It's a tasty October with 31 Flavors of Horror

Are you ready for October? Those of us who love our scary movies are, and here at Big Lug Land we are no different. As many general film review sites, and horror specific ones, I'm ramping up and getting ready to bring you horror reviews for every single day of October. 31 flavors for 31 days, and it's going to be a real treat. I took a crack at doing this two years ago and loved my "31 Horror Movie October," but 2010 wasn't as accommodating. This year I am ready to hit the ground running, up to my eyeballs in scary movies!

I've been chipping away at the whole Friday the 13th series for you, and slogged through the Resident Evil series, suffering through every big, blown-up beastie and flash of Milla Jovovich's naughty bits.

I can't wait to share with you all the goodies I've got in store. I can't promise they'll all be as... drippy as my ice cream icon for the month, but hopefully you'll find them as tasty!

Watch this space because the fun starts this Saturday!

One A Week Reviews #38: UFOs Do Not Exist! The Grand Deception and Cover Up of the UFO Phenomenon

Reviewed for Exploitation Retrospect - this is such a no-go I'm mostly just posting my review to amuse and warn you off watching this claptrap...

Here's what I've always thought about conspiracy theories: If you really were on the path of hushed-up secret knowledge the powerful don't want you revealing, chances are good they would have shut your fat ass up long ago.

That said, for whatever reason, images of these big gray, blank-eyed aliens and the thought they might actually exist gives me no end of the heebie-jeebies...

This is not really a movie or a documentary. Bill Knell is some sort of paranormal researcher who's created a slide show assembled of third-hand stories, historical anecdotes, and huge leaps of logic. The tinny audio requires paying close attention, and he doesn't even edit his verbal stumblings.

For starters, the running time is actually 2 hours, not the 250 minutes claimed on the packaging. Why misrepresent it? If you can't even be honest about something as simple as that how can you be seen as credible about anything else? Blurry video, scanned photos, and paranoia do not a case make. He runs through his “credits,” but claiming appearances on public access shows and A Current Affair are kinda... well, cheesy. “I'm a guy who loves true stories of the paranormal.” (Sure, you are, sweetie. Sure you are....) If he were a younger man I wouldn't hesitate to assume he pieced this together in his mother's basement. However, I'd expect a younger man to be more technically adept. The awful pictures are oddly hypnotic. Sometimes you can't tell if it's an alien or just another grumpy old man in them, so bad is the image quality.

One A Week Reviews #37: The Walking Dead Girls!

If you're a fan of Horror cons you're gonna like this one. If you like cute girls who have tattoos, it'll also be up your alley. This review for dvdsnapshot covers a film with a lotta flaws... and a lotta zimbies!

THE WALKING DEAD GIRLS!

Official Synopsis:

The Walking Dead Girls is a behind-the-scenes look into zombie culture in the United States and the obsession into "Sexy Female Zombies." What is it about Zombie Bimbos or "Zimbies" that are starting to gain the worlds (sic) interest? Why are zombies now in mainstream culture and seen in advertising from JCPenny and Sears? With interviews with zombie master maker George Romero and cult movie star Bruce Campbell from ZomBcon 2010 and so much more. Also with a rare look into the making of a Zombie Pinup Calendar, behind the scenes of "Stripperland." "The Walking Dead Girls" is a sexy look into the zombie phenomenon created by George Romero that is 40 years in the making.

Our Take:
 
Calling this a "documentary" may be a tad generous, but any movie that opens with Lloyd Kaufman doing a PSA to warn the world of Stripper Zombies can't be all that bad.  However, the sparkling sit-down interview with "Uncle Lloyd" is the high water mark of The Walking Dead Girls. This is a weird mishmash of interviews with zombie genre vets and tattooed cheesecake models posing for a zombie-themed calendar.

The recent glut of zombie movies and books have lead to proms, walks, and societies dedicated to planning a response for the evidently yearned-for zombie apocalypse. That's touched on here as some kind of connective tissue to string together the interviews. Kaufman, George Romero and a surprisingly restrained Linnea Quigley hold court for sit-down conversations, most with the quite game Luna Moon, while other actors are restricted to the convention floor. These are interspersed among conversations with the models of a hybrid Fifties cheesecake-zombie calendar. A lovely bunch of actresses and exotic dancers, hold forth charmingly while painted to look like rotting zombies. One, an adult film performer named Lilith Eve, is the most personable and charming of all the interviewees.  Her charm keeps the surprisingly sour Bruce Campbell - here playing Devil's Advocate in an uncomfortable conversation that'll remind you of the William Shatner "get a life" sketch from Saturday Night Live.

One A Week Reviews #36: It! (1967)

Time for another fun and thorough look at a B-movie, this time one where Roddy McDowell brings some camp...

It's appropriate that It! shares a disc with The Shuttered Room, as it stars with an attic a-fire just like the other film ends with one. We meet assistant museum curator and all around nebbish Arthur Pimm (McDowell) and curator Grove as they find out one of their museum's storehouses has just burned to the ground. Prissy Pimm is acting a little put upon and possibly guilty, but they meet some law types, including a young, future B-movie stalwart Ian McCulloch, at the rubble and try to figure out if anything is salvageable. All that has survived is a somewhat ominous looking statue that Pimm doesn't like at all. Grove tries to read the inscription on it, then somehow winds up dead as soon as Pimm turns his back. The question raised isn't so much "Did the statue do it" as "how'd he do it?" Especially as the arms are in a different position. Being that we then get the title "IT!" shown next to him I think it's a big 10-4.

Pimm heads home to hang out with his Mother, who he brings home "borrowed" jewels for her to wear. We quickly find out that Mother Pimm is a Mother Bates, dessicated and in a rocking chair. Less than 10 minutes in and things are completely whackadoo. Here's where you'll distinctly start thinking "This might just be a good flick."

Pimm was hoping to be named as replacement curator, but instead gets a raise and a new boss. He also finds that our Golem is now transported to the museum.The arms have moved yet again, but one could assume that Pimm, being loco, is imagining all of this. There's some dramatic lightning - this is all getting very Hammer Horror - and then the dishy electrician shows up. Either Pimm or McDowell is gazing at him longingly, and it's a shame when he's almost immediately crushed under the statue. Well, that's what tall, blonde, and dumb gets for blowing smoke in its face. Crazy pants even puts Mummy's necklace away before our cops are called in again. Two deaths in less than 24 hours would seem to make Mr. Pimm suspect number one. Everything is getting delightfully goofy in this flick. While we know he's secretly nuts, he behaves in a manner where everyone is going to conclude he is, even stating outright the unseen can be more real than the seen.

The papers already are having a field day while Pimm is using daddy's death as an opportunity to get close to Ellen (Jill Haworth), Grove's daughter. She's not really into him, thinking he's a bit of a mama's boy (not to mention clearly a repressed homosexual), but she's gonna humor him. That's not gonna end well.

One A Week Reviews #35: The Shuttered Room

This week I'm taking a thorough look at a B-movie on a very fun double feature disc, The Shuttered Room. The title sequence is surprisingly absorbing: A layered shot of lovely Carol Lynley just staring out a windshield, the reflected trees running past between us and her still face, with sputtering jazz propelling us along. Occasionally it splits into layers, making for a jittery effect. A splintered personality excellently depicted. Susannah and her new, older husband Mike (Gig Young) are returning to the old mill. a childhood home that haunts her. Being that this home is on Dunwich Island, a clear tip-off to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with Lovecraft. The story "The Shuttered Room" was evidently a "posthumous collaboration" between HP Lovecraft and August Derleth.

In other words, it's Lovecraft tropes adopted in a bit of a bait'n'switch.

Upon arrival to Dunwich Island they're nearly immediately accosted by Oliver Reed and his band of merry idiots, overacting some juvenile irresponsibility. His characterization is all acting drunk and wearing tight pants. He must've been a wearisome man to have to put up with if he was anything like the role here. He's all about making faces and threatening rape. This bunch of inbred island-folk don't exactly roll out the welcome mat for long-lost daughter Susannah. Uncle Zubulon does his best to shoo 'em off, showing off a maimed compatriot. We already know there's something in a pitiful cabin locked behind a red and fancy door. As the isle seems populated solely with man-children and utter douchebags, whatever is behind there already seems more appealing than they are.

Anyhow, no one's very interested in Susannah claiming her property, not Ethan (Reed) nor Aunt Agatha (Dame Flora Robson). Old, patronizing, paternal hubby only seems to have one personality trait, "bemused," when dealing with young, fresh Lynley. He doesn't seem flexible enough to put up with the cobwebbed, dusty rattrap she's inherited. They're immediately dragged out by "Rapey Reed" to go see Aunt Agatha in her even less appealing watchtower home. She tells 'em that Susannah was sent away so as not to be affected by the Whatley curse. I assume it means she was sent away so as not to turn into a magnificent jackass. Aunt Aggie proves her jerkiness by going out of her way to tell Susannah how horribly her parents died.

For all this running around, they've had a pretty full day. Seems like the only sensible thing to do is unpack and stay in the big, nasty, ramshackle old mill that everyone has told them to get away from as soon as possible. Even more, it's already been proven that the island is populated exclusively with assholes. Anyone smart would head back to the mainland and sanity. Instead, Mike takes off and Susannah wanders around, taking a trip down a very cruddy memory lane. We know she shouldn't be there alone, and everyone in the movie knows she shouldn't be there alone, but Mike and Susannah? Dipshits.