his experiment but he decides to include them. Tanya has a fear of water so they try to get her into the hot tub, but she has a super freak out. The group takes an outing to the Santa's village where it suddenly turns from day to night and one of the female patients is attacked and raped.

The mannequin, Morty has come to life and uses fear power from the people to exact revenge on these people. Richard continues to have flashbacks and he slowly discovers the truth about his fears. It turns out that he witnessed his mother having sex with his uncle and he told his dad. The dad shot and killed the mom but blamed it on Richard. Richard's dad and uncle buried the mom while wearing these weird wooden masks that reminded me of the goblin masks from Troll 2. I guess the mannequin was actually trying to protect Richard, I'm not sure. It has haunted Richard ever since. At the end of the movie Richard drops out of his program, so it's got a great message about higher education.

I obviously didn't remember a lot of the details so this movie didn't resonate with me much. It's a strange concept but at least it has some interesting and weird characters who react so oddly to their surroundings that it's not the worst. There is a lot more rape and attempted rape than I usually like in a movie, so that brought it down in my book too. There is a Chinatown inspired twist as well, but that was pretty gross.

Richard wears some super terrible turtleneck sweaters and Tanya has this insane jogging outfit but it was just the early '90s fashion trends in play. The rap soundtrack is really played up on the back of the VHS box, but it did nothing for me, if anything it didn't seem to fit with the movie about a bunch of old college students trying to get therapy.

The Refrigerator

Watched June 30, 2013

1991  
Starring: Julia McNeal, Dave Simonds, Angel Caban.

I put this movie on with low expectations, mostly because inanimate objects that kill is a really difficult concept to pull off. I was so happily surprised when it turned out to be fun and weirdly enjoyable.

Eileen (Julia McNeal) and Steve (Dave Simonds) are a newlywed couple from Ohio who are headed to his new job in New York City! Before they arrive they arranged to look at an apartment in Alphabet city. They arrive and Steve manages to talk the building manager into renting it for $200, which even then is a crazy steal. Too bad the apartment contains a secret killer.

Steve starts his job as some cubicle suit, but it doesn't matter because this isn't Steve's story. Eileen is basically a housewife but she does want to be an actress. She gets a call from a friend about an open audition, she gets ready for it but can't find her keys. She goes crazy tearing everything apart and she still can't find them. After missing the audition, she finds her keys in the refrigerator. Juan (Angel Caban) the plumber stops by the apartment to see if anything needs to be fixed, since this is an old apartment building there is plenty that needs to be done. I have to say the chemistry between Eileen and Juan is instantly electric. There is no spark between Eileen and Steve even though they're the married couple.

Steve begins to have dreams about the refrigerator, inside he seems a miniature version of his boss. Eileen also has dreams about the refrigerator but she sees her crazy mother. Juan comes by another day with his assistant to fix more things in the apartment. Eileen goes to check out all that New York has to offer including weird shacks in abandoned lots and the perverts around 42nd st.

Juan leaves the apartment and his assistant is eaten by the refrigerator. Days later Eileen finds a hat in her crisper drawer. She begins to suspect that something weird is happening then her mother comes to visit her out of the blue. Apparently Eileen's mother tried to kill herself when Eileen was a little girl. They rehash this story and bond over it. Eileen goes out for cleaning supplies and Eileen's mom is eaten by the refrigerator. Eileen comes back home and knows something is wrong. I'm not sure how she figures out that it's the fridge. Steve comes home from work and Eileen wants him to get rid of the fridge. Steve goes on a rant about how important refrigerators are and with them we can have cold drinks at any time, he refuses to get rid of the fridge. That night everything goes haywire as the fridge commands Steve to give Eileen to it to eat. Eileen won't have it and she stabs Steve in the back with a kitchen knife. Juan comes in to save the day and uses a drain snake to lasso the fridge closed. This makes the fridge bring all the appliances to life and they destroy Steve. Juan and Eileen make it out of the apartment together.

It ends wonderfully with a scene of Eileen and Juan as a couple and they are about to compete in a flamenco competition, it was established earlier that while Juan is a plumber his real passion is flamenco dancing.

All the extras are awesome characters. At the end when Juan and Eileen are running out of the building one of the neighbors in the building is a man in a bathrobe with a puppet on his hand. There is a lot of product placement (my guess is uncompensated) for Aunt Jemima pancake mix, Rolling Rock beer (in cans!) and more. I thought this movie was great, I'm really happy I own it and I look forward to sharing it with more people.

Mirror Mirror

Watched April 14, 2013

1990
Starring: Rainbow Harvest, Karen Black, Kristin Dattilo, Yvonne De Carlo, William Sanderson.

I had watched this a couple years ago then gave it to Jen when I did my big moving VHS purge. Well it came around again and was pretty enjoyable.

Megan ( Rainbow Harvest) is a Lydia Deetz clone who has just moved with her mom ( Karen Black) into a new house after the sudden death of her father. The house has a mysterious past that includes a murder that left the house abandoned. All the furniture in the house was bought by an antique shop, they took everything except for a freestanding wood mirror. In the articles taken from the house there is a diary. The antique shop owner Emelin (Yvonne De Carlo) begins to read the diary and discovers that there was a demon in the mirror and the young woman who lived in the house killed her sister to stop the demon.

Megan is a goth outcast but on her first day of school makes friends with Nikki ( Kristin Dattilo) a regular looking girl. All the popular kids immediately hate Megan because she dresses in black while they all wear pastels. At home the mirror is in Megan's room and she becomes enchanted by it.  She is compelled to stare into it, rub her face and gum on it, all while not realizing the mirror is bleeding. 

At school, a teacher yells at her for not taking a test and then he has a heart attack while she furiously draws circles on her test paper. Megan is not completely aware that the mirror is taking her terrible thoughts and making them a reality, but she slowly gets clued in. During gym class they're all in the pool and the most popular girl gets mad at Nikki, so Megan, through the mirror powers, tries to drown her in the pool. This doesn't work but the popular girl is taken out of the pool and goes to the showers. There all the steam pipes burst and scald her to death.

Megan mentions her new powers to Nikki, but Nikki doesn't want any part of it. This causes Megan to hurt Nikki to convince her to be friends again. Nikki figures out that Emelin might know something about it, so she goes to talk to her. Megan finds out about this and kills Emelin. Nikki figures out that she has to destroy the mirror. Megan kills Nikki's boyfriend by creating a figure that looks like Nikki to drown him in a tub of water. Finally Nikki goes to Megan's house, where Megan has lost control of the mirror. The mirror forces Megan's mom to put her hand in the garbage disposal, dismembering her and she bleeds to death.  Megan wants Nikki's help to stop the mirror now, but they just want to get out of the house. The mirror stabs Megan and Nikki is over here wishing everything would go back to the way it was. This takes them back to the original murders that occurred in the house with Nikki and Megan now the two sisters, but Megan is still dead. I'm not really sure what that means, that it was a cycle of sisterhood and demons.

The movie has some nice death scenes and Megan is super weird but interesting to watch. She wears some extra crazy hats. There's a scene where all the popular girls make fun of Megan by dressing all in black. They all look so much better I don't understand why they think it would make Megan mad, but I guess it does. You do get to see the demon that is trapped in the mirror for a little bit, but it still doesn't really explain how it got there, or why it can still control things while in the mirror. 

Boardinghouse

Watched March 11, 2013

1982
Starring: John Wintergate, Kalassu, Lindsay Freeman

Once the movie begins you know by the title credits that it isn't going to be good. If you don't have enough money for decent titles, you don't have enough money to make a movie. The plot is somewhat explained as typed words on a screen in a police station. Also it was obviously shot on video, the quality reminded me of the movies I used to make on video in high school. Later I found out that this movie has the distinction of being the first movie shot on video then transferred to film. 

The plot exists somewhat, but it takes some leaps to pull it all together. Jim Royce (John Wintergate) inherits a house from his deceased uncle. Years earlier many people had been mysteriously killed in the house. Jim is an unattractive human being (to me anyway), but he's got a plan. He puts out a classified listing to rent out rooms in the house, but only to hot chicks ages 21-26. Somehow this works, he gets a ton of chicks to move in with him.  They all just hang out in crazy swimsuits by the pool. There's a strange hobo gardener who hobbles around the house and works on things. I'm not sure if he is supposed to be the red herring to the real killer. Jim also has the power to move things with his mind. Jim works in some data management job but he has a hilarious drunk friend who tries to inject some comedy into the film, because drunks are always funny. Weird stuff happens at the house, like one of the girls, while in the dirtiest shower I've seen on film, sees blood coming out of the wall, then sees herself as a pig face demon. Another girl moved in to escape her rapist fiance, but the fiance finds her and tries to get to leave the house with him. Instead the girl goes to the beach with Jim, where they make out until Jim gets knocked unconscious, she just starts bleeding everywhere then drowns herself in the ocean. Jim doesn't seem to question it, he just goes back home. All the ladies throw a big housewarming party, but the party happens to be on the same night that people were killed before.  Things go nuts, everyone starts dying. It turns out the killer is one of the weirdest girls, who was actually our favorite character. I guess she escaped from an asylum, but the house also has something to do with it, I think.

Yes, there are lots of boobs. Including the scene where the girls is in the shower and she pushes her boob hilariously against the shower door a bunch, in fear of course. Since it was the '80's the swimsuits, hairstyles and outfits are all great. Jim is so unattractive I cannot understand that any of these women would ever want to sleep with him. There is also a scene where everyone throws pies in each other faces. Also when a band comes over to rehearse the girls grab one of the dudes, pants him, squeeze his butt and push him in the pool.

Apparently they thought this movie was scary, so they put a dark shadow over the screen as a warning when scary stuff was going to happen. It looks so terrible. Most of the "actors" in this movie never made another movie. It's mess, there are really longs parts where nothing really happens. There is no concept of time, it could be minutes or weeks that this whole thing takes place. Definitely skip this one. 

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Watched July 16, 2012

1982
Starring: Tom Atkins, Stacy Nelkin and Dan O' Herlihy and the weirdo little brother from Teen Witch; Joshua John Miller.

 Warning: There are no witches in this movie.

I found out there are a couple of unrelated movies that share the title Season of the Witch.  The first on my list to watch was Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Much like Troll 2, this movie has nothing to do with the previous movies. There is no mention of Michael Meyers or Laurie Strode.

 It begins with a guy running away from an evil matrix-like guy. The man is almost murdered by the matrix guy,  he ends up in the hospital clutching a mask. He is then strangled by a different matrix dude, who then gets in his car and douses himself with gasoline and sets himself ablaze. Dr. Challis (Tom Atkins)  watches this happen and has to explain the death to the man's daughter Ellie (Stacy Nelkin.)  Dr. Challis is a gross old dude, but all the ladies seem to want a piece of him.  Dr. Challis and Ellie team up to find out what happened to her dad.  They head up the the Silver Shamrock Novelty factory where the mask was made. This is where the real plot unfolds. The head of the Silver Shamrock company Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy) has a super evil plan for the upcoming Halloween. He has put microchips that contain stolen pieces of Stonehenge rock into the masks he is selling. On Halloween as the kids watch a special program it will activate the masks and kill all the kids. Why he wants to do this is never explained, or I missed it anyway.  Dr. Challis finds out the plan and tries to stop it, it seems like he has done it by calling the TV stations and telling them to stop the broadcast. As the screen goes black you hear the Silver Shamrock theme and it's assumed that all the kids are exploding with blood and bugs.

I wouldn't recommend this. It's pretty slow and the plot doesn't make much sense.  The beginning is kind of awesome as it's a zoomed in computer screen that slowly reveals a digital jack 'o' lattern. The Silver Shamrock commercial for the masks is pretty awesome with it's minimal electro beats even though it's played a million times. You don't root for any of the characters as Dr. Challis is a horrible dad and Ellie turns into a robot. I like the idea of trying a new story since Michael Meyers died in Halloween II, but this one is not a winner.

Death Bed The Bed that Eats

Watched July 9, 2012

1977
Starring a bunch of people I've never heard of. (I did check it out on IMDB and it turns out that the brother is played by  William Russ who's been in a lot of stuff, including playing Corey Matthew's dad on Boy Meets World.)

I was somewhat recommended this movie because I had a terrible idea for a moment about making a movie about a vampire stop sign. What the concepts share is a bizarre villain, in this case a bed that eats people. This movie was never theatrically released, instead being traded underground on VHS until being officially released on DVD in 2003.

The first thing that struck me is that there really isn't much dialogue, but there are a ton of inner monologues and somewhat of a narrator voice. The basic plot is this: several hundred years ago a demon fell in love with a maiden. The demon created this bed for them, but the maiden died. The demon was so distraught he cried tears of blood on the bed. This made the bed come to life and it was filled with a lust for blood. The bed found a home in a castle and ate people that tried to sleep on it.  At some point a really sick artist was using the bed, but the bed didn't want to eat him.  Instead the bed trapped the artist behind a drawing of the bed. The bed and the trapped artist became sort of friends as the bed would give the artist gifts from the people it ate, rings and such.  Now in the present day 1970's, three young ladies come to the castle for a retreat. The first girl is super paranoid that no one likes her, so she is the first to be eaten by the bed. The bed is really good at cleaning up the mess so the other two ladies don't know that the first girl is dead. Sadly, the murder scenes are pretty mundane. The bed doesn't have awesome teeth, instead it just envelopes the person when they lay on it. Then you see a screen of stomach acid digesting the victim. The second woman is almost eaten but she managed to very slowly crawl away before the bed grabs her with a sheet arm and finishes her. The last women watches the bed eat her friend, collapsing in shock. Luckily her brother has been looking for her so he shows up and tries to stab the bed. The bed cannot be killed by conventional means so when the brother stabs the bed, his hands are dissolved by the bed's stomach acid. By chance, the bed demon finally falls sleeps which lets the artist in the painting talk to people. The artist tells the sister how to destroy the bed. She follows the instructions and the bed bursts into flames, but not before the women's body is inhabited by the maiden that the demon loved.

The plot unfolds very slowly and the deaths are pretty tame. The explanation of the bed's history doesn't come out until more than halfway into the movie. Everything happens painfully slow and the supposed climatic scenes are still terrible. The best part is when the brother's hands are melted off and he just stares at them, then they burn his hand bones in the fire.

I own this movie, as a friend gave it to me, but I never want to watch it again. The idea is fun in theory and could be translated into an interested 15 minute movie. But this movie really doesn't work even if you like bad movies.  If you do check out the bonus feature, the director gives a very detailed way on how to use the internet and message boards.