kindertrauma

Leviathan

Posted on By unkle lancifer

 

  Once upon a time, in anticipation for the presumed success of James Cameron's forthcoming THE ABYSS, everybody and their mother made an "Alien Under Water" movie. As far as this shrimpy, Johnny-come-early sub-genre goes GEORGE P.COSMATOS'(OF UNKNOWN ORGIN) LEVIATHAN leads the pack. Does that make it a good movie? Well, let's just say that it's good-ish. The cast is certainly worthy, robot-faced PETER WELLER, sexy AMANDA PAYS (who fought a similar fishy fiend in THE KINDRED), GHOSTBUSTER ERNIE HUDSON and C.H.U.D. alum DANIEL STERN are just a few of the familiar faces you'll find floating around in the tank. They're all coworkers looking forward to the end of a 90-day shift 16000 feet under water mining minerals of some sort. (The crew dynamics and nice guy geologist WELLER's struggle with command are well done.) The fly in the soup is the discovery of a sunken Russian vessel "Leviathan" whose cargo includes mutated skeletal remains and hard to resist toxic vodka. Rather than getting a visit from the standard pink elephant, this harmful hooch, spiked with an experimental gene-altering element designed to produce a "homo-aquaticus," has the drinker growing scales and maybe a tentacle or three. After infection is detected, any and all of the crew's attempts to punch out early are snubbed by greedy number crunching, Medusa-eyed corporate talking head MEG FOSTER via picture phone. Written by BLADE RUNNER's DAVID PEOPLES, the film and its morphing monster's effectiveness varies depending on what movie it's currently trying to ape. When it's mimicking THE THING's isolated paranoia and THE FLY's body nausea it fairs well. It's only when it tries to fit into the too big for it's feet (fins?) ALIENS shoes that it stumbles. Legendary STAN WINSTON's special effects work have certainly been better showcased before; early glimpses of the monster are intriguing yet the final reveal of a flounder headed heap are less so. (You know that you're in trouble when the beast you've designed has to rely on an eleventh hour peppering of random sharks to provide back up.) It's hard to be harsh on a film that from it's inception was born to be a second banana, with it's hokey humor, amiable cast and B-monster trimmings LEVIATHAN, blemishes accepted, does ultimately rise above the surface to provide seriously fun, though sometimes groan-inducing late night entertainment.indelible scenes

  • STERN's nick-name "Six-pack" is repeated in every other sentence
  • Mouth in a hand! Me likey
  • Dejesus' (MICHEAL CARMINE R.I.P.) leachy attack
  • Those darn sharks!
  • Psycho-eyed MEG FOSTER (was anyone else forced to watch her in THE SCARLET LETTER in school?) gets punched in the face

Traumafessions :: Adam of DVD Panache on Freddie's Nightmares: Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

Posted on By unkle lancifer

 

 

For me as a kid, scarier than a machete-wielding stalker or malicious aliens were the monsters that allegedly had my best interests in mind: my parents. They weren't bad parents, but thanks to a few movies and television shows I was convinced that some day they could turn out to be evil. The nightmarish parental vision that stayed with me the most was on an episode of FREDDIE'S NIGHTMARES that I caught one night while battling insomnia. "Do You Know Where Your Kids Are?" (1989) concerns a babysitter named Lisa at a seemingly ordinary house with someone very strange in the basement. You see, the family's daughter murdered the mother, and rather than letting the girl rot in jail they simply imprisoned her below the house, with the dumbwaiter serving asher source of nourishment. The parents see nothing wrong with this arrangement, even though occasional screams escape from the basement during the Lisa's stay. Through strange circumstances, Lisa is lured to the basement and imprisoned while the evil girl (who coincidentally looks much like Lisa) escapes. Despite Lisa's many pleas, the family keeps her locked into the basement, thinking it to be one of their daughter's ploys. Months pass and eventually Lisa escapes but to her horror finds the evil girl living at her house, with Lisa's mother mistaking the lass for her own missing daughter. The idea of Lisa being falsely imprisoned haunted me, especially since my family lived in a house with a sprawling basement and a firewood elevator — more than accommodating facilities to jail a troublesome child should my parents see fit.

Thanks Adam! You lucky kids can not only visit Adam regularly at DVD PANACHE but watch the episode of FREDDIE'S NIGHTMARES of which he speaks, in it's entirety HERE. (Both highly recommended!)

Scarecrow Fear-O-Meter

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Who better to judge the scariest scarecrow than a crow? Remember we're not judging the highly variant quality of the below productions, we're just wondering which would be the most effective straw man in thwarting our ebony feathered friends! (In other words, the scarecrow with the LEAST birds on his head is the scariest!) 

Scary scarecrows also appear in the DARK HARVEST series (don't bother), the recent HALLOWED GROWN and a TALES FROM THE CRYPT episode entitled FOUR-SIDED TRIANGLE with NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3's PATRICIA ARQUETTE. A pumpkin headed alternative can also be viewed in JACK-O. If we've forgotten any others let us know in the comments section! 

KINDER NEWS ALERT!!! MAJOR SCARY SCARECROW RATING UPSET!!!! find out more HERE!

Scarecrows

Posted on By unkle lancifer

 

This review is part of the FINAL GIRL film club!!!  

    O.K., I'm not a big fan of heist flicks. I don't really care about who ends up with the money and it's usually really frustrating to watch the money exchange hands for two hours just to end up destroyed at the end. I guess the lesson is "Don't be greedy," which I get, but Cyndi Lauper only took about three minutes to get that point across when she sang "Money changes everything." Be all that, as it may, one way to get me to enjoy your heist movie is to add supernatural murderous scarecrows into the mix, that and a little puppy dog named Dax. SCARECROWS includes both the aforementioned plus an ELAYNE BOOSLER look-alike, and an impressive decapitation as well. The sound effects may be atrocious and the dialogue more so, but when push comes to shove SCARECROWS pushes back with a pitchfork and it pushes back hard. Is gore enough to save a movie? The simple answer is a resounding Y-E-S! SCARECROWS delivers more than just gore though. The beginning stinks and it's just way too dark, but it's got more than a couple surprises up its straw-filled sleeve. Just when you think it's delivered its major high point, two others quickly follow. I admit during the big fight scenes, the punches sound cartoon ridiculous but hey, you knew these guys where working on a limited budget the first time you saw a fake-as-hell explosion. As far as the ever growing killer scarecrow sub-genre goes, this rates pretty high. It's gruesomely relentless and although seriously shoddy in places, enough blood is spilt to justify it and its never quite explained title creatures' existence. 

    indelible scenes
     

    • Yelling "Pennies from heaven!" and getting a face full of blood
    • Wrist saw-ers: A love story
    • You can't go wrong with a talking severed head!
    • "Hey Paco…it's me."
    • Cigar chomper gets sickled after getting stuck in fence
    • Dad's final appearance in the plane followed by more hand grenade play and hilariously badly dubbed screaming

    Traumafessions :: Reader Frost on Return of the Living Dead

    Posted on By aunt john

     

     

    Oh sweet Jesus! what kind of demented individual designed this prop of prepubescent terror? I was an active lad of about 7 years old in 1985, when this film was released. Getting dirty with my Matchbox cars, playing on the rail road tracks, and attempting to get our neighbor's daughter to play doctor. VCRs were something of a rare novelty back in those days, and so it was destined to be; a Curtis Mathis shop opened up, in the humble little town where I lived. They sold VCRs, and rented VHS tapes; Ingenious! My father surprised us all one day, with a brand new VCR, and 3 movies: IT'S ALIVE, C.H.U.D., and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD. With that milestone of change in my childhood, began my long, disturbing, depraved, and unhealthy fixation with horror movies. It was with the 3rd film we watched, that the single most disturbing image I have ever seen (besides the Joanie Laurer porn video) was burned into my retinas and into my soul, forever. He lunged out, trying to eat the brains of a group of spray painted misfits…He was the infamous zombie, known in the horror world, as TARMAN! 

    Unkle Lancifer sez: Thanks Frost, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD is definitely one of the greats and "Tarman" is damn traumatizing! The one scene that always got to me is that re-animated split anatomy doggie model. I'm not sure how or if it could hurt me but that was seriously screwed up! 

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