CreepTales (1986 or 1989 or 2004 depends on who you ask)

 

We have another horror anthology (or "portmanteau" as someone has recently reminded me) this time.  It of course is my favorite sub-genre of horror flick so I always go in to these with high expectations.  As is the norm, we have several horror shorts that range from somewhere in the neighborhood of a half hour to a few minutes.  With many different writers and directors it's sure to be a little asymmetrical from story to story.  The confusion in the year of origin comes from the fact that filming began in 1986 but not finished until 1989.  But when was it released?  Yup, you guessed it, 2004.  Don't look at me that way, go look it up.       

 

All of the shorts have a connecting wrap around story that involves a couple of ghouls (or are they demons?  perhaps just your run of the mill monsters) try to rent a video on Halloween.  By the time they get to the video store it is closing and they really want to watch CreepTales.  They then decide to go dig up their Uncle Munger who was buried with a copy of the film.  They take it home and have a bunch of other monsters/ demons/ghouls over to watch it with them.  Only problem is Uncle Munger wants his copy back!  I won't talk about all of the stories but I will highlight a few of them.  The first one I will talk about is "Snatcher" which stars SpongeBob voice actor Tom Kenny as a purse snatcher who is having a great day.  That is until he snatches the wrong purse.  It's not a long story, maybe ten minutes and it's mostly a montage of purses being snatched.  It's a good time and it has a really fun ending.    

Next we'll move on to Groovy Ghoulie Garage.  This one concerns two friends who on Halloween night have to go pick up the sister of one of them who has recently been kicked out of school.  On the way there their car breaks down so they wait for a tow truck to take their car in for repairs and where do they go?  Groovy Ghoulie Garage is where.  From here on in things just don't seem right about the town or the Halloween Party they go to in town while they wait for their car to be fixed.  While I've seen this story done before (and better I'll admit) which makes it predictable it has some sort of charm to it.      

The last story I want to mention is the final short.  "Sucker" concerns a woman who lives in a filthy and cluttered house.  A traveling salesman offers her the answer to her problems.  The dust buster (or Dirt Demon I think he calls it) will clean up anything she points it at.  It only comes with two rules: use it for no more than thirty seconds at a time and do not point it at any person.  But what if pointing it at her husband will solve her biggest problem?  She has 24 hours to us it as the salesman will be back for it tomorrow.  

  

 

While it's stories vary in quality, a couple are real stinkers that I didn't even mention but none of them are very long.  I enjoyed this one and even though I usually give anthologies portmanteaus a higher grade than they deserve I will still give this one three and a half houses of skulls out of five.  Hey, in it's defense it does have Forrest J. Ackerman acting as creative consultant!  That has to count for something.

Bunnyman (2011 original version/2019 Grindhouse edition) Just in time for Easter!

 

 

 

 OK, so there's two versions of this film.  The original and a re-edited "Grindhouse" version which is the version I saw.  First I want to say I am glad my Horror Honey Denise was with me when I watched this because if not, all of the times I pointed to the TV screen and yelled "What the Fuck?!" would have gone unacknowledged and I would have had a difficult time explaining it to anyone!  The basic film is a poor retelling of Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Leatherface in a bunny suit.  I'm not really sure where my dislike for the movie falls into the original version because while I appreciated the effort to make it look like it came from the 70's there were a few things done that to me are a film maker no-no's.  I'll attempt to name a few:

 

 

1. There is a scene where some of the cast "time travel" which is just some scenes of 1970's New York with a voice over of the characters talking about what they are seeing after they walked through a wormhole.  

2. Not to be outdone by that there is also a clip while they are all walking through a field and some sort of nature scenes just begin.  There's a bear, there's snow capped mountains, there's a tribe of South American cannibals ("Good thing they don't see us.", comments the voice over) and then we go back to them walking through a field.  I'm sorry, what?

3.  At one point we get an on screen message that reads: "Meanwhile In Another Movie" which then takes us to a dimly lit bathroom.  A girl comes into the bathroom, strips down, and begins to take a shower.  Enter the Bunnyman who then kills the girl which takes us back to the original film.  I think I wanna see more of that movie.  Maybe that's in one of the sequels?

4.  In one scene all the actors are suddenly speaking German, Swedish, Russian or some other language that sounds like this.  Just one scene and then back without any explanation or nothing.  Maybe have a SAP button on screen showing it being switched and then they speak Spanish and it switching back?  Nah, that might make too much sense.  

5. A couple small things where a record player is playing in the background and it's so loud you cannot hear what the characters are saying.  Then a few scenes later (and more than one time this happened) there is absolutely no sound.  Like it was filmed without the sound turned on.  Admittedly it's a scene of cars moving down the road but don't have NO sound.  Give me something.  That's just lazy and cheap.

 

 

 

Now I did like some of the Grindhouse effects like making the film look older than it is.  It's a little excessive at times but it's OK.  While some people have criticized the film for the split screen effects and the scene wipes I liked that.  I mean that's Grindhouse.  Then we get the intermission which while not being anything new it was decent.  But some didn't like this either.  Look, we don't complain when Tarantino does it so why complain now?  While I'm sure some of the things I have complained about might be there for comic relief but it's still some head scratching inducing stuff.  If it wasn't for the humor, then there is a real problem.  

 

I honestly don't know how to rate this as some of the things I have commented on are some of the best parts in a bad way if that makes any sense.  Putting this close to the "so bad it's good" range but not quite.  I went to the Horror Honey for some input on this one and she was in the same area I was in the two or two and a half range so I'll stick with two Tony's Pizzas out of five.  Something tells me this one wasn't meant to be as funny as it was.     

Knock at the Cabin (2023)

    A very interesting film from M., certainly much better than Old that I watched about two months ago. Knock begins with what seems (to me at least) to be a tribute to the original Frankenstein when the hulking Leonard (Bautista) meets little Wen (Cui) and begins to help her catch grasshoppers. The two share a few moments of friendly chatter and I could see that there is some sort of connection that Leonard has with children as he relates to her very well. Or at least he has with this particular child. Things quickly take a turn as Leonard is joined by the other three members of his group.

  Although Redmond (Grint) isn't in the film very long he gives an intense few moments as he meets his fate. As he is pulling the white cloth over his head I could feel his fear but also was convinced he knew this was something he had to do and was dedicated to performing his part. In fact there isn't a weak performance in the film. If there is anything negative to say it is that after the first twenty to thirty minutes of the film Chui (who is impressive none the less), begins to shrink into the background and her impressive talent from the opening scenes melt away and becomes a standard child actor. Nothing wrong with that as she is still better than most child actors I see in films today.    

 

What I want to also point out is the job Dave Bautista gives here. I've known Bautista since his days as a wrestler in the WWE. Wasn't much of a fan as for the most part he came across mostly as just a muscle head who did what he did best which was have a lot of muscles and be mean. Here, he is also large (probably the biggest I've ever seen him) and menacing but I also see another side of him. I see his humanity, his understanding that what he is asking this family to do is nearly impossible to do. He tries to be as understanding as possible and gives them as much of a chance as he can to do the right thing. Even though he knows that allowing them to take their time deciding brings him even closer to his own demise.

 

 All of the "Horseman" exit the film nearly as quickly as they came in to the film. It would have been nice to get some back story on them as I felt more attuned to the four of them than I did the family. The question is are they crazy? Apparently not, but Eric, Andrew, and Wen can't know that. I mean really, put yourself in their situation and tell me it's easy to decide what to do. And if it's easy to figure out who you would kill in your family then your family isn't as close as it could be. What I hope we could get is a prequel where we see the "4" each receiving their "call" and how they met and so on. I dunno, maybe call it "Before the Knock" or some shit like that. I think if I had more backstory on them I could have given this a higher score.  Another way it gets close to a four for me is because it gets the hometown discount.  The truck stop restaurant we see at the end of the movie is a place I've been many times growing up in South Jersey.  The only difference is it's actual name is The Evergreen Dairy Bar.  When my family and I would go "down the shore" when I was a kid we would stop here on the way for a quick breakfast or lunch.  Good memories in there. As it is I think three and a half grasshoppers out of five is a fair score but a prequel could add to the story and perhaps it would be good enough to bring this to 4.