Recent viewings

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Last Showing" (2014)
Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund stars in this low-budget British thriller set in a multiplex. He's a crazed projectionist who traps a young couple inside the theater overnight and makes them unwilling "stars" in his own personal horror film. Not a classic by any means, but not bad for an obscure cheapie. 

[lester1/2jr]

Undocumented - college kids + illegal immigrants vs right wing baddies, but mostly standard torture/ how do we escape evil guy scenario 4/5

[Rev. Powell]

MST3K: JUNGLE GODDESS: The serial is the first episode of the incoherent "The Phantom Creeps" (with Lugosi). In the movie, a pair of airplane pilots go into the African jungle searching for a missing girl whom, it turns out, the natives worship as a goddess (because she's white, duh). The host segments are uneven but generally good, with the low point being an outdated infomercial parody and the high point the sitcom sketch "My White Goddess" (which manages to take the p**s out of TV comedies and the racist movie at the same time). This is probably not a great episode, but it was one of the first I ever saw and it has tremendous personal nostalgia for me (I quote the line "baby, you're a goddess!" all the time). 3/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Truck Turner" (1974)
Soul music legend Isaac Hayes is Mac "Truck" Turner, the most bad-ass skip tracer and bounty hunter in L.A. When he kills the city's most powerful pimp during a shootout, the dude's grieving girlfriend and business partner (Nichelle "Lt. Uhura" Nichols!) puts a price on Truck's head, and soon every bad mo-fo in the city is gunning for him.
This blaxploitation classic is tons of sleazy, action packed fun. Groove on the outrageous fashions, the hair, the slang, and especially the funk-tastic soundtrack. Pure '70s gold.

[316zombie]

dark corners...i love thora birch, but this movie is just terrible!

[Rev. Powell]

MY NEIGHBORS THE YAMADAS (1999): Vignettes (some very short) about the five-member Yamada clan: the daughter gets lost shopping, the son woos his first girlfriend, Mom and Grandma pressure Dad to do something about the noisy teenage bikers disturbing the peace, and so on. Crafted in a minimalistic but highly creative style, it's like binge-reading a sweet-natured daily comic strip---and unlike much anime, it makes the Japanese look like normal people, without a single rampaging mecha or any hint of a tentacle fetish. 4/5.

[lester1/2jr]

316 - I'm not a big turn offer but I turned that one off something just immediately didn't work for me

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Burning" (1981)

A gang of summer campers plays a fiery prank on "Cropsey," the cranky ol' caretaker -- which goes horribly wrong and burns the poor bastard alive. Five years later, a mysterious figure who wields a mean pair o' garden shears starts picking off a new crew of camp counselors.
This is very familiar territory, of course (see: any random "Friday the 13th," "Madman," "Sleepaway Camp," etc.) but "The Burning" was a cut (sorry) above most of its summer-camp splatter competition, due to the truly nasty gore effects from carnage wizard Tom Savini.
Watch for a young Jason Alexander of future "Seinfeld" fame (with hair!) as one of the potential victims.

Bonus bit of useless trivia: "The Burning" was the very first production from Harvey Weinstein's Miramax studio, which was an odd coincidence cuz ol' Harvey has been all over the news this past week due to supposed improper conduct towards the women who work for him...

[FatFreddysCat]

"Hush" (Netflix original, 2016)

A deaf/mute woman who lives alone in an isolated cabin has to fight off a murderous and very determined home invader... but if he thinks she's going to go down easy, he picked the wrong house.
This taut little suspense/horror/thriller is kinda like a 21st century update/twist on the '60s Audrey Hepburn flick "Wait Until Dark." Cool stuff, sucked me in right from the get-go. Definitely worth a look.

[316zombie]

316 - I'm not a big turn offer but I turned that one off something just immediately didn't work for me

  be thankful you did,it was just bloody AWFUL! even my hubby , who loves movies that don't make sense, didn't like it. but he has the same unfortunate obsession with movies that i have with books,he HAS to watch the whole thing, no matter how bad.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Gerald's Game" (2017)
Looking to re-ignite the spark in their love life, a couple heads off to a secluded beach house for some private sexy time, which includes handcuffing Wifey to the bed. Unfortunately for her, Hubby then drops dead of a sudden heart attack, leaving her trapped and alone. Soon she learns that in order to escape her current situation, she'll have to overcome some demons from her past as well.
A tight, disturbing, well done psychological thriller based on Stephen King's novel. Kudos to Carla Gugino's performance as the trapped wife, since she plays a good chunk of this movie as a one-woman show.

[Rev. Powell]

HOLE IN THE SOUL (1994): Comic documentary self-portrait by Dusan Makavejev (SWEET MOVIE), who recalls his career, talks about making another film, visits his agent for the first time ever, and goes to a screening of SWEET MOVIE with a pig companion. Reinforces this director's odd sense of humor, but he's no longer out to shock viewers---he now embraces a grandfatherly persona, amused by his own irrelevance and toothlessness. A feature-length extra on Criterion's WR: MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM disc. 2.5/5.

THE CHUMSCRUBBER (2005): In a wealthy California suburb, disaffected teen Dean finds himself snared in an amateur blackmail and kidnapping plot after his only friend, a drug supplier, hangs himself and local high school drug dealers assume he knows the location of the stash. This strange satire/black comedy is ambitious and has a great cast (Glenn Close and Ralph Fiennes appear in relatively small roles), but it never finds a sure footing, and its lack of coherence is amplified by the fact that everyone in the story is on drugs (prescription or otherwise). 3/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Jaws 2" (1978)
Amity Island's Police Chief Brody has another shark problem - and this time the toothy sucker has its sights set on a group of local teenagers out for a day of sailing.
"Jaws 2" doesn't come anywhere close to matching the suspense or craftsmanship of its predecessor, of course, but it's an enjoyable enough creature feature in its own right. After this flick, however, the "Jaws" franchise went straight down the poop chute and never returned.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Halloween III: Season of the Witch" (1982)
A small town doctor (Tom "Escape From New York" Atkins) gets caught up in a plot to commit high tech human sacrifice on Halloween night, using specially programmed masks and a devious TV signal.
...this totally entertaining, yet completely batsh*t mix of '50s paranoid sci-fi and splashy '80s gore tried its best to send the "Halloween" franchise off into a new, Michael Myers-free direction but failed spectacularly at the box office...which is a shame, because it's still a fun watch today. "III" is just about the only "Halloween" movie I'm not completely sick of.
Added bonus, my 10 year old watched it with me for the first time and he loved it!

[FatFreddysCat]

"Cult of Chucky" (2017)
In the seventh (!) "Child's Play" installment,  wheelchair-bound Nica (lone survivor of the previous chapter) is locked up in a mental hospital. Therapy has convinced her that "Chucky" was just a figment of her imagination and that she was responsible for all of the carnage in the prior film. Of course, things get complicated when the real Chucky shows up in the flesh - err, plastic -- and starts carving up her fellow patients.
Part old school slasher flick, part psycho-thriller, and all big dumb gory fun, this makes the second decent "Chucky" movie in a row. Not bad for a franchise that I wrote off twenty plus years ago. Who'da thunk it?