THE COMPANY OF WOLVES Isn't About Company or Wolves

[Warning: For this review, I took the places where there'd usually be comedy and replaced it with intelligence. I did it because "smart" is the new sexy. And comedy is the old "fat."]

Every now and then the Shocktober Spectacular tries to outsmart me. I hate it when it does that and I really wish it’d stop. When I’m watching a horror movie, I want to see Jason take something, preferably Manhattan, and I want to see him take it from naked girls and stereotypically jive-talking black guys with red leather jackets and boom boxes on their shoulders. With that said, when I’m in college, I’d prefer it if Jason didn’t walk into my class and try to machete me. The point is, I don’t want my horror movies to teach me anything just like I don’t want my PSYC 101 class to try to kill me.

Check out that movie poster. If you put that picture on your movie’s box, your movie goddamned well better be a horror movie. The Company of Wolves is not a horror movie...it's the scariest type of movie of them all…the metaphor. It’s even the worst kind of metaphor because it’s a metaphor that poses as a horror movie. That’s like seeing what’s obviously a Nintendo game under the tree on Christmas, and then unwrapping it and finding out its Winter Games. Thanks, Grandma. I'd rather've gotten fucking socks.

The Company of Wolves is a modern (read: 1984) take on Little Red Riding Hood. It centers around a pretty girl who is obsessed with the occult, and, more specifically, werewolves. Not helping the matter is her grandmother, who is constantly telling her werewolf-related stories. Each time she does, the movie cuts away from the main story and shows the events of the grandmother's story as its being told. The first story is about a boy who tries to buy a love potion from a mysterious traveling stranger (The Phantom Menace’s General Zod): a potion that ends up turning him into a wolf. The second story is told by the girl herself, about a pregnant Victorian wench who crashes her baby’s daddy’s wedding-day party and gets revenge by turning the hoity-toity attendees into wolves*. The movie ends with Steven Tyler, pictured above, seducing the lead girl, then turning into a werewolf, and then carrying the girl away with a band of wolves, who, I’m assuming, were all also once metal singers too.

* In all my years of trying to be funny, this intended-to-be-serious sentence is probably the funniest thing I’ve ever typed.

In its defense, The Company of Wolves is an absolutely beautiful film. The movie is hazy, mystic, and dreamlike, and with its shattering porcelain head decapitations and bird eggs that hatch tiny human babies, it totally wins this year's “what the mother fuck?!” award. The Company of Wolves was an abstract artistic masterpiece--a smart, clever, and dare I say genius film that, in it’s time, received loads of critical acclaim. Unfortunately, this is the Shocktober Spectacular, where we money shot all over critical acclaim’s face. Alas, it’s time for my review’s shocking twist ending.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say “film metaphor,” think Signs. Signs was advertised through and through as an alien movie. The truth is, the alien ad campaign was just a gimmick to get people into the theatres. Signs is as much about aliens as The Warriors was. Signs is really a movie about a misdirected preacher’s redemption of faith, but NOBODY would’ve went to go see it if it was advertised as such. And The Company of Wolves isn’t about werewolves. It’s about…well...

In tonight's (HALLOWEEN NIGHT'S!) movie, werewolf-ism (a word?) was a metaphor for the onset of adulthood in our heroine. Consider that once a month, there's a “full moon" that turns werewolves, otherwise normal people, into frightful monsters. Sound familiar? The tip-off was when, at the beginning of the film, the heroine was said to be "in bed with cramps.” My acting teacher once stated so correctly that "every single thing, no matter how little it is, appears in a movie for a reason." In the endless writes and re-writes, the word "cramps" could've just as easily been "a cold," or "mumps" or "the herp," but it wasn't. It was "cramps." Plus, the running thread of the main story of the movie was some boy who was obsessing over the girl, and her hemming and hawing about whether or not to give in to his advances. Each "side story" that was told was somehow sexually themed, and they both ended with the characters turning into wolves—or suffering—as a result of their "adult" choices or actions. Werewolves are scary. For the teenager, adulthood—more specifically, the acceptance of responsibility that come with it—is also frightening.


If you're looking at this picture right now, you're totally learning about the birds and the bees.

The knockout punch of my interpetation comes at the end of the movie, when the wolves swarm the girl’s cottage. The film makes a point of showing them tearing up her room and trashing all her shit. I think this destruction of all her childhood trinkets represents the onset of womanhood. She’s fallen for the abovementioned boy, no matter how much she doesn’t want to admit it to herself: she kicks and screams as the pack of wolves overwhelm her and carry her off. Face it girl…from now on out it’s gonna be guys, not dolls. It sucks. I distinctly remember the day when I stopped playing with G.I. Joes and got into girls. Last Tuesday.

Aw...aw...awwww yeah, bitches! You like that? You like that? Don't think for one second that just because I have more Transformers toys sitting on my computer than I have girls' phone numbers in my phone that I won't drop some science on your ass in a second, because I will. I am SO on to you, The Company of Wolves. You think I’m not, but I am. Audition tried to pull this same shit last year, and you saw what I did to it.

Fuck you, film metaphor. I’m your worst nightmare, and you are my bitch.

ALICE, SWEET ALICE Hates Fat People

Alice isn't really a bad girl. When it came down to it, all she was guilty of was being a bitch while on her period and putting roaches on a fat guy. Let's be honest--all girls are bitches on their period, and I think you're doing society a huge disservice if you're not putting roaches on fat people.

The devil really got it bad in the movies of the late '70s, but only Alice, Sweet Alice had the balls to make God the antagonist. That's why I liked it, because sometimes, isn't that just how it is? You know how actors are always thanking God in their Oscar acceptance speechs? Why doesn't anyone ever blame God when they lose?

Alice, Sweet Alice is about a girl in an over-religious family who, of course, is presented to be the movie's lead villian a la The Good Son, even though the majority of her family spend the majority of the movie slapping the shit out of her and totally deserve any knifings they may possibly be getting in the future. Typical horror-movie killings occour until about halfway through the movie, when we find out who the real killer is. It was someone who was wearing the exact same costume that Alice liked to wear, and it's important to note that the movie's characters spent the whole movie investingating the murders, but they still swore up and down that the killer was Alice until the real killer revealed themself at the end. Their detective work involved an entire police force and it's modern equipment. It apparently didn't involve looking at the killer and noticing the person was three times taller than Alice.

I only write about things that I can joke about, so I'm not going to go into detail about the greatest movie death involving a shoe I've ever seen, but it was awesome. Aside from this, the creepiest thing about Alice, Sweet Alice was Alice's 450 lb. (at least) landlord who would've been plenty disgusting WITHOUT the huge piss-stain on his pants.

One of my favorite things about Alice, Sweet Alice was how Brooke Shields' name was in a bigger font than the movie title's on the box, but she was in the movie for about five minutes. It figures that a movie about girls would lure me in with this bait-and-switch treachery, because real girls do this to guys all the time. I can't tell you how many times I've been to Dixie's and bought shot after shot for the hot girl at the table, only to find out the one who really liked me was the fat friend.

You know what? I've been watching these movies all October, and Alice Sweet Alice was the first creepy movie I've seen all month. Three Jason heads. And lest you think my writings have no social value, the moral of this review is this: put down that twinkie and hop on the treadmill right now, or somewhere, when you least expect it, a girl will put roaches on you. If you think she won't, you're only lying to yourself.

Yes, RETURN TO OZ is a horror movie

In theory, Return to Oz is the greatest movie ever made. Consider this: You've got perhaps the most well-known movie of all time, which has survived decades being widely accepted as THE quintessential family movie, and some guy was presented with the task of producing a sequel. This guy, who I imagine has the biggest balls ever and is probably Sam Elliot, says, "Okay, I like the original, I understand they show it every Christmas and Thanksgiving, I know that this is usually the first movie kids ever see, but it's just a little too faggy. I say we ace the munchkin dance sequences and replace them with:

- Dorothy narrowly escaping electroshock therapy.

- Evil howling clowns with wheels for hands and feet.

- A desert that turns anyone who steps on it into sand.

- A queen who decapitates her victims. Also, make sure she collects the heads, and if you can, try to show her walking around without a head and have her try to take off Dorothy's head and put it on her body.

- A room where people who touch anything are turned into antiques forever.

- Scary, scary fucking living rocks.

Plus, how perfect is it that the little girl who plays Dorothy is Fairuza Balk, known for her role as lead witch in The Craft, as well as for just being her generally creepy self. This is how sequels need to be done: by taking out one thing that sucks about a movie and replacing it with about ten things that are bad-ass. All thats missing was tits. Honestly, at the rate they went at, I can't beleive they didn't work in a Dirty Sanchez or two.

I'm kind of cheating here because I saw this movie once when I was a kid, and I HAD TO LEAVE THE THEATRE. No bullshit. The sequal to The Wizard of Oz has actually been firmly established in my personal lore as one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. Having finally re-faced my fears, I can still say that it's alot creepier than today's fare, and certainly not for kids just as much now as it was back then.


I'm not sure what this Japanese subtitle translates to, but it's probably "HA! Now you prepare for ultimate super brain cook!"

Return to Oz made me long for a time when we all weren't a bunch of pussies. I was going to do a whole post on this topic, but for starters: we're all a bunch of pussies. You know how people see "shocking" movies like The Devil's Rejects and say, "there's no way a movie like that would've--or could've--been made twenty years ago."? Bullshit. One of my favorite examples is a rare NBC miniseries called Something is out There, that had more blood and rad face eviscerations than Alien Vs. Predator and Freddy Vs. Jason combined. The perfect example is A Clockwork Orange. I know A Clockwork Orange may seem tame compared to today's movies, but today's movies never would've existed if A Clockwork Orange hadn't set the precident. I don't believe some other movie would've eventually been made to set the precident, I believe a precident would never have been set. To rephrase, imagine A Clockwork Orange had never been made, and a movie producer in 2005 was given the script to A Clockwork Orange as we know it. It never would've gotten made without being toned down to one of the lamest things to ever make you roll your eyes and say, "man, that was gay." It would've joined the hundreds and hundreds of "that could've been good, but..." movies I've seen in the last few years, because executives are scared to take chances. They're scared, unwilling, and unable to dare to offend, due mostly to a split-second nipple sighting at a Super Bowl halftime show, which further infuritates me that the public finds nipples so offensive. I've found that when you try to make everyone happy, you just make more people pissed. There's no way in hell Return to Oz would've been made to day, considering that it's scarier than any horror movie I've seen since The Ring. And it for damn sure wouldn't have been marketed as a kid's movie, which it so shamelessly was in the '80s. Because today's kids are pussys. If you're reading this and you're under 10 and don't believe me, go call your dad a fag and see if he spanks you.

Viva la '80s.

Three Jason heads.

CHOPPING MALL!! Robots...with lasers!

Mall security guards. Those three words conjure in your mind the image of nature’s most wondrous combination of hiked-up pants and birth defects. Malls hire these people because, well, we have to put them somewhere. The America of the 2000s says, “Give people a chance.” The America of the ‘80s says, “Fuck that, pussy.” Chopping Mall asks the question you and I have been asking for years: “why hire the retarded when you can hire robots with lasers?”

Chopping Mall is about a group of kids who throw a party in a mall after it closes, only to have their awesomely mulletted heads literally handed to them by the mall’s malfunctioning robot security guards. The robots are so born to kill that I’m surprised no one in Hollywood is jumping all over an Alien vs. Predator vs. Chopping Mall. Let’s look at the technical readout. Our robotic rent-a-cops are armed with tasers, and retractable metal claws capable of removing 80s catch phrase-spouting larynxs from throats. I also think they’re equipped with stealth technology, considering that no one in the movie seems to hear them until they’re heads are being crushed by the robots’ commerce-protecting treads. I know the above arsenal could take out a police force or two—much less the guy who takes an extra toothpicked sample from the food court’s Chinese restaurant—but if these weapons didn’t work, the robots also have—when they’re not spending half the movie forgetting that they have them—laser beams. Laser beams that sound like this: “Peeew! Peeew! Na na na na!! Peeeew Peeeeeeeew!”

Just because I’m going to spend the rest of this article talking about the robot’s lasers, don’t think that that was my only problem with Chopping Mall. It wasn’t. I had a lot. But people, let me tell you something. I’ve lived through two “wars,” and in all the media coverage I watched at work when I should’ve been writing horror movie reviews during time I should’ve spent working, I never saw us deploy anything that shot lasers. But apparently, in 1986, there was some mall that has three laser-shooting robot security guards. Motherfucker, South Park Mall is the nicest mall in North Carolina and just last year they got toilets that flush by themselves. Speaking of, they also have a guy with a tip jar in the bathroom. I stiff him every time I go in, and I've never had to duck anything that looked like a laser beam because of it. And what kind of crimes are going on in malls that require robots with lasers? I know that every now and then someone will bring a coke into Ambercrombie. I know that sometimes, kids think it’s funny to walk up the “down” escalator. You could put an end to both of these with signs. Last time I checked, Osama was flying planes into our Trade Centers, not our Orange Julius’s. Let’s get those robots out of the Kay-Bees and into the front lines where they need to be.



Perhaps Chopping Mall was a metaphor for the American government’s missallcoation of resources, or perhaps it was just a great way to show me tits, robots, and head explosions. The answer to that question we may never know, but we will know this: I give Chopping Mall three Jason heads, making it this season’s highest scorer. Here’s why. Movies just don’t come any more fun than this, especially 20 years after they were made. It earned all three of those stars because it’s a huge clusterfuck of ‘80s film stereotypes that, at the time, were cool, and to think I live in a country were there was a time when this shit was ever cool really makes me smile.

BASKET CASE!!!

[If you're just joining us, welcome. What's going on here is, I spend every October reviewing horror movies. It's called the Shocktober Spectacular. If that's not your bag, come back in November, when I get back into the normal swing of things. Like making fun of the poor.]

You know how sometimes you’re flipping though the cable stations late at night, and you’re unlucky enough to flip by HBO during one of those Real Sex documentaries at the exact moment that a circle of old naked men are wearing Indian headdresses and standing around a campfire? You wish you could un-see it, but you can’t. Stretch the shock of that eyeball trauma over 90 minutes, and that’s what Basket Case is. 90 minutes of old man penises.

My friend Kevin has heard me talk about this movie for years, but I’ve never pulled the trigger on it. When I finally confirmed that the movie’s main villain was a head and arms, it became pretty obvious that I wouldn’t be leaving the video store with anything else. The joke was on me, however. I’ve been where few men dare to go, and I’ve seen things that would turn the very soul the darkest black, but I’ve never seen anything like Basket Case. I mean, this shit is bananas. B-a-n-a-n-a-s.

I’m going to tell you what Basket Case is about in as few sentences as possible, and please understand that I’m not making any of this up. Basket Case is about a guy who was born with an extra head and pair of arms growing out of his side—an incomplete conjoined twin. The head and arms were amputated but somehow continued to live, despite not having what scientists refer to as a “respiratory system” or “organs.” In the movie, the normal-looking other brother walks around with this glob of play-doh in a wicker basket, unleashing him on the doctors who performed the amputation years ago. The ball of paper mache kills them in ways that defy the very laws of sanity, as we’ll discuss in a bit, but DO NOT LET THIS DISSUADE YOU. If I ever, ever have a head and arms growing out of my side, I’m giving you permission to amputate immediately it with whatever you have on hand. A knife, a spoon, your wallet, a Nintendo controller, I don’t care. That was my problem with Basket Case from the get-go: why would you want to kill the people that saved you a lifetime of P.E. class shower humiliation? From me you’d get a Playstation II and bottle of Dom in the mail as thanks for the operation, plus a lifetime of gratitude. If, immediately following, a head and arms did happen to show up and kill you, I promise you I would have had nothing to do with it.



It's almost impossible to understand what I'm talking about without a visual aid, so there you go. There were four things about Basket Case which I thought were absolutely hilarious. One: the "Basket Case," as we'll call him, had a head, so I'll buy that he had a brain, so I wouldn't really get that worked up if he just spent the whole movie beating people at chess. That, however, was not the M.O.. The thing has foot-long arms and no legs, and yet it spent the entire movie throwing couches around, breaking tables in half, and busting through more walls than Kool-Aid man. Plus, it ate packs and packs of raw hot dogs, even though it didn't have a stomach to digest them in or an ass to shit them out of. Two: since the budget of Basket Case is a few dollars over what you put in the meter today, the “Basket Case” is a disaster of terrible terrible stop-motion animation—either the animators forgot to include about 50 poses in between shots, or God gives all people born as just a head and arms the power to teleport across rooms as a consolation. Three: midway through the movie, the “Basket Case” escapes the basket. His brother finds him just 30 or so minutes later, on the other side of New York City. Someone with legs never could've walked to where he was that fast, which means the “Basket Case” had to have cabbed it. Not only is that a hilarious visual, but it probably really pisses Danny Glover off, with his whole “why can’t black people get a cab in New York?” thing. Apparently the pecking order among cabbies is white people, heads, and then maybe black people. Four, just like in the howevermany other movies I've reviewed, no one can defeat the "Basket Case," even though their kids probably spent all day Saturday kicking something about his size around a field before enjoying Capri Sun and orange slices.

Basket Case has put me in a serious quagmire. Reading the paragraph above, one would think that this would be right up my alley, but I got a really ill vibe from watching it. The movie didn’t laugh at itself, it took itself seriously, and seriously, it’s a pretty sick movie. The effects are horrible, the acting atrocious, and the film would’ve actually cost more if the sets would’ve been built out of Legos, but the tone is there, more speciffically, in the demented closeness and love between the normal human brother and his killer head counterpart . Basket Case is just not fun. In fact, it’s pretty depressing and hideous. 2 Jason heads worth of depressing and hideous.

Up next, Alice Sweet Alice for Liz, followed by Truth or Dare?, for mystery woman Stephanie.

Today's Holiday Special Brought To You By X-Entertainment...PART II!

I'm really busy. No review today. In the meantime, peep these...I got some more in my jacket. Man what are these, condoms? Uh uh, Sex Packets.

Click here for another yearly foray into X-Entertainment's Halloween insanity, entitled "A Spooky Conversation." That's all it is--nothing more. Also, click here for the hilarity I linked to for last year's XE Halloween special: A Christmas Story II: Ralphie Goes to Hell. Note how it makes fun of the exact same thing I pointed out in my Dolls review. Now is my shit together or is my shit together?

Become a fan of this guy's site. He's a genius.

That is all.

Five Years Later, I Still Won't Like THE GRUDGE

Do you know who The Grudge is? The Grudge is that black guy at your gym with the Iverson jersey and the Jordans who can't hit a fucking shot.

The Grudge really really really wants me to think it's scary, and it will show me whatever I want to see in order to convince me that it is. It had all the 2000's horror movie staples : a rainy, drab look, tons of shock scares, and scary Japanese girls. But you can touch first, second, and third all you want, but you damn well better touch "home" before you run over and slap Jeff Kent on the ass.




Here's the deal. The Grudge had one of the creepiest shots I've ever seen in a movie. In fact, let's take a look at it right now.



Don't look away. Take a good long stare. It's okay. We're adults. You can admit it. That's some scary repugnant shit you're looking at. But do you know why I could sit two feet in front of my TV and watch it with Eyes Wide Open starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman? Because The Grudge showed me something scarier than this 45 minutes ago. And then again 10 minutes after that. And than again and again and again. By the time it got to it's climax, which is what's pictured above, I had already seen that same thing 10 times. In my opinion, Clea DuVall's death scene ursuped Martin Hendersens in The Ring (My vote for creepiest scene in a movie ever), but it didn't happen at the end, it happend 30 min. into the film. And then they did it again, and again, and again, thus detracting from the punch of the first scene and the future shock of the movie's finale, which would've been on time had it been something new for us to look at.

Plus, this film couldn't have ripped off The Ring more if it starred Namoi Watts and called itself The Circle.

2 1/2 Jason heads.

DOLLS is just two letters away from "Troll."

As far as I’m concerned, everyone who’s died during this year’s Spectacular has deserved what they’ve gotten, and in my opinion they haven’t gotten it bad enough? Why? Because last year, people were dissolving in the innards of tons and tons of gelatinous mass. Now I don’t know about you, but that’s how I want to go—either like that or in a lightcycle duel. This year, however, people are dying in housefires set by monkeys. Man, there’s even more honor in getting snapped in the ass with a gay towel by Freddy Kruger than in dying in a housefire set by something that flings shit at you at your zoo.

Dolls was on cable, so I watched it. It was a genuinely creepy movie with a lot of wicked deaths, but the point is: none of them should’ve happened in the first place. Do you realize that the combined heights of the killers in the last three reviews comes to just under three feet? In a weird way, though, that’s why I love Dolls.

In Dolls—and in Troll—whenever a character saw the title villain approaching, they threw up their hands and screamed like their dicks were on fire. I find this hilarious, because, in the three Hellraiser movies I’ve seen, every time Pinhead aka The Lord of Pain, shows up, whoever’s in the room at the time casually strikes up a conversation with him. I am not kidding. No one has ever flipped out when the walls of the room split open and an eight-foot tall man with blue skin and nails in his head appeared. I’ll tell you what—for a manifestation of pure evil Pinhead is pretty chatty, and if you’ve at least skimmed How to Win Friends and Influence People, you can probably talk yourself out of an eternity of underworld face-hookings. On the other hand, I wouldn’t laugh at you if you didn’t, cause he's Pinhead. But dolls who come to life?

Imagine for a second that your G.I. Joes came to life and tried to kill you. You shouldn’t be doing anything else but tying them up, putting little blindfolds on them, and saying, “Alright, solider. Knowing is half the battle…and the other half is this firework up your ass! And by the way, while you all were oversees, I was home fucking your wives!” before blowing them to action figure hell. And in the above sentence, anything else especially includes “getting killed by them.”


"Alright Pinhead, maybe Connery was a better Bond than Moore, but you have to admit, Walken was great in A View to a Kill. And don't tell me Tonya Roberts didn't create a little movement down below, if you know what I mean!"

Vs.


"NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! AHHHH SWEET HOLY JESUS, IT'S AS IF IT'S EATING MY VERY SOUL!!!"

I liked Dolls a lot. It was fun, it was great to crack on with the friend I watched it with, and it had some really awesome shit in it, like that scence depicted in their movie poster above, which is an actual death scene in the film. 2 ½ Jason Heads.

TROLL was on Cable. So I Watched it. I'm Sick.

[Sorry for the delay—I’ve been out sick. Plus, I’ve got the most unbelievable Full Metal Jacket story to share, but you’re gonna have to call me to hear it. Shocktober Spectacular aficionados, I’ll make it up to you this weekend, I promise—ed.]

Some people are terrified of midgets, which is understandable—they have really creepy hands. I was going to review Marley’s Revenge yesterday, but I honestly didn’t know enough synonyms for “it was like a groin kick to my eyes” to complete the review, so I thought maybe I’d watch Troll to help me think of some. And oh boy did I!

It’s not hard to usurp Troll in the comfort of your own home. You can re-make it for more money then they spent on the original if you simply buy a flashlight and re-enact it on your wall with shadow puppets. If you can change the pitch of your voice when alternating between the male and female characters, you’ll have better acting. And if you watch yourself do it, you’ll have more of a fan base. Even better…if any of your friends walk in on you while you’re doing all this, they won’t laugh at you as much as they would’ve if they would’ve walked in on you watching Troll. Editor’s note: if you’re watching Troll, reading this review, or any combination there of, you probably don’t have that many friends.

I’m not saying Troll is terrible, but the only reason I’m not saying that is because you can pretty much come to that conclusion on your own after reading the first two paragraphs. What I am saying is that Troll is the worst kind of bad—the type of bad that’s not even fun. The perfect illustration of the difference: last year, when I saw the first ménage a tois I’ve ever seen between one boy and two Killer Klowns, I said, “What the fuck am I watching?!!” But when I was watching Troll, it was just, “What the fuck am I watching?”

Troll is about a troll who takes over a previously troll-less apartment complex and turns everyone in it into trolls. Tenants in this “most celebrity loaded apartment complex since the one in Friends” apartment complex include Sonny Bono, June “fucking” Cleaver, and Julia-Loius Dreyfuss, in what I call her “Feeding.” The best thing about this movie is Dreyfuss, rising above her material. The worst thing about this movie is everything else, aside from two points which I will touch on now.

The main character’s name is “Harry Potter.” It was so awesome to watch a movie with “Harry Potter” in it and not have to keep thinking about how hot Hermione is going to be in five years. But let’s not let that distract from how nuts it is that this came out in ’86. Everyone who knows me knows how Zach Braff stole Garden State from me, which gives me and Troll a certain, special, genital fondling kinship.

Nobody can beat up the troll. Anyone who’s ever watched WWF and tried to do the moves on their friends has found out that they can’t, because their friends weigh too much. If the recipient of these moves is three feet tall, however, all bets are off. In Troll, seven people are overtaken by the troll, and only one of them is under 30. I watched this movie for an hour and a half, and I never once saw the troll get Tombstone Piledriven, which I do to the majority of people I see who are under 4 feet anyway, regardless of if they're trolls who are trying to kill me or not. It's a 3-foot troll, people. Anyone--even Daniel Larusso--could've kicked it's ass in any number of ways. Much to my dismay, the only move anyone used against him was to raise their hands and say "Nooooooooooo!!!!" Regarding it's effectiveness, well, they were all trolls seconds later.

In summary, Troll is probably the lowest-budget movie to happen since the Empire Strikes Back flip book I made in the back row during Social Studies in 4th grade, but it’s a lot less entertaining. For those of you keeping score, this year’s Shocktober Spectacular is 0 for two. The Shocktober Spectacular hates it when it’s 0 for two. If anyone is reading this, and I know they aren’t, but company policy requires me to ask anyway, someone PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT A RECOMMEND A “GOOD” BAD HORROR MOVIE!!!!

1 Jason head. Is. Your. Rating.

Oh. MONKEY SHINES.

In California, money doesn’t grow on trees. Unfortunately, neither does gas or horror movies, which really makes me wonder why so many people come out here. After yesterday’s day-long expenditure of funds, I realized that I was just one day away from October 1st, which, if it was a movie starring Tom Cruise, would be called O:1, and I still didn’t have a movie to review or enough money for gas to go rent one. Grabbing the remote, I fell back on my only option: your Earth “cable.” Beggars can’t be choosers, and I’ve never thought of myself as either, but I still had to settle on whatever movie Satan and his minions of Halloween Horror Demons felt like dealing. I definitely got the “Asshole” hand with all the 3s.

Since this intro is shaping up to be longer than most of the actual reviews I write, I’m gonna quit pussyfooting and get down to what really brings the boys to the yard. The only movie on TV was Monkey Shines. You know the Shocktober rules: I’m only allowed to review movies I’ve never seen before. Which means Showtime couldn’t have picked a better movie.

Monkey Shines has a VERY creepy movie poster, which cleverly plays off of America's fear of cymbals. But that's it. It’s very hard not to be prejudice against a movie that’s about a killer monkey. When that same movie shows you male nudity in its first 10 seconds, it’s like a gay black midget taking the nuts out of his mouth just long enough to heckle an Alabama civil war reenactment. But the Shocktober Spectacular review committee is fair and just. In fact, Monkey Shines took a turn for the better when it took something that would normally suck—getting hit by a truck—and made it look ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS.

Monkey Shines is about a quadrapalegic man who is assigned a monkey to help him perform his daily functions, which is why I hope I never become quadrapalegic. I can think of at least 10 things I do daily that I’d hate to have to rely on a monkey to help me perform. What the quadrpalegic didn’t know was that his particular monkey was, in a past life…a lab monkey. It spent months being injected with a serum made out of human brains, which made it smarter, which I thought was interesting. Is that how things work? If it would’ve been injected with bicep, would it have gotten stronger? If it would’ve eaten kidney, could it have held its liquor better? I’m gonna call bullshit on this theory because I know a guy who spent a few months in jail, and he doesn’t smell any worse at all, even though I’m sure he ate his share of…never mind. Just you never mind.

So anyway, the monkey develops some sort of a mind connection with Quad City DJ, which he uses to do 90 minutes of things that weren’t in the least bit scary. The monkey only kills two people, and both of those deaths are off-screen. And in the first movie of the Spectacular, nonetheless. Here I am at the World Series, and I’ve got my worst batter hitting leadoff. This movie was whack-tacular. I know we’ve been rubbing shampoo in rabbit’s eyes for years, but damn it, this movie should spawn at least five special interest groups protesting animal’s cruelty against us.

On a side note, this movie’s subtitle was, seriously: an experiment in fear, which are both the raddest and least true words to ever be used to describe a movie about an evil monkey.

Monkey Shines gets ONE out of five Jason heads just for showing up, because the Shocktober Spectacular is a lot like the Special Olympics. Everyone who finishes the race gets a hug, no matter what place they come in.

For Tuesday: Twenty years before the Sith were getting their revenge, Marley was getting his. Tomorrow, I’ll be getting mine.