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The Amityville Haunting (2011)

[Note: My first two books on horror movies, Legendary House of Haunted Hell and 66.6 Absurd Movies about the Devil, have just been re-issued together in a lower-priced compilation edition featuring one bonus review. Because I'm a supervillain, not a monster, I'm presenting that bonus review here for those of you who have already purchased these two books separately. You're welcome.]

God damn it, we finally get a brand new Amityville movie and it's one of those fucking Blair Witch/lost & found footage deals. Seriously, that is preternaturally weak. Their intro has the facts all wrong too (the Klutz family didn't live there for two years, it was more like until the first mortgage payment bounced), but the first person we actually see onscreen is this absolutely stunning blonde, so I guess I'll give it a chance. The blonde and her cretinous friends waste no time breaking into the Amityville Horror house, brilliantly filming their misdemeanor criminal activity all the while, and while this sequence probably hits a bit too close to home for the poor bastards who currently own the place in real life the horror doesn't really begin until after these kids are dead and an entirely new family moves in. A new family with an annoying-ass kid who also happens to videotape everything that goes on. How fucking gay convenient gay. Before long there's strange sounds, shit moves around under its own power, the little girl has a mysterious imaginary friend, blah, blah, blah, wake me when it's over, suck my balls. It's your typical Presto Magix haunted house movie, except freed from the duo burdens of paying for a tripod or finding a someone who can actually hold a camera still. Cheap, lazy shits. And I like how the main kid delights in telling people that he lives in "the Amityville house". So does everyone on the block, idiot. Apparently the asshats who made this movie didn't realize that the place is known as the "Amityville house" because it's located in a town called Amityville. I guess their pre-moviemaking research consisted entirely of being really stupid. And what is with the dad? Even the parts that could have worked are completely undermined by his retarded dialogue ("I have identified the enemy.") and spasmo overacting. Okay, we get it, you were in the military. Fucking rein it in, Neidermeyer. Oh, and just for the record, it also didn’t help that when the imaginary friend finally showed himself he appeared in the terrifying form of a complete fucking dork.

What a steamer. My condolences to the previously-mentioned blonde. Take it from Mr. Satanism, you're a rare talent, and you deserved better. Eight inches of better. And that's limp, baby.

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For more peerless horror movie reviews, check out my latest collection, Mr. Satanism's Horror-nasium, now available on Amazon.

V: Below the Threshold, By Allen Wold (1988)

This book is based on the original V television series, which may pique the interest of a select subset of nerds but don't be fooled, because it's the very definition of a ripoff. Churned out well past even the tail-end of the whole V phenomenon, it reeks of "Quick, write a V novel before people forget about V!" There's tons of sentences that make little or no sense contextually, obvious typos, and at least one part where the writer specifically refers back to something that he forgot to mention previously. As a result, it reads like one of those e-books people self-publish via Amazon, and I hate that shit. The worst thing about it though is the story, if you can call a guy walking around, taking the same meeting multiple times, talking on the phone, and repeatedly eating at Wendy's a "story". Seriously, for the first 100 pages or so absolutely nothing happens, and if you're an old fan of the show there's definitely no V action, whatever that was exactly. IIRC, it was mostly watching aliens eat gerbils and jerking it to the actresses who played "Diana" and "Lydia". I was a Lydia man, myself.

Er, they seemed hotter in the '80s.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about: in one part, our main guy goes to bed, decides he needs a drink, gets up, fixes his drink, heads back to the bedroom, remembers that he left his gun in the kitchen, goes back to the kitchen to retrieve it, and then finally returns to his bedroom for a third time. I'm not kidding, it's like the writer was paid by the letter, and when shit finally does pop off in the final pages it's still not very interesting or reminiscent of V at all. In fact, with a little find & replace this could easily be a (shitty) crime/light sci-fi novel that has nothing to do with V whatsoever. I'm gonna keep my eyes peeled for Wild Wild West: Below the Threshold or Alien Nation: Below the Threshold or maybe even ALF: Below the Threshold. I guarantee this generic money-grab has been repurposed somewhere, before if not since.

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Psycho Cop (1989)

Did you ever see the movie Maniac Cop? Well this is nothing like that. In this flick, a bunch of drips who keep repeating themselves (maybe they're stuck in a time loop) are cruising around in a cherry red convertible that they totally don't deserve when they draw the ire of this goofy-ass cop who can't act and worships the Devil. He follows them to the place where they're staying, which of course is in the middle of nowhere (cell phones didn't exist in 1989 , but if they did I guarantee you wouldn't be able to get a signal out there), where he axes the caretaker, jams his nightstick down a guy's throat (heh), hits the ugly blonde with his car, knifes the mediocre brunette, tasers one dork, and chokes out another. Another dork, I mean. He also steals all their beer (typical cop). Finally the hot redhead has had enough, so she shoots the prick, after which she does a strip tease to the song "Cop Killer". Okay, fine, I'm making that last part up. The story is like something an autistic person would write, the acting is so wooden you could crucify Jesus on it, the gore is all but non-existent, and there aren't any tits, so the only decent part ends up being the redhead in a bikini. Kudos to her though - I'd hit that so hard it would file assault charges.

As I was chucking the VHS of this into the garbage I noticed a real blast from the past on the back cover. Check it out:

Remember those days? Can you imagine how pissed off you'd be if you actually paid ninety bucks for this piece of crap? On VHS? Christ, I would've stabbed somebody.

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Spider-Man: "The Hunter and the Hunted" (1981)

Peter Parker's boss, J. Jonah Jameson, decides that his newspaper needs an extra kick in the ass, and what moves newspapers like knowing that the paper in question owns its very own, bona fide saber-toothed tiger? (Hey, don't look at me. I just review this shit.) Too bad the only saber-toothed tiger around belongs to Ka-Zar, Lord of the Savage Land, a guy who regularly fights dinosaurs with his bare hands:

Ignore him, Lisa. He's just showing off.

This doesn't bother J.J.J. unduly though, so he hires Kraven the Cowardly Hunter to cat-nap the tiger. Kraven activates his superpowers (this is achieved by taking drugs), wrestles/gasses/electrified cages the sabertooth into submission, and somehow gets it past Customs into New York, where it generates so much publicity that nobody shows up. Oh, wait, J.J.J. just said that he hasn't actually kicked the publicity blitz off yet, and, as it turns out, he never does. In fact, he never even takes possession of the damn tiger! What do you want to bet that this is as far as the whole cockamamie idea goes? Frankly I think Jonah J. Jameson comes up with these ridiculous schemes solely to see how many superheroes/villains he can get pissed off at him at one time.

He never learns.

Pretty soon Ka-Zar shows up looking for his cat, and when Kraven finds out he's in town (while sitting at his bamboo desk, watching the news on his television, which also appears to be made out of bamboo) he decides that they should fight. I mean why not, right? Neither one of them is married, or wears a shirt, so... Er, let's move on. Ka-zar barges into Jameson's office and picks him up over his head, I assume because he plans on throwing him out the window, but he's not a complete monster and lets Jonah answer his phone first, which turns out to be a lucky break for both of them because it's Kraven calling to see if Jonah can give Ka-Zar a ride to the big gay sex fight. He can and he does, Kraven uses his high-tech Kraven Computer to capture Ka-Zar without even breaking a sweat, and ultimately it's up to Spider-Man to save the day, which was a nice way to wrap things up, seeing as it is his show and all. Not that that's anything to be proud of, obviously.

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The Cross and the Switchblade (1970)

Why would you join some pussy-ass gang like the Crips or the Warlocks when you can join the baddest gang of all, the Christians? Christians are millions strong; they recruit like crazy; they've got members in every hood in the country; they hassle, threaten, and bully everyone around; and whenever someone stands up to them they always manage to spin it so that they're the ones being dissed. Even better, if you're in charge of one of their chapters you don't pay taxes, not even on any tithe you take in!

The main Christian in this flick is a preacher-man so dedicated to bangin' that he abandons his pregnant wife to troll for prospects. Ruthless. He's currently got his eye on these thugz who are so hardcore that they wasted a kid by NOT hitting him with lead pipes, but eventually he decides to hold this huge rally and unite all the local gangs -- the Mau Maus, the Bishops, the Trixters, the Brotherhood, the Dittybops, the Be-Bop-A-Lulas, the Switcharoos, the Sacagaweas, the Pattycakes, the Kool Moe Dees, the Portmanteaus, the Bakeoffs, the East Georgetown Ballas, Sparkle Motion, the Studly Coalition, the French Resistance, the Latin Sallys, the Blue Man Group, the Marty McFlys, and all the rest -- into one Warriors style supergang under his colors. (That would be Jesus, and those colors don't run. They just sort of hang around. Ha ha!) It's no Romper Stomper, but there is one solid brawl/foot chase that starts as a rumble in the park and ends with both gangs on a roof fighting the pigs, the best part being when some cats get fooled into running down a blind alley where the other gang drops Molotov cocktails and bricks on them. Plus: a guy falling off a fire escape and landing on his face, a trick holding herself hostage (just like Blazing Saddles!), a surprisingly cool bit where one gang is hit at a funeral, step-by-step instructions on how to fix, and a part where violent gang members intimidate people into donating money to the preacher, which might just be the most honest scene to ever appear in a Christian movie.

All told, pretty entertaining.

"Five dollars gets you two joints, all our bodies, and a Sparkle Motion mouse pad!"

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Disaster Movie (2008)

The two dilholes who make these "______ Movie" movies are the least talented people to ever become famous in the history of this universe or any that will come after. They deserve to die slowly, painfully, alone, and unloved, their corpses left to rot in the street for stray dogs to piss on while their parents hold a press conference explaining that they never wanted kids in the first place, but the condom broke and then so did the coat hanger. Just the existence of their awful movies makes the world an sadder, uglier, shittier place. The only useful purpose they serve is helping you eliminate people on dating websites:

No thanks.

If you've never seen one of these flicks (you lucky bastard), they're a lot like the TV show Family Guy: there's no plot or story or jokes, just a bunch of references. "Hey," you might be thinking, "I get references!" Well bully for you. Jason of Star Command. There's your fucking reference. Now go away.

Okay, let's see what we can salvage from this cinematic brain abortion:

1. Nothing

Wow. I'm not fucking kidding, there aren't any funny or interesting parts in this movie AT ALL. Or tits. It was just reference after reference after reference after reference. Ninety percent of them aren't even disaster movie references. I don't even know how to review this. Should I just list all the stuff it references? I suppose if you think that just saying "Jessica Simpson" or "Facebook" is unbelievably hysterical, you'll laugh yourself even stupider, but no one who knows not to eat their own feces will be able watch this for more than five minutes without becoming so enraged that they kick a hole in the television set, develop a drinking problem, and decide to start beating their wife. It's a good thing I'm pretty much in favor of all those things.

I will say though, I did like the pregnant reference. Nine months in or not, I'd bone that bitch for so long the baby would assume my penis was his twin brother.

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Turns out classic cinema eats ass, too. For proof, check out The 100 Best Movies Ever Made ...Mostly Suck, now available on Amazon.

The Phantom of the Open Hearth (1976)

With everyone up in arms and shitting crumb cake over the fact that they (inevitably) went and made A Christmas Story 2, this seems like the perfect time to point out that your precious Part 1 was a goddamned remake anyway. Well, not exactly, but this movie does feature (a different) Ralphie, (a different) The Old Man, the same annoying narrator guy, and even the saga of the infamous leg lamp. Ralphie's in high school in this version though, so he's less concerned with BB guns and more concerned with some piece named Daphne Bigelow who, the voice in his head informs us, "offers ecstasies not yet plumbed by human experience". That means he's pretty sure she's a virgin.

"And rest assured, I'm going to be the one who pops that particular cherry."

Once you disregard the previously mentioned Christmas Story touchstones, the rest of this movie is all over the place though, and it's a tad darker and a lot more low-brow than the take we're all familiar with. For example, there's a surprising amount of drunken puking. My absolute favorite bit is when Ralphie rents a tux for the junior prom and the only jacket in his size has a bullet hole right through the heart and dried blood all over it! I swear to fuck I'm not making that up. And I was completely blindsided by the end, where the titular Phantom of the Open Hearth goes on a supernatural rampage, killing two of Ralphie's idiot friends and briefly possessing his mom. Okay, fine, I am making that part up.

But it could have happened.

There's one final, almost meta touch I haven't mentioned yet. The movie begins and ends with Ralphie as an adult, speaking directly to us and waxing incoherently about bumper stickers and his time in the army as he segues into and out of the main story. It's almost like they're intentionally pegging him as exactly the type of annoying bore who tortures family and friends alike with his rambling, pointless stories that have no clear beginning or end and you've all already heard at least a dozen times before. Needless to say, this couldn't be more appropriate.

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For reviews of more rare movies, some of which probably have "phantom" in the title, check out my book Legendary House of Haunted Hell, now available on Amazon.

The Giant Claw (1957)

I hate the Giant Claw. You can never pick up shit with it, and when you finally get fed up and put your fist through the glass the manger is all like "You owe us 900 dollars!" Nine hundred eight dollars and twenty-five cents for a little plush porcupine. Fucking assholes.

Anyway, that's not what this movie is about. This movie is about a gigantic, awesome/hilarious bird that's going around knocking toy airplanes out of the sky. Check it out:

My favorite part is when it attacks this plane the main guy is in, forcing him to make an emergency landing. Everyone bails out, the plane explodes, and then the special effects guys (or possibly some interns) throw a bunch of burning wood right at the actors! I guess they didn't have OSHA back then. Initially, this main guy is pretty much the only one who's actually seen the Giant Claw ("That makes me chief cook and bottle-washer in a one-man bird watcher's society," he says. What?), but before long it's causing panic, terror, and horror (and, later, more panic and some nightmare terror). Even worse, there's no way to kill it because it has an atomic force field, or some such nonsense. This movie came out in the 1950s though, so you know they'll come up with a super-scientific gizmo to destroy the force field, and as soon as they do it only takes a couple of rounds (pussy) to drop that sucker right into the drink:

The Giant Claw should've flipped everybody off right here.
That would've been hysterical.

Okay, I'll admit that the Giant Claw isn't as badass as, say, Rodan, or Q the Winged Serpent, and even while they were making it the people who dreamed up this movie had to be like "We are gonna be mocked for decades for this," but I liked it anyway. Really, how often do you get to see a giant, ratty space vulture with a mohawk flying around eating parachute guys right out of the sky? Unless you have access to the stuff I have access to, not very often, so I suggest you check this flick out.

"I'm the Giant fucking Claw, and you can ALL suck it! Kaw!"

The Dunwich Horror (2009)

You know, I think I speak for everyone when I say that we've had our fill of H. P. Lovecraft movies. Why doesn't anyone ever make an Algernon Blackwood movie? Or a William Hope Hodgson movie? Honestly, can't someone show a little imagination once in a while? This disaster begins with a ridiculous "She's Having My Monster" scene, followed by an exorcism. The exorcism sequence is actually kinda cool at first, but then they find the source of the demon's power hidden under the floorboards and are you fucking kidding me it's a goddamned Tomy Pyraminx:

Oh, they peeled all the stickers off, and painted some goofy symbols on it, but that's what it is all right. Stupid assholes. It would be embarrassing enough if we saw it just the once, but they keep harping on the damn thing, and it gets more laughable by the second. The best is when the two exorcists take it to a third guy to add to, quote-unquote, "the collection". I'm sure it'll look lovely on his mantle, right next to these:

Ha ha ha! What a fucking joke. To make things worse, it's right about this time I noticed that every once in a while the picture would start skipping and jumping and randomly fading to black and shit. At first I thought there was something wrong with my television, but nope, it's all on purpose, I guess to make the movie as annoying and unpleasant to watch as possible. Well, mission accomplished, idiots.