A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

Terrorist John "Die Hard" McClane travels to Russia, where he commits a carjacking, kills dozens of civilians during an ill-advised car chase through crowded city streets, helps an accused criminal elude the authorities, and causes untold property damage. Whenever someone questions his behavior he responds with his new catchphrase ("I'm on vacation!"), shoots them, and then sodomizes their corpse. We know Die Hard's really a good guy though, because he is willing to share the occasional "moment" with select Russians -- as long as they speak English -- and he speechifies his regrets about being a dick in the past, although this doesn't effect any of his current decisions to be a dick. Nevertheless, a few folks do try to kill Die Hard in return by shooting at him with machine guns and, at one point, a military-grade helicopter. He always manages to duck though.

A scene from one of the Die Hard movies, probably.

As an impromptu justification for murdering so many people and destroying so much shit, Die Hard decides to help the CIA -- played by his son -- smuggle a political prisoner out of the county. Having lived through seven or eight previous Die Hard movies however, Die Hard Sr. knows that there's going to be a big twist, and sure enough, the bad guy they're smuggling out of the country turns out to be a bad guy. He's confident Die Hard won't arrest him though, because "You're out of your jurisdiction, Detective McClane." He's right, of course, so Die Hard Jr. tosses him off a building and into some whirling helicopter blades instead, in a comedic callback to Die Hard 1. Because how funny is it that Die Hard 1 exists? (I assume that's the joke, since merely reminding people that a thing exists counts as jokes now.) In retaliation, the pretty girl bad guy crashes the helicopter into the building where Die Hard and his son are standing, but they both escape by jumping out a window and falling multiple stories through several harmless planes of glass. The helicopter falls the same distance but explodes (three times), killing everyone on board. Then, since they're currently at the site of the Chernobyl disaster and there is literally nothing else in the vicinity to destroy, the movie ends.

A lot of people hated this entry in the series, but fortunately Hollywood doesn't care what people think and besides, what did they expect, a bunch of hugging? Two-and-a-half stars.

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The Mr. Satanism Library

Poltergeist (2015)

Of all the classic Steven Spielburger movies, far and away the most overrated is fucking Poltergeist. Not that it doesn't have some good shit in it, but there's a point somewhere around the middle where it just totally loses its mind and stops making any goddamned sense whatsoever. So yeah, remake that bitch and let's see what happens. How bad could it be? And as it turns out this is a perfectly serviceable haunted house movie. Sure, it's not as good as the original, but frankly it's not that much worse either. They do sell some of it way too hard (everything to do with the tree), but the dumbest bits from the original (like the crawling steak) have been excised completely and if you ask me most of the scary parts in this remake work. Frankly, the only major problem with this version is the family who's getting poltergeisted. In the original they were all pretty likable, you know, for white people. Here though, not so much. The dad, for example, is a jerk, but he's one of those subtle jerks that you want to punch the second you meet but you're not exactly sure why. Guys like him never beat their kids and rarely cheat on their wives, but they think about it a lot. They usually watch too much football. The wife is far from ugly but isn't good-looking either, and has the personality of paste. She's the kind of woman you forget you once had sex with while you're still having the sex with her. The little boy, realistically annoying in the original, is taken to an extreme here. He's such a detestable sissy-bitch that you'll be praying for him to actually get eaten by the tree this time. Or the clown puppet. Or anything, really. Hell, if he just died from meningitis or something that would be fine with me. The two daughters are okay though, especially the teenager. Yum. You probably knew I was going to say that, didn't you?

                     Kndra: Rents out. Brats sleepin. Cum over an lets fuck

                     MrS: Cant. Watching Poltergeist

                     Kndra: New or old?

                     MrS: New

                     Kndra: Im breaking up w you

All the shit with the power lines and the static electricity and the electronics operating on their own reminded me of original Poltergeist ripoff Pulse (1988). (This is not a good thing.) The hands in the TV are creepy. The scene with the maxed-out credit cards is good, even if it belongs in the Amityville Horror remake more than it belongs here. The bit with the comic books is heavy-handed, stupid, and, thanks to Ghostbusters ("No human being would stack books like this."), instantly mockable. Whoever dreamed up that scene must have a pop culture awareness level of zero. The dead flowers would've been a nice, subtle touch, if the dad didn't blatantly acknowledge them, completely ruining the effect. The teenage daughter has a fantastic ass. "We're gonna get in big trouble!" was perfect, exactly the reaction a child would have. I was happy to see Jane Adams show up. I've always wanted to fuck her. The dad pukes up worms immediately after drinking some hooch, as if to say "Remember Poltergeist II? This is better than Poltergeist II, right?" The drill scene isn't bad. Their use of the drone was a clever update. I didn't get the end; are they just not going to live in a house ever again? Never thought I'd hear a Cramps song in a Spielberg movie. Okay, it's a cover of a Cramps song, but this is a remake of a Spielberg movie, so close enough.

Yes, there's no defensible reason for Poltergeist 2015 to exist, but, ultimately, there's no real reason to be upset about it either. If you're a Spielberg fan what you should really be worrying about is this: Which classic Steven Spielberg movie will they remake next?

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Read about more cinematic haunted houses here.

Monkeys & Dinosaurs!

Above: a promotional photograph from the Japanese version of Planet of the Apes, and yes that monkey in the white pimp suit is flipping us off, British style. To learn more about this terrible film, and just about every other dinosaur and/or killer monkey movie ever made, check out my latest book Monkeys & Dinosaurs: Cinema as High Art, Vol. 1, available right now on Amazon, here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014LH22KI

Sexting: Sex + Text = Trouble

You know what really equals trouble? Parading this slew of sex-crazed, underage hotties across my TV screen. I mean, I'm no Jared, but come on, a man can only take so much.

First up, some chippies take a few naked pics, just for a larf...

...but apparently one of them doesn't know how to use e-mail and the next thing you know their racy pictures are all over the school and on my hard drive. Er, I mean NOT on my hard drive. Because I would never. Anyway, I loved their classmate's matter-of-fact reaction to the whole thing:

Chick: "You obviously saw the pictures. They were supposed to be private."

Dude: "I guess that didn't work."

Still, there is an upside they don't mention: after a few weeks of embarrassment and grief, you know these chicks ended up being the most popular girls in school. Especially Chloe.

In our second example, this chick's jealous, creepozoid ex-boyfriend (take my word for it, she can do a lot better) sends naked pics of her to her mom, to what end I can't possibly imagine. Maybe he's trying to make the mom insecure about her own body so that he can move in, flatter her up, and possibly nail her as well, at which point he can check the ever elusive "mother-daughter combo" off his list. I joke, but that's actually not such a bad plan. Well, aside from the fact that he's 18 and his ex-girlfriend isn't, which means that he'll be doing all his future "sexting" up in the Stateville Prison. Except in this case "sexting" means "being brutally raped by his cellmate", of course.

Our final zany sexual misadventure begins when Mr. Furley... oops, sorry, wrong video. The correct misadventure begins when this kid leaves his Facebook page open and his buddy posts a bunch of hilarious filth. ("The only words here that aren't obscene are of, the, and and," someone subsequently points out.) Luckily for him, nothing really comes of it and the only indignity he suffers is getting bitched out by his sister. Who, I might add, is pretty damn tasty and is welcome to sext me any time:

That's right, I learned absolutely nothing from this video. It's called confidence. Maybe you should try it sometime. You're welcome.

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My newest book on film, Monkeys & Dinosaurs: Cinema as High Art, Vol. 1, goes on sale in one short week. In the meantime, catch up by reading all of my previous books, available here.

Snakes, Rats, Spiders, and Bats

My latest book is now available! Check it out here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XSIAZF6. Best of all, it's absolutely free starting Monday and ending on Friday, so get it while it's hot! And free. Free's the important thing.

Need a fix between fixes?

Follow me on Twitter! I post sporadically, but it's all pure gold, I assure you! Here's the link:

https://twitter.com/mrsatanism

Wild Child (2008)

Hollywood Exec: "We need a movie that will appeal to the tween girl demographic, while also satisfying the creepy old man demographic... Something I can watch with my daughter, but that, say, Mr. Satanism would also enjoy..."

Valued Assistant: "How about a movie about a naughty teenage girl who gets sent to boarding school?"

Hollywood Exec: "Go on..."

Valued Assistant: "Well, she's hot, and underage, and, you know, naughty. But not too naughty: strictly a fair-to-moderate level of out-of-control. And... her dad sends her to a British boarding school, so all the girls wear private schoolgirl uniforms and have British accents. And are underage, of course."

Hollywood Exec: "Rating?"

Valued Assistant: "Oh, PG-13, for sure. Lightweight teenage rebellion stuff. Our main girl alters her uniform so that it's sexy as fuck. Mild swearing. Implied shoplifting and underage drinking, obfuscated to such a degree that it feels like there are entire scenes missing. Maybe some property destruction. No tits."

Hollywood Exec: "No tits? But Mr. Satanism...

Valued Assistant: "Underage. Private. School. Girls."

Hollywood Exec: "You magnificent fucking bastard."

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For more girl-centric movies, check out Lifetime Movies ...for Men, on sale now.

A Chronology on Elm Street, Part 9

A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4 banked so hard at the box office that the producers were probably knee-deep in Colombian prime for weeks, and once they stopped punching things and talking really fast over one another, moving forward with a Part 5 was inevitable. This time, Freddy is reborn as a Davis baby, but he quickly grows to full size, so as to better spout off one-liners. He morphs one cat into a half-man, half-motorcycle (It's the Murdercycle!); stuffs a chick with food until she dies; A-ha's a guy; rides a skateboard; proves that the main chick does indeed make a better door than a window; and, the most unforgivable crime of all, bores the absolute shit out of us.

You just got A-ha'ed, asshole.

These movies rarely present us with a cohesive, well, anything, but this time Freddy does have a goal: he wants to possess the main chick's unborn child. Although why, after dodging so many attempts to destroy him, he'd want to make himself susceptible to a simple coat hanger is beyond me. At any rate, there's only so much rampant idiocy a person can take, even if that person is a character in a horror movie, so someone finally enlists the aid of Freddy's mother, who eventually steps in and puts an end to his current spate of shenanigans. That's right, Freddy Krueger is ultimately defeated because someone tells his mom. And popular belief is that she subsequently grounded him for twelve years, explaining why the next movie is set in 2001. But as we'll see next time, popular belief couldn't be more wrong.

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Check out my many books on the horror genre, available here.

A Chronology on Elm Street, Part 8

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

Part 4 here is where this series really started guzzling out of the toilet, but people are reliably stupid so naturally it was the most successful entry yet. And I am in part to blame, because this is the only Nightmare on Elm Street I ever paid to see in a movie theater, although in my defense my date insisted and she did give me a handie right there in the balcony. So fuck it, that was totally worth $5.25 times two, or however much movies cost back then. I wouldn't know, since she put the tickets on her credit card and I "forgot" to pay her back. Hey, it wasn't that good of a handie.

I begged her to finish me off at this exact point in the movie, but she wasn't having it.

So, in a "fuck you" on par with Alien 3, the hot blonde from Dream Warriors returns, only to be portrayed by a new actress who's not quite as hot. Although she does a fair job of rocking a bikini top at one point, so I suppose I can let this slide. Less forgivable: all the kids who survived the previous movie are ruthlessly killed off before this one is even half over, beginning, naturally, with the black guy. (Speaking of black guys, they really should've included a scene where Freddy finishes off the Fat Boys too, seeing as they also recently infuriated him by escaping his clutches. That would have been both thematically appropriate and hilarious.) It's an unapologetic middle finger to everyone who liked these characters, but in this movie's defense at least these early scenes are effectively creepy, and I did like some of the imagery, like the dog pissing fire (symbolically pissing all over the previous movie, I guess), and the corpse discovered floating inside the waterbed. Even the one-liners still lean more towards "badass" than "Henny Youngman" at this point:

Victim: "I'll see you in Hell."
Freddy: "Tell 'em Freddy sent ya."

But once Freddy has wiped the slate clean and starts in on the next batch of kids, this movie becomes a completely different animal. I'm not sure what kind of animal, exactly, but definitely one that eats its own shit. Seriously, it's like someone threw a switch because the idiocy kicks in the instant we're shown the graves of his final Part 3 victims, who are buried right next to each other and next to two previous Freddy marks, even though almost none of these people are related. Is this just a mind-boggling coincidence? (Studio Audience: "That's incredible!") Or are we to understand that there's a special cemetery reserved exclusively for victims of Freddy Krueger, like the one in Zermatt that's reserved for people who died climbing the Matterhorn? Either way, it's pretty stupid. Ah, but this movie has just begun to stupid: wait until you see the bit where the dead kid pops out of his coffin for an American Werewolf in London-flavored monologue, which to be fair might have worked if said kid wasn't portrayed by the worst actor in this entire fucking series. From here, it's just one long, slow slide into suck:

Horror movie producers refuse to accept the fact that pizza isn't scary. In one nightmare, dead people appear as toppings on a pizza. Look, horror movie producers, what is it going to take to convince you that pizza isn't scary? It's not scary when it comes flying out of the refrigerator (976-EVIL II), it's not scary when it grows a face and bursts into song (House IV), and it's not scary here. Pizza = NOT scary. Got it, assholes?

"No! No! Please! Help us! So stupid! Please! Our careers! No!"

"I spilled a beer on the DVD player and now it always does this." There's a sequence that repeats itself several times, which is probably meant to be disorienting but in practice just makes everyone think that the DVD is skipping.

Roaches check in, but they don't watch the in-room movie. Because it's Nightmare 4. The chick who's afraid of bugs turns into a giant cockroach and then dies in a giant Roach Motel. It's just like Kafka! Except, you know, stupid.

The nonsensical resolution just falls out of the screenwriter's ass. The nonsensical resolution just falls out of the screenwriter's ass.

In short, fuck this piece of shit.

Freddy Krueger will return in Moonraker.

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The Mr. Satanism library. Finally, someone puts movies in their place.

Making Contact (1985)

By the mid-1980s, everyone wanted to ape Steven Spielberg's suburbia-centric "sense of wonder" shtick; you can see it in movies as diverse as Explorers (1985), The Gate (1987), and Pulse (1988), which, minus Spielberg's suffocating influence, would almost certainly have been a disposable children's film, an R-rated horror flick, and unproduced, respectively. Of all the late-1980s Spielberg wannabes though, the most wildly unhinged has to be Making Contact, created by Roland Emmerich, the guy who would go on to bury movie theaters in a deluge of liquid shit including but not limited to Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998), Eight-Legged Freaks (2002), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), 10,000 BC (2008), and so, so many more. Seriously, it's a wonder every movie fan on the planet hasn't killed themselves. Anyway, this flick concerns a kid with ESP who regularly talks to his dead pop on a toy telephone, owns a toy robot sporting the most sophisticated A.I. I've ever seen, and spends most of the running time being terrorized by the ugliest, dirtiest, smelliest (probably) ventriloquist's dummy you've ever seen.

Still waiting on that Magic, Part 2 callback.

On a scene-by-scene basis it's an awkward, clumsy disaster, full of sequences that make no real sense and that seem to have been included simply because "I dunno, magic". The end result is completely batshit retarded and plays out like a deranged alternate reality version of Poltergeist (one where Steven Spielberg ate a lot of paint chips as a child) crossed with bottom-barrel E.T. ripoff and all-time Mystery Science Theater 3000 favorite Pod People (1983), with elements from The Goonies, The Monster Squad, Poltergeist II, and Labyrinth randomly tossed into the salad for no apparent reason other than to make the end result as mind-fuckingly incomprehensible as possible. Oh, and Star Wars too, literally in this case: copyright be damned there's a scene in this movie where several kids are menaced by honest-to-fuck Darth Vader, who's sporting a lightsaber and everything. It's unbelievable. So if you've ever wondered what Steven Spielberg's early-1980s output would look like if you edited them all together into one mega movie and then let a schizophrenic person cut the result down to 75 minutes while huffing ether, well, here's your goddamned answer you fucking lunatic. The fact that the person responsible for this fuckgoggle went on to become one of the most successful people in Hollywood just goes to show that anything, and I mean anything, is possible. As long as you're a gibbering maniac.

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A Chronology on Elm Street will return next week.

A Chronology on Elm Street, Part 7

"Are You Ready for Freddy?" - The Fat Boys

Here's some Nightmare on Elm Street trivia for you: Who inherited Freddy Krueger's house after he was killed by that lynch mob? Give up? It was his nephew Mark, AKA Prince Markie Dee of the 1980s rap group the Fat Boys, best known for... being fat, I guess. (If it seems strange to you that it took until 1988 to finalize this transfer of ownership, keep in mind that Freddy's paternity is a bit convoluted. There were at least 100 potential claims floating around out there.) Of course, there is one caveat before he can take possession. That's right: a worldwide scavenger hunt spanning all seven continents, during which the Fat Boys will be competing against none other than the substitute Duke Boys, Coy and Vance! Yeeeee-haw!

Nope, nothing here to offend black audiences.

Okay, fine, I'm kidding; he just has to spend the night in the place, which is, of course, standard legal boilerplate in the horror genre. And this is bad news for Markie Dee and his boys, because while Uncle Freddy Krueger wasn't actually destroyed at the end of Dream Warriors (because fucking bullshit) he did take a serious ass-whuppin' and is currently holed up in his former digs, attempting to recoup. Needless to say, the last thing he needs is a bunch of overweight assholes lumbering around the place and throwing House Party 8. Not to mention the effect on property values if three people of color move into the neighborhood. (Sorry, but it's true.) So Freddy runs them off, but not before they perform a little rap about their predicament, which has no adverse effect on Freddy whatsoever, unlike the music of Dokken. Hell, Freddy even joins in and raps a few lines himself. Why the sudden immunity to pop music? Well, it may seem odd now, but rap music had yet to garner any real critical respect in the late 1980s (the Fat Boys, in fact, were one of the main reasons why), so back then fat phat rhymes simply weren't enough to ward off any serious supernatural threat. You had to rock. Or whatever it is Dokken does.

So yeah, a herd of fatties stampeding through Freddy's house; the riderless tricycle, an ominous symbol of impending doom in all previous Freddy appearances, is inelegantly kicked out of the way by a morbidly obese man as he flees in slapstick terror; and Freddy Krueger raps. Welcome to the Nightmare on Elm Street experience, post-Part 3. You might want to bail now, because it's not gonna get any better.

Also, do I really need to point out that it's super fucking racist to make a video that's entirely about black people being afraid of a ghost? Because it totally is.

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Check out my newest book, The Not-At-All-Cleverly-Titled Book of Dragon Movies, on sale now!

A Chronology on Elm Street, Part 6

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

The problem with movies is that it doesn't take much to fuck one up. One shitty actor, one monster suit sporting a visible zipper, one selfish actress who won't take her top off... Sometimes that's all it takes to bring the whole house of cards tumbling down. This movie, this miserable fucking whore of a movie, is the perfect example. It begins with our lovely blonde Dokken fan still being terrorized by Freddy (see previous entry in this chronology), and with no second third-rate rockers to rescue her this time she's at her wit's end, eating coffee raw and chasing it with Diet Coke in a desperate attempt to remain awake and skinny. This soon lands her in a home for wayward, suicidal teens (my favorite kind), where it turns out that all the patients have the fever for the flavor of a Freddy. (It's an old TV commercial reference, like "Chow chow chow." Just don't worry about it.) Fortunately for them, the main chick from Part 1 (inexplicably not dead, despite the way that movie ended) shows up to help them develop their lucid dreaming skills, the only way to defeat Freddy on his own turf.

Dammit, Freddy, the penis goes inside the hottie, not the other way around.

Meanwhile, this creepy/ridiculous nun reveals that to truly destroy Freddy someone needs to find his remains and bury them in hallowed ground. Or, you know, in the middle of a junkyard, whichever is easier. (Seriously, don't make an effort or anything.) Now, combine these two plot threads and we're finally getting somewhere. Part 3 has always been the natural ending point for sloppy, unplanned movie series because then they can go around claiming that it was "always meant to be a trilogy", and here it is Part 3 and they've come up with a wholly plausible double-whammy means to put Freddy out of commission once and for all that, if it doesn't really make normal sense, at least makes horror movie sense. And fuck me if their two-front assault doesn't work: between fighting the kids in slumberland and reanimating his bones Jason and the Argonauts style in the real world, Freddy's powers are stretched a little too thin and his clock is finally punched. But not before the hot blonde is almost eaten by a gigantic penis; one chick upgrades from a frumpy 4 to an edible 8 when, in her dreams, she reinvents herself as a punk rock chick (I'm telling you middle-of-the-road girls right now, going punk/goth works, and I can't speak for everyone but I have no problem dating a poseur, as long as she's good in the sack.); and a mediocre nurse who's really Freddy in disguise shows us his/her tits while seducing a teenage boy (because as if Part 2 wasn't evidence enough, Freddy is inarguably gay and a pedophile).

Can't name a single song by The Jam. No one cares.

So yeah, this would've been a passable flick if it wasn't scuttled by the bullshit final shot, where it's revealed that Freddy is STILL alive FOR NO DEFENSIBLE REASON WHATSOEVER. You cock-nobbing motherfuckers. You just spent this entire movie meticulously laying out the goddamned "this is how you kill Freddy" rules once and for all, and then you throw the entire megillah out the fucking window with absolutely no explanation???? Are you FUCKING kidding me??? Why, why, why, should I watch a movie where nothing that anyone does matters at all? Freddy still being alive in the final shot of this miserable flick literally negates everything that happened in the 95 minutes preceding it, and everyone involved can just rim my fucking job. Fuck Dream Warriors. I hate this cunt movie.

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The Not-At-All-Cleverly-Titled Book of Dragon Movies. Now available.

Hollywood Lolitas Us Again...

Here's a few classy shots of the children's movie The Neverending Story III blatantly sexualizing an extremely underage girl:

For the full review (of the movie, not the girl, you perv), check out my latest, The Not-At-All-Cleverly-Titled Book of Dragon Movies, on sale now, exclusively on Amazon. And holy shit, if you're a Kindle Unlimited member, it's FREE! Don't have a Kindle? Relax, download this free Kindle app and read Dragon Movies, and all my books, on any device! God damn, the future is awesome, isn't it?

A Chronology on Elm Street, Part 5

"Dream Warriors" - Dokken

A beautiful blonde wakes up in Freddy's dreamworld and finds herself drawn into a spooky old house, where she's confronted by none other than...

...her favorite rock band Dokken. You remember Dokken, right? (Of course you don't. Don't worry about it.) At first Dokken scares her, but after the lead guitarist burrows through the floor like a gigantic mole and then bursts out of the wall to favor her with a guitar solo she realizes that they're pretty okay guys. (Pretty okay guys who can fucking rock.) But just when she's finally starting to enjoy herself Freddy Krueger appears and drags the guitarist off, and when our hottie follows she finds herself in the (relatively unimpressive) bowels of Freddy's twisted dreamscape, where the world's most sparsely-attended Dokken concert is being held. (Well, the most sparsely-attended before 1995 or so, anyway.) Freddy's there too, ready to cook our main chick's hash, only to be driven back by Dokken's preternatural ability to rock, at which point Freddy Krueger is the one waking up in his bed, terrified. "Who were those guys?" he gasps. Really, Freddy? You're afraid of Dokken? They're like one step above hair metal, and frankly I'd probably bet against them in a fistfight with the Sleez Beez.

I feel the same way, Freddy.

"It's just a stupid joke in a dumb music video, it's not fucking canon," you're probably saying right now, out loud, to your computer. (Hey, do I know you, or what?) But let's really think about this for a minute. The big fake-out here is that it wasn't the blonde's nightmare after all, it was Freddy's, and it featured slightly skewed versions of several incidents that will occur in his near future (i.e. the next movie), exactly as presented here. (Minus Dokken, of course, who had better things to do.) (Ha ha! No they didn't.) Given the information provided, it's my contention that this incident really happened in the Nightmare on Elm Street universe; it's what they call a prescient vision, and it's the first suggestion that, in addition to his other powers, Freddy Krueger has a limited ability to see into the future. That's a hell of an important piece of information to dole out in a goddamned music video, but that's what makes the expanded world of A Nightmare on Elm Street such a fascinating tapestry: its willingness to...

Okay, who am I kidding? Even if you jettison the music videos and the comic books and the late-night ads for the Freddy Krueger Hotline, none of this Elm Street bullshit even tries to make any sense. Sometimes Freddy can possess people, other times he can't. Sometimes he's the "bastard son of a hundred maniacs" (whatever the hell that even means), other times he was raised by a pimp (it's in the novel). Thursday he's finally, irrevocably dead. Friday he's better. It's all a load of terminal horseshit anyway, so I say this goddamned music video is canon, if for no other reason than I like the idea of Freddy Krueger being just as terrified of heavy metal as the rest of America was in 1987. Seriously, why should he be any more rational than my mom?

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The Not-At-All-Cleverly-Titled Book of Dragon Movies. My latest. Available for pre-order RIGHT NOW.

Q is coming...

...along with dozens of other dragon movies in my all-new book, available for pre-order RIGHT NOW. Get it here.

A Chronology on Elm Street, Part 4

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge

A new family moves into the house formerly occupied by the previous movie's main chick, and in no time flat their teenage son is possessed by Freddy and off on a gory, homicidal rampage. Although he does get some limited action with a hot little redhead first, and in my book that's a pretty fair trade-off.

Redheads. Always worth it.

This is the Elm Street flick everyone hates because it doesn't quite gel with the rest of the series, but that's exactly why I like it: it just does its own haunted house/possession thing and doesn't get bogged down with a bunch of half-assed "mythology" that nobody cares about anyway. Plus Freddy is still a passably scary badass here instead of the fucking joke he would soon become, rattling off endless Bob Hope-style one-liners and pimping his own 1-900 number and shit. Seriously, what a tool. In this movie, the people get the funny lines, like the main kid's dad ("He needs a methadone clinic!"), or this smartass:

Chick: "So you going to Lisa's house tomorrow night?"
Dude: "No. Can't. I'm grounded."
Chick: "How come?"
Dude: "I threw my grandmother down a flight of stairs."

Then there's the main chick, a sizzling-hot redhead who isn't even fazed when her sort-of boyfriend shows up at the front door covered in someone else's blood. We all need a girl like that. Clearly this is all good stuff, but wait, there's more:

• The exploding bird
• The joker with the huge Limahl and King Kobra posters in his room. In the history of the world, has there ever actually been a person who listens to both Limahl and King Kobra?
• The whale-song playing while red-hot Red is trying to stab Freddy in her kitchen. For real, did you ever notice that? What the hell?
• All the terror builds up to Freddy crashing a high school pool party. Ha ha! Maybe he'll TP the quarterback's house next. Duh.
• Special shout-out to the bikini chick with the Flock of Seagulls hair at that party, by the way. She doesn't do anything important, but Jesus Christ is she fucking fine.
• End credits song: "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?" by Bing Crosby. Brilliant. This movie rocks. Or swings, whatever.

Seriously, any babe with the vag to wear her hair like this, in public, has won my eternal love.

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Dig these crazy haunted house movies? I wrote an entire book on the subject. Legendary House of Haunted Hell is currently available here.

A Chronology on Elm Street, Part 3

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Are you reading these blog entries in order? Well you really should be reading them in order, because, chronologically, this is actually Freddy's third outing, thus the whole "Chronology on Elm Street" thing. Pay attention.

So enough time has passed for Freddy Krueger to be little more than an urban legend, although why he waited this long to strike again is a bit of a mystery. Maybe he really does need to recharge his batteries, like an old Buick that's been parked in the barn too long. Maybe he realizes that it's a lot sexier to slasher-kill teenagers than small children, and has been waiting for all the kids on the block to grow up. Or maybe he simply craves at least a little bit of a challenge, and teenagers are way more likely to put up a fight than, say, infants, who tend to give up almost immediately when they're attacked by supernatural evil. Fucking pussies. Whatever his logic, the first of Freddy's new slate of victims is this sexy-ass blonde who really should've been the main chick because quite frankly our actual main chick is no great shakes. (Calm down, fans of this chick, I'm not saying I wouldn't fuck her, just that I probably wouldn't brag about it. Much.) It's a good thing for us that the killing begins relatively early in this movie though, because quite frankly almost nothing these kids say or do when they're not being ruthlessly slaughtered rings true, not even Hollywood true. Seriously, you'd think the screenwriter had never seen a John Hughes film, although most of those came out after this movie was released so I suppose I can't fault him for that. (Still, he does occasionally get it right: "Oh god, I look twenty years old,"says the stressed-out, sleep-deprived main chick.) At any rate, the hottie's numbskull boyfriend is next on the hit list, followed by lil' baby Johnny Depp (which will probably please anyone who's been subjected to The Rum Diary or Dark Shadows) and, finally, the main chick.

Sigh. I'll get a tampon...

If you haven't seen this movie in a while, you'll find that it's both better and worse than you remember it, leaning towards worse. The simpler dream sequences are creepy and effective, with the mild surreal logic of real dreams, and the deaths are respectably gruesome (blood geyser!), but overall not enough really happens, especially during the long, dead period between the moment when the main chick hatches her Home Alone-esque plan to "get" Freddy and when she finally carries it out. (Also, it would have been way cooler if some A-Team music played while she was setting up her jury-rigged Freddy trap.) It probably says it all that my favorite part of this movie is when Johnny Depp makes an incredibly dated cat food reference ("Chow chow chow.") that will just sound like random crazy talk to anyone born after 1980 or so.

So yeah, hardly the preeminent Nightmare on Elm Street outing. Assuming there even is one.

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A Chronology on Elm Street, Part 2

Freddy's Nightmares:

A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Series:

"Sister's Keeper"

Okay, so that guy in our previous installment who led the mob in burning Freddy alive, only to become his first (or possibly second) dream victim? There was a reason he was so aggressive about getting rid of Freddy Krueger: his hot, blonde, twin daughters were next on Freddy's hit list, and now that Freddy's a killer dream ghost, they still are. I guess it takes Fred a while to power up at this point though, because a decent amount of time seems to have passed since their pop's death, long enough for the more stable of the two to be pretty much over it. The other one keeps having dreams about Freddy though, and when she gets hurt in these dreams it's her sister who feels it. This, of course, is based on the old myth that if you, say, fuck one twin, the other one will also have an orgasm. (Actually, if you were fucking her neither one of them would have an orgasm, but you get what I mean.)

Freddy does a good job of playing the sisters off against each other for a while (classic), but eventually they're both on the same page and decide to enter their shared dream and confront him together. Unfortunately, their brilliant plan ("We'll just wish him away!") doesn't work, and their double-dose of hotness is immediately reduced to a solo act. It's always tragic when a tasty piece ass is abruptly pulled off the market like that, but I take some consolation in the fact that it's the stable sister who ultimately gets whacked. Given a choice, I always prefer to date the crazy twin.

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The Mr. Satanism Library

A Chronology on Elm Street, Part 1

Freddy's Nightmares:
A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Series:
"No More Mr. Nice Guy"

Wow, you know what that title needs? More colons. So yeah, Freddy Krueger's journey begins here, in this prequel to the first movie that ran as the first episode of his (mostly retarded) anthology TV series. It opens at his pretrial hearing, where he stands accused of murdering several children. He gets off on a technically even faster than I get off watching a Katy Perry video though, and, having clearly dodged a bullet through sheer chance and an unbelievable stroke of luck, he decides to lay low, immediately killing a cop. Wait, what? I was about to point out that this is the worst possible thing he could do (investigating the murder of one of their own is just about the only time the pigs actually do their jobs), but the cop in question, and his gruesome slaying, are never mentioned again. His fellow officers must have really hated him, huh? Beyond this Freddy seems poised to pick up his life right where he left off, even resuming his job as an ice cream truck driver, although I can't imagine he'll get very much business now. There's one thing he didn't count on though: a cry for street justice! (Cf. Twisted Sister.) In service of this, a lynch mob tracks Freddy down and sets him on fire, although even as he burns alive he seems remarkably unconcerned about the situation. It's almost as if he knows that this will transform him into an unstoppable dream ghost. Alternate theory: lazy writing and characterization.

From here we're in pretty familiar territory: the ringleader of the vigilante group starts having nightmares, other people who were involved turn up dead, dreams and reality become hella confused, and by the time Freddy is drilling the ringleader's face off that poor bastard has no idea what's going on. There's also a nicely surreal opening bit featuring a news anchor, and while they couldn't get away with any nudity at least they grace us with a wholly gratuitous image of a hottie in her underwear. Pretty subdued compared to later episodes of this show, and reasonably well done, despite some stupid mistakes. (They really should've used a fan to blow that lingering fog off the courtroom set when the narrative switched back to "reality".) It's probably not worth seeking out on its own, but it would make a nice bonus on a future A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) DVD or Blu-ray. You know, if people still bought those.

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Need more horror? Check out the Mr. Satanism Library.

So... which psychotic, vengeance-crazed teenage girl would YOU ask to the prom?

Carrie White (Carrie - 1976)

 

 

Susan Bradley (Kiss of the Tarantula - 1976)

Jennifer Baylor (Jennifer - 1978)

Rachel Lang (The Rage: Carrie 2 - 1999)

Carrie White (Carrie - 2002)

Carrie White (Carrie - 2013)

It's a tough call, but I think I'd have to go with Rachel. There are no wrong answers though, so defend your choice in the comments section below.

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