Manos : The Hands Of Fate (1966)

Having read for years how horrible Manos : The Hands Of Fate truly is and having personal friends of mine who are equally deranged as myself warn that even the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version is barely watchable I knew it was only a matter of time before I took fate into my own hands and ventured down the supposed torturous road of Manos.

Personally being a fan of awful movies and "So bad its good" cinema I was rather pleased with the outcome of this journey into the bizarre. This is inadequate film making at its best/worst. The dub-over-voices add a element of freakish, weirdness that will leave you wondering if you are going insane. Its hard to follow whats happening with any normal mind frame and the characters are as out there as they get. The character of Torgo is by far the highlight of Manos. He is some sort of a cripple freak with lots of padding in the pants around the knees. I have never seen the MST3K version but I' sure they made the Torgo stuffs joke. I know I did! Torgo lives only to serve his satanic master (or defy him). He is also the most awkward character in cinematic history. He peeps through windows and touches girls hair. Its just a day in the life of Torgo.

We have this couple who spend day and night in their convertible making out in the desert. I don't think they have or ever will get passed first base. Its a day in the life of Manos youth. Then we get Manos six wives who all wear sheer togas. They are frozen in the day but they awake to wrestle at night. Then we get this retarded little girl who runs around chasing her dead puppy. We drift in and out of consciousness as this thing rolls on and by the films end you can be thankful that the nightmare is over but you can't help but miss Manos and his crazy-ass cape. Its a bad-ass cape!

Hands Of Fate is only for the toughest and most jaded of bad-film lovers. If you take this one on, be brave and just remember... Its only a movie. Only a movie. Only a movie.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

My earliest memories of Apocalypse Now goes back to the age of five. My father was working late and being a typical young boy from the 80's who was obsessed with guns, soldiers and war I stared at the television screen in both horror and amazement as Martin Sheen slowly crawled out of a swamp, covered in face-paint as lightning filled the locations sky. Once he makes it on to solid land it becomes apparent that he is holding a machete and is planing on doing some very wicked things. Suddenly my father walks in the front door and is quite pissed that my mother was in another room leaving me a bit neglected to watch Apocalypse Now.

My father threw a bit of a fit and changed the channel and those images that I witnessed that night have stuck with me all through my childhood. I knew that one day I would find out the name of the movie that my father wouldn't let me watch.

It wasn't until I was about twenty years old that I would watch Apocalypse Now in full. All through my teenage years I was rather obsessed with horror films and war films were a thing of the past. However once seeing this epic masterpiece in full I remember this sense of gratification what came over me once I saw Sheen in that swamp and the films climax hit me like a fucking train. Here is a film that is so striking in its atmosphere and mood that I felt this could possibly be the greatest movie ever made and for a horror buff I felt equally satisfied from the harrowing tale of madness. After all the last two words of the film is "The Horror". Isn't war the real horror-story in life? It certainly is awful and many more are affected by it then those who fall victim to a serial killer that is reenacted in the countless slasher films of the 80's that I was familiar with. This was something new and much horrific for me.

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola (Dementia 13, Rumble Fish). It tells the tale of a captain in the army, played by Martin Sheen, on a classified mission to kill an American decorated war-hero, gone insane, played by Marlon Brando. Insane isn't the word. Brando's character plays like a cross between a philosophical madman like Charles Manson and a patriotic victim of war. There is a sense of sadness to his character but the overwhelmingness of his barbaric brutality and insanity over comes in the end.

Aside from Brando and Sheen, Robert Duvall shows up for some light hearted laughs and very memorable lines. "Charlie don't surf". He blows the shit out of a section of Vietnam just so he and his boys can do some surfing. Dennis Hopper also shows up in a very typical role for him in the 70's. Its hard to tell if he is acting or just being himself here but I would almost bet money that he wrote his lines for himself or at least just winged it. Hopper's performance is brilliant as usual for this era and followers will not be disappointed.

Apocalypse Now is the greatest Vietnam film ever made. The cinematography is beyond amazing with transitions, fades and dissolves that can not be topped. There is a portion of the film where a character is on acid and while many films succeed in making the audience feel tripped-out this movie takes it to a whole other level. From this point on the rest of the film plays like a acid-trip and not a very pleasant one at that. I have not heard anything of a remake which is a bit of a surprise considering they love to remake and destroy everything they can possibly think of. This 70's classic is a trip into madness and the horrors of war. The film is untouchable and any attempt of a remake would make for nothing more then toilet paper.

Texas Asshole Massacre (2011)

I really don't know why I do it to myself. Maybe its because the O on the dvd cover just screamed out rent me. Maybe its because I enjoy watching awful porno movies. Okay I admit it, its because The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the greatest horror film ever made and due to my life long devotion and obsession with the film I felt compelled to check out the porno, parody of it. I also figured it couldn't be worse then the Hollywood remakes of the classic film. Well I was wrong. The Texas Asshole Massacre has got to be just about the worst XXX Parody around, in the ranks with Nightmare On Dyke Street.

I wish there could be a real massacre taken out on the assholes that made this piece of shit! Try to follow me here. The movie starts off with some modern porn stars in a car explaining how they are going to become legit filmmakers and "Go from the blue-screen all the way to the silver screen". Then they get dropped off at a house where they are both fucked in the ass and deep-throated. Then a Vietnam war veteran makes a bunch of silly faces and rapes a white girl from England because she is a "Gook". He tries to rub her white color off her ass with some spit claiming that she painted herself and he knows she is a "Gook". Aside from the sheer racism of this scene he also searches her pussy for "Weapons and razorblades". He also sticks his cock in a bowl of Chili and makes the girl deep-throat it. Then we have another scene in which a female cook eats semen from a bowl of Chili. Oh and she also does some deep-throating and has asshole sex. In the last minutes of the movie a girl is running through the woods naked and doing her best Marilyn Burns impression as a big titted bitch in a apron chases her around, swinging a big dildo around. What the fuck!

I feel like whoever made this piece of shit might have seen one or two scenes from the original movie and felt it was okay to make a parody. This thing might as well have been called deep-throating-chili-asshole-fuckers because it is certainly not a spoof on Texas Chainsaw. For a better pornographic take on Texas Chainsaw check out The Texas Vibrator Massacre. That one wont let you down. Fuck this movie right in its chili-holes.

Green Eyes (1934)

Green Eyes should have been called heavy eyes because that's whet you get when you try to make it through this sleeper... Very heavy eyes. Yawn!

This 30's murder mystery runs just a bit over an hour but it seems like a life time. What you get is about 60 straight minutes of questioning. Not exaggerating at all. The entire movie is pretty much Who? Where? When? What? Why? and How? It can become a bit much after a while.

A man is killed at a costume/dance party with multiple stab wounds to the back from a double sided knife. Money is missing from the dead mans safe and its not long before others in the house start dying, off screen of course (We wouldn't want to interrupt the questioning).

Drinks are drugged or as they say in the movie "Doped" and three people die by the hands of a gun. The movie doesn't give itself away and I guess in that case it works as a mystery but it is still not an easy sit.

Not my kind of movie. This won't be screening again anytime soon at my place.

The Monster That Challenged The World (1957)

Another crazy monster flick from the 50's. This monster looks pretty good. It looks kind of like a giant Caterpillar with two big claspers on its jaws. Why they chose a giant Caterpillar-looking-thing to be a sea creature I'm not exactly sure but that's what we have here.

The monster first strikes at a couple of Navy boys. The first is drained of blood and the second one just drops dead of fright. (You gotta see the actors frightened face). The monster leaves some spermy-looking secretion behind. Naturally when the military finds the abandoned semen covered ship and two dead soldiers they declare war against the monster.

The title is a bit deceiving because its not really The Monster That Challenged The World, its really The Monsters. The first monster is killed off pretty quickly with a rowboat ore to the eye. The Army finds a giant egg in the bottom of the sea and bring it back for observation. Its not long before they learn that there is a bunch of these giant sea creatures.

We get some awesome stock footage showing close-ups on slugs and snails and how they eat. Its a very slimy scene and when viewed on a theater sized screen can almost make you squirm a bit.

We have multiple close-ups on dead bodies with eyes bulging from their sockets, A decapitated head, A severed arm and a whole bunch of dead rabbits.

A little girl botches up the whole operation and sets the last of the monsters loose upon the land. We also have a Blob homage thrown in with some fire-extinguisher-fu.

It can run a bit slow at times but the acting isn't terrible and the monster is a whole lot of fun to look at. Fans of this flick might also want to check out The Horror Of Party Beach.

Straight Jacket (1964)

A bit of a let down as far as a William Castle flick goes. The story has it that Castle went to see What Ever Happened To Baby Jane 17 times and his dream was to make a movie with Robert Bloch (the man who wrote Hitchcock's Psycho) and Joan Crowford. Well the dream came true and the movie is called Straight Jacket.

Joan Crowford plays an axe wielding maniac who is released from an insane asylum after twenty years for the crime of hacking her husband and his lover to bits with a axe.

As the poster art boasts "Straight-Jacket vividly depicts ax murders". This is no lie. We get multiple decapitations (complete with cheesy severed heads-a-rollin) which seems to be William Castle's fascination since Homicidal (a Psycho ripoff) but the dismemberment isn't quite enough to save Straight Jacket from falling into the boring realm of uninteresting characters and a ending that is seen coming from miles away.

Straight Jacket also lacks a decent gimmick. William Castle figured that a big star like Joan Crowford was enough to sell his movie and that a gimmick was not necessary. Well guess what... We love William Castle and his silly gimmicks. We also love the fact that he makes B movies with B-grade actors. Throwing a Hollywood bag like Crowford into the mix just knocks the whole film of axis. She doesn't belong in this kind of film. I will admit that Crowford did a great job and of course stole the show. Its also almost humorous watching her go insane. It almost plays like a autobiography for the crazy self centered bitch that she was in real life but there is just something missing from this one. Its almost as if the film fails in its expected camp level and just comes off as a badly acted Hitchcock film. Could you imagine North By Northwest being played out by really bad actors with the exception of James Stewart? It would be a mess.

In the following year William Castle would direct a far superior murder mystery titled I Saw What You Did And I Know Who You Are not to be mistaken for that shitty 90's Last Summer movie. This one is really only worth a watch for Castle completest and Crowford obsessed lunatics. Everyone else should stick to the greats like The Tingler and House On Haunted Hill.

Homicidal (1961)

The director, William Castle (The king of gimmick). The film, Homicidal (Alfred Hitchcock Psycho ripoff). The gimmick, the fright break. The outcome, pure entertainment.

William Castle cashes in on the success of Hitchcock's Psycho which came out one year prior. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Hitchcock and Castle are in two very different ranking positions so Castle does what he does best and puts on one hell of a show. Cards were handed out with the purchase of ticket that allows the movie-goer to get a full refund at the cowards corner providing they leave the theater before the films climax during the "fright break". The "fright break" interrupts the film right before the final reel with a clock that counts down 60 seconds. Naturally nobody would leave before the end of the movie and be seen in the cowards corner by their friends so Castle makes out yet again with another brilliant gimmick.

Aside from the fright break Homicidal is pretty graphic for its time and definitely surpasses Psycho as far as the blood goes. In one scene a man is stabbed repeatedly in the gut with a big kitchen knife, leaving a bloody mess for all us gore hounds to stare at. We also get a decapitation which is not much by today's standards but in 1961 definitely turned a few stomachs.

Homicidal is a bit on the slow side but is all worth the wait in the end. Castle doesn't disappoint this time around with a twist ending that was totally original for its time. I won't give the climactic twist away because William Castle warned during promotion "Do not give the ending away to Homicidal. If you do your friends will kill you and if they don't I will!"

Freaks (1932)

Anybody who is interested in exploitation movies should be familiar with this timeless cult classic and anybody who is interested in seeing these types of films might as well get their start here. After all Freaks is kind of the grandaddy of exploitation films.

Director Tod Browning who is remembered by most for Dracula with Bela Lagosi which was released one year prior to Freaks, is the man responsible for Freaks. He was introduced to the script from Harry Earls (A dwarf) who played besides Lon Chaney as a mobster who posses as a baby in Brownings The Unholy Three. Browning naturally being drawn to carnival life, freak-shows and physical human abnormalities excepted the job and set out to make one of the most important cult films of all time.

An earlier Tod Browning/Lon Chaney calibration dealt with carnival folk, love and murder. The film of course being Alanzo The Armless also known as The Unknown which was praised by some and appalled others but the main difference was that Browning was in his comfort zone of the silent era. The director was not a fan of the brand new talkies and would have preferred even Dracula to have been a silent film but this was no longer an option for a Hollywood director. The talking pictures have arrived and so will Freaks.

The outcome was a masterpiece in the macabre. Naturally it was hated. The world wasn't quite ready for this brand of exploitative cinema and the movie was banned for three decades, not seeing the light of day till the 60's with the hip generation & art-house Beatniks looking for new (or old) kicks in a cinematic light.

Freaks tells the tale of a dwarf named Hans who is manipulated into marrying a big women. Hans becomes the laughing stock to the entire circus and worse yet he is being poisoned little by little by his greedy wife who wants to get her hands on the little mans fortune. Hans eventually catches on and with the help of the other Freaks he gets his revenge on his wife and her secret lover Hercules. (They call him Hercules because he is "The Strong Man" of the circus). Aside from dwarfs, Freaks makes a spectacle of Pinheads, human skeletons, Siamese twins, hermaphrodites, retards, a man with no lower half of his body (known as the Torso), and a man with no limbs known as the human worm.

The movie was blamed for being cruel and condemned by its reviews. Aren't horror movies supposed to be cruel? Looking back at how unfairly Freaks was treated its amazing to see how backwards we have always been as a society. Its almost as if the people were angry that the Freaks were not made out to be the bad guys. Sure they kill a couple of people but they kill very bad people. On the other hand America was perfectly fine with Dracula seducing and killing innocent women.

Freaks which runs at 61 minutes was cut down to as much as a 30 minute version before it became banned. Tod Browning originally intended for a much more violent film. For me Freaks is perfect just the way it is but it would have been nice to see it the way Browning wanted it to be seen. Unfortunately Freaks is the film to blame for putting the genius director on the unemployment line. He would direct one or two more films but nobody would give him a break. After all he was the man who offended everybody with his tale of humanity and sympathy.

Anybody who has ever seen Freaks remembers Freaks. Its not the kind of movie that can be forgotten or ignored. If extreme cinema is your thing, be sure to give this one a watch. You wont regret or forget!

Anna Obsessed (1977)

This is one of my all time favorite horror porno's from the 70's. It plays like a slasher film with many of the cliche slash-em prototypes and the disturbing uneasy feel of a rape/revenge flick.

This one also goes under the shorter title of Obsessed and is released in cut and uncut versions. I unfortunately own the trimmed down version which is surprisingly graphic and violent at times so I can only wonder what contents are in the full uncut version.

Anna Obsessed stars Annette Haven (Reflections, Dracula Sucks, Soft Places) as a lesbian who ingages in some cunnilingus with Constance Money. Meanwhile there is a rapist/murderer stalking the suburban homes of Long Island and Mrs. Money is next on the list for a night of terror. Anna Obsessed offers up a bunch of jump-scares in true slasher fashion, weird dreamy flashbacks and a bit of the ultra violence. One scene that stands out in particular is quite a disturbing one. Constance Money is abducted and raped by the L.I. killer. She is chocked and probed with a pistol.

The average horror hound will probably see the surprise ending coming from a mile away but it still makes for a good watch. This tasteless classic is the perfect flick to watch with a group of sleazy, drunken friends. Watch for Jamie Gillis in a horny secretary's fantasies.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Al Pacino in one of his best roles in this 70's heist flick. Dog Day Afternoon is supposed to be based on a true story of a homosexual who robs a bank to pay for his lovers sex change operation. The robbery is botched up and we get a stand off between the criminals and the police with the bank tellers being held hostage.

Dog Day Afternoon's style and mood reminds me of movies like Taxi Driver and something that Paul Shrader would have written. Pacino's character Sonny is a great anti-hero in the ranks of men like Travis Bickle. Sure hes a criminal but he has charisma and the people of NYC need to relate to a nihilistic fuck up like this. During the all day and all night hostage stand off, Sonny gains the respect of some and the interest of the entire city with his radical verbal beatings towards the police. When it becomes known that he is a homosexual the city is in a uproar and every Tom, Dick and Harry feels the need to voice their opinions, as if the mans sexuality has anything to do with his actions or his impact on society.

John Cazale who I remember best as the big shot with a handgun who gets slapped around by Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter plays Sal, Sonny's partner. Sal adds a whole other level to the film. His character is extremely awkward and it really says something about the company that our main character keeps. Sal is ready to kill everybody and commit suicide. He makes it clear that he is not ready to go "back" to jail and that death is a much better alternative but Sonny easily manipulates Sal into doing exactly what he wants.

Lance Henricksen (Piranha Part 2 : The Spawning, Pumpkinhead, Terminator) shows up as a sharp-shooter cop who puts a bullet cleanly between the eyes of the bad guy. We also get a cross-dressing lunatic, a bit of racism, a bit of sexism, a bit of violence and a political message to go along with it. A Dog Day Afternoon is a great example of brilliant 70's film making and a time in cinema that just doesn't exist anymore. Great dialogue, great writing, great characters and great acting adds up for a great movie.

Pay attention to the lack of music in the film. It really adds to the whole experience.

True Grit (2010)

I recently broke a general rule that the average cinemaniac lives by when I watched a remake before seeing the original. I did this for a few reasons, the first being that the original 1969 film is a John Wayne movie and I personally have never been a big J.W. fan. As a young kid my grandfather used to watch John Wayne movies on the regular and I was just bored out of my mind. Now that I am older I am still bored by old J.W. and prefer the Italian spaghetti westerns and of course Clint Eastwood. On the other hand I have a certain interest in the Coen brothers (No Country For Old Men, Blood Simple). So naturally I gave the 2010 remake the first chance but now I feel the need to go and watch the John Wayne version and compare notes.

The Coen brothers take on True Grit starts off a bit slow with its main focus on a 14 year old girl named Mattie Ross whom sets out to avenge her fathers death with the help of a one eyed bounty hunter named Cogburn (Jeff Bridges). Cogburn and the young girl are joined by a good old boy Texas Ranger named LaBouef played by Hollywood-boy Matt Damon. Matt Damon's character sucks of course and all the entertainment comes from the one eyed Cogburn. Cogburn is a rude & crude, drunkard, killing machine and he has one hell of a voice. I highly doubt John Wayne's character is even half as cool.

In the most memorable scene Cogburn chops a mans fingers off, shoots his friend dead in the head and then leaves the fingerless man bleeding to death with a knife stuck in his chest. We also have an awesome shoot-out on horse back, a typical western target practice scene, some Cobra-snake-fu, gratuitous child kicking, Teeth being ripped out of bleeding mouths, public hangings and a typical anticlimactic Coen brothers ending.

Not a bad flick for a modern western and worth a watch for Coen brothers fans.

Sid And Nancy (1986)

There is not a Sex Pistols fan out there who has not seen this 80's flick about the fast life and early death of the band and its bass player Sid Vicious. If there is, they can't be that big of a fan...

Sex Pistols films in general cater to obviously that certain audience but the fact that Sid And Nancy was a bigger budget film and certainly had wide releasing it is a surprise that writer/director Alex Cox (Repo Man) would make a film that explains nothing. Its almost as if Cox said fuck you to everyone else, I'm going to make a movie for the people who already know something about the subject at hand and everyone else can just fuck off. Its a pretty nihilistic attitude to go along with a nihilistic movie and the finished product became an immediate cult hit. Nobody else would want to sit through a two hour movie of two junkies shooting up, snotting on themselves and bleeding while incoherent music blares in the background.

All the important iconic figures are in the movie but of course there is no explanation behind the  characters. A John Spaceley or Gringo (Story Of A Junkie) character shows up for some screen time. A character named Rock Head who is supposed to be Johnny Thunders, Malcom Mclaren, Sue Cat Woman and many others and as if its not obvious enough that this is an intentional cult flick the dialogue although extremely funny, memorable and quotable is almost dulled out whenever any conversation of importance is going on. Of course with countless viewings one would know the script inside and out but yet again to everybody else... Fuck off!

Gary Oldman (True Romance) plays Sid Vicious and does an excellent job at that. From his body language to his slurred cockney speech. Chloe Webb plays Nancy and does an excellent job of portraying Nancy as the fucking horribly obnoxious piece of shit that she was. Before the films climax the average audience is awaiting the moment Sid kills her and puts us all out of our misery. Aside from the great cast Alex Cox's direction is amazing with excellent camerawork and plenty of symbolic trash to fill each frame.

So skip out on "the methadone clinic and go out in a blaze of glory" with Sid And Nancy.

Nightmare On Dyke Street (1992)

Possibly the worst porno parody I have ever seen and that's a pretty hard goal to achieve. This thing makes absolutely no sense at all. Dyke Street is obviously supposed to be a spoof on The Nightmare On Elm Street movies and yes we do have a Freddy Kruger character who shows up in the dreams of our female lead Samantha. We know when we are in dream land not only because Freddy appears but because the set is suddenly covered in Christmas tree tinsel. Why the film makers thought tinsel was a good effect is beyond me but the cast and sets are covered in it. The tinsel is so obviously annoying to the actors as the pull the shiny, festive, slivers away from their genitals. This stuff is getting in their vagina's for Christ sake. Next the film will cut away and the tinsel which was just removed will be back again as if the director was screaming "more tinsel! Don't touch the tinsel!".

Aside from the obnoxious Christmas decorations, Freddy doesn't really do much and for some reason he wears a long black wig. I don't know if this is supposed to mean that Freddy is a lesbian because there is no fucking dialogue in the movie other then the occasional moan and groan. Maybe he is supposed to be a woman, after all the movie is called A Nightmare On "Dyke" Street. Lesbian or not Freddy sports anal beads instead of knives for fingers but never puts them to use. Instead he/she just rubs them on women's ass and clits. Who the fuck thought this thing up? Three directors are credited for this thing which is even more embarrassing. One of them is to blame for Halloweenie which I am yet to see but Dyke Street is really pulling me in the opposite direction.

As if this isn't all weird enough we also have a bit of racism thrown into a scene where a bunch of white students make fun of their black teacher and shout out "Hammer time" constantly. They also draw a picture of a man with a huge Afro on the blackboard with an arrow going to his penis. Captioned underneath it says "Hammer time". Next the black teacher strips down to nothing but his belt and screws one of his students as Freddy watches. We also have a bunch of audio taken from Full Metal Jacket which is mixed into the shitty techno soundtrack.

It is a hell of a task to make it through A Nightmare On Dyke Street in one sitting and I strongly recommend staying far away from this grabastic piece of amphibian shit.

Davy Crockett And The River Pirates (1956)

What we have here is probably the only decent film ever to come from Walt Disney. Davy Crockett And The River Pirates is the Technicolor sequel to Norman Foster's Davy Crockett : King Of The Wild Frontier. This time around Crockett and his partner Georgy has to race Mike Fink The King Of The River to New Orleans.

This movie is amazing for one reason and that is the character of Mike Fink and his crew of roughneck pirates. Mike Fink is a bragging, prick. He is totally full of himself and everything out of his mouth is hilarious. "I can out-run, out-jump, out-sing, out-swim, out-dance, out-shoot, out-eat, out-drink, Out-talk, out-cuss, out-fight anybody in the whole Mississippi and Ohio Rivers put together!" He beats the crap out of his own men and has the most obnoxious laugh. How can anybody not love this character. Davy Crockett on the other hand is exactly what you would expect out from a 50's movie legendary hero. He's a good-doer with high morals. Boring!
Its also amazing that this thing is a children's movie. We have excessive drinking, plenty of fist fights and violence. A war with native American Indians and plenty more of what is considered politically incorrect today.

Davy Crockett And The River Pirates is a childhood favorite of mine and it turns out the director is the grandfather of a personal friend of mine. I don't know what the odds of this is but it makes me like the film just a bit more. If you think you might want to see a man eat his hat "feather and all" you might want to check this one out.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

You like slasher movies? Then you would probably like Silent Night Deadly Night. You remember the one where Santa runs around with an axe and punishes everyone who has been "Naughty".  Linnea Quigley is impaled on a deer antlers and bullies are decapitated.

Well don't worry because you get to see it all again in Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2. The sequel runs just under 90 minutes and almost the entire running time is eaten up with footage from the first film. I believe we get to see every single murder from the original. Then when we finally get around to something fresh and new it is terrible. A man is killed with an umbrella in a ridiculous scene. Another is strangled, another is run over repeatedly by a van. Eventually we get around to a decent kill in a scene where a man has battery cables shoved in his mouth (the scene comes complete with bad 80's electric special effects and exploding eyeballs). Then we get another strangulation and eventually the big massacre that gives the movies its cult following. Our psycho killer walks through the streets and shoots people who are taking out their garbage "Garbage day!".

The fact that most of the film consists of footage from the first movie is only the beginning of the problems with Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2. The entire film is filled with continuity and plot holes. Anybody familiar with the first film knows that Santa gets blown away right before he chops mother superior up with an axe. The axe falls to the floor and the camera zooms in on the villains younger brother. Obviously they were setting themselves up for a sequel in true 80's fashion. The only problem is the new killer retells the first film step by step and the fucking guy wasn't even there. How the hell does he know what his older brother was doing on his own time?

Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 is a mess of a movie but can be a bit of a guilty pleasure. It's not the worst movie to watch in a arthouse theater full of unruly, drunken, maniacs who like to throw things at the screen and yell through the entire movie. Good times! Just don't try to take it seriously. You would be better off trying suicide...

Critters 2 (1988)

Mick Garris the director of The Stand and Psycho 4 : The Beginning, directs the sequel for Critters. This time around there is a lot more murder on display. While the first film had a {PG13} rating and was very tame almost in a Gremlins kinda way, the sequel's tagline boasts The Main Course... It's everyone's turn for seconds and sported a {R} rating.

This means more death and more gore. We also get a bare breasted bimbo this time around in what has to be one of the most gratuitous scenes of boobage in cinematic history next to Zombie Death House.

This time around the hungry aliens eat humans, cows, dogs, nerds and bullies. Critters two offers up another dead cop and they even get the bounty hunter from the first film who can't chose a face. To bad they didn't get the glam bastard instead or at least Charlie the towns drunk. Charlie does come back for the second film and this time he is one of the bounty hunters and he pretty much saves the day in this one.

On the other hand aside from the increased gore and nudity they also added more comedy and sappy stuff into this one. We have a boring love story for a subplot going on with our red-head main character and there is also a little girl running around that we are supposed to think "Oh how cute". Of course this is not the fact and us monster-kids would much rather see them both being eaten up by the razor toothed hairballs from outer space. However we do get an awesome super-nerd who works at a fast food joint. His screen time is much appreciated and he has to be one of the most awkward actors of all time. Some of the other comedic treats that Critters 2 has to offer is a dead easterbunny, more foul mouthed Critters and a spaceship suicide bomber. Also the Criters all join together to make one giant flesh eating ball of terror.

Fans of the first film should definitely enjoy the sequel. More gore! Need I say more?