NETFLIX AND KILL: TALES OF HALLOWEEN (2015) ** ½

Tales of Halloween gives us ten intertwined All Hallows Eve-themed horror stories.  It’s similar to the superior Trick R’ Treat in that characters from other stories turn up in different stories.  Adrienne Barbeau acts as our host, trading in on her role in The Fog as the silky-voiced radio DJ narrator.  There are also a lot of cameos by horror directors sprinkled about, which add to the fun. 

The first story is Sweet Tooth (***).  A babysitter and her boyfriend frighten a young boy by telling him about the local legend “Sweet Tooth”.  It seems the kid found his parents eating all his candy on Halloween night and killed them in a fit of rage.  After the boy goes to bed, the babysitter and her boyfriend eat all his candy and Sweet Tooth comes after them.   

This segment has a great hook.  The camerawork is a lot like John Carpenter and there are a lot of nods to his work.  The gore is also pretty sweet (no pun intended), but it’s a shame the monster looks so damned rubbery. 

The Night Billy Raised Hell (**) was directed by Darren Lynn (Saw 2-4) Bousman and it’s about a boy who is dared to egg the house of a neighbor who never celebrates Halloween.  The neighbor (Barry Bostwick), who wears a top hat to conceal his horns, catches him and makes him go around town playing increasingly mean-spirited pranks.  Eventually the duo takes to robbing trick or treaters at gunpoint for their candy. 

This segment has a good set-up.  Unfortunately, once we meet the neighbor, it all goes out the window.  I like Bostwick and all, but his performance is way too hammy.  I could’ve also done without all the annoying and unfunny comedic sound effects too.  At least we get a cameo by the ever-sexy Adrianne Curry playing herself. 

Trick (***) by Adam (The Toolbox Murders remake) Gierasch stars B-movie favorites Tiffany Shepis and Trent Haaga.  Four friends watch Night of the Living Dead while getting wasted and handing out candy.  One trick or treater comes to the door and stabs Haaga.  While his friends try to figure out what to do, they are picked off one by one by knife-wielding kids in costumes. 

After a silly second episode, this one gets the job done.  It’s simple, but effective and Gierasch does a good job at making the unlikely premise scary.  The rat poison death is particularly gruesome.   

The Weak and the Wicked (** ½) is from Paul Solet, the director of Grace.  A young man wants to get revenge on the street punks who burned his family alive.  In order to do so, he must ask for help from an unlikely source. 

Like Trick, this one is simple.  Perhaps a little too simple.  As with the first episode it suffers from a weak monster, but I did enjoy the performances by the cartoony killer street gang. 

Grim Grinning Ghost (** ½) is up next.  Lin Shaye tells a ghost story at a party about an evil spirit that kills you if you turn around.  Naturally, her daughter encounters the same ghost on her way home. 

The scene of Lin Shaye telling the story is effective, mostly because it’s always fun to watch her ham it up.  The rest of the tale is competently done.  However, the ending is way too abrupt to make much of an impact. 

Ding Dong (**) by Lucky (May) McKee is a bit of a disappointment.  A couple who lost their child the previous Halloween decide to go all out with scaring kids that come to the front door.  In doing so, they try to hash out their marital problems. 

Ding Dong benefits from the bravura performance by Polyanna MacIntosh, who plays the wicked domineering wife.  I’m not sure what all the shots of her painted red and leering at the camera were all about, but she at least looks great.  The Hansel and Gretel theme that runs throughout this story never really works though.  That’s mostly because the narrative is so fractured and borderline incomprehensible.   

This Means War (***) finds two neighbors (Dana Gould and James Duval) trying to outdo each other with their Halloween decorations.  When it becomes clear that neither man will back down, they set out to destroy each other’s decorations.  It all ends in an all-out street fight between the two. 

This segment plays like a Halloween variation on Deck the Halls.  It isn’t scary at all, but it’s a welcome breath of fresh air after the disjointed Ding Dong.  Gould and Duval are well cast as the warring neighbors and both men get their moments to shine.   

Friday the 31^st (****) by Mike Mendez is by far the best story of the lot.  A girl in a Dorothy costume is pursued by a masked killer.  After he murders her with spear, he is visited by a trick or treating alien.  When the killer doesn’t have a treat to give, the alien possesses Dorothy to get a trick. 

This one is a clever mash-up of slasher movie and alien invasion.  Mendez does the slasher thing beautifully.  I can see him directing a bona fide Jason movie down the road.  The alien is really cool too and is done through old school stop-motion animation.  The ending is a hoot.  Think Evil Dead Meets Monty Python.  If only the other stories were this much fun. 

The Ransom of Rusty Rex (** ½) by Ryan (Abominable) Schifrin is about a pair of kidnappers who hold a millionaire’s son for ransom.  They quickly realize he’s not exactly human.  Even worse, he’s HUNGRY.   

The twist ending of this one was fairly obvious from the get-go.  However, Schifrin goes through the motions in a competent fashion.  There’s more comedy than horror here, and while it’s not entirely successful, it’s a decent enough story. 

Things end of a positive note with Bad Seed (***), directed by Neil (Doomsday) Marshall.  It’s all about a killer Jack O’ Lantern.  After it bites the head off the guy who carved it, the pumpkin goes on a rampage. 

Bad Seed has a winning sense of humor about it.  (I particularly liked the scene with the police sketch artist.)  It also does a nice job of tying all the previous stories together.  Marshall films the pumpkin attacks with panache too.  It’s just a shame they couldn’t come up with a satisfying ending.

NETFLIX AND KILL: HOLIDAYS (2016) ** ½

Usually horror anthologies are wildly inconsistent endeavors.  Most times you have to sit through two or three clunky stories to get to a fun and/or memorable segment.  Holidays is different from the rest in that nearly all the stories are about as good (well, goodish) as the one that preceded it.  The stories themselves also feature a lot of the same faults (mostly crummy endings), but it’s still worth a look for fans of the subgenre. 

The first story, Valentine’s Day (** ½) was directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer, the team who did Starry Eyes.  It’s about a bullied teenage girl who has a crush on her swim coach.  After she is pushed off the diving board by one of her tormentors, she sets out to get revenge. 

This tale has a distinct Carrie vibe to it.  (One of the girls even wears the same hat that P.J. Soles wore in Carrie.)  The strong set-up that succinctly establishes the heroine’s bullying is undermined by the rushed and unsatisfying finale.  Some of the fantasy sequences are a bit too tongue in cheek too, which makes for an inconsistent tone. 

St. Patrick’s Day (** ½), directed by Gary (Dracula Untold) Shore, is about an elementary school teacher with a problem student.  She tries to teach the class about the origins of St. Patrick’s Day and is soon plagued by visions of snakes.  Eventually, she learns she’s pregnant with a demonic snake baby. 

This segment has a real fever dream type of quality.  Shore tosses in everything from bizarre visions, to Wicker Man-inspired scenes of pagan rituals, to a disgusting birthing scene.  None of it quite sticks, but it gets points for sheer weirdness alone.   

Easter (** ½) is about a little girl who’s confused with the whole Easter Bunny/Jesus connection.  (“It’s kind of like a scary version of E.T.!”)  That night, she’s visited by a bizarre amalgam of Jesus and the Easter Bunny who wants her to join his ranks. 

Easter features some very odd imagery (like chicks hatching from Bunny Christ’s wounds) and a weird looking creature.  Like the other stories, it’s more about setting an off-kilter mood than telling a straight story.  Like Valentine’s Day, it ends much too abruptly to be satisfying though. 

Mother’s Day (** ½) revolves around a woman who habitually terminates her pregnancies.  Her doctor sends her to a remote hippie clinic in the desert ran exclusively by women.  There, they perform an ancient rite on her and hold her prisoner so that she can give birth to… something. 

The naked hippie rituals and freak-out sequences are the best part about this story.  Like St. Patrick’s Day, it revolves around pregnancies and strange visions.  It ends with an effective exclamation mark, but the journey to that moment is uneven to say the least. 

Father’s Day (** ½) focuses on a young woman who’s still reeling from the disappearance of her father.  On Father’s Day, an old tape of her father’s voice winds up on her doorstep.  She then goes off looking for him to uncover the reason for his sudden disappearance.   

This segment starts off with a great hook.  It also contains a suspenseful sequence where our heroine listens to the tape in her Walkman in order to retrace her father’s footprints.  The ominous build-up is all for naught though thanks to the abrupt and frustrating ending. 

Halloween (**) was directed by none other than Kevin (Clerks) Smith.  An asshole runs his webcam service and verbally berates the girls who works for him.  When he tries to rape one of the girls, they knock him out and start up a new cam show with him as the star. 

As is the case with Smith’s other horror work, Halloween begins like his typical foul-mouthed slacker comedies before turning dark and disturbing.  While the punchline is messed up, it’s more of a torture porn movie than the weirdo shit the other stories offer.  It might be the worst story of the lot, but it still has at least one clever edit. 

Christmas (** ½), directed by Scott (Priest) Stewart, stars Seth Green as a father waiting till the last minute to buy a VR gadget for his kid.  The customer ahead of him takes the last one and has a heart attack before he can get it to his car.  Instead of calling for help, Green takes the headset and runs.  When he tries to use the VR glasses on Christmas morning, he sees horrifying visions. 

This one has a great set-up and a good performance by Green.  Like so many other stories in the anthology, it falls apart in the homestretch.  You think it’s going to lead up to a confrontation with Green and the dead man, but things take an abrupt 180 near the end and the resulting twist is more of a head-scratcher than a mind-blower. 

New Year’s (***) stars Lorenza (The Green Inferno) Izzo as a lonely woman who goes on an internet date on New Year’s Eve.  The guy she picks up turns out to be a psycho killer.  Unfortunately for him, she turns out to be even crazier. 

Holidays concludes on a high note.  This tale is simple, straightforward, and effective.  Sure, the twist ending is predictable, but the big reveal is done in an entertaining manner.  Izzo’s performance is enormously appealing too, and her wide-eyed glee makes this final story breezy fun.

GLOW: THE STORY OF THE GORGEOUS LADIES OF WRESTLING (2012) ****

I wanted to love the Netflix show GLOW, but I ultimately found it to be an uneven experience.  While it got better as it went along, a lot of the drama felt forced and sitcom-y, especially early on.  Luckily, Marc Maron was terrific as the schlock moviemaker-turned-wrestling director who was loosely based on Matt Cimber, and his performance alone made it worthwhile. 

As a fan of the original Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, I wondered how closely the show would hew to what really happened.  Not very close as it turns out.  If you enjoyed the Netflix show and/or was a fan of the GLOW wrestling show in the ‘80s, you owe it to yourself to check this documentary out.  Not only will it give you a better picture about how the show came together, it will also pull at your heartstrings, something the Netflix show had a hard time doing.  It is simply one of the best wrestling documentaries ever made. 

GLOW:  The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling shows how everything really went down.  From the show’s humble origins, to the casting, to the rehearsals, and finally to being filmed at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas.  We also learn how the show suddenly disappeared (at the height of its popularity, no less) and the fates of the female wrestlers who were left in the lurch. 

The footage from the old show is priceless.  The scenes of the girls rapping are especially memorable.  The new interviews with the ladies is genuinely moving too, particularly the scenes with fan favorite Mt. Fuji.  She proves to be just as charming and sweet as ever, even while confined to a nursing home bed.  The scene where all the ladies are reunited for the first time in nearly thirty years is guaranteed to leave you misty eyed.  

Unfortunately, Cimber declined to participate in any of the interviews.  We do see him at the reunion, mingling with the ladies, and bringing cheer to Mt. Fuji.  He probably deserves his own documentary somewhere down the line.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017) ** ½

I’ve never been a big Blade Runner fan.  I think the last time I saw it was when the Director’s Cut came out.  I didn’t think that was necessarily an improvement.  (Did we really need that unicorn bullshit?)  Heck, I never even bothered with the “Final” version.  Still, I went in with high hopes for this belated sequel, mostly because I’m slowly becoming a Ryan Gosling fan (thanks to The Nice Guys).   

I was a little miffed that Ridley Scott wasn’t at the helm.  Not really because he directed the original, but because I loved his bonkers Alien:  Covenant (which was mostly ignored by critics and the moviegoing public).  Instead, we got Denis Villeneuve.  He did his best to take what Scott did right and add his own voice to it, although the results are decidedly mixed. 

One thing I can say for the movie is that it echoes Blade Runner well enough.  Like its predecessor, it’s an elegant film filled with beautiful visuals.  It’s also a superficial and empty exercise in style.  All the gorgeous cinematography in the world can’t hide the fact there isn't much of a story here. The plot is overly simple and is stretched out to a nearly three-hour running time.  I can’t honestly imagine why they waited thirty-five years to tell this particular story as it is thin at best. 

The central mystery isn’t that hard to figure out either.  (SPOILERS from here on out.)  I mean they wouldn’t make Ryan Gosling Deckard’s son because that would be too easy, right?  So that only leaves one other age-appropriate person in the cast.  I’m not even sure I understood what the big deal was over her either.  I mean the woman’s very existence is supposed to “break the world”, but since she spends all of her time in a germ-free environment like John Travolta in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, she doesn’t seem like she poses much of a threat to anyone.  I mean she could easily catch a cold and die if she ever came close to another person, so she seems like she’d be easy to eliminate. 

The subplot with Gosling’s girlfriend (Ana de Armas) is likewise overly obvious.  His lady friend is nothing more than a hologram version of an Alexa device, which I guess is supposed to be some sort of social commentary on our everyday reliance on computers, but it was all done much better in Her.  Oh, and you can pretty much guess his girlfriend’s fate from the get-go too. 

The finale is also a bit of a letdown.  I dug Gosling’s fight with the replicant badass (Sylvia Hoeks), until I realized that’s pretty much the end of the movie.  She’s not terrible or anything, but she’s definitely lacking the presence of Rutger Hauer.  Likewise, Jared Leto’s villainous character was well-acted, yet not very menacing.  Also, it sucked that there was no big showdown between Leto and Ford and/or Gosling either.  Bummer. 

The performances are fine.  I liked Gosling a lot and Dave Bautista is so good you’ll wish he had more than one goddamn scene.  (Seriously, if anyone could’ve taken the main baddie role, it should’ve been him.)  Ford does a decent job too, even if he seems to be playing… well… Harrison Ford instead of Rick Deckard. 

Still, it’s all nice to look at.  Roger A. Deakins’ cinematography is stellar.  Visually, there are several sequences that are arresting.  However, like the original, it's an ultimately hollow (not to mention a tad boring) experience.

JUST THE TWO OF US (1970) ***

Denise (Elizabeth Plumb) and Adria (Alisa Courtney) are two lonely housewives who spend a lot of time with each other when their husbands go away on business.  They go out to lunch one day and witness a lesbian couple holding hands.  That makes them curious enough to experiment with each other.  Denise winds up falling hard for Adria, but she rejects her for a younger man. Denise then befriends the couple who take her to a swinging party where she gets high for the first time and is seduced by an older woman. 

Co-directed by Barbara (Humanoids from the Deep) Peeters and Jack Deerson (the cinematographer of Two-Lane Blacktop), Just the Two of Us is a quiet, effective lesbian drama that contains just enough skin and sex to play at the grindhouse.  It’s surprising just how thoughtful and progressive this romantic drama is.  Because so much emphasis is placed on Plumb and Courtney’s relationship, when they finally get together, it really means something.  When they grow apart, you really feel for Plumb. 

Part of why the film works is that the performances are all strong.  Plumb is the standout as the confused and lovesick Denise.  Her chemistry with Courtney is considerable, both in and out of bed.  

Just the Two of Us only occasionally veers into time capsule kitsch.  The musical interludes are badly dated and the party scene is kind of chintzy.  Since the party ends with a hot lesbian sex scene on a pool table, it’s hard to complain.  

AKA:  The Dark Side of Tomorrow.

BLOOD GAMES (1990) ***

An all-girl team of sexy baseball players crush their male counterparts on the diamond.  When their coach welches on a bet, the girls’ coach (Ross Hagen) holds the guy at gunpoint until he coughs up the money.  The guys’ team finds out what happened and they retaliate by stabbing Ross. The violence escalates until the women kill the son of the crooked man who owns the town.  He then offers a bounty on their heads and the women are soon in a fight for their life.

Blood Games blazed the trail for female baseball movies.  By that I mean it came out two years before Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own.  In fact, this flick features one of the worst games of baseball ever played on screen.  The budget was so low that they couldn’t even afford to play on a real ballfield.  Instead, they play in some field in the woods where the grass is knee high.  The girls also wear booty shorts, which I’m not really going to complain about, but man, it would be hell on their legs if they had to slide into home.  Another odd thing about their wardrobe:  No hats.  How do they expect to catch a fly ball without a visor to block the sun? 

The ladies also have their own tour bus, which raises the question:  Do they go across the country hustling baseball games?  Is such a thing even financially viable?  Maybe that’s why they couldn’t afford pants and hats for their uniforms. 

Luckily, the baseball stuff is quickly brushed aside in favor of the violent back-and-forth between the women and men.  The scenes of them stalking, fighting, and killing one another is a lot more convincing than the scenes of them playing ball.  I guess this was meant to be a literal war of the sexes.  Even if it isn’t entirely successful, there are still plenty of scenes that pack a punch. 

The movie is more effective in the first half when the crazed rednecks are attacking the women’s tour bus.  The scenes of the ladies being hunted in the woods play like First Blood, but with boobs and baseball bats.  While that sounds like it can’t miss, there’s way too much annoying slow motion in the second half.  I guess they had to get this thing up to 90 minutes somehow.  

Blood Games does have one standout sequence.  It comes when perennial drunk George “Buck” Flower sneaks into the ladies’ locker room.  The ensuing shower scene in a classic.  The bit where one of the girls uses a hair dryer to dry off her boobs is priceless.  

In short, Blood Games pretty much gives you everything you'd want from a female revenge picture.  

AKA:  Baseball Bimbos in Hillbilly Hell.

NETFLIX AND KILL: V/H/S: VIRAL (2014) ***

I wasn’t much of a fan of the first two entries in the V/H/S anthology series.  Even though the franchise is of the Found Footage variety, I still decided to give this one a whirl.  Boy, I’m glad that I did.  Not only is this third installment a dramatic improvement in many ways, it’s one of the best Found Footage horror films ever made. 

The wraparound segment, Vicious Circles (**) is the weakest link.  A guy keeps filming his girlfriend with his new camera.  When he sees the cops closing in around his block, he decides to film all the excitement.  Meanwhile, his girlfriend gets captured by the lunatic driver of an ice cream truck and he desperately tries to rescue her.     

The Found Footage aesthetic is especially annoying in this segment.  The videotape footage is full of popping, scratching, and static, but it’s really overdone, almost to the point of parody.  Although there are some grisly moments here, like a guy losing his feet while being dragged by the speeding truck, the fractured narrative and odd plot detours (like a family barbecue that turns deadly) don’t really lend themselves to the wraparound format.  Luckily, the stories themselves are a lot of fun. 

The first tale is Dante the Great (***).  A failing magician finds a magic cloak that allows him to do amazing and impossible illusions.  He becomes an overnight sensation, but we soon learn that fame comes with a price:  He has to feed his assistants to the cloak in order to gain more power.   

This segment plays fast and loose with the form.  It’s not really a Found Footage flick, but more of a mockumentary.  The sequence where the magician takes out an entire SWAT team with his magic powers is awesome and his duel to the death with his sexy assistant is one for the books.  It’s almost enough to make you wish it was its own standalone full-length feature. 

Parallel Monsters (***) is up next.  A scientist works on creating a doorway to a parallel universe.  He opens the door and is startled to meet his alternate self.  They get along famously and decide to switch places to see how the other half lives.  Very weirdly as it turns out. 

Directed by Nacho Vigalondo, this story has a cool Outer Limits Meets Playboy Channel vibe.  The Found Footage gimmick works well here because the scientist is filming it all for his scientific research.  The scene where the two parallel dimension scientists film each other is really cool too.  You never know quite where it’s headed and the big reveal in the end (which I wouldn’t want to spoil) is guaranteed to make your jaw drop. 

Bonestorm (****) rounds out the pack and it is by far the best use of the Found Footage gimmick I have seen.  A group of teens go down to Tijuana to finish filming their skating video.  The ditch they’re skating in just so happens to have some weird satanic markings on it.  When one of the kids cuts his elbow and bleeds on the pentagram, it awakens an evil group of zombie cultists. 

This segment is fun, especially if you’re like me and made skate tapes in your younger years.  The filmmakers really capture the feeling of hanging out with your friends on a lazy afternoon and shredding.  When the shit hits the fan, the feces really flies.  The scenes of the skaters caving in zombie skulls with skateboards, slicing them up with samurai swords, and blowing them up with firecrackers are worth the price of admission.  This is some of the best zombie mayhem I have seen in a long time.  It also helps that the zombies all have a great Burial Ground-inspired look to them. 

V/H/S:  Viral is easily the best in the series and one of the best anthologies of 21^st century.  Folks, this is why you watch all the sequels in any particular series.  You never know when you’re going to be surprised. 

AKA:  V/H/S:  New Virus.