NETFLIX AND KILL: HUSH (2016) ***

After being thoroughly impressed by Gerald’s Game, I decided to check out another Mike Flanagan joint.  As it turns out, they had a lot more in common than I thought.  For instance, the book Carla Gugino throws at the dog in Gerald’s Game was written by the heroine of this movie!  Not only that, but she also has a Stephen King book prominently displayed on her bookshelf!  It’s a veritable King/Flanagan shared cinematic universe! 

Kate Siegel (who also co-wrote) stars as a deaf-mute author who lives alone in the woods.  While she’s busy in the kitchen, a crossbow-wielding killer in a white mask murders her neighbor just outside her door.  He then sneaks into her house and takes advantage of her disability to toy with her.  The killer cuts the power and waits patiently in the darkness to strike.  In the meantime, Kate builds up enough courage to fight back and beat the killer at his own game. 

This is essentially Wait Until Dark, but with a deaf woman, but Flanagan finds lots of ways to make it stand on its own and be unique.  As with Gerald’s Game, he shows he can milk a maximum amount of suspense from a slim premise, a single location, and a minimum amount of characters.  Like Gerald’s Game, there’s even a scene where the female character steps outside of herself to give herself a rallying pep talk.  Another similarity:  There’s a scene where the heroine has to rebound back from a horrifying hand trauma.   

There are definite similarities in both films, but they are still different as night and day, which makes it a fun double feature.  I will say that even at a scant 81 minutes, there are a few places where the movie drags.  The highs easily outweigh the valleys though, and it’s amazing how much suspense Flanagan was able to wring out of such a slight scenario.

NETFLIX AND KILL: GERALD’S GAME (2017) ***

Director Mike (Oculus) Flanagan’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel plays like a cross between 50 Shades of Grey and Cujo.  Instead of a woman being trapped in a car surrounded by a hungry dog, it’s a woman handcuffed to her bed surrounded by a hungry dog.  References to King’s other works abound (most notable being Dolores Claiborne as something bad happens during a solar eclipse), which should make any King fan happy.  

Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) are a married couple who are stuck in a rut.  In an attempt to spice things up, they go to a secluded cabin in the woods for some kinky sex.  Gerald cuffs her to the bed and almost immediately, things get a little rough.  Too rough for Jessie in fact, and she demands to be let out of the handcuffs.  Before Gerald can do that though, he has a heart attack and dies.  If you thought being left alone in the middle of nowhere while handcuffed to a bed was bad; it gets worse.  Pretty soon, a famished stray dog starts sniffing around the bedroom and begins feasting on what’s left of old Gerald, and it’s only a matter of time before Jessie is next on the menu. 

Flanagan does a good job at getting into Jessie’s psyche.  The scenes of her dead hubby walking around the room and admonishing her for being “stupid” are a nice way to show his psychological hold on her, even in death.  She even appears to herself as a stronger and more resilient Jessie who tries to coach her into thinking of a way out of her predicament.  Some of this is overly theatrical, but Greenwood and Gugino are so on-point that it hardly matters.   

Flanagan is adept at maintaining a crackling level of suspense throughout the majority of the picture and gives us a handful of intense moments along the way.  There was even a scene that made this old gorehound holler out in disgust.  With that scene, Flanagan shows that he is one of the best horror directors working in the field today.     

The film only has one drawback, and it’s a bit of a big one, especially when it comes down the homestretch.  The subplot about a serial killer/necrophiliac called “The Moonlight Man” just feels like padding.  While I understand the necessity of the character, it just causes the ending to drag on and on.  Had Flanagan ended the whole thing about eight minutes sooner, it would’ve been a wham-bam kick-to-the-gut experience.

NETFLIX AND KILL: LITTLE EVIL (2017) ***

Horror-comedies are a tricky thing.  If you can’t find the right tone, the comedy can overpower the horror.  Luckily, the writer and director of Little Evil, Eli Craig does a fine job juggling genres.  Having already directed the cult classic Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, he’s quickly become a pro at marrying the two genres and having fun with the usual horror clichés. 

Adam Scott just got married to the beautiful Evangeline Lilly and they seem like they’re going to have a perfect life together.  However, her son just so happens to be the Antichrist, which puts a damper on things.  She shrugs off his odd behavior (like using a goat puppet to talk), but it’s hard to ignore the fact that people have a habit of dying around him.  Teachers throw themselves out of windows and birthday clowns set themselves on fire.  Adam finds it increasingly difficult to get along with the kid, especially when he buries him alive in the backyard.    

The movie takes an unexpected turn about halfway through when Scott finds himself caring about the spawn of Satan, despite the death and destruction he causes.  I mean, he didn’t CHOOSE to be the Antichrist.  Maybe with a little love and guidance he’ll turn out okay. 

Adam Scott can do this sort of meek character in his sleep.  The film plays upon fears of stepfathers who are afraid of not measuring up to their stepchild's biological father.  I mean how can you measure up to Satan himself?  Scott is the perfect type of nice-guy underachiever that the role requires.   

Lilly is also a lot of fun as the mom who turns a blind eye to her son’s behavior.  We’ve all seen mothers who are in denial of their child’s actions.  Because of that, it’s funny seeing her have that same kind of detachment when she learns her son just buried his stepdad alive.  Lilly’s nonchalant revelation about the morbid circumstances around her son’s conception is one of the funniest bits in the movie.  (“I told you not to judge me!”)  Clancy Brown and Sally Field also do a fine job in their supporting roles. 

Craig takes a lot of visual cues from other movies.  There is a lot of stuff taken from The Omen, with a little Poltergeist thrown in there for good measure.  The general premise is slight and a bit predictable, but thanks to the clever writing and fun performances, it manages to very funny and completely charming.

NETFLIX AND KILL: CULT OF CHUCKY (2017) **

Cult of Chucky picks up a few years after the events of Curse of Chucky.  Now, the wheelchair-bound Nica (Fiona Dourif), who was blamed for Chucky’s last rampage, is being moved into a sterile psych ward in the middle of nowhere.  Predictably, her shrink brings in a Chucky doll as part of some half-assed therapy session and it doesn’t take long before Chucky is roaming the halls and killing patients. 

The seventh Child’s Play film isn’t so lucky for Chucky.  Even though director Don Mancini did a fine job on the past two entries, this one just feels uneven and slapdash.  While he introduces some OK concepts into the Chucky mythos, they don’t really make a whole lot of sense.  Like when Chucky puts his spirit into multiple Chucky dolls and they all start running around killing people and making wisecracks.  Sadly, more Chuckys doesn’t equal more fun.

Another problem is that it all seems to be leading up to something that never happens.  Just when the movie starts to kind of come together, it ends abruptly, leaving things wide open for yet another sequel.  I guess it’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe effect.  Why deliver the goods in this one when you can promise even more stuff in the next installment?

When in doubt, Mancini piles on the gore.  There are set pieces revolving around severed heads, ripped-out tongues, and a power drill, among others.  They’re juicy and all, but without a strong narrative to go along with it, they lack the punch of the series’ best kills.

Alex Vincent makes a welcome return as Chucky’s original owner, Andy.  In fact, the subplot about him keeping Chucky’s head in a box and taking out his frustrations on it is a lot more interesting than the stuff in the nuthouse.  Jennifer Tilly is also back as Chucky’s love Tiffany, but they never really figure out what to do with her or her character. 

Naturally, Brad Dourif gets all the best lines as Chucky.  The funniest one references one of his earliest roles.  I won’t spoil it for you because it’s one of the best lines in the movie. 

So, if you’re just in it for the wisecracks and gore, Cult of Chucky may be up your alley.  Sadly, it left this die-hard Child’s Play fan cold.  It’s easily the weakest installment of the series.  That probably won’t stop me from watching the next one though.

NETFLIX AND KILL

Well, it’s that time of the year again.  It’s October and you know what that means:  Time for everyone who has a movie blog to spend each and every day watching and reviewing horror movies.  As you can see, it’s already October 5^th and I haven’t reviewed any yet, but fear not, I will be watching and reviewing at least 31 horror films this month.   

Usually when I do one of these things, I try to have a theme to tie everything together.  In past years, I have watched nothing but sequels and in other years I have wasted precious money watching crap I’ve found in the bargain DVD bin at Wal-Mart.  I finally started streaming Netflix this year and while browsing their selection I found a ton of horror movies, so I figured I’d watch 31 horror flicks to celebrate the Halloween season.    

This will be fun because the films I’ve chosen include a couple of horror sequels, along with a lot of low budget crap, so it should be a nice mix of what I have done in previous years.  I hope you all have as much fun reading about my plunge into the horror of streaming as I will writing about it. 

Here’s a couple of links to the previous years’ 31 Days of Horror-Ween reviews:  https://thevideovacuum.livejournal.com/tag/.the%2031%20days%20of%20horror-ween 

https://thevideovacuum.livejournal.com/tag/.the%2031%20movies%20of%20horror-ween

THAT’S ACTION (1990) **

Imagine That's Entertainment, but instead of clips of classic MGM musicals, it’s filled with clips of crappy AIP action movies.  Robert Culp is our host for this seventy-eight-minute compilation.  He’s usually great, but even he can't bring any spark into the lifeless script he’s been given (which was written by director David A. Prior, who conveniently directed a lot of the films featured).   

The clips themselves are uneven as hell and range from several minutes to only a few seconds.  Most of them look low rent.  I mean, just look at the scenes from Space Mutiny.  Are you really supposed to watch the scenes of Reb Brown being chased around in a futuristic golf cart in an abandoned warehouse and think to yourself, “THAT’S ACTION!”  If anything, the scenes from Space Mutiny showcase just how painful it must be to watch it without the benefit of the robots from Mystery Science Theater 3000. 

There are some highlights here, like the flying hand scene from Future Force, but they're more the exception than the rule.  Even though the emphasis is on action, we still get to see clips from horror movies like Aerobicide and The Lost Platoon.  Most of the fun though comes from seeing guys like Oliver Reed and Cameron Mitchell slumming it in such cheap-ass action junk.   

Culp teases a sequel at the end, but for one reason or another, it never happened.

VINEGAR SYNDROME SPRING 2017 CATALOGUE OF FILM (2017) ***

In a short span of time, Vinegar Syndrome has become one of the best home entertainment divisions around.  Their primary focus is on vintage smut, but they also cater to fans of ‘70s exploitation, ‘80s horror, and ‘90s VHS gems.  This three-disc DVD collection of trailers acts as a visual catalogue of all the films in their library.  Remember the Something Weird Sampler?  Well, it’s kind of like that, except it’s well over eight hours long.  Sitting through the entire thing is a daunting task, especially when two of the three discs are XXX rated.  If you break the discs up into one-hour blocks, it goes down a lot smoother.   

The only complaint is that many of the trailers for the films featured could not be located.  In the interest of posterity, newly-made trailers have been edited by Vinegar Syndrome and placed in their stead.  These (mostly brief) trailers don’t pack nearly the wallop as the original “vintage” trailers, but since they are only acting as a placeholder, they aren’t that much of a distraction. 

Because of its catalogue nature, it doesn’t flow as well as something like Trailer Trauma or the 42^nd Street Forever series.  Many trailers are entertaining on their own merits (like Prisoner of Paradise, Mai Lin vs. Serena, Hot and Saucy Pizza Girls, Taboo 2, and Night of the Spanish Fly), but a lot of them are just kind of cobbled together.  By the time you get to the third disc, some of the trailers start to repeat themselves because of their availability on blu-ray.  Still, just having all these trailers in one spot is pretty cool.  I’ve already jotted down some titles I should probably get my hands on, and in that respect, the disc(s) accomplished its goal.