THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: THE CONJURING 2 (2016) **

Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) go to London to investigate a possessed girl who lives in a supposedly haunted house.  Together with a team of local doctors, they try to uncover the nature of the girl’s trauma.  The investigation is called off when a videotape surfaces that suggests the girl may be faking the whole thing.  However, thanks to their psychic abilities, the Warrens come back to the house and discover the supernatural shenanigans are very real.

Director James Wan did a fine job on The Conjuring, so it’s a bit of a mystery that he never hits a consistent tone with this sequel.  He often struggles to find a balance between the subtle scares (like toy fire trucks rolling around by themselves) and the over-the-top CGI nonsense (like the stupid looking “Crooked Man”).  It’s almost like there’s no middle ground in between the two.  The overreliance on jump scares also gets a bit grating as the film goes along.  The opening sequence, a séance set in the Amityville Horror house, is a lot of fun though, and it almost makes you wish the whole movie revolved around that.

Instead, we have a lot of shoehorned subplots that fight for supremacy.  In addition to the old geezer who’s trying to possess the girl, we also have a ghost nun (who seems to portend Ed’s demise), and the aforementioned Crooked Man specter (who… uh… doesn’t do much).  All of this just feels overstuffed.  I mean the haunted hag in a habit (who eventually got her own spin-off movie, which I may or may not be able to squeeze in this month) sort of belongs there, but that Crooked Man dude is rather unnecessary.  Not to mention the fact that he looks like he came out of an episode of Goosebumps or something.

The inflated running time (133 minutes) doesn’t help matters any.  The first half is especially slow going as it takes a good hour for the Warrens to finally take the trek to England.  From then on, things improve somewhat, but it lacks the panache of the original Conjuring in just about every regard.  The ending is also needlessly drawn out and curiously low on chills.

The scenes of the family in England dealing with Exorcist/Poltergeist-style happenings don’t have enough money shots to make for a fun (or scary) ride and the relationship stuff between Wilson and Farmiga isn’t all that compelling either.  Throughout the film you have a feeling that their talents are largely going to waste, which further cements the overall atmosphere of disappointment.  Wilson does get to do a not-bad Elvis impression when he sings “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” to the kids.  If they ever make 3000 Miles to Graceland 2, Wilson would be right at home playing one of the leads.

The Conjuring 2 is just weak all the way around.  It’s especially lame whenever Wan tries to make the most mundane things seem supernatural.  I mean in one scene, a remote control disappears and we’re supposed to think the ghost did it.  Hell, I don’t know about you, but disappearing remote controls are an everyday occurrence in my house and you don’t see me calling Patrick Wilson over it.

For more horror reviews, check out my latest book, The Bloody Book of Horror, which is currently on sale at Amazon.  Get your copy here:  https://www.amazon.com/Bloody-Book-Horror-Mitch-Lovell/dp/1542566622/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1538450805&sr=8-3

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: SINISTER 2 (2015) * ½

Well, the first Sinister didn’t exactly set the world on fire, but we got a sequel to it anyway.  If you remember Sinister, you’re already one up on me.  All I remember is Ethan Hawke cashing a paycheck by watching snuff movies in his attic until a white-faced boogeyman came to kill his family.  

This time around, it’s Shannyn Sossamon’s family’s turn to be menaced by the weird boogeyman dude.  She and her two sons are hiding out at a remote farmhouse from her asshole abusive ex.  While she’s busy playing footsie with a private investigator (James Ransone), her kids are busy being shown snuff movies by the ghost children that inhabit the house.  Naturally, it’s only a matter of time before they’re trying to make a snuff flick of their own.

Sinister 2 basically remakes the original in a new setting with a different cast.  The results are all-too familiar.  The family drama is relatively uninvolving, and Shannon Sossamyn is no Ethan Hawke either.  At least Ransone (who is soon to be seen in It 2) is amusing as the nerdy, well-meaning, but ultimately ineffective investigator who becomes the family’s de facto protector.  Whenever he’s onscreen, the flick is at the very least tolerable.

Unfortunately, the horror elements are woefully lackluster, which doesn’t help matters any.  The scenes of the ghost kids showing Sossamon’s sons their various snuff films quickly become repetitive.  Most of them go on and on without much of a payoff.  The only marginally effective sequence is the one involving rats gnawing their way out of people’s stomachs.  That’s about the only gnarly moment in an otherwise forgettable, unnecessary sequel.  If we had one or two more sequences of this caliber, it might’ve worked.  As it is, there’s nothing remotely sinister about Sinister 2.

Hey, are you wondering where my review for the original Sinister is?  Well, you can find it in my latest book, The Bloody Book of Horror, which is currently on sale at Amazon.  To get your copy, follow this handy link:  https://www.amazon.com/Bloody-Book-Horror-Mitch-Lovell/dp/1542566622/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1538450805&sr=8-3 

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN

Well folks, it’s October.  It’s that time of the year again.  Time to switch your Twitter handle over to something horror related.  (In this case, I’ve changed mine to “Witch Lovell”.)  Time to change your blog format to an all-horror movie reviewing platform.  As per usual, I will be reviewing nothing but horror flicks this month.  31 movies in 31 days.  I have the line-up already sketched out and I’d say about 75% of the films will be taken from popular (and possibly not-so popular) horror franchises.  

Along the way, I will be also reviewing an occasional oddball “Deep Cut” and/or some crazy shit I stumble upon on Amazon Prime (which I’ll label as “Prime Evil”).  There’ll probably be a “real” movie review or two; but they will be more the exception than the rule.  Horror movies have always been my first love and it’s always a blast finding new shit to geek out about.  One thing is for sure, it’s going to be fun sharing some of my wild discoveries with you all, whether they are good or bad.

As you probably already know, my work schedule as well as my family life often prevent me from blogging on a daily basis.  As much as I’d love to review a single movie every day, it often just doesn’t work out that way.  That’s why I call it “The 31 Movies of Horror-Ween” and not “The 31 Days of Horror-Ween”.  I’m sure I’ll wind up watching so many that it’ll spill over well into November.

So what do you say?  Let’s start cracking!

DYNAMO (1980) ** ½

A couple of publicists  discover a taxi driver (Bruce Li) who has an uncanny resemblance to Bruce Lee and sign him to an exclusive contract with the promise of making him a star.  After a crash course in Kung Fu, Bruce goes around the world on a publicity tour where he is jumped by goons in Tokyo, attacked on the ski slopes of Seoul, and accosted by his room service waiter in a hotel room in New York.  Before Li’s big match, some bad guys kidnap his girlfriend and force him to take a dive. 

My enjoyment of Bruceploitation movies mostly rely on their crass willingness to trade in on Bruce Lee’s image.  Dynamo does an OK job in this regard.  Early on, there’s a scene in which some characters get stuck in traffic.  As it turns out, Bruce Lee’s funeral procession is the cause of the traffic jam.  Real footage of the funeral is cut into the scenes of the actors sitting in the car and the results are moderately amusing. 

Another signpost saying you’ve reached Bruceploitation heaven is the hilariously bad dubbing.  There’s plenty of that to go around.  The problem is much of the dubbed dialogue is annoyingly echoey, especially on Li’s karate teacher.  Now, I can put up with dialogue that doesn’t match the actors’ lip movements, but it’s hard to take when it sounds like a Theremin going off every time someone opens their pie hole.  So, in that respect, Dynamo isn’t Bruceploitation heaven; it’s more like Bruceploitation purgatory. 

The Kung Fu action sort of balances everything out.  Li’s teacher (the guy with the annoying bizarro voice) tells his pupil surprise is the best weapon.  Because of that, he encourages Li to attack him whenever he feels like it.  Now, I’m not sure how effective this training method would be in real life, but in this scenario, it leads to several random fights between the two.  Since these duels are more for training purposes, they lack any sort of real stakes.  However, the action is pretty much non-stop, which certainly helps.

The unifying thing that makes Dynamo as good-not-great slice of Bruceploitation flick is Bruce Li’s performance.  Not only does Li kick a lot of ass, he wears Bruce Lee’s yellow jump suit from Game of Death throughout much of the movie (which also adds to the crass cash-in factor).  He also gets what is probably the longest and most gratuitous sex scene of his career.  That doesn’t quite put it over the top, but it adds to the film’s overall WTF quality. 

INVASION OF THE GIRL SNATCHERS (1973) ***

The IMDB plot synopsis of Invasion of the Girl Snatchers is enough to get you curious.  It calls it a “1970s spoof of American New Wave films featuring a criminal couple on the run encountering a UFO cult.”  That doesn’t even scratch the surface of the weirdness to come.  (Although I honestly saw little, if any evidence of a New Wave influence.)  The fact that it manages to combine elements of Easy Rider and Mission:  Impossible in the opening scenes is enough to make you sit up and take notice.

Kaspar (Ele Grisby), a junior agent of a secret government agency and his superior, Trowel (Hugh Smith) are on the trail of some girl nappers.  As it turns out, they’re working for Aph (Charles Rubin), the leader of a cult of alien beings.  Aph wants to put alien consciousnesses from his home planet into the brainwashed girls and make them do his bidding.  Once Trowel gets turned into an alien zombie, it’s up to Kaspar to save the day. 

They say they don’t make them like they used to, but I’m not sure if anyone made them like Lee Jones did.  Since this is his only directing credit, we may never know for certain.  All I know is that Invasion of the Girl Snatchers is one of the weirder low-budget ‘70s movies I’ve seen in some time.  That friends, is praise of the highest order.  If you think you’ve seen it all, folks… trust me.  You haven’t.  

The movie really belongs to Carla Rueckert, who co-wrote the script and stars as one of the brainwashed girls, Ruthie.  She spends much of the movie walking around topless while wearing dark sunglasses and rubbing people who suffer from cramps.  Naturally, when Kaspar gets a boner, she mistakes it for a cramp and helps him rub one out.  I also loved the part where she is bound and gagged and uses her boob to knock the phone off the cradle to dial for help.

It’s almost a guarantee that Rubin’s character will get on your nerves.  Most of the time, he just stands around wearing a robe and reciting incantation after irritating incantation.  If you can make it through these long, dull scenes, you’ll be treated to some memorably weird stuff that runs the gamut of just plain odd to downright awesome.  I mean how many movies have you seen that feature a bra equipped with a homing beacon AND a girl possessed by an alien who drinks nitroglycerin like it was cheap whiskey?

Smith gets the best line of the movie when he says, “Great gobs of baby owl shit!”

AKA:  The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow.  

GROUPIE GIRL (1970) ** ½

A young girl named Sally (Esme Johns) takes off to swinging London on a quest for sexual misadventure.  She stows away in a passing van and inadvertently winds up becoming a groupie.  She’s passed around from rock group to rock group, one of which becomes involved with a hit and run accident.  Sally understandably freaks out, and the band tries to keep her quiet to save their squeaky-clean image. 

Groupie Girl contains a handful of memorable moments to keep fans of English sexploitation happy.  There’s a clothes-ripping catfight, nude dancing, and an all-out orgy.  The best scene though is the bizarre prelude to the orgy where the participants crawl around the floor on all fours imitating animals.  If you assume that most English people are prudes, here is a scene that suggests otherwise.

It’s also loaded with out-of-date slang, groovy music, and funky late ‘60s fashions.  So much so that it works better as a time capsule than as a sexploitation picture.  I mean any movie that features an opening credits sequence in when the titles are painted on the side of a van can’t be all bad.

It all starts innocently enough, but Groupie Girl becomes darker as it goes along.  The third act is particularly bleak, and it ends on a downbeat, depressing note that much of the fun of the earlier scenes gets cancelled out.  To make matters worse, it seems as if the filmmakers are chastising Sally for her sexually liberated lifestyle.  Ultimately, there’s enough nudity and camp value here to make it worth a look.  It’s just a shame that the abrupt and callous ending leaves such a bad taste in your mouth.

AKA:  I am a Groupie.

THE DEBT COLLECTOR (2018) **

Scott Adkins is a karate teacher in danger of losing his school to the bank.  To make ends meet, he gets a job as a loan shark for a local kingpin (Vladimir Kulich).  He’s paired up with a perpetually hungover leg-breaker (Louis Mandylor) and they go around town collecting money.  Along the way, they get into various scuffles, and bond over breaking bones.  Things take a turn when a rival gangster (Tony Todd) hires them to find the person responsible for ripping him off.

The Debt Collector is the third Adkins collaboration with director Jesse V. Johnson in the past two years.  It’s not as successful as their previous collaborations, Savage Dog or Accident Man, but it’s an OK attempt to broaden Adkins’ range a bit.  Johnson deserves some credit.  Each of these films have all been different in terms of style and tone.  Although this is by far my least favorite of the three, it’s nice to know he’s capable of creating a variety of nuances within the genre.

The film is at its best during the first half, which plays like a gangster version of Training Day.  It’s not quite as interesting once a semblance of a plot begins to take hold.  It’s here where things become a tad predictable.  I liked it better when Adkins and Mandylor were just cruising around and breaking bones.  I could’ve also done without all the heavy-handed footage of a slaughterhouse that is peppered throughout the action.

Adkins gives a solid performance and Mandylor is quite good as the former B movie actor-turned-loan shark.  I just wish the banter between the two was funnier.  The other attempts at humor are equally hit-and-miss throughout the film.

Since this is an Adkins/Johnson joint, that means there are plenty of fight scenes to go around.  They aren’t bad for what they are, but they lack the gory highs of Savage Dog or the humor of Accident Man.  Even if The Debt Collector is a tad off the mark, there’s enough compelling evidence here to suggest I’m more than likely to sit through the duo’s next collaboration.

AKA:  Pay Day.