BLOOD BEACH!

Look at that movie poster. How rad does that look? Well, don't get excited--never has a movie promised so much and delivered so little. Oh, it had it's beach swallowings, but they were some of the most lethargic beach swallowings I've ever seen. I'm telling you--I've seen people panic more when they've driven half-way to work and realized they left thier coffee on the roof of their car. I remember how, when I was a kid, I would go absolutely insane when my hamster bit me or I got a splinter from our wooden deck. I'm pretty sure I'd take those fits at least a tad bit further if my favorite vacation spot straight-up ate me. Not the guys in Blood Beach, however. These guys gave barely a struggle, as if they lived in a world where there everyday routines consisted of their morning coffee, a few minutes on the treadmill, and--eh--another beach-eating. Honestly--these people did not care that they were being eaten by a sand creature. I think I even saw one of the victims look at his watch and roll his eyes on the way down. Like he was thinking, "Great! Now I'll never get to the store on time!" The worst was when, honestly, as one of the characters was being swallowed, he simply looked at another character and said, "help me" in the same tone of voice I'd use to ask someone to help me open a pickle jar. You see that bitch in the movie poster? She's not screaming...she's yawning.



There's a HUGE difference between bad-awesome and just bad. The biggest offense of Blood Beach was that, at it's core, it simply wasn't scary. However, a low budget, bad creature effects, and terrible acting don't translate into a low Shocktober Spectacular rating--In fact, it's usually the opposite. However, Blood Beach was not only not scary--it was not fun.


To Blood Beachs' credit, I can say one thing about it that I've never been able to say about another movie in the entire Shocktober Spectacular: the acting was phenomenal. Burt "Paulie" Young and John Saxon were on time. They were so good it was almost as if someone forgot to tell them they were in a movie called about a vacation destination whose favorite food is LADIES!


Back to the great acting, though, let's be honest...no one rents a movie called Blood Beach for great acting. The rent it for blood beachings. It's like that move The Gift. It was a fantastic film all around, and Keanu Reeves gave what was inarguably the performance of his career. To bad the only thing you remember about The Gift is Katie Holmes' tits.

Blood Beach is The Gift without Katie Holmes' tits.

One Jason Head. Because if you call a movie "Blood Beach," it damn well better have some blood in it.

NIGHTBREED!

Every now and then I actually end up enjoying the horror movie I'm reviewing. This, obviously, is good news for me while I’m watching the film, but bad news for me in the long run, because it means I don't have much to make fun of in my review, and long-time followers know that pointing out others' misfortunes is my bread and butter. This was sort of the case with Nightbreed. The movie wasn't bad at all, but all was not lost, for I had to look no farther than the movie's box to find that sweet lifeblood of the Shocktober Spectacular: unintentional hilarity. Here's what I'm talking about:

"A NEW REASON TO FEAR THE NIGHT!!!..."

...screams the movie poster, and it wasn't kidding! Right under that very warning stands a troupe of genetic atrocities so repugnant—so foul—that the very site of their deformed visages would turn even the hardest man’s soul black. Let's have a look:

Pictured, from R to L: Porcupine woman; Satan (aka "The Devil"); fat man with snakes living in his stomach; Lizard-Man (with parts of your little sister still probably stuck in his teeth from lunch); Craig Sheffer, girl with cat for half a head, man with….uh…wait a minute. Can we go back a couple of people? Craig Sheffer?!

What part of that dreamy coif and those chisled cheekbones give me a "new reason to fear the night?!" I know Craig must be tough because he's wearing a leather jacket, but I should probably point out one more time that standing behind him is A LIZARD-MAN!!!! That guy is a new reason for me to fear the night, the day, and pretty much any open spaces in general. Craig Scheffer?! He's a new reason for girls to cross out Jon Brandis's name on their Trapper Keepers, replace it with his, and surround it with tiny little hearts.

You know what my favorite part of this picture is? Imagining the fortitude Craig Sheffer's character must have had to stand in the company of these guys, right up front, in that pose, with that mad-dog look on his face, like he's actually the scariest one in this photo. Craig's never had a zit in his life! On the contrary, two people to his right is a man with a moon for a head.

I don't want to ruin things for Nightbreed fans, but I'm very excited about Nightbreed 2, in which the breed will be joined by two more reasons to fear the night:


Cindy Crawford, and


Elmo.

In all fairness, when Craig’s character gets angry, his eyes go red and he gets some lines on his face, but that’s when the real horror starts--when you realize that the monster Craig Sheffer is still better looking than you are.

Another thing about Nightbreed that had me rolling my eyes and uttering a heartfealt "What the hell?!" was the "mysterious" town of Midian. According to the movie's lore, "Midian" is a town inhabited by the abovementioned monsters. It's shrouded in secracy...while obviously dismissed by the sane as "myth," some people still beleive it to be real. Craig Sheffer's character has devoted his life to discovering Midian, but to no avail, which is why I thought it was absolutely hilarious that, later in the movie, Midian was INSTANTLY located by:

his girlfriend
a bar-hopping floozy (?)
Craig's psycologist
a backwoods store owner
a batallion of cops (?!)

I honestly believe you could put Stevie Wonder behind the wheel of a car and he could take you to Midian. Some seceret...hell, most people have a harder time finding the mall’s bathroom.

All kidding aside, I will now tell you what was really wrong with Nightbreed. It wanted to be more than it was, and, at some point, it very well may have been, but in the end, it wasn’t. The problem was, even after the end result, the director and the producer kept insisting it that it was, when we, the viewing public, had just watched the proof that said it wasn't. Get that? Clive Barker really wanted Nightbreed to be the one thing in the world that pisses me off the most: a horror movie metaphor. However, someone needs to tell Clive that just because you really want something to be something doesn’t mean it actually is, and no amount of jumping up and down and pointing at it and saying it is is going to actually turn it into one. Nightbreed wanted really badly to be legit, and at one point it actually almost achieved it. There’s a delightful scene in which one of the characters is decending into Midian, all the while glimpsing it’s grotesque inhabitants for brief seconds, each one more insanly disfigured than the last, but the scene wasn't frightening. With Danny Elfman’s score behind it, I'd go as far as to call the scene "playful." The monsters weren’t scary—it was almost as if creatures from Beetlejuice had accidently wondered onto the set of Nightbreed. This is due, in part, to the fact that the monsters were never really malicious in the first place, which brings us to the question the movie’s box itself asks, “In the battle of good versus evil, who is man, and who is monster?” I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that by the end I wasn’t rooting for the monsters, and I’d also be lying if I didn’t notice the irony of the movie’s real villain--a human who would don a horrifying mask to give him the face of a monster. Nightbreed was, in essence, a “it’s what’s on the inside that counts,” movie, but with one too many horror movie elements added. The end result was 50 percent horror movie, 50 percent not, and this undeciceviness created a distracting tone that made a possibly brilliant movie only mediocre.

HOUSE OF WAX

You know how sometimes, in the $50 round of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, they’ll ask a ridiculously easy question and give four multiple-choice answers: one of which is obviously right, two that are just kind of there, and a goof answer that is so obviously wrong that you could have birth defects that haven’t even been discovered yet and still not pick it? For example, the question will be something like, “What color is a fire truck?” and the choices will be, “red,” “white,” “yellow,” and “your uncle’s penis in a shopping cart.” Well, if you decide to watch House of Wax, be prepared to spend ninety minutes with a group of kids who not only keep picking “D,” but keep acting surprised when they find out they’re wrong.

I’m not talking about typical “let’s split up—you go check out the woods while I go stick my head in the Iron Maiden and look for clues”- type shit. The characters in House of Wax are so slow they would need an even Specialer Olympics designed for them. For example: imagine you’re posed with the following question. “You’re all alone. While looking for your missing friend, you happen upon a completely deserted town. At the center of the town is a creepy house made of entirely of wax. Despite having just learned that the town was once populated by a wax-sculpture obsessed psycho and the huge “CLOSED” sign on the door, your best plan of action would be to: (A) Realize your friend is hanging from a meathook somewhere and go back home and call dibs on his "X-Box" before anyone else can, (B) regroup with your friends and notify the authorities, (C) Both A and B, or (D) Pick the lock and proceed into the house of wax. Two things worth noting: this type of shit happened throughout the entire movie, and this was actually one of the smarter instances of it happening.

I don’t care how sweet Paris Hilton’s death scene was…this constant moronic logic mentioned above completely ruined the movie for me. That, and the fact that the lead characters are a bunch of asshole punks that you will hate if you are any type of decent human being. By the end of the movie, they’ve chalked up three accounts of breaking and entering, one account of damaged property, and one account of assault. The film itself was molded from the same template as Hostel and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, almost scene-for-scene, right down to the elongated, no cutaway, torture and death scene that all the horror movies of the early 2000s had. The only difference was that in House of Wax, the characters had to break into the house of the killer to get it. I’m telling you: these kids really had to work to get killed. Hopping over fences, tearing down “closed” signs, breaking windows, picking locks—you’d have an easier time escaping from Alcatraz, and even then, your prize for success would be freedom. I honestly believe that if this house’s welcome mat was a pool filled with alligators, these kids still would’ve found a way to get in, and what did they receive for their efforts? Hot wax in their orifices.

I give House of Wax TWO JASON HEADS, and I consider that generous for a movie who’s tough guy is Chad Michael Murray. That’s like saying Justin Timberlake is the toughest member of N’Sync. Maybe he is, but he’s still a member of N’Sync.

I should also note that a good one-and-a-half of those stars were earned by Elisha Cuthbert’s tank top.

Up next, a movie who’s title is only three letters away from being “Night Feeders.”

THE 2006 SHOCKTOBER SPECTACULAR!

My favorite holiday, by far, is Halloween. In fact, the only two things I enjoy more than Halloween are bad '80s horror movies and making fun of things, which is why, every Halloween, I decide to combine the three into one ultimate explosion of spookily-rad comedy.

For the last two years, I've pained my way through a ton of awful, awful horror movies, made fun of them, and called it the Shocktober Spectacular. It's my favoritest thing in the world to do, and I'm excited to announce that the 2006 edition of the Shocktober Spectacular will be beginning on Monday, October 2. I do at least two reviews a week, but since I'm a struggling, out-of-work actor who would, at this point, gladly sleep my way into a Miss Cleo infomercial, it looks like this year I'll be putting up three a week, and maybe even four. Of course, this year's edition will be especially rad because the finale will be a review of Night Feeders, the Citizen Kane of horror movies which stars...me.

If you're new to the Shocktober Spectacular, you can view the groundrules here.

And to get you in the spooky state of mind you can click here and here for a couple of my favorites from years past.

Stop by on Monday for the 2006 season opener!