That Billy Loves Stu thing...

Guess I'll play along, too! My other posts I have planned are taking a while to write so I gotta have some kind of filler.

1: In Ten Words or Less, Describe Your Blog:

Random horror thoughts in a girl's mind.

2: During What Cinematic Era Where you Born?

                                            A: The Classic Horror Era (late 30's to 40's)

                                            B: The Atomic Monster/Nuclear Angst Era (the late 40's through 50's)

                                            C: The Psycho Era ( Early 60's)

                                            D: The Rosemary's Baby Era (Mid to Late 60's)

                                            E: The Exorcism Era (Early to mid 70's)

                                            F: The Halloween Era (Late 70's to Early 80's)

                                            G: The Slasher Era (Mid to late 80's)

                                            H: The Self Referential/Post Modern Era (1990 to 1999)

1985, so I'm on the cusp of the Halloween and Slasher eras, although I guess I grew up more on slashers.

                                    

3: The Carrie Compatibility Question:

                                           (gay men and straight women - make your choice from section A)

                                           A: Billy Nolan or Tommy Ross, who would you take to the prom?

                                           (straight guys and lesbians - make your choice from section B)

                                           B: Sue Snell or Chris Hargensen, who would you take to the prom?

Ugh, I have to choose between those two dorks? I'm gonna go gay for this one and say Sue Snell.

4: You have been given an ungodly amount of money, and total control of a major motion picture studio - what would your dream Horror project be?

Right now my dream is to see all of the Meg books made into movies! It's this kind of badly written but at the same time hella entertaining series of books about the giant prehistoric megalodon shark returning from the oceans depths and wreaking havoc! Four books out right now, but a fifth is on the way. I guess it's not really horror, probably more action, I'd say the shark eats enough people to get a special spot in that "animals run amok" group of horror films.

OR... I might take one of the ideas I've had and see what a real screenwriter can make of them. But I'm not going to share. Not yet.

5: What horror film "franchise" that others have embraced, left you cold?

Although I love the Freddy Krueger character, his whole franchise is kind of a joke, with the exception of the first one and New Nightmare. He's a not a scary killer in the others, he's a freaking comedian.

6:  Is Michael Bay the Antichrist?

You know what? No, he's not. Every movie that he's involved in has the exact same style no matter who is directing, but he's put out some enjoyable flicks - The Rock, Bad Boys, Transformers. I got to give him his cred.

7: Dracula, The Wolf Man, The Frankenstein Monster - which one of these classic villains scares you, and why?

The Wolf Man, because I would rather not be ripped apart and eaten, thank you.

8: Tell me about a scene from a NON HORROR Film that scares the crap out of you:

Raiders of the Lost Ark! The opening scene and the final scene with the MELTING FUCKING FACES absolutely traumatized me as a kid. I used to stop the movie at the scene right before they opened the ark and call it a happy ending.

9: Baby Jane Hudson invites you over to her house for lunch.  What do you bring?

A plastic surgeon, copious amounts of Scotch, and a singing coach.

10: So, between you and me, do you have any ulterior motives for blogging?  Come, on you can tell me, it will be our little secret, I won't tell a soul.

Besides the entire Blogosphere? Well, I like to write and I love horror movies and since making them seems to be out of the question for now, I guess I'll have to write about them. Plus, I love seeing my stuff get "published" per se and seeing what other people think of it. I don't have anybody in my real life that I can talk about horror movies with anyway.

11: What would you have brought to Rosemary Woodhouse's baby shower?

A video camera so she can actually show me what the fucking baby looks like.

12: Godzilla vs The Cloverfield Monster, who wins?

I admit: I don't know jack about Godzilla. But I hear he's pretty bad ass.

13: If you found out that Rob Zombie was reading your blog, what would you post in hopes that he read it?

I'd say, buddy, you've got the original style and it worked the first two times around. Now let's get back to that. Oh, and H2 royally sucked and you should flog yourself for 37 days for making us watch it.

14: What is your favorite NON HORROR FILM, and why?

Oh god, it changes. Right now I'm really into hardcore dramas like Revolutionary Road, but I also still love the Scorsese gangster movies, especially Casino. But then I love classics like Gone with the Wind.

15: If blogging technology did not exist, what would you be doing?

Trying a little harder to get my career as a videographer off the ground.

Movie Review: Let the Right One In

"Best. Vampire. Movie. Ever."

Hm. Really. I gotta say, y'all had me fooled. I was expecting some really great stuff from this movie. Perhaps I wasn't in the right mood to watch a slow-burn romantic vampire movie where I can't tell who the @%$* is a male or female. I get it, I get it. Let the Right One In is about the friendship between two outsiders, about love that's not necessarily sexual. Whatever. It was BORING. There, I said it. I was bored. There were some very nice scenes thrown in there, but on the whole, this movie apparently didn't affect me like it did the rest of the world.

I've never been a big fan of vampire movies on the whole, simply because I hate how it's romanticized. And Buffy, the Vampire Slayer is my favorite TV show ever, but STFU, it became way less about just vampires after the second season. At least this film shows the ugly side of vampires for once, despite still giving it a romanticized feel. "Oh, the poor creature of the night with the hard life. She's so lonely she needs a friend." No. She's a killer. Honestly, she needs to die, she doesn't need a friend. She's got some old guy killing people for her and bringing her blood, which is like WAY worse than her killing people herself. Animals have blood too, nimrod. Ever think of that?

There are some powerful images in this film, I'll admit. Both hospital scenes are striking, and the part where Eli comes in without being invited. That one stuck out to me. Answers a question I didn't know I had: vampires can't come in without an invitation, but what happens if they do just walk in? In Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, they get stopped by an invisible barrier, but that's the only place I've ever seen that happen. We get a much more horrifying answer from Let the Right One In. I also cringed when what's-his-face disfigured himself. Ew.

That's an interesting thing about the movie: it brought back the Renfield-type character to vampire tales, Eli's spider-eating man-bitch, as it were (Buffy fans hopefully got that), who does her dirty work. I guess she's grooming Oskar to be the next man-bitch, as the closing scene indicates. 

There are some lame images in the film, too. The first time Oskar is attacked by the gang of misfits. He just stands there while one of the kids beats him on the legs with a really thin stick. And the kid is crying while he's beating him. WTF? Seriously, Oskar? Just reach out and snap the twig. Problem solved. Instead, you practice stabbing trees and saying stupid shit like, "Squeal like a pig!" 

Apparently both of these kids' acting coach told them to never convey any sort of emotion and just stand there and look somber the whole time and the audience will love it and feel sorry for them. Again, not so much. All these kids do is stand there and say their lines, I felt no emotion from them at all. I've heard the film described as so moving that people even cried. Eh, like I said, maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind to watch a movie like this - especially when I was expecting something much different. 

Gotta say though, I freaking love that DVD cover art. The simplicity of the silhouette against an icy glass is very beautiful and provocative. Kudos on that.

P.S. I hated the setup of the DVD... the audio was automatically set to the English dubbed version instead of the original Swedish. I can read subtitles, dillhole.

True Crime Psychos: Armin Meiwes

Hopefully this can be the beginning of a new series for my blog. I love true crime stories, so perhaps every week or so I can talk about some of these real life monsters that are often the basis for horror films.

The true crime psycho of today is Armin Meiwes, one that many people probably don't know about. Meiwes killed only one person, but the full story behind that killing is the fascinating part. I first heard about Meiwes (MAY-ves) while searching for a book on Jeffrey Dahmer on Amazon. One of the related books was Cannibal: The True Story of the Maneater of Rotenburg. Cannibals interest me (STFU, I'm interested in the psychology behind it) and I'd never heard of this dude so I looked him up.

Armin Meiwes was a German man who lived in the small town of Rotenburg. Much in the style of Ed Gein, he had a dominant mother, a woman angered and embittered from two failed marriages. When Armin was only six, both of his half-brothers left the home and soon his father left too, leaving him alone with his mother, his only companion.

Armin Meiwes

He did not fit in well at school and was often made fun of. Armin missed his brothers and developed a relationship with an imaginary friend named Franky. He first began thinking of cannibalism at the age of eight, thinking that if he were to eat someone, then they would never leave him and would always be a part of him. He fantasized about cannibalism, becoming excited from scenes of slaughter in horror movies, and indeed enjoyed to watch videos of animals actually being slaughtered. One of his strangest quirks was to take pork or beef and mold them into shapes of human hearts, livers, and genitalia - taking pictures of his work to look at later.

Flash forward through the boring parts: Armin grows up, Mommy dies and leaves him all alone, he starts trolling around on cannibal websites. This is where the unbelievable part of the story comes in. He starts putting up personal ads on these cannibal websites saying that he is a hungry cannibal looking for somebody to eat. See, he only wanted to eat a WILLING victim. He met up with a few of them in real life and brought them to his house, showing him a "slaughter room" that he had furnished in one of the unused upstairs rooms of his house. It was complete with a cage, hooks hanging from the ceiling, and a proper butcher's table. He strung up some of his internet dates, but it soon became clear that none of them really wanted Armin to kill and eat them - it was all just fantasy. So he let them go.

Then he met someone for whom the act of being eaten alive was not fantasy. It was this man:

Bernd Brandes

Bernd Juergen Brandes, a 36-year-old engineer from Berlin. Bernd had a fantasy as well: one of self-destruction. He felt guilty about his mother's death in car crash at a young age, and as Lois Jones best describes it in her book "he started to connect his sexuality and his genitalia with the death of his mother. The only way he could see of atoning for her fatal accident was through his own annihilation and endless suffering. Bernd started to dream of being slaughtered and eaten" (From Cannibal, pg. 53). Bernd had rendezvous with male prostitutes, where kinky sex games turned serious when he would ask them to bite his penis off.

Blah blah blah, he meets Armin on the internet and they agree to carry out their fantasies together. When they actually got down to the deed, the first thing they did was cut off Bernd's penis. They tried to eat it raw but could not. Armin went downstairs to fry it, but apparently didn't do it right because it was still inedible. Bernd then lay in a bathtub of warm water as they both waited for him to die. After about 9 hours he was still alive, but unconscious, so Armin stabbed him in the neck.

Then Armin got down to the slaughtering. Apparently, you really CAN learn anything on the internet because from reading his cannibal websites, Armin knew how to butcher a human body. He kept Bernd's head around for a while because he liked talking to it. Bernd's fleshy parts were wrapped in blue plastic, in toto about 66 pounds of flesh for Armin to eat. When police searched his house about a year later, there was only about 20 pounds left.

Meiwes was finally caught when he went looking for another slaughter boy to eat on the internet. An Austrian college student realized he was serious and tipped off police. Armin was first only found guilty of manslaughter (cannibalism is not illegal in Germany) and sentenced to eight years, the main point being that Bernd Brandes was a willing victim who gave his consent (on tape, as it were, because Armin filmed the whole slaughter) to be killed.

So there's the story. My thoughts: Forget Meiwes, WTF is up with Brandes? Fantasies and sexual desires related to cannibalism is not a new story, I'm sad to say, but a man whose fantasy is to be killed and eaten alive? Where does that come from? That's the part of the story that blows my mind, yet I have heard nothing on the psychology of someone with that kind of fantasy. Jones does a chapter-long write up of Brandes in the book Cannibal, but it is not near enough to help me understand. Brandes had such hatred for his sexuality and his feelings that he wanted his penis gone, and all traces of his body on the Earth gone. He begged Armin to, after he ate him, grind up his bones and his teeth so that he would be completely annihilated. How does one come to hate themselves so much that the thought of being eaten is a comfort?

There were several movies, and even a song, made about Meiwes's case. I was excited to see a movie cleverly titled Cannibal, which was supposed to be a very graphic account of the slaughter. I'm a gorehound so I got the movie.

WARNING: VERY ANGRY BLOGGER ALERT.

I could write a formal review of Cannibal but honestly, I don't feel there is any need. And the review would probably sound a little something like this:

FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT MOVIE! THIS IS THE WORST GD ATTEMPT AT FILMMAKING THAT I HAVE SEEN SINCE CABIN FEVER 2. WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING THROUGH YOUR PEA SIZE BRAIN TO THINK THAT YOU COULD SHOW OTHER PEOPLE THIS PIECE OF FLAMING GARBAGE?? I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED TO HAVE BEEN FORCED TO LICK THE HORSE SHIT OFF OF EVERYBODY'S SHOE IN THE WORLD THAN TO WATCH YOUR FUCKING MOVIE, AND YOU KNOW WHAT??? I WOULD HAVE ENJOYED IT! BECAUSE THIS MOVIE STANK UP THE WHOLE HOUSE SO BAD, I HAD TO OPEN THE FUCKING WINDOWS! SO FUCK YOU, AND LEARN HOW TO MAKE A FUCKING MOVIE, YOU FUCKING DEGENERATES.

So you see, I don't think I could have written a fair review, because frankly, there is no fucking movie. Nobody even TALKS in this fucking movie until about 20-25 minutes in. I KNOW! What kind of shit is that? It's obviously incredibly low budget, shot on a prosumer video camera - NOT EVEN A REAL FUCKING MOVIE CAMERA. And I suppose it probably is an accurate portrayal of the slaughter of Brandes, but they do this by have two nasty-looking naked guys rolling around together, showing their penises in close-up. The slaughter scenes are very graphic, but I didn't even care because the quality of the filmmaking was so abysmally low.

Fuck, I'll admit it: I didn't even really watch the movie. After the first shitty 20 minutes, I started fast-forwarding. I stopped at some of the gore scenes, but even they were so bad and so FUCKING SLOW that I had to fast-forward through that as well, which is really sad. So, plain and simple, don't watch this movie.

Instead watch this: 

That is the effing awesome German metal band, Rammstein (with a lead singer that I would like to... well, let's just say that I would have loved to play the angel in that video) and their song, "Mein Teil." Mein teil means "my part," and the band wrote the song about the Meiwes case, from the point of view of Brandes... "my part" obviously referring to when they tried to eat his penis. A kick-ass song on its own, but even better when you know the story behind it.

And there you have it, boys and girls, the true story of the Maneater of Rotenburg, the Hannibal of Hesse... Armin Meiwes. If I've disturbed you and/or grossed you out, I apologize. Just wait until I get to the post about Albert Fish. That fucker will give you nightmares for weeks.

Yea! Somebody likes me!

A million thank yous to Porkhead's Horror Review Hole for awarding my site as a Versatile Blog. I love reading Joel's reviews, always insightful and wickedly funny. I think he has my same kind of snarky and sarcastic attitude, which I love. Too bad he lives in England ; ).

So there are some things I have to do to properly accept my award:

1) Thank the blogger who gave you the award (Thanks again, Joel! Is it cool to call you Joel?)

2) Share 7 things about yourself

3) Give the award to 15 other bloggers who you believe deserve it

4) Contact the blogs you picked and tell them about the award

Alrighty, so I have to reveal seven things about myself.

1) I am a yellow belt in taekwondo. It's only the third level and I'm not currently in training, but I hope to go back soon.

2) I have a cat named Lucifer.

3) Here's my Alfred Hitchcock tattoo:

                                                            

4) My ultimate vacation fantasy is a tour of the best roller coasters in the country.

5) I don't care if she's a felon, I love Lindsey Lohan and I love her movies (except I Know Who Killed Me).

6) My dream is to have my own movie theatre and library in my house.

7) Chocolate makes me insanely thirsty.

I definitely plan to make more time to read lots of other blogs but here are some that I loved as soon as I saw them:

Behind The Couch
Black Hole Reviews
Fear of Fiction
From Midnight, With Love
Day of the Woman
The Korova Theatre
Maynard Morrissey's Horror Movie Diary
The Spooky Vegan
Unflinching Eye
Made for TV Mayhem
This girl digs horror
80s Horror Movies
Little Miss Zombie
The Horror Digest
My Undead Brain

Keep up the bloody good work, horror bloggers! We are all awesome.

Movie Review: Dead Snow

Nazi zombies. In the snow. I feel like I should have been more weary of a film with this premise, but strangely, I was not. I had faith. I heard about it a long time ago, and thanks to my new membership with Netflix (I know, right? How much of a procrastinator am I?), I was able to finally see it. Who doesn't want to see some Nazi zombies in the snow?

See, I should have learned this by now. Most of the movies that I get really excited about and think are just going to be awesome, are in fact, usually NOT. The ones that I often pick up on a whim end up being totally great. Like Dead Snow. Loooooved it.

The plot sounds familiar - group of pretty people go to a remote cabin in the mountains to have fun and are instead attacked by Nazi zombies from WWII. How they became zombies is never explained, but honestly, do you really care? I'm more curious now about the life expectancy of a zombie. I mean, these dudes looked pretty good for zombies, and even better for 70 year old zombies. I wonder what their secret is...

Back to the show. So the group starts to split up one by one, as they so often do in these movies, and are therefore one by one attacked by the zombies. It's a likable group of characters who all actually seem like they are friends. I hate those movies where there are all these different types of people that are always mean to each other, and we're supposed to believe that they are friends? No wonder they usually turn on each other when things get rough. But the group in Dead Snow is believable, with no cliche characters or over-sexed couples hooking up every five minutes. Although there is one hook up in an outhouse. An outhouse? Really? In the snow? Mmmm, sure sounds sexy to me.

Question: Why do they always have to make fun of the movie nerd for being a movie nerd? I'm slightly offended.

The weird thing about this movie is that there is no real main character to follow. It jumps all over the place, which is sort of a good thing because it makes the film more unpredictable. I thought Vegard, the one most knowledgeable about the area would be the sole survivor, then oops! Not so much. The chick with the dreds? She seems tough. Oh, wait. I guess not. But as likable as the characters are, that doesn't mean I don't want to see them chopped into tiny pieces by Nazi zombies. In the snow. I'm sorry! I can't get over that! They should have just called the movie Nazi Zombies in the Snow. Hey, it worked for Snakes on a Plane.

There are some good kills in this flick - a lot of them intestine-related, too. At one point, one of the men is hanging off a mountain using one zombie's intestines as rope while another zombie clings to him. That's the kind of ingenuity I like to see in these indy films.

More gore highlights:
1) the always wonderful "all appendages getting ripped off at the same time" gag
2) fingers in the eyes and then head ripped apart
3) various decapitations and amputations of zombies
4) self-mutilation via chainsaw
5) a rather strange death where a dude turns around and sees his intestine attached to a tree

My vote for favorite kill goes to number 2.

So first impression is that Dead Snow is a nicely paced and well-shot take on the zombie movie. It uses a different setting and quite odd foes (NAZI ZOMBIES IN THE SNOW!) to create a deliciously gory and at times very funny flick. As a warning for those who need it, the film is in Norwegian and there are subtitles. If you feel like you can't watch a movie with subtitles, then you can just go fuck yourself because you're an idiot.

One other thing: Not that I have any trips to Norway planned in the near future, but where exactly is this mountain filled with NAZI ZOMBIES IN THE SNOW? Because I really want to go there.



NAZI ZOMBIES IN THE SNOW. NAZI ZOMBIES IN THE SNOW. NAZI ZOMBIES IN THE SNOW.

There. It's out of my system.

Movie Review: Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom

So I finished watching Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. I was actually a little nervous to watch it, sure I was going to regret the experience. One review I read called Salo an "endurance test" - will the viewer make it all the way through? Raise my hand in victory, I made it all the way through!

Where to begin? 

Well, first of all, it's actually not a bad movie and not nearly as deplorable as most reviews make it out to be. From what I've read, I was expecting 2 hours of rape, graphic torture, and other forms of humiliation. Yes, there is definitely all of that, but perhaps I imagined these acts were going to be much more graphic, simply from reading a description. I read that there was a scene where a girl is made to eat bread with nails in it. The scene itself is not as bad as it sounds on paper - the girl takes a bite, screams, and blood comes out of her mouth. 

But that wouldn't be enough to be considered controversial, would it? The film is based on the Marquis de Sade's book "The 120 Days of Sodom," which he wrote while imprisoned in the Bastille. It tells of four f-ed up in the head rich dudes who hole up in an isolated castle with some 46 victims that they will use to act out their sexual desires and fantasies, getting ideas from listening to the sordid stories of four brothel madams. I've actually read some of the book (you can easily find it online) but it is very long and nothing more than a graphic account of each days' descent into sexual depravity. I can only read so much about poop eating. Yes, POOP eating. We'll get to that later.

So the film follows a similar plot - set in Fascist Italy near the end of WW2, four Fascist leaders come up with the brilliant plan to kidnap nine teenage boys and nine teenage girls, take them to a deserted, isolated mansion and do whatever they want to them. They also bring along four old whores who will tell them disgusting stories of their clients' depravity, in order to give them "ideas" of what they might like to do to these teenagers. The men's appetites seem to be mostly homosexual, so I don't see why they needed the girls. Anyway. 

The violence in the film didn't really get to me until the end. The teenagers chosen to die are taken to the courtyard, where they are tortured and I guess killed, since we don't actually see their deaths. One boy's eye is gouged out with a knife (yes, you DO see it happen) and a girl is scalped. The four Fascists each get a turn to watch what the others are doing to the kids, as they sit and watch the festivities through binoculars from a window in the mansion. All the while, the victims are being held down by four other male youths, perhaps in their teens or twenties, who have been the guards the whole time the kids have been in the mansion - subjugating the teens so that the adults can have their way with them. 

Every review seems to focus on the violence and depravity of the film, but one thing I found the most interesting and worthy of discussion is not what happens to the victims, but the victims themselves and their sometimes lack of emotion about what is happening to them. They seem to have no problem standing naked before the four men, even before the abuse begins; their faces are blank as they listen to the disgusting stories told by the madams; even during the banquet of shit (yeah, you read that right), the kids ACTUALLY FUCKING EAT THE POOP. They could have easily pretended or whatever, but as one girl says to another, "I can't go on," the other girl is taking a big forkful of poo into her mouth. This is all saying that there is little or no resistance from the victims for hardly any of what happens to them. Is it because they know that there is no way out of this situation, that they can easily be killed? There are four armed guards near them at all times, and they are in an isolated mansion far from any help. Is it a child's fear of disobeying adults?

The kids also have no desire to help each other out. If this were a movie made now in America, I bet you there would be at least one rebellious character who would try to stand up to the men. But the kids never say ANYTHING. Even when the bearded man squats down, shits on the floor, and then makes one girl eat it with a spoon, no one even tries to say, "Hey man, that's gross, don't make her do that." Sure, if they stand up to them, they risk being punished or killed, but GD, would they at least fucking try??!!

They even turn on each other in one scene. When the freaky ass dude with the goofy smile and lazy eye goes into the boys' room as they are sleeping to punish one of them for breaking the rules, the kid says, "Wait! Spare me and I'll tell you about the girl who keeps a picture under her pillow." So they go to the girls' room. They wake up the girl, say they know she has the photo and she says, "Wait! Spare me and I'll tell you about the girls who have sex together every night." So they go into the room where the two girls are necking and catch them. One of the girls says, "Wait! Spare me and I'll tell you about the boy who has sex with the black maid every night." This time, all four of the Fascists go to the room where the boy and maid are having sex, and they shoot him 20 times. A chain reaction of betrayal that ends in one boy's death, a death that could have been avoided if the kids hadn't narked on each other. He is perhaps the lucky one, however, considering what the others go through later. But how could they do this? Do they really wish ill will on the others, when they must know that they are not going to make it out of that mansion alive? Going along with these sick men might for a time save their lives, but what about their souls? Seeing as this movie is constructed based on Dante's description of hell (the movie begins in the Antechamber of Hell, then the following sections are the Circle of Obsessions, the Circle of Shit, and the Circle of Blood), surely these kids have entered the ninth and deepest circle of hell, where the worst sinners are punished - the ones who betray.

One quick note on the banquet of shit: I know there are a lot of weird paraphilias out there: people with foot fetishes; arousal by exhibitionism; hell, even people aroused by amputees. Some of these numerous paraphilias out there are somewhat understandable, if not just weird. However, I will never, ever in a million years and beyond EVER understand coprophilia/coprophagia. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER. Yet, there is a whole market out there for scatological porn. Remember 2girls1cup? Yeah, that wasn't just a viral video that somebody made to gross people out, it was clips from a real porn movie. Never understand it. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER.

All in all, and repeating what many other reviews of this movie have said over the years, this is an interesting movie to analyze, but not one that I would want to see again or recommend to others. I mean, what parts can you look forward to watching in this movie? The girl pissing on the bearded man's face? Or the kid getting his tongue sliced off? Trust me, seeing it once will be enough. I'm sure you'll remember it for a long while.

Salo

So I just started my free trial with Netflix and was informed that my first DVD should arrive tomorrow. What movie did I choose for my first Netflix purchase?

Salo.

I know. But before you say anything, I feel like maybe I need to see this movie, even though I REALLY don't want to. I've seen bits and pieces of it on the internet, but obviously none of the more graphic stuff (look it up on imdb if you don't know what I'm talking about - here).

I've heard that it's just a really shocking movie and has no redeeming value. I've heard that it is a brilliant metaphor, and has been defended by many film historians, despite still be banned in several countries to this day.

It should be arriving in the mail tomorrow so hopefully I'll have a review up by tomorrow night! Read it if you dare!

Childhood Horror Memories: Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 and Sleepaway Camp 2

My parents, as far as I recall, never put any real restrictions on my movie or TV watching. My mother was, oddly, vehemently against Ren and Stimpy, but as for horror movies, they seemed to trust that I could handle it. I wasn't as into horror movies then, just an occasional one here and there. Most kids I knew weren't allowed to watch any Rated R movies for the longest time - whereas I have a clear memory of watching Basic Instinct with my parents in the room and them making fun of me for getting uncomfortable at the "sexy parts."

My best friend for most of my childhood was Erin. Her mom was one of those strict parents that wouldn't let her watch R movies, so naturally, whenever she spent the night at my house, we would rent the goriest movies we could find. And soon, we found some real winners - two movies that we rented literally every time she came over. Little did I know what good taste we had in movies back then!

The two horror movies that we absolutely loved were Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 and Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers (SPOILERS are ahead for both films). I know these movies now under the category of "campy cult classics" (still love them both, and they are proudly in my DVD collection) but back then these were our rebellion against strict parents - okay, not MY rebellion, it was more hers, but I totally enjoyed being a part of that rebellion! We would go to the video store and quickly grab these two movies without ever looking around. Strangely, neither of them ever seemed to be rented out.

Hello Mary Lou synopsis: Mid 1950's, it is prom night and the prom queen shoo-in and requisite popular bitch, Mary Lou Maloney, shows up at the prom with one dude, but bangs another dude at the prom. The first dude is pissed and inadvertently sets Mary Lou on fire when she's on stage about to be crowned prom queen. Everyone just stares at her  and doesn't try to help and she dies. Flash-forward to the present (well, 1987) and Vicki something-or-other is the new shoo-in for prom queen. She finds some old dress in the school's costume shop and releases the angry spirit of Mary Lou. Eventually Mary Lou takes over Vicki's body and everybody wears bad 80's clothes and too much AquaNet.

I don't know how exactly Hello Mary Lou is a sequel to Prom Night because the two movies couldn't be any more different, besides the prom thing. HML is gory as hell, much more than you would think. Of the one time I sat through the original Prom Night, all I remember is it being very dark (and I don't mean metaphorically) and hella boring. HML has some killer special effects sequences. Highlights include:

1) LOCKER SMOOSHING. Naked, possessed Vicki first tries to make out with her friend in the shower then chases her around the locker room. When she finds out what locker she's hiding in, Vicki sings "A-whomp bomp-a loo bomp, a-whomp bam BOOM" and smooshes her friend with the lockers on either side of her, telekinetically. Some pinkish sludgey stuff squishes out. Ewwwwwwww.

2) SWIMMING IN THE CHALKBOARD. Just a cool-looking scene. It's where Vicki becomes "officially" possessed by Mary Lou.

3) PERVERTED ROCKING HORSE. Likes to lick the fingers of teenage girls. Perv. But Mary Lou was kind of a slut in her day, so I don't think she minded. She made Vicki's body make out with her own father, for pity's sake.

4) THE GROSSEST FINALE EVER. Possessed Vicki is on stage at the prom waiting to accept the beloved flowers and crown. Yea! But oh no, there's Michael Ironside, the dude from 30 years ago that killed Mary Lou! So he knows Vicki is possessed by Mary Lou and he shoots her. As Vicki's lame bf rushes to her side, a hideously burnt-up (and kind of juicy) Mary Lou-ghost literally PUNCHES her way out of Vicki's body, via the gunshot holes. Even as I picture the scene now, it's really grossing me out. Surprisingly good special FX for a movie like this.

5) MICHAEL IRONSIDE. Scanners is the shizz-it. But he's awesome in this movie, too.

Question: How exactly was Vicki the front-runner for prom queen? She wore drabby clothes and no make-up. Where I come from, the rich and pretty are the prom queen contenders, not someone who would dare let her face be shiny. Horror movies are all about suspension of disbelief, though, so I'll let that one slide for now.

There are a lot of rip-offs of other films in here, but to be honest, I don't give a shit. You can tell me about all the references to Carrie (duh!), The Exorcist, and A Nightmare on Elm Street you want, and I'll say, hey! If you're gonna steal, steal from the best! Hello Mary Lou is actually a pretty good horror movie, that despite the plot and nudity and gore and whatnot, really takes itself seriously. Therefore, IT WORKS. At least for me.

Sleepaway Camp 2. Ahhhh, good times. It's so good, you don't even have to care about an original because you could watch this gem 400 times and still think it's the greatest thing since square watermelons. Kids at a camp get killed in a variety of ways by the smiling happy camper, Angela Baker! Angela is THE single greatest killer in the history of all movies. I'm not exaggerating. Just watch the scene in Unhappy Campers where she's walking around the cabin looking for the right murder weapon (Radio on the head? No... Wire hanger? Nah... Oooh! Guitar string!) while her intended victim jabbers on for 5 minutes in the bathroom. Sly, cunning and a comedic genius all at the same time.

All you need to know about the first Sleepaway Camp is that there was a crazy aunt who raised a boy, Peter, as a girl, Angela, which obviously screwed Peter/Angela up in the head so that when Peter/Angela went to camp with his/her cousin, he/she killed a bunch of people. Oh, and Sleepaway Camp has probably the most disturbing few seconds of any movie ever in the world when, in the finale, Angela is sitting naked on the beach with her boyfriend's head in her lap. She stands up, gives a really creepy facial expression and makes a weird sound, all the while showing us that she has a PENIS! I may have forgotten most of the rest of the movie, but anybody who sees that will, unfortunately, have the image burned into their brain forever. Maybe longer than forever.

So in this sequel, it's many years later and Angela's been in the nuthouse, had a sex change, and gotten out. But she's still crazy as a shithouse rat. She's a counselor at camp, and does her best to "weed out the bad kids." Smoking pot and drinking while having premarital sex? You get burned up on a bbq grill. Show your titties to the boys and then give Angela lip? It's a power drill death for you, girly! Slutty bitch who tries to fuck all the guys at camp and uses bad language? Oh, you're gonna pay for that one. You get drowned in an old outhouse filled with poop and leeches! Other highlights include a bit of throat slashing, battery acid to the face, the standard decapitation, and as mentioned earlier, strangling with a guitar string.

The other "characters" really don't even matter in this movie, or any of the other Sleepaway Camp sequels. You watch these movies to see Angela kill all the cliche characters and laugh your ass off while doing it. The humor is actually genuine, too. There's not any of that awkward, badly delivered comedy, at least not in Unhappy Campers. If you're looking for the King of Cheese and bad actors giving the worst line readings ever, go watch Return to Sleepaway Camp.

Pamela Springsteen is absolutely brilliant as Angela, the upbeat killer who gives you the sweetest smile while she's watching you BURN TO DEATH! Fantastic. Felissa Rose, who played Angela in the first Sleepaway Camp and then again in Return, is also pretty awesome. Perhaps that's because she can open her mouth really wide and look so g-darn freaky. Ooh! Idea! A movie with the two Angelas, Springsteen vs. Rose, who comes out on top?! Okay, I guess that wouldn't work in reality. But I'll bet the Sleepaway Camp fans would fucking love it.

A face to give you nightmares: