Friday, January 5, 2024

Runaway (1973)

The ski train is heading back down the mountain and engineer Holly talks about how he’s been doing this run for years and is going to retire. Uh oh, that’s not a good sign.  Before you know it, the air brakes aren’t working and the train’s speed is increasing.

Meanwhile let’s meet the passengers.  Les is a ski bum who tries to get everything for free, utilizing such methods as hitting on wealthy women in hopes they’ll pay for his vacation or stealing someone’s train ticket. Ellen and her husband are planing to get divorced. John is with his young son who was afraid of something I can’t remember, maybe skiing.  There are some college students and a few professors making a racket, shouting and banging on things as if they’re drums.  Student Carol is declaring her love to Professor Dunn,  asking him to say he loves her and to sit with her. Dunn looks uncomfortable and brushes her off.

Based on these stereotypes, we can assume Les will grow as a person and stop thinking only of himself. Ellen and her husband will reconcile.  John’s son will learn to be brave and Carol will be rebuffed with extreme prejudice during the crisis.

Since the brakes fail within the first fifteen minutes, you wonder’s what sort of disaster is waiting for the rest of the movie. Well it’s mostly interpersonal disaster and a lot of people getting down on the floor to brace for a curve they’re going to hit at 60 mph.  Holly thinks he can make it but the guys in the office don’t believe him.  But damn it Holly’s been doing this run for years.  Plans include trying to use handbrakes or a faster train to catch up to them and attempt to help them brake.

This is a 1970s tv movie, it’s formulaic, and I’m all in. 

Ridiculous dialogue

Carol: I did it because you’re alone.  I don’t like it, being alone.
Les: That’s dumb.

Holly: We’ll try the emergency brakes in the coaches. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try the hand brake.  If that doesn’t work, by god, we’ve got a runaway coming off this mountain.

Les: I’m gonna be ready. I’m gonna make it. You run around pulling the shades, not me.


I like the graphic
Smarmy Les putting his arm around a woman who appears to have
money and suggesting they take a ski trip where she pays their way
The panic begins
Les proving he’s the weasel by hiding and refusing to help
The sketchy idea of hanging off the car to look at the brakes
while someone holds onto your jacket to keep you from falling
Smiles and horror in the same shot
Hurrah! Let’s mob the crippled train


Monday, January 1, 2024

The Elevator (1974)

Disaster movies follow a predictable pattern. Introduce a number of unrelated characters, stick them together in a stressful situation which could kill them all and see who gets out alive. Who will fall apart? Who will overcome their fears? Who will admit their flaws and become a better person? Who will reveal they are pretending to be something they’re not?

A Brinks truck makes a delivery to an office in a high rise, not realizing robbers know where they’re headed. Once the truck leaves, Pete and Eddie head upstairs while getaway driver Irene stays in the parking garage.  When Pete kills the man in the office, Eddie is upset but Pete says he saw their faces so it had to be done. 

As they try to act nonchalant and leave tthe scene of the crime, they find a number of people waiting for the elevator.  Eddie and the money get on, but there is no room for Pete who frantically asks Eddie for the briefcase full of money. When the doors close, Pete runs down to the garage to wait for Eddie but he never arrives. If only the workmen had used the freight elevator for their seven hundred pound safe, the bolts would have held and there’d be no damage to the mechanism.

Stuck in the elevator with claustrophobic Eddie are the rest of our cast of characters.  Mrs. Kenyon is looking for a penthouse for her son.  Marvin is the leasing agent who works for the building and showed her the penthouse. Dr. Reynolds is having an affair with his secretary, and is now trapped with her and his wife.  Robert is a young man who is upset with his fragile mother for trying to control the inheritance from his father. 

Questions you’ll have are why was Pete hiding in the trunk of the car, rather than sitting inside it with Eddie and Irene? Or why didn’t Eddie get out of the elevator since Pete couldn’t get on? Why was 


Sunday, December 31, 2023

The Magnificent Dead (2010)

The town of Rosewood is under consideration as a new stop on the railroad.  The townfolks are excited about the business it would bring and how much easier it would be to travel.  Everyone wants it except Jared, a rancher who doesn’t want the railroad on his land.  I’m not sure why the railroad needs to use his land, but he’s not having it.

Meanwhile an injured man is found outside the saloon and brought to a holding cell in the jail to await help. When a household servant brings him food, the man bites her. The Sheriff says the doctor should arrive soon to check the man and urges her to stay so her wound can be looked at as well. But the servant goes home and she falls ill.

The mayor hasinvited the railroad representatives to town to convince them to designate Rosewood as the new stop.  This makes Jared mean mad since he’s made it clear his land is not available.  He and his men come to town and dust the railroad reps who turn out to be mostly gunfighters.

When a new preacher arrives, he says he can help them convince Jared.  Then he suggests hiring a group of gunfighters in a nearby town who’ll take up the fight. The only issue is they’re lepers.  People aren’t too keen on bringing lepers to town but he assures them they won’t catch the disease.

The preacher and a couple of men ride out to ask the lepers if they’ll convince Jared of his selfishness.  The lepers agree but the next morning are nowhere in sight.  Surprisingly no one is suspicious of the three large, upright boxes in the back of the preachers wagon that he won’t let anyone get near. Or that the lepers aren’t in town when they arrive, even though the preacher said the lepers had gone ahead to scout the town.

The leper gunfighters show up that night for a town meeting. They tell everyone to stay in their houses at night and not to leave town during the day. Oh this doesn’t bode well for our townsfolk, especially since their leader is sounding like a cult leader with lines like, “Whoever believes in me though he were dead will have eternal life.”

The only reason I watched this was because the gunfighters were lepers, but that didn’t have much to do with anything. Also were they really lepers or was that a ruse to avoid telling people they were dead? Are they vampires? Zombies? Lepers? All three? It’s not great, but it is the only western leper horror movie I’ve seen.

Ridiculous dialogue

Man: Are these lawmen?
Preacher: No, they are lepers.

The horror of their malady adds to the fear that they strike in the hearts of their opponents.

Carl: This town hates me.
Father: I think it’s you Carl who hates this town.
He doesn’t look too bad for a leper
Oh no,he’s deteriorated a lot in the past 24 hours.
Yeah, it just got way worse


Monday, December 25, 2023

I Trapped the Devil (2019)

Mark and his wife Karen decide to visit his brother Steven. They haven’t seen him in a while and have been unable to get in touch. When they show up, the house is a mess and he’s tells them to leave.  Mark says he has as much right to be there as Steve does and they’ve driven all this way to see him.  Steve relents and lets them stay the night.

Mark feels like something is off and after dinner Steve takes him down to the basement.  There is a closed door and Mark hears a man asking to be let out. But Steve says it’s not a man. It’s the devil.   When Mark tells Karen, she says they can’t be involved in this, but Mark thinks if they let the man go and pay him money, then they can get Steve some help.

Mark and Steve argue about if the man is the devil. Steve shows mark the attic which is covered with a string graph.  Meanwhile Karen contemplates letting the man out of the basement and worries because the gun she saw in the bedroom is now missing.    

The main question is what does Mark do? What if he lets him out and he’s made the wrong choice? But I also had other questions that are not addressed.  How did Steve trap him? Why does he think he’s the devil? If he is actually the devil, shouldn’t he be smarter than to be trapped in a basement? And most importantly, shouldn’t the devil be able to escape from a locked room, or are locks his one weakness? He’s the king of darkness but as long as you can keep a door locked, you’ll be safe.

Overall I liked it. It’s more a psychological piece with a slow burn rather than straight horror. But while I liked it, I wasn’t fond of the ending.  At first I thought, oh that’s it? But the more I think about it, it’s making me question some things.

Sunday, December 24, 2023

Black Santa (2023)

Twenty five years ago, Stephon and Blake were sent to a foster home after their crackhead mother couldn’t take care of them.  Their foster mother kept them chained to the floor. When Blake wouldn’t stop crying, a doctor came to the house and shot him up with something which killed him.  They covered it up by saying Blake had a seizure. There was no investigation.

Twenty five years later, Stephon dresses up as Santa and kidnaps his mom, foster mother, doctor, CPS worker and a small child. The child was in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

As he’s in the middle of torturing everyone, his girlfriend calls and says she’s on her way to his place and they need to talk. It turns out she’s pregnant. So he slips her a mickey, brings her to the garage and ties her up with his other victims.  She was in the foster home with him, but doesn’t recognize the others.

Unlike Silent Night, Deadly Night, this isn’t any fun.  It’s mostly poorly done torture on people tied to chairs in a large garage or storage space.  The only fun part is the aging is accomplished by slapping some ill fitting gray wigs on the actors.


Friday, December 22, 2023

Stalled (2013)

During an office Christmas party, the janitor heads into the women’s bathroom to fix the fan.  While he’s in a stall, two women enter and he’s afraid to come out.  He listens to them trash talk about another woman and about the charity auction where they’ll wear bikinis to try to get the highest bids.

When one woman turns into a zombie and bites the other, he realizes he’s trapped.  Soon more zombies have stumbled into the restroom and they can’t figure out how to get out because the door opens in. 

Almost all of the movie takes place in the bathroom and is mostly one man and zombies. There does turn out to be someone else in another stall but we just hear her voice and her face is never shown. This probably would have made a better short film. It’s a horror comedy but not really funny or scary. 

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Krampus vs. Bigfoot (2021)

Apparently Bigfoot works on a space ship, his friends refer to him as Foot, he looks like a gorilla and his voice sounds like Fat Albert. He works with Van Helsing, who’s gotten crew member Karli pregnant. Van Helsing is a jerk and a martyr.  He leaves the ship because he says Karli would be better off without him.

Krampus is in another space ship with his minions. So you’d think this would be awesome but it’s super boring.  It’s a bunch of CGI with voice actors and generic background music. 
 

Ridiculous dialogue

All she cares about now is that baby I put inside her.


Generic Space

Everyone wears helmets inside the ship

I thought this was a gorilla till they called him Foot
and he mentioned he’s a Sasquatch


 

Sunday, December 17, 2023

A Christmas Horror Story (2015)

 This anthology has the stories running concurrently, rather than doing them one by one. The wrap around story is a DJ played by William Shatner.

  1. Santa’s elves get ill and become zombies who try to kill Santa.
  2. High school kids break into a school during Christmas vacation to investigate the year old murder of two students, not realizing what killed them is still around.
  3. A crappy family visits their rich aunt to ask for money, but when their shitty son purposely breaks a Krampus statue, it unleashes evil.
  4. A family trespass to cut down a tree for Christmas and choose the one property where creatures can assume the shape of a child.
Production is decent but most of the characters are jerks so you don’t care about them.

Ridiculous dialogue 

Molly: I get that he’s creepy but that doesn’t mean he’s a killer.
Dylan: then what’s he doing here on Christmas Eve?

Friday, December 15, 2023

The Christmas Tapes (2022)

While celebrating a quiet Christmas Eve, a family hears a knock on the door and finds a man holding a large present. He says his car broke down and his cell phone is dead so he wants to use their phone.  No one is suspicious except teen girl Rachel who thinks he’s weird and wonders why her parents are ignoring the stranger danger rules.

Her fears turn out to be valid when she comes out of the bathroom and her entire family is tied up.The stranger says watching regular Christmas movies is boring so he’s brought his own. 

  1. Travel Buggies - Dave and Jess have been posting videos for years and have 200 subscribers. Dave’s tired of the manufactured experience all for content. He wants to stop filming and enjoy each other’s company.  Jess disagrees but says after this trip, maybe they can take a break. When her content doesn’t go as planned, she gets mad at Dave and blames him for not helping plan the trip. Things might have been okay if earlier in the day they hadn’t done a ritual next to a scarecrow calling on Hans Trap who snaps the neck of nasty kids.
  2. The Christmas Gift - Dean is claustrophobic but since his kids only pay attention to YouTube, he’s going to ship himself to them in a giant box. He’ll film everything and make an unboxing video. Freight companies won’t ship humans so he finds someone on the internet who agrees to help. The guy shows up dressed as Santa and asks to stop by his own house to talk to Mrs. Santa. The two convince Dean to get into the box there rather wait until he’s a block from his house. Oh Dean, why would you ever trust a stranger to lock you in a box, especially when you are claustrophobic?
  3. Untitled - a dating service puts a chip in a client’s head, tells them to deliver a package to a hotel room, and that they might see things that don’t exist due to the chip.  If they fail to deliver the package, they’ll die.
  4. Christmas Spirit - A couple buys a house but the moving company can’t bring their furniture until after Christmas. The wife finds decorations in the closet and puts them on the mantle. Odd things happen so they call someone to investigate. He sends over a weird paranormal investigator who makes them so uncomfortable they don’t want him in their house.

It would have been so much more enjoyable if when the stranger brought out the VHS tapes, the family no longer had a VCR. Sadly they still have one hooked up in the living room. I noticed IMDB lists this as both horror and comedy, which is surprising since it wasn’t funny.


 

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Christmas Cruelty (2013)

Aka O’Hellage Jul!

The movie opens with some horrific murders, and then transitions to the characters we’ll be watching for the rest of the film. Unfortunately they're really unlikable. We watch them get drunk, get ready for Christmas, and insult each other.  One guy hates women and talks about how all his girlfriends have been horrible, overlooking the fact that he’s the common denominator. 

Once in awhile they cut to the killer who sits at his desk at work, or goes home and has dinner with his family.  The editing is bizarre. In some scenes there are constant cuts. Sometimes they cut to a slightly closer shot of the same thing and then back.  It might happen six times in a single sentence. It’s annoying.

It’s not fun or interesting, everyone is unlikable, and you’ll feel yucky when it’s over.