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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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