The DAN ZONE

Remember the horror of junior high? You involuntarily leave behind the safety of six hours of the same four walls, the same 25-30 fellow students, the same desk, the same teacher, not to mention the right to act like a child because you are a child—a secure and predictable environment with few surprises. You’re thrust into the nightmare of the teen years—nine different classrooms, nine different teachers, over a hundred different fellow students, and three minute marathons from one end of the building to another that include a pit stop at your locker for the proper books. On top of that, there are your budding hormones, acne, sprouting of hair down there just as you are forced to undress for gym in front of other members of the same sex…. junior high school is definitely the harshest transition-less period in life after dropping out of the warmth of the womb into a cold, cold world.

That’s why I so fondly recall many of the horrors of junior high. First there was the change of venue…and social situation. Growing up in one of the most sheltered, WHITE areas of Long Island, I understood that some of my favorite singers like Donna Summer and Michael Jackson were, you know, black, but I wasn’t aware I’d actually meet a black person! Okay, I exaggerate. We actually had one black girl transfer into my sixth grade class the year before, for a couple of months, and then disappear just as quickly after because, as my teacher explained to the whole class, her house burned down. Her house burned down??? I’m no conspiracy theorist, but even my pre-adolescent mind at the time was like, ‘The house of the new, only black family in town burned down???”

Anyway, the cool thing about my junior high was that it was smack dab in the middle of a notoriously ghetto town! My school district was set up so that kids would go to the elementary school and high school in their own town, but for those two middle years of junior high, kids from every school in the district were sent to the single junior high in the district. So here you have all these naïve white kids who never met a black kid before thrown into a school that actually had a slight black majority. The majority standing we took for granted was wiped away in an instant, our obsession with the Go-Go’s and A Flock of Seagulls was wicka-wicka-wicka scratched into the street beats of Grandmaster Flash, childish one-on-one fights were replaced by serious knife-wielding gang fights in the schoolyard, and a 13-year-old black girl dropped out of school after the first two weeks not because her house burned down, but so she could give birth to her baby, which she brought back to school two weeks later to show off to all her friends in the schoolyard…and you would think that would be what ignorant white pre-teens would have to worry about. Nope. You wanted to become friends with the black kids—so they could protect you from all the evil white kids in the school! Yeah, junior high was definitely a lesson in the truths about race relations.

The first real challenge with junior high was the fact that the school was over a mile from my house. The thought of not being able to run 8 short blocks home in times of trouble was terrifying. We had to get up extra early to go stand out in the cold on the corner ‘bus stop,’ which is where the bullying begins. You tried to stay hidden behind, well, the STOP sign, which never gave you full coverage, and simply hoped the bullies would target your BFF since you were both in diapers instead of you. You’d try avoiding any trouble by using the timing method—figure out about what time the school bus arrived every day, then wait until the last second and RUN all the way to the bus stop to catch it. If you didn’t, you’d have to go home and tell dad the awful news—that he had to drive a mile and a half out of his way on his commute to work.

Missing the school bus was also something you never wanted to do AFTER classes. If you missed the bus, you’d have to hang around for the ‘late’ bus, which didn’t show up until like five (and was reserved for the WORST kids in the school who were there late for detention!). As for the bus itself, well, here’s where the irony comes in. The COOL place to sit was the last three seats on either side of the aisle in the back of the bus. So…a little more than three decades before, crackers (oh sorry—we called us honkies back then) made African-Americans sit at the back of the bus, which ended up becoming the place white kids wanted to sit the most in my youth. I know, it’s obviously because that’s where you can do the most inappropriate things without the bus driver seeing. And man, did the bullies take advantage of that cover. Things could get pretty brutal back there for the geeks. The best was when an occasional geek would try to take a stand and run on the bus first and claim one of those coveted back seats defiantly—until one of the biggest bullies walked right up to him and dragged him, kicking and screaming (sometimes with bloodshed) from the seat. It was like a metaphorical Roman Empire conquest being enacted before our very eyes.

There were fun moments on the bus as well. My personal favorite memory is of the tipping attempt. See, right near the end of our bus route, the bus had to turn onto a major turnpike at a 45 degree angle. The bus driver was a pretty cute young dude who liked to speed and flirt with the tough mean girl bitches who sat in the back through his rear view mirror (I always pretended he was pouting this lips and batting those eyes at me). So the girls (and the male bullies as well), would instruct the driver each day to hit the turn at maximum speed, and then command all the other kids on the bus to run to one side of the bus to see if we could tip it. Of course, we all complied, because death was a better option than saying no to a bully. Usually, the bus driver would tease us, driving fast until right before hitting the turn. But one particular day, he must have been feeling feisty (one of the hottest mean girls actually bothered to come to school that day), and he hit the turn at what felt like 90 miles an hour. All we scared peons rushed for our lives (or deaths) to one side of the bus as instructed (with just one dirty look). The bus screeched around the turn. The two wheels on the other side of the bus lifted off the fricking ground. We all screamed in terror as the road right outside our windows came closer and closer to our faces…. Needless to say, not even the bullies were brave enough to ever try that game again.

The dependence on the bus actually caused a problem when it came time to go home sick, especially if you had a mother who didn’t drive, like me. Being a very anxiety inducing time for a pre-teen, my junior high years also found me very often getting some major stomach ‘viruses,’ to put it nicely (It didn’t help that I didn’t know back then that I was lactose intolerant and would have cereal and milk for breakfast every morning). I don’t know how I even graduated junior high, because I went home sick all the time. As for the stomach virus part, which made a bathroom a necessity, here was another catch—the stalls in the junior high boys’ room DID NOT HAVE DOORS. Yeah. No kid ever used a bowl in a school filled with cruel pre-teens. So if you ever had to take care of business, you’d go to the nurse’s office, where she had a single person bathroom. All you had to do was say you weren’t feeling well, and she would reply, “Do you need to use the bathroom?” Clearly, she KNEW what the issue was. You’d think the damn school would spring for some doors. Anyway, I was very often in the single person bathroom—I mean, nurse’s office—waiting for my mom to come pick me up. And you know what that entailed? My mom calling a cab company and waiting for them to come pick her up to then drive her to my school to get me as I sat on the nurse’s office single person bathroom bowl sweating it out. Ah, the good old days.

Gym was also an interesting experience. Naturally, dodge ball was the worst, with even the gym teacher taking pleasure in watching the bullies throw the ball like a fricking bullet at the geeks. I still don’t understand where they found the ability or coordination to throw a huge spherical object with one hand with such force. When you were lucky enough to avoid the cannonball and it instead slammed against the bleachers behind you, the sound of the contact could shatter your eardrum. But the bad boys were knocked down a notch when we played football. Talk about awkward moments—our gym teacher was obsessed with making us do it like the professionals, making sure that when we were doing that whole ‘hut, hut, hike’ thing, the back of the one kid’s hand was firmly placed up against the other kid’s perineum. He even demonstrated on one of the students. Boy, talk about a WTF moment in hindsight (literally). And of course, we had a crazy female gym teacher who found her teaching inspiration in the newly released mega hit “Physical” by Olivia Newton-John. For the ten weeks that song was at number one, she had the 45 RPM record blasting on repeat on a turntable in the gym ALL DAY, Olivia’s sweet and sexy voice echoing through every hall in the building. Do you know how hard it was for me to keep my gay ass in class for nine periods when all I wanted to do was run out in the halls in sweats and a head band and do the jumping jacks routine Olivia did in her HBO concert???

Not surprisingly, my fondest memories revolve around food—and experiences that made you want to puke from fright. All the dreadful things that occur in the lunchroom in teen movies are REAL. Junior high lunch was terrifying. First there was the greasy frozen pizza they served us with soggy French fries as the side dish EVERY DAY (One of my all-time favorite meals). But then there was the evil waiting at the end of the lunch line. See, just as you finished paying the lunch lady at the register, two of the biggest, meanest bullies in the school would be waiting for you to walk by while putting your change in your pocket. The change never made it there. You would immediately be asked the rhetorical question, “Got any change?” So you turned it over without argument (and without even a ‘thanks’) because you didn’t want to end up being held outside the school bus window on the way home when the gang was trying to make it tip over.

It being 1982 and all, I was very fond of the classic zippered, hooded sweatshirt, as was everyone that decade. The first thing you did when a food fight broke out in the cafeteria was pull the hood over your head, zip up, and pull those drawstrings so tight you looked like a jawa (which you never said out loud because that kind of geek talk is just asking for it). Of course, the food fights were one-sided, because only the bullies and mean girls threw food. The goal was simply to try and avoid it until the cafeteria monitor—a disgruntled teacher assigned the task during a free-period—decided to put a stop to it. There was one out of control food fight in particular that began when a jealous bully blew a fit because his mean girl girlfriend joined the other mean girls in catcalling when the incredibly hot sports coach walked into the cafeteria one afternoon. I was so proud of myself for surviving that one unscathed. Or so I thought. When I sat down at my desk in my next class after lunch, my friend who sat behind me very carefully tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Um, Dan. You have some food stuck to your back.” I quickly removed my hooded sweatshirt and found…an ENTIRE piece of greasy cafeteria pizza clinging to the back of my sweatshirt.

But that wasn’t the grossest experience of the lunch period. The real danger was in going outside at lunchtime. See, right outside the cafeteria was an area where you could go and hang out after you finished eating, because the disgruntled teacher covering cafeteria duty was so dedicated to actually monitoring what went on between students outside the building. You learned pretty fast that a pizza on the back was a better option than some fresh air. Right outside the cafeteria windows, all the bullies would play handball against a wall. Across from that wall was another wall lined with a fenced off stairwell leading to a maintenance room in the basement. As the bullies used the handball and bricks to practice for crushing skulls in dodge ball, they would often send the ball flying…down into the stairwell. When this happened, the bullies would send the closest unfortunate geek within reach to go get the ball. Said geek would be thrust through the gate and onto the stairs, the gate slamming closed behind him with a very final echo. As the terrified geek ran down the stairs to retrieve the ball, the words “SPIT PIT!” would ring through the schoolyard.  Everyone in shouting distance would come running to the stairwell, surrounding the gate, leaning over it, and…you guessed it. Making the stairwell a spit pit. By the time the poor geek raced back up the stairs with the hand ball, he would be ‘clam’ chowder.

Fortunately, I never fell victim to the spit pit. Which is what makes it one of the fondest memories in my return to junior horror high…

I never thought I’d see so many female body parts so in-my-face in my life, but thanks to Piranha 3-D, one of my new favorite movies, I’ve now had some extremely intimate moments with the female anatomy. How can I love a movie so filled with babes and boobs, you ask? Well, because all the fish get eaten in this film…and again, I’m not talking about the piranha.

There’s no talking about this film without ignoring the giant—well, not elephant—in the room. It’s the bearded clams!!! Not to mention the boobage. Piranha 3-D has more T, A and P than any other rated-R horror film I’ve ever seen. Which made it all the more uncomfortable having two kids under 10-years-old sitting behind us with their mother. WTF? Seriously, with a movie this explicit, not to mention gory, it should be mandatory for the movie theaters to WARN parents trying to bring their kids in. But back to the, um, ‘TAP’ in the film. Ironically, there’s no sex, it’s just nudity. But it’s almost every single chick in the flick. Now I’ve never been to spring break, and I heard it was raunchy, but I had no idea that there are essentially NO girls with any inhibitions about being naked in front of droves of drunk frat boys.

And despite there being no focus on the bodies of the frat boys, Piranha rules!!! It’s everything the snorefest Jaws isn’t. Okay, that’s taking it a little far, because Jaws is a great film…until, you know, the endless monologues on the boat for the last hour of the movie. As far as fun, entertainment, thrills, and suspense, Piranha is much more up there with the classic Jaws 2, the absolute best film in that franchise, and actually pays much more of an homage to the second Jaws. This film truly does for fresh water lakes what Jaws did for salt water ocean. That’s right. This spring break isn’t taking place at the shore, it’s a party on a lake. And shallow water has never been so frighteningly filmed.

The director happens to be the man behind other favorite horror films of mine like the remake of The Hills Have Eyes and the freaky foreign film High Tension. Alexandre Aja shows an amazing ability to cross subgenres of horror films, because every film is good in its own right, but completely different than the others. This film in particular is witty fun, yet soaked with blood and gruesome gore. After seeing the special effects of this film in 3-D, you pretty much have a full sense of how horrible it would be to have your face gnawed off by the razor-sharp teeth of a pack of piranha. The effects are cringe-inducing.

The film is also amazingly American in its portrayal of loads of stupid, drunken college kids just looking to get laid and totally ignoring the authority of law enforcement. And of course, to satire the whole ‘Girls Gone Wild’ phenomenon, there’s Jerry O’Connell as a sleazy porn director who is a big dick—in more ways than one. Not since South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut has a film gone there to such an extent and gotten so many moviegoers to scream in sheer horror at the sight of all the goodness a man has to offer. And speaking of man goodness, the ever-adorable horror director Eli Roth has a small role here, as does black bear Ving Rhames, surprisingly chubby and older now. There’s even an appearance by “Carlos” from Desperate Housewives, and he’s never looked more delicious (unfortunately…). All the kids in the film are pretty much from a bunch of today’s teen television dramas.

Then there’s the six degrees of Spielberg situation. As if to pay tribute to the man who began the man-eating fish craze thirty-five years ago, this film features Elisabeth Shue as the local sheriff. She still looks stunning after all these years and commands the part seriously despite the campy chaos going on elsewhere. Elisabeth appeared as Marty McFly’s girlfriend in the sequels to the Spielberg creation Back to the Future (replacing the original nobody who played the part in the first film, forever killing the trilogy’s continuity), and is here reunited with none other than Christopher Lloyd, who was clearly directed in this film to act EXACTLY like ‘Doc’ Emmett Brown. Awesome. But the best nod to Spielberg and his original fish film is the cameo in the opening scene. I wish Scream 4 luck in finding a first victim for the prologue to top the one in Piranha 3-D.

More fun than Jaws, smartly not taking itself seriously, and with Ray-Ban inspired glasses that are ten times better than the technologically archaic red/blue glasses used for the 1983 classic Jaws 3-D, Piranha had best be just the beginning of a new generation of summer blockbuster fish franchises!!! Because this film bites—in a good way.

Aside from slashers, the 80s also spawned various horror films about the use of human flesh as meat to be served to unsuspecting patrons at restaurants, diners, and such. Motel Hell serves up a seriously demented take on the theme and could be so disturbing, but instead goes the over-the-top exploitation camp route, probably because it would have been way too heavy for 1980 censors if the premise had been taken seriously. So basically it was watered down to Waters…John Waters that is. Yeah, it’s definitely weird enough to be something John Waters could have put on celluloid.

Basically, a freaky redneck man and his hella butch overalls wearing sister have a motel, slaughterhouse and a ‘meat market,’ so you can guess what becomes of guests. Not even Norman Bates thought of a way to turn a profit on being a psycho killer!  This plot could be a simple set up for a whole lot of kills, but instead, the movie is more about the process of exactly how this psycho pair makes sure their meat is perfectly right for use. This shit is heinous. They bury their victims, STILL ALIVE, in their yard up to the head, then cut their throats, severing the vocal chords so the victims can only make these horrible gurgling sounds. After that, they cover their heads with sacks. So every time the psycho pair visits their little crop of people, you see a bunch of sacks wiggling furiously from the dirt while making miserable noises. The goal of the pair is to tenderize the meat through immobility—which requires feeding the ‘garden heads’ by sticking funnels in their mouths.

The psycho pair is portrayed in typical backwoods lunatic creepy comic fashion, not unlike Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive in that respect, where you find the maniacal behavior somehow funny, yet you know coming face-to-face with the freak in real life would be a whole different story. The scenes involving the tormenting of the garden heads are truly horrible, but the film has a bunch of characters and subplots that help distract from over thinking the possibilities of the situation—like, WTF happens when the buried victims poop or pee? Ew…fricking…ew.  There are two chicks who stop their car in the middle of nowhere because there are cows crossing the road—cardboard cows that are part of a trap, making this a moment that could have been high on suspense but is instead somewhat humorous. There is all out slapstick camp when a whip-wielding dominatrix and her male slave, dressed in clear plastic bra and miniskirt (Missing Persons anyone?), think they are about to get into a swinging B&D interlude with the nasty looking, rope carrying psycho pair. Then there’s this trippy neon strobe light experiment the psycho pair performs on the garden heads that could only be a product of 1980. Add to that a role for Wolfman Jack as a reverend, and you can see how far this movie strays from its disturbing main premise

Along with the revolting concept of the garden heads, the ending of this movie also has some pretty strong horror elements. First of all, the garden heads eventually escape, and are these traumatized, almost zombie-like monsters, making for some fantastic horror. And the final scene could have carried the whole movie in a sort of Texas Chainsaw way, when a local cop is chased through the slaughterhouse by a chainsaw swinging maniac wearing a fricking slaughtered pig’s head. What a fantastic creepfest that moment alone is—a visual that could easily stay with viewers forever. It makes a great starting point for a remake if you ask me….

Back in the day when Friday the 13^th and Halloween reigned supreme, right as the 70s were becoming the 80s, there were a string of low budget horror/exploitation films being made that were just begging for a market that didn’t involve passing theatrical rating systems. It’s almost as if a catalog of movies was being filmed in preparation for the early 80s home video explosion.

The most crucial part of marketing these films would be the theatrical poster (aka: the VHS box artwork). The gruesome scenes of sex and slaughter alone made young, impressionable teens and pre-teens’ stomachs turn with terror, afraid to imagine what brutal horrors awaited the adolescent sinners on celluloid. 1980’s Mother’s Day was definitely one of those cover visuals that kept me away from the film until I was much older. From the title, you could assume that this movie was cashing in on the emerging slasher/holiday themed films, but in truth, this movie has more in common with Deliverance and I Spit On Your Grave. It’s definitely the torture porn of its day.

But back to that artwork, which is what promises a gory good horror experience. This ain’t no Mamma Mia. Mother in her chair with half her face looking like a skull immediately brings to mind Mother Bates. The present she holds with a decapitated head indeed points at some demented celebration of the Mother’s Day holiday. Behind Mother we see her two sons. The inbred looking one on the left is holding the bloody axe, so we assume he’s a deranged killer, while the one on the right we can only assume is more horribly disfigured and deformed under his potato sack mask, much like Jason in Friday the 13^th Part 2 (which this film pre-dates by a year). His knife screams Michael Myers. So this simply has to be a straight up holiday horror film, right? Nope. It is the work of a genius artist and marketing team, because this simply isn’t a scary film, not a holiday slasher, and barely even a disturbing exploitation flick.

The film’s opening is classic. Some self-help guru is giving a seminar, and an old lady bonds with the couple she’s sitting with in the front row. After the seminar, she offers the young man and woman a ride. But this nice young couple has plans for her. As soon as they get on a desolate road in the woods, they plan to attack and kill her. The ominous synthesizer accent stabs are sheer 1980 perfection. Before the couple can attack the old woman, the car stalls, so the lady gets out to check under the hood. The twist, of course, is that this is Mother, and it is she and her sons who have plans for the couple. We cut to a blatant dummy profile in the back seat that is supposed to be the man, then we cut to the girl in the front seat, who screams as blood is splattered on her, and then we cut back to the man dummy, whose head is THEN chopped off….you know, after blood has already flown! Hard to believe an editing job this bad was not corrected upon the film’s original release. Once Mother and her sons drag the girl out of the car and the boys have some fun with her, she crawls to Mother for mercy. Mother proceeds to choke her with a rope—while saying “I love you” and planting a kiss on the young woman’s lips!!!! Geriatric lesbianism??? Blech!!!

We are then introduced to the three main chicks of the movie. Let’s face it. By 1980, any trio of girls in a horror movie was simply a poor man’s Laurie, Annie and Linda. These three are slightly older though, and planning to do a whole girl getaway thing, but first we’re treated to a pool party that captures a moment in time when men were men, sporting beards, filling the packages of speedos, their backs covered in hair while their heads were bald. They just don’t make men like they used to.

Once the girls are on the road, all signs point to a bad weekend. They are heading off to a lake to camp. Bad sign. They stop at a gas station convenience store and two kids are playing banjos out front. Bad sign. A crazy redneck store clerk warns them to stay away from their destination. Bad sign. They drive past a “proceed at your own risk” sign. Literally a bad sign!!! And yet, they still go skinny dipping almost immediately!!!

Before the horror begins, we get the weirdest 1970s flashback to when these girls were in high school (the 70s being, you know, a year before the film was released, and probably when the film was made). The flashback holds plenty of promise. First off, they paid for the rights to use Tommy James’ “I Think We’re Alone Now,” which is a big surprise. Anyway, the girls are recalling playing a prank on one hell of a cute guy—one of the girl’s luring him onto a baseball field at school at night to have sex. She runs off for a minute, he gets naked and begins doing naked pushups, and then the girls turn on all the playing field flood lights! And it’s more than just a full moon that’s out! As the guy scrambles for his clothes and runs off, everything is flapping in the cool night breeze!

Just as the girls are having a poignant moment, Mother’s boys attack. The girls’ are dragged kicking and screaming in their sleeping bags to Mother’s house. Magically, when the girls are released from their sleeping bags, they are no longer in their nightwear, but are instead fully dressed in their day clothes!!! Anyway, they are brought upstairs and tied to machines in a fully equipped gym!!! Didn’t Leatherface have one of those?

Weird thing is, this family seems almost normal, aside from the whole kidnapping girls and doing sexual things to them. This is definitely not the Texas Chainsaw family. In fact, when one of the girls calls one brother a ‘backwards, perverted piece of shit,’ he replies, “Don’t ever say backwards again! We civilized! Look around!” And you totally believe it. They have TV, they have Trix on the breakfast table! And they don’t even look particularly frightening, which is a big disappointment for someone like me who loves Wrong Turn. One brother has red hair, fucked up backwoods teeth and a deformed eye, but when the other brother takes off his creepy potato sack, he’s…um…actually really cute and totally normal! WTF? On the bright side, he’s the one whose butt we get to see when he takes advantage of the first girl. This is the one and only disturbing exploitation scene in the film. They bring the girl outside, make her dress like a little girl with toys in her hand, then he pins her down on the ground and begins slapping her repeatedly while screwing her—as Mother sits by and watches!!! More old person sexual weirdness. Meanwhile the other brother takes “Kodak” photos per Mother’s request. I wonder if this was the kind of advertisement Kodak wanted for their precious ‘moments’? The scene, thankfully, can’t compare to the heinous rape in I Spit On Your Grave, and modern desensitization and overexposure to torture porn further weakens its impact.

From this point on, the movie is essentially just Deliverance with women seeking revenge instead of men. The other two chicks escape their gymnasium prison and exact revenge. This is also when the film is most suspenseful. There are a couple of horror elements thrown in as the girls escape the house (the obligatory body parts found around the house, for instance), there’s a great cat and mouse game in the woods (the girls have amazing sense of direction in the strange woods in the middle of the night), there’s a classic TV set kill (you can’t pull that off with a modern LCD flatscreen), and even an electric knife kill. See? This family really isn’t backwards at all. But the ultimate moment comes when the chicks get revenge on Mother—using a set of blow up tits that were lying around. I’m not even kidding.

This is one of those movies that holds all its potential in the very final image you see before the credits role. There is a bit of family back story referenced between Mother and sons a few times throughout the film, but you don’t really even give it much thought as you’re watching. But then comes the final ‘scare,’ and you can’t help wonder why they didn’t make the family backstory the focal point of the entire film??? Oh if only they’d make Millennium Mother’s Day. Because the best part of Mother’s Day 1980 is the Psycho-homage artwork.

Way back in 1984, the same year A Nightmare On Elm Street haunted our dreams, there was another film released with a curiously similar premise. Hot off his groundbreaking role in Jaws 3-D, Dennis Quaid starred in Dreamscape opposite Kate Capshaw, same year she did Indiana Jones…can you spot the six degrees of Steven Spielberg situation going on there? For added fun, there’s even resident Exorcist exorcist Max Von Sydow! Dreamscape freaked me out when I was a kid, and I’ve been contemplating adding it to my horror collection for a while. It’s definitely entertaining—and definitely one of those hokey PG-13 sci-fi horror flicks you’d watch dozens of times on cable during long summer days back in the mid-80s. Well dag, why am I even hesitating in adding it to my collection? The nostalgia alone is reason enough to own it! Unfortunately, both the DVD and Widescreen releases are edited versions! Oh the f*cking humanity!!!

I just caught the movie on cable this weekend. It definitely is  no Elm Street. It’s more a psychological sci-fi thriller with a couple of standout horror elements. The situation is pretty simple. There’s this experimental dream clinic where people with the ability to enter the dreams of others are being studied. Essentially, they’re lab rats (which Dennis Quaid so conveniently points out). There’s plenty of exposition and character development, including the obligatory 80s sex scene (Quaid making Capshaw’s fantasies come true in her dreams!). Quaid is also pretty sure one of his fellow caged rats is up to no good and possibly killing people in their dreams. Which is perfect for the bad guy looking for a way to assassinate the president (the president being Eddie Albert of Green Acres fame!!!).

The freaky cheese begins with Quaid trying to help a scared young boy get past his night terrors. He enters the boy’s dream for one hell of a trip—and a confrontation with the boy’s boogeyman, who is not wearing a dirty red and green striped sweater and a fedora. This boogeyman is actually…a snake man!!! Eek! A snake!!! Pretty sick scene, especially when you are a young teen in the 80s and claymation/stop motion animation whatever-it’s-called technology is actually cutting edge. Yeah, the snake man kind of looks like he slithered his way out of 1933’s King Kong when he moves. I can only imagine how CGI-tastic he would look in a remake. I think what makes him work in this film is that he’s not overexposed and all up in your face, as is the problem with horror movie monsters these days.

There are numerous parallels to the Nightmare movies—some ideas even ahead of the Freddy franchise. First of all, there’s the dream clinic angle. There’s the fact that if you die in your dreams, you die. There’s the ability to manipulate your dreams, like in Elm Street 3. Then when Quaid confronts his dream-nemesis at the end of the movie, it’s like a Freddy free-for-all. Let’s see. The bad guy at one point uses finger knives. Yep. He rips out a heart, and quips, “Have a heart!” Very Freddy, post Elmstreet 2. The killer dreams he has ninja abilities, just like the kids could imagine super powers in Elm Street 3. The final nightmare eventually leads Quaid into a fiery underworld reminiscent not only of Freddy’s boiler room, but also his fiery lair in New Nightmare. The Dreamscape lair is protected by devil dogs/hell hounds as in Elm Street 2. And there’s even a character taking on the appearance of another character’s father as in Elm Street 3!

One segment is uber creepy and NOT like anything you’ve ever seen on Elm Street, but may have experienced if you’ve ever played Resident Evil Zero. Zombies on a train! This scene puts the snake man to shame! Too bad it’s such a short scene, because it definitely gives the entire film horror cred. The other standout moment is the very “Amazing Stories” twist at the end. Not a major twist, but still mysterious enough to get the Twilight Zone theme dancing in your brain.

I must say, after the debacle that was A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010, I think the producers should have focused their attention on remaking 1984’s other nightmare movie, Dreamscape. This one is a classic premise ripe for a horror overhaul.

How to even begin with this 1990 (aka:late 80s) horror film that I just pulled off my DVD shelf for a viewing? I guess you could call it Snow White meets Carrie. Sounds horrible, I know. But somehow, it works for a 1990 (aka: late 80s) horror film.

For starters, the movie begins with girl on girl action—and by that I mean, girl on girl slashing! In front of a mirror. And it’s brutal. Now that’s my kind of movie. But naturally, this is just the prologue. It’s when we get to the actual story that the fun really begins. First, there’s the presence of scream queen Karen Black and laugh queen Lily Munster (who racked up a couple of good horror movie credits in her later years). Recently widowed Karen and her daughter are moving into the house where the mysterious mirror resides. Lily Munster works at some sort of antique shop and wants to take all the old items left in the house by the previous tenants for her shop. She leaves the mirror, probably because she’s too distracted by the books she finds on black magic and the occult.

This mirror is the perfect centerpiece for the bedroom of our female lead, Megan. Megan looks pretty much EXACTLY like Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, which is why all the popular kids at school end up treating her like she’s Carrie. Luckily, Megan makes at least one friend, and no, it’s not her gym teacher. Typical high school bully stuff goes on, making it clear that Megan is going to need to tap into the evil within the mirror to get some nice brutal revenge on her antagonists. In fact, it’s really the mirror that ‘taps’ Megan when she essentially gets her sexy on with her own reflection as the mirror drips blood. When the mirror is done with her, it has magically transformer her into what looks like that sexy 1990 one hit wonder Alannah Myles (if Megan had grabbed a hairbrush microphone and started singing “Black Velvet” into the mirror while shaking her new perm, my life would have been complete). Once she’s gotten the Olivia Newton-John Grease finale treatment, Megan has the power to make the popular jock boy fall for her, which leads to a very The Craft moment—but, you know, with a mirror.

Megan’s metamorphosis into an evil and sexy murderess is just icing on the cake when you have Karen Black around. As usual, this be-otch is crazy! Karen has some awesome lines in this film and deserved more. Let’s see, first, right after they move, she’s on the phone with the family therapist, and when he asks how her daughter is coping with the death of her father and the move to a new house and school, Karen’s eyes get all Cookie Monster googily like they do and she barks, “I’m talking about me doctor, not my daughter!” And when Karen finds her dog dead (after it was sniffing around the mirror), she cries “First your father now this.” When a shocked Megan stammers, “It’s not the same thing,” Karen responds, “You never liked him, but he liked you!” She’s definitely a dog lover after my own heart. Later on, when a quickly evil-turning Megan gets all demonic on her mother’s ass, Karen goes “I’m going to the store Megan. Do you want me to pick you up some Midol?” PRECIOUS. Karen even ends up hooking up with the guy she calls from the Pet Sematary (I mean…cemetery) to bury her dog, which results in a very bizarre bug-hater’s nightmare of a family dinner.

But all that gay campy shit aside, there are two genuinely creepy moments in this film: a visit from Megan’s ‘father’ in the middle of the night as well as what eventually comes out of the mirror alone could support a much freakier horror film if the moviemakers had opted to exploit those elements (which is what would probably happen if this film were remade today). Other than those two scenes, while the film has a great creepy atmosphere and pretty excellent gore scenes, it’s not essentially a scary movie. And the ending scene—oh man, I was having flashbacks to the end of The Exorcist II: The Heretic, when Regan returns to her home where she was possessed and there’s bright blue light shining through all the windows, crap flying everywhere, doors banging, and the entire house rocking on its foundation. All that’s missing in Mirror, Mirror are those darned locusts. Which, you know, is the one thing that saves Mirror, Mirror from having a totally busted ending. That and the freaky thing that comes out of the mirror. You simply have to see this film if just for that ending.

Ever heard of Rolfe Kanefsky? I hadn’t either, until I discovered that I have not one but FOUR of his horror movies in my collection. So I guess that means I’m a fan.

Funny thing about Rolfe, he had a huge window for a lawsuit when Scream premiered in 1996. Four years before Randy gave us lessons on the rules of slasher films, there was David, the lead character in There’s Nothing Out There, who spouted the rules of surviving a horror movie every chance he got. That’s right kiddies. Randy the video store clerk is a total poser.

Speaking of video stores (still hot in the 90s), let’s start with the opening of There’s Nothing Out There. A blonde chick in a hot pink miniskirt and tank top is working in a video store and is suddenly attacked by a crazed killer. As she writhes and crawls with pouted lips and heaving chest across the floor of the video store (make love to the camera, baby!), we are bombarded by the cover art of VHS tapes on the shelves—classic horror titles that feature artistic drawings of curvy, busty, scantily clad women looking somehow horrified and horny at the same time (hornified?). Keep that in mind—because Rolfe likes to make films that are, in part, a discourse about the intercourse between sex and horror.

Turns out video store blondie is only dreaming. She’s actually asleep in her car—and is immediately attacked by some sort of alien with octopus arms! She drives until she crashes…

Dissolve to David…and his teenage friends. They are headed off for a weekend at a summer home. When they see police investigating a crashed car on the side of the road, David immediately pipes up worriedly, claiming this is a clear warning sign telling teenagers on their way to party and have sex that they should really go back. When they arrive at the summer home, Randy…um…I mean…David, warns them not to skinny dip, not to go off into the woods alone, not to go in the basement, to beware the cheap cat scare tactic…you get the picture. David is Randy, four years before. David’s character tries continuously to warn the others that they are in the midst of a horror movie, but they don’t listen until most of them have been slaughtered at the hands of an alien that looks kind of like the lovechild of Basket Case and that big pile of talking poo from Weird Science. David has all the answers. He’s the one who knows how to survive a horror movie. Hell, not even Randy made it past the first sequel.

Even though it was released in 92, I have a feeling There’s Nothing Out There was completed at the tail end of the 80s, because it’s more 80s than 90s. Most of the songs used in the soundtrack are very new wave sounding (nothing famous), there’s a group of punks who come to skinny dip in the water behind the summer home, and all the girls look like members of Poison, only, you know, not as pretty…

There’s Nothing Out There is low budget, extremely funny in all its familiarity, and clearly made by a lover of the genre. Rolfe also serves up the sex—and based on his imdb page, it appears he’s no stranger to ‘non-mainstream’ movies, if you will. In fact, several of the actors in this, his first film, appear in some of them. Here we get a gratuitous shower scene with a blonde chick and sex scenes galore. And Rolfe gives us a nice bit of balance when the cutest guy in the film tears of all his clothes to go skinny dipping at night. And boy is there a full moon out!

There are plenty of nods to other horror films. The slapstick humor, which is laugh out loud at times, is straight up Evil Dead, as is a face melting scene. Random blue and red lighting is thrown in that has Dario Argento written all over it. There are abundant references to stomach bursting scenes from alien horror films. And they even try to burn the alien in the oven in a very Trilogy of Terror moment. Not to mention, there’s a watery basement scene that I would swear is an ode to the film Return of the Alien’s Deadly Spawn that I just reviewed recently.

To add to the fun, there’s one guy who has total gay face. I’m sure this dude has to be gay in real life, because every line he delivers sounds somewhat queeny, not to mention that his only other credit in film on imdb is as a dancer in the original 1988 Hairspray. And not once, but TWICE in this film he lashes out against pussy—first he throws a poor little pussycat to the alien to save himself, and second, he knees one of his ‘girlfriend’ in the va-jay-jay when she is possessed by the alien after it shoots green lasers at her eyes. Yeah, There’s Nothing Out There is definitely my kind of horror film.

12 years after his first horror film (and clearly a fun time making adult entertainment), Rolfe returned to the genre where he got his start with another goody. This time around, the major inspiration seems to be the Night of the Demons series.

A bunch of college kids, including b-movie scream queen Tiffany Shepis, are involved in a hazing (imagine that) on Halloween night that involves them stealing a demonic book for a scavenger hunt from their crazy teacher (scream king Brad Dourif—you know, the guy whose soul jumps into Chucky), then spending a night in a creepy mansion. Well, the demonic book ends up in the basement, Dourif ends up in a coma, and the kids end up getting possessed by his spirit one by one when the hole to hell opens. Hole-y Night of the Demons! The long shots of dark hallways, the glowing fire in the main room where the kids are hanging out and the zooming camera signifying the rampant demonic spirit looking for a new body to inhabit are straight out of my favorite horror film of 1988.

Again, Rolfe loves camp and comedy in his horror, and there are plenty of good one-liners in this film, the kids battling each other as they turn into demons—only one at a time in this film compared to the demon party in Night of the Demons. Tiffany Shepis gets some awesome support from the blonde ‘bimbo’ in the bunny costume, who has a few surprises up her sleeve. And then there’s the absolutely adorable Parry Shen in the male lead. Parry is like the go-to guy if you want an adorable, boyish Asian guy in your film. He has also appeared in the campy horror Hatchet as well as Shrieker. I just hope he keeps making these kinds of horror movies because he totally rules.

On top of all that, there are also creepy mannequins, men in women’s clothing, Tiffany Shepis’s boobs and butt, a chainsaw, a long tongue, a creepy floating red balloon, darts, and a picture perfect Bruce Campbell cameo. And then there’s the basement ending hell hole ending, which is like something out of Amityville-3D.

Too bad Tiffany Shepis was too young to be in movies in 1992, otherwise she would have been in EVERY Rolfe Kanefsky film. Corpses, while campy and low budget, runs a little long in my opinion, but it still has its moments—and plenty of Argento lighting, plenty of gore, and plenty of undead. In fact, it starts immediately with disembowelment—on a baseball field—which leaves you with a lot of high hopes.

An evil undertaker is bringing the dead back to life in the basement of his funeral home using a special embalming fluid. His assistant happens to be Tiffany Shepis’s cute boyfriend (whose nipples she likes to squeeze—hard—after sex in a coffin). Tiffany happens to be the daughter of the Sheriff. The sheriff happens to now be marrying the ex-wife of the evil undertaker, and the ex-wife is trying to get his funeral home shut down so the city can build a mall there (and yes, there’s a reference made to Dawn of the Dead). So the undertaker is going to use the undead to fight the powers that be and get his ex-wife back. But that’s when things get gory and the undead wreak havoc.

This film seems to draw its inspiration from Re-Animator as well as Dead Alive and, of course, Evil Dead. Fun moments include a horny zombie with a constant erection because he died of a Viagra overdose and a bunch of zombies ripping of Tiffany Shepis’s clothes, to which she comment “Is that really necessary?” Jeff Fahey takes a Bruce Campbell stance to battle the undead, but the real comedy show is the MILF playing the stepmother. She totally steals the show.

Just note that this is one of those films that ‘continues’ after the credits. But the content is more like the ‘special features’ because it’s approximately 15 minutes of alternate scenes and endings! WTF?

Moving on up to the big time, Rolfe’s 2006 film Nightmare Man landed in the Afterdark Horrorfest. And people HATE this movie, which shocks me, because I think it has everything going for it. It’s scary, creepy, suspenseful, laugh-out-loud funny, gory, and has Tiffany Shepis in her best scream queen role ever. This time around, Rolfe deeply explores the fine line between hard-ons and horror.

The first half hour of this film is like a mini horror film in itself, with fantastic directing that keeps you on the edge of your seat. A woman having problems getting pregnant with her suave Italian boyfriend orders a fertility mask, but instead gets a seriously hideous looking black mask with gnarly teeth, evil eyes and devil horns. She plans to return it. When she hears someone in the house, the lights go out and she goes to look for her Italian Stallion, who calls to her from the attic. She goes up there…and…EEK!!! Fricking scary scene.

Next thing you know, Italian Stallion is driving her to some sort of nut house. Their car runs out of fuel so he offers to leave her all alone in the middle of nowhere while he walks back to a gas station. It just so happens that, to help with her therapy, one of her doctors has told the Italian Stallion to bring along the mask she thinks is coming to life as the ‘nightmare man’ when she doesn’t take her medication. So now the mask is in the trunk of the car, it turns to night, and we are treated to another fricking SCARY scene. This is what a horror movie is supposed to be. Our infertile femme fatale runs off into the woods, being chased by Nightmare Man.

At the same time, Tiffany Shepis and her friends are partying it up at a summer home in the woods (sound familiar?). It’s only Tiffany, her boyfriend, her female friend (with whom she’s had a secret lesbian relationship), and her now hetero girlfriend’s new boyfriend. Believe me, this hottie could turn anyone from dyke lover to dick lover. Anyway, this group is playing truth or dare, and when the ex-dyke is dared to do demonstrate having an orgasm, Rolfe juxtaposes her gasping and moaning performance over the infertile femme fatale’s screams and gasps for air in the woods, once again exploring the sex and horror theme he first considered way back at the beginning of There’s Nothing Out There.

Naturally, our infertile femme fatale makes it to the house, beginning the reign of terror on this gang of friends. But is Nightmare Man real, or just a figment of this crazy be-otch’s imagination? Is he a symbol of man’s power over women’s bodies? Is he just her husband in a mask? Is he her physical manifestation of everything she fears about men? Well, whatever he is, people start dying, until only Tiffany Shepis and the infertile femme fatale remain. This is where Tiffany shines. Her dialogue exchanges with the crazy bitch are perfect, bringing in the camp and comedy aspects of this film. And just when you think the twist (a lame one) has been revealed, the film delivers a perfectly demonic second twist that’s like something out of…you guessed it. Evil Dead or Night of the Demons.

These aren’t the only films Rolfe celebrates again. He also throws in Argento lighting and…in fact…totally celebrates his own movie There’s Nothing Out There. For starters, one of the characters is wearing a t-shirt that says… “There’s Nothing Out There.” Awesome. There’s another gratuitous shower scene, and also a blatant close-up of a big glass jar of M&Ms being smashed during a fight, something that also happens blatantly in There’s Nothing Out There! On top of that, there’s a bit of dialogue in which Tiffany Shepis references a mysterious sound being the cat, but when another character asks her if she has a cat, she says no. I’m telling you, Nightmare Man is for There’s Nothing Out There fans what the self-referential Was Craven’s New Nightmare was for A Nightmare on Elm Street fans. But even if you haven’t seen Rolfe’s first movie, Nightmare Man is a rollercoaster ride of horror fun that has sadly fallen victim to the negative free-publicity that the online world offers awesome horror films way too often. For me personally, Nightmare Man has me hoping for another Rolfe Kanefsky film to come along.

Having almost 40 years of experience watching horror films (I’m 41 and have been watching some form of horror films since I was like 5) I grew up on what are now considered ‘slow burners’: horror films that have about an hour or so of characterization, plot development, and a snail’s pace building of tension, headed for some sort of horrific climax, most often only hinted at in the promos. In essence, this was pretty much the norm for a majority of horror films for decades. This formula not only drew you in while causing your fear to mount, it also prevented an early climax—the premature delivery of the money shot, be it the reveal of the horrific monster previously hidden in shadow or the first drop of bloodshed. Many movies fit into this mold, including Psycho, 2000 Maniacs, The House on Haunted Hill (original), Homicidal, Black Christmas, Night of the Living Dead… I could go on and on.

Naturally, many of these movies gave you short spurts of thrills early on to grab your attention, but after that, it was just little dribbles of fear that carried you along. Not knowing when something was going to happen is what kept you watching. The anticipation of seeing what all the hype was about while actually being tentative about finding out was what created the intense horror movie experience. I mean, after being told that people were puking all over their popcorn while watching The Exorcist, when you sat down to see it for yourself, you definitely weren’t glancing at the clock every five minutes wondering when things were going to get exciting. There was actually a sense of relief that things were somewhat calm, because you were dreading the worst. But that calm was a false calm. You knew it was just the calm before the storm, so you welcomed the dialogue and level of sanity as you were supplied with exposition and character development. When you were finally slammed with the true level of repulsive moments the film had to offer, you were pretty much left damaged for life.

That all began to change, I guess in the 80s after the slasher phenomenon took hold and movie studios began calling for higher body counts and more blood, as if that were a substitute for chills, atmospher and suspense. Take, for instance, the Friday the 13^th series. The original film, released in 1980, had a body count of 9 (four more bodies than in the original slow burning slasher Halloween two years earlier). In 1989, when Jason took Manhattan, the body count was 19…almost double. And let’s face it. In 1980, Friday the 13^th was considered a ‘shocker’ and was actually a scary experience for filmgoers (despite it just being on old lady doing all the killings). By the time Jason took to the streets of New York, it was all a big joke, and he was even facing off against smart-mouthed street hoods with boom boxes. Ooh! Scary! This was pretty much the dark period of horror, which had become a farce, a joke; the audience was in on it, cheering for the evil rather than the well-being of the disposable characters. Then came Scream, which initially celebrated the dawning of the age of the slasher. While predictable and formulaic in terms of slashers (because it was mocking them), Scream was also suspenseful, heart-pounding, and loaded with likeable characters. A barrage of copycat films soon followed, and horror quickly promised to lose its foothold again.

Unfortunately, in most cases, the conclusion studios looking to make money off horror movies came to was that what ‘scared’ people was brutality, extreme violence, and body counts. It was a logical theory based on the success of the resurgence of slasher films. It’s what the latest generation was growing up on. And it’s the reason why we are about to witness the seventh sequel of the Saw series, why kids in the theaters were laughing at even the most grotesque moments of The Exorcist when it was re-released, and why The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is now called out as being ‘overrated,’ ‘laughable,’ and ‘boring’ on message boards.

The real saving grace for the horror genre in the past decade was the infusion of foreign horror films into the American mainstream, beginning with Asian horror. Other countries explored new horror devices rather than recycling the formula that had become so popular in the U.S. The impact of these films on the horror conscience was so strong that they started getting English version remakes, the most successful being The Ring, followed by The Grudge. The funny thing is, what you’ll notice if you watch The Ring is that, in essence, it is a major slow burner. After a fantastic shocker of an opening (in true Scream style), The Ring really turns into much more of a suspense/mystery film, and it is not until the end that we get the most pay off from a horror perspective—but that one taste of it at the beginning is what keeps us glued to the screen. Unfortunately, the whole girl in a white dress with her long black hair combed over her face thing was exploited like slashers had been, and before long, the string of films with this theme were throwing her in your face, all up in the camera so often that she was no longer frightening.

But we have definitely seen somewhat of a revisiting of the slow burner. Eli Roth did it with Cabin Fever, and wouldn’t you know, many people say the film is crap. Rather than being about people getting stripped, tortured and killed for exploitative purposes (as his follow-up, Hostel¸ was) it is an exploration of morality and humanity as friends turn against each other when faced with catching a spreading disease…slowly but surely. And of course, I’ve posted a whole blog about him, but director Ti West is mastering the old school art of slow burners, with mixed reviews from current horror lovers. The Roost and The House of the Devil are two of the creepiest films I’ve seen in years. The characters are slowly immersed in something horrific and unexplained, and we’re right there with them, our hearts in our throats as we wonder What the fuck is going on here?

And that question pretty much sums up the slow burner. It’s the “what the fuck is going on here” question begging to be answered that keeps you watching…if you have patience and relish the prolonging of the terror. If you prefer immediate gratification without any variation of ups, down, slow, fast, you’ll be satiated by modern films that start you right at the highest frenetic peak, providing you with a “this is exactly what the fuck is going on and is going to continue to go on non-stop for the next hour and a half.”

Tonight was the second episode of the new sitcom Hot in Cleveland on TV Land. And although the comparisons to The Golden Girls were inevitable, tonight it seemed like the writers were actually tipping their hat to the classic show. There may not have been any cheesecake involved, but the girls all gathered around the kitchen table to talk about female issues–and sex. And here we have Betty White, almost a decade older in real life than Sophia was supposed to be when The Golden Girls first premiered, sitting on a chair in a corner of the kitchen behind the main table where the other girls were talking, just as Sophia used to sit on a stool at the carving counter behind the main table on The Golden Girls. And there was even more familiar territory when Wendie Malick’s character began telling a story about something that happened to her character, an actress, on the soap opera on which she used to star. When Jane Leeves made a comment to the affect of “Go on, finish your story because we’re not going to be able to stop you anyway,” it was like witnessing a St. Olaf story all over again. Perhaps this was just a one-time homage to the other series, but it’s very welcome and I have no problem with this sitcom  imitating one of the best….

Of course, the comparisons got me thinking…are these women supposed to be the same age as Dorothy, Blanche and Rose on The Golden Girls? Although age was never specified, it was implied that Blanche was the youngest, and probably in her early 50s when the show began. In real life, Rue was the youngest at 51, while Bea and Betty were both 63. While age isn’t specified on Hot in Cleveland, in real life, Jane Leeves (who Betty White keeps calling the slutty one on the show) is the youngest at 49…Valerie Bertinelli is 50, and Wendie Malick is actually a decade older at 60! And all I can say is DAMN these women look good. I know plastic surgery has become big in Hollywood, but even the oldest of these three women looks like a MILF, while The Golden Girls looked like GILNFs (Grandmother’s I’d Like NOT to F*ck).

This gory little b-movie is one I’d forgotten about until it was recently mentioned on the horror message boards. When I saw it back in the 80s on VHS, it was titled Return of the Alien’s Deadly Spawn, but the DVD release simply uses the original title The Deadly Spawn, which they apparently changed to cash in on rumors that there was going to be a sequel to Alien. Even though it’s not a sequel to anything, somehow Return of the Alien’s Deadly Spawn works so much better with the b-movie sci-fi/horror feel of this 80s treat. It was originally released in 1983, one of my ten favorite years of the 80s.

I can not believe how bloody red gory this film is, with plenty of awesome fake body parts (mostly heads) and the giant Deadly Spawn’s slithering, sperm-with-teeth offspring (which love to eat head, ironically).

The opening has two young guys camping out in the woods together (gay!) when they see a meteor fall to earth nearby. They go to investigate but one guy goes back to the tent for a flashlight. This is classic. He starts calling out to the other guy because he can’t find the flashlight…but the guy apparently has no name, because he’s calling out generic things like “Hey! Where’s the flashlight! Hello! Can you hear me? I can’t find the flashlight!” Not only are these guys gay, but apparently they’re turning tricks with strangers in the woods! And those who are gay shall pay, so both dudes fall victim to the giant alien sperm machine.

After some absolutely awesome synth-drenched creature feature music over the opening credit, we arrive at the house that is predominantly the setting for the remainder of the movie. It’s not explained, but somehow, the giant Deadly Spawn has worked its way into one of the dankest flooded basements I’ve ever seen. This thing looks like a sewer, and is apparently the perfect temperature to keep sperm-with-teeth thriving.

So in this house lives a couple, their older son who is some sort of science major, their younger son who has a room loaded with iconic horror merchandise (I can totally relate), and visiting relatives—an aunt and her psychotherapist husband.

Mom and dad both end up in the basement (they’re having electricity issues they need to check on), and the gore is superb, although the giant Deadly Spawn, revealed pretty much from the start, is almost comical in its look—sort of like a more gruesome and evil Audrey II with great big eyes. But the real comedy is that when everyone else wakes up in the house, they have no idea of the horror in the basement (even though the cat tries to tip them off) and just go about their daily business. The uncle intends to sit down with the little horror freak to psychoanalyze his obsession, while auntie is off to an old lady tea party—and she conveniently leaves a sign on the door that the electrician should go round back and into the basement. Dunh! Dunh! Dunh!

You can guess what happens next. However, our little horror freak decides to slip on one of his masks and go scare the electrician after he arrives. Instead, he witnesses some serious head chomping by the sperm-with-teeth. And for pretty much the remainder of film, we keep cutting back to the kid just standing in the basement taking in the Deadly Spawns feasting on the heads of his mom, dad and the electrician while being totally ignored by the main monster.

In the meantime, auntie’s tea party gets NASTY. The sperm-with-teeth have escaped the basement, and one ends up ground into the salad in a food processor. Yum. But what happens next is awesome. It’s an old lady army as the sperm-with-teeth attack and grannies strike back, beating them down with umbrellas and other elderly apparel!!! These senior actresses totally get into it, crawling on the floor with sperm attached to them, blood gushing from their arthritic joints. Totally awesome.

At the same time, the science major gets a visit from some of his friends (it wouldn’t be an 80s horror film if teen characters weren’t thrown in there just to raise the body count). These fellow science geeks have found one of the nasty critters on the street and are dying to examine it. Dying being the operative word. Let the killings begin as the Deadly Spawn manages to climb its way out of the basement to chase the kids around the house! It’s so awesome to watch this three-headed moving monster model being pushed around the house by hidden crew members—I’ll take that over CGI any day.

Naturally, it’s not the science majors who figure out how to take down the sperm machine, but the little kid who is totally into horror. In the aftermath of the carnage and the defeat of the Deadly Spawn, we get like 5 lame minutes of the authorities hunting down the remaining sperm-with-teeth through the woods, and it feels like they’ve just ruined an awesome flick with a horrible ending. But what follows after the 5 minutes of filler is one of the most fricking AWESOMELY unexpected endings you’ll ever see. If you thought twist endings began with The Sixth Sense, think again.