Watched June 15, 2015
1993
Starring: Steve Buscemi, Ned Beatty, Miriam Margolyes, John Glover
Ed (Steve Buscemi) runs a hardware store that his parent's established before they died. His mother passed about a year ago but he can't seem to get over the loss. He shares the same house that he grew up in with his Uncle Benny (Ned Beatty). A mysterious salesman, Mr. Pattle (John Glover) comes to the hardware store and tells Ed he can bring his mom back for $1000. Ed agrees, but when the Mr. Pattle digs up the mom, her corpse is in terrible shape so it costs a little more to find some replacement organs. Eventually she makes it back to the house and it seems like she is just as she was.
Uncle Benny, who is Ed's mom's brother is upset about this resurrection because he disliked her meddling. Ed's mother doesn't act exactly the same, she now sits in the fridge at times, which is strange. After a day she passes out and is dead again. Mr. Pattle comes back and says for some more money he can tell Ed how to keep giving more life to his mom, so she'll stay alive. Steve agrees and now he has to feed his mom two live cockroaches a day. Somehow the mom eats too many cockroaches and is filled with a renewed lust for life. She starts chasing down the neighbor's dog to eat it, to get more life energy inside her.
Meanwhile, Ed's new neighbor Storm (Sam Sorbo) is aggressively trying to seduce him for no real reason. This leads Ed to be distracted from keeping his blood thirsty mom inside the house. Ed's mom is visited by a disgruntled former employee of the hardware store. Ed's mom treats him cordially, offering him tea, then killing him with a chainsaw.
Ed goes back to Mr. Prattle, who's job it is to just milk all the life insurance money that Ed received, didn't want the mom to become homicidal. Mr. Prattle tells Ed that for $50,000 he can share the secret of how to get rid of the mother permanently. The instructions are this: Ed has to chop off her head and bury it in the certain part of the cemetery, then bury her body in another part, and he has to do it at a certain time of night.
After her first human kill, Ed's mom goes to the hardware store and gets a large riding lawnmower to attack her next victim. Her next victim happens to be Storm, but Ed shows up in time to chop off his mom's head. He does manage to bury her head, but just as he is getting the body from the car, the cops show up for a separate incident in the church yard.
Steve ends up going to trial for the murder of his mother, even though he just had to kill her again to stop her from murdering more people. The film is bookended by a black and white sequence of the Ed at the trial for his mother's murder. It seems like the whole thing must have been a dream, but in the end it's not and he is acquitted for killing him mom. Storm turns out to have been hired by the same company as Mr. Prattle to make sure that they got the money out of Ed. After Ed's mom goes nut, Storm quits her job and falls in love with Ed for real.
A very interesting dark comedy. Steve's motivations are so hard to determine because we don't meet his mother until she comes back. A year is a long time to sit in the ground and then come back to life. You have to suspend your disbelief to get into the story. They do a good job of answering some obvious questions that would have been plot holes in other movies. Such as why a super sexy neighbor lady would want to seduce Ed, and the answer is that it was her job.
Watched June 11, 2015
1990
Starring: Anthony Michael Hall, Claudia Christian, Jerry Orbach
I've had this movie for a couple years and I keep bringing it to movie night but due to an aversion to family friendly fare it has never been picked. I took one for the team and watched it by myself, which I'm sure made it a little less enjoyable then it could have been as a shared experience, but it wasn't that great anyway.
Casey (Anthony Michael Hall) is somehow a rookie detective on the police force even though he looks to be about 18 years old at best. He somehow is in a relationship with fellow detective Sam (Claudia Christian) even though they don't have any chemistry. Casey has been on a case trying to nail some diamond thieves and a complicated sting has been set up in a park. There is supposed to be a mole that will take the hand off with the bad guy. Casey is there to arrest them. Somehow an explosion goes off that knocks Casey unconscious before he can catch the bad guy. Sam was waiting in the car and by the time they got over their the bad guy was gone. Casey wakes up and is fine but is convinced that there is a witness in the empty park. He finds a leather bag with a strange stone in it. He heads home but is followed by a curious little guy. Gnorm the Gnome reveals himself to Casey because he wants his bag back, it contains his lumen stone. Casey traps Gnorm in a cage, and is happy to have a witness even if no one will believe what he has. Gnorm has a special ability to make people fall asleep, so he escapes the cage and tries to get his lumen stone back. Casey convinces Gnorm to help his solve his case by finding the bag guy.
Sam wants to help Casey even though the chief of police, Stan (Jerry Orbach) doesn't think Casey is competent. Casey and Gnorm cruise through town trying to track down the bag guy, Gnorm can speak some English and does remember some events from that night. Casey disguises Gnorm as a little kid and they cruise the boardwalk. Gnorm is pretty into butts, it is a strange sexual tone for a kids movie.
They do keep getting closer to catching the bad guy. Gnorm is eventually taken into the police station and strip searched, so you get to see some bare gnome butt. Casey keeps figuring out the clues and it turns out that it was Stan that set up the whole thing because he has it in for Casey. After a shoot out they manage to capture Stan. Casey helps Gnorm get some sun for him lumen to take back to his people so he can be the hero.
Super weird tone for a kids movie. Gnorm is very weird looking. Not partiuclary funny, even though Gnorm bites a bad guys butt and there are several nut shots. He pronounced it G-Nome and G-Norm Whenever Gnorm is walking around looking cool his theme is Lowrider. Mostly just weird, I wouldn't want to watch it again.
Watched June 8, 2015
1987
Starring: Urbano Barberini, Rebecca Ferratti, Jack Palance
Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barerini) is a modern day physics professor who is regarded as a nerd. His friends treat him like it's high school and he's not very popular. He has a special ring, while driving home he somehow activates it and is transported to Gor, another world.
Tarl is dropped into the middle of a village that breaks out into battle. The bad guys have stolen the home stone, which is somehow related to Tarl's magic ring. Tarl is beat up during the battle over the stone and knocked unconscious. He is then dressed in a tiny loin cloth and nursed back to health by Talena (Rebecca Ferratti). Talena is a warrior princess and represents her people in trying to get their home stone back. She sees something in Tarl and brings him along. First they have to train Tarl to become a better warrior. A group of them begin a trek across the desert to find the bad guys who stole the home stone.
They have several adventures along the way and pick up some more people for their cause. Talena has to pretend to be a slave when the enter a specific village, then she is forced to fight another woman at a tavern. Luckily she wins and they all escape.
They do get to bad guys place and after a battle get the home stone and free Talena's father, who was captured at some point. Just as Tarl is beginning to like Gor, his magic ring sends him back to his world.
Some other stuff happens but that is not what the movie is about. It's about a ton of butts in loincloths. Everyone has tiny outfits and many shots are at butt level. Also another example of English dubbing that mostly lines up with their lips but still seems off. It is an Italian production so maybe it was the case that they did speak English but they wanted more American accents. The technology of Gor is very strange, they have high heeled shoes and locks but haven't figured out wheels. If you like butts and lots of sword fights, this movie is for you.
Watched May 18, 2015
1979
Starring: Chantal Contouri, Shirley Cameron, Henry Silva, Rod Mullinar
Kate (Chantal Contouri) is a professional lady about to take some time off from work. Apparently she is the descendant of a vampire clan, but she in unaware of this. A group of scientific vampires kidnap her and take her to a farm where they keep humans that they milk the blood out of like cows. The scientists are convinced that they just need to awaken the blood thirst that is in her genes for her to claim her vampire destiny. They drug her and perform various experiments to try to convince her that she wants to drink blood.They don't do a very good job of making her like the blood. They make her hallucinate so that she is surrounded by mysterious forces, and they only stop when she drinks blood.
After the initial tests don't seem to work, they let her go back home and to work but then she bites her friend and her boyfriend. The scientists bring her back for more conditioning but it still doesn't seem to work. They invite her to participate in a special ritual, they give her fangs to bite one of the human blood cows and she does it. Even though she has now had some blood, she still doesn't embrace her inherent vampirism. The group also kidnapped her boyfriend and brought him to the farm, one of the doctors tries to help them both escape. The doctor pushes the lady scientist into a blood vat, and she dies. The doctor and Kate escape on a helicopter but another scientist grabs on. When he falls off he falls onto power lines. Kate is taken to a weird basement cave where her boyfriend is being drained of his blood. The doctor says that Kate can drink him, but she doesn't want to. Then Kate lets the doctor drink from her. She then seems to embrace her vampire heritage.
Good special effects, it's slow in places, but overall pretty interesting. The exposition of the story can be frustrating. I did want Kate to escape the vampires and it seems like she resists for so long, so it's disappointing when she succumbs. Since they are constantly drugging Kate it's so confusing what is real or fake for her. If I was trying to turn someone into a vampire I wouldn't make them have terrible drug trips I would make the vampire lifestyle seem really glamorous, but the scientists don't take that approach.
Watched May 11, 2015
1981
Starring: Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., John Houseman, Craig Wasson, Alice Krige
A man in a high rise apartment in New York gets out of the bath but the water keeps running. On the bed, a woman is lying face down naked. The man keeps asking "Who are you?" to the woman, he touches her and she is cold. She turns around the reveal a skeleton face, scared he backs into a window, crashes through and falls out. As he falls, his towel is blown off so you see dick as he plummets to the ground and dies.
Four old men; Ricky (Fred Astaire), Dr. Jaffrey (Melvyn Douglas), Edward (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), and Sears (John Houseman) are friends who live in a small town in Vermont. They regularly get together to tell ghost stories as members of The Chowder Society. It was Edward's son who died by falling out of the window. His other son, David (Craig Wasson) comes to mourn with his father and is convinced there is something suspicious about his brothers death. David then shares with The Chowder Society that he slept with Don's financé. David met Alma (Alice Krige) while he was a professor at a college in Florida and she was a secretary. He was seeing someone else but he was compelled to ask Alma out. They went on a date where she put ice cream all over his face, then getting caught in the rain when back to her house from a crazy sex romp. They got engaged but David called it off after he discovered she was a night creeper. Alma leaves David then goes after Don.
Edward happens to be the mayor of the town. During a snowstorm he is compelled to walked out onto a bridge. On the bridge he sees a different skeleton face, scared falls off the bridge into the frozen river.
After Dr. Jaffrey of the Chowder Society also dies, they let the David in the group and they share their big group secret. In the 1920's they were all friends in college. A new lady, Eva came into town and they all liked her. She tried to sleep with Edward but he couldn't which is was severely disappointed by. All the boys got drunk one night and came over to Eva's house. They hint they all want to sleep with her but Edward doesn't like that. Since she was disappointed by Edward, Eva seems into the idea and she threatens to reveal his sex secret but he pushes her and she falls into the stone fireplace. She doesn't have a pulse so they decide to put her in the car and drive her into the pond. As the car is going down she comes to life, but they can't save her.
The house she stayed in is now abandoned, but a mysterious man and boy are squatting there. It seems that Eva convinced them to work for her, even though she is dead. David and Ricky go to the house, but the David falls and breaks his leg. Sears goes for help but crashes into a snowbank and the weird kid bites him. Ricky leaves David in the freezing house because he is convinced that Eva is still trapped in the car haunting them. Ricky manages to convince the police to pull the car out of the frozen lake, just as that is happening she is trying to seduce and kill the David. They get the car out of the lake and her rotted corpse falls out, finally at peace out of the water.
Good example of not judging a movie by it's cover, which made it look pretty boring. The back of the box description didn't help either, so I was wary. It turned out to be pretty fun, the mystery haunting is cool and there is way more nudity and sex than I ever expected from a movie with a bunch of old men in it.
