That's a Wrap

 

Once again, we bring another Countdown To Halloween Blogathon to a close.  We had a good month.  It was a long month.  At times a rough month.  Cerpts over at our sister blog The Land on Cerpts and Honey lost his mother early on and thankfully through blogger magic was still able to participate all month long.  His mother was like a second mother to me as I was growing up when I was just a teen-aged Cheeks.  She had a part in raising me just as she did raising Cerpts.  She did a much better job with him.  One of the things I will always remember about her was one occasion when I was gesticulating as I was talking, I went to raise my hand and Cerpts bent down in a laughing knee slapping sort of movement at the same time.  My thumb went right into his eye.  His contact lens was ripped in half and it lodged into his eyeball.  I forget exactly what happened after that as far as medical treatment for it was concerned.  The most memorable part of the incident was when Cerpts went home and told Ma what happened she came up with the most epic quote that sums up our friendship.  Her response was: "Well, I'm not surprised, I'm happy if on nights when you go out with Cheeks you come home not covered in shit!".  Yes, she called me Cheeks!

 

 

 

I will always remember Ma for her love of Halloween and how every year she would painstakingly decorate the house for Halloween.  She made a habit of decorating inside and outside and I remember the first year I went over to Cerpts' house during October and noticed she was using the cardboard cutout decorations like those pictured up there ^^^.  It was classic Halloween.  I think Cerpts might still have some of these cardboard decorations still.  Although we never really talked about it, I'm pretty sure Ma liked witches and all things witchy.  I remember one Halloween, when I lived just a few blocks away from Cerpts, Ma came over to my apartment dressed up for Halloween and she was decked out in her best witch costume.  She also had a pentagram with bells hanging off of it.  It sort of looked like this:

 

She also liked Stevie Nicks, I think, because the way Ma dressed she reminded me so much of her with her flowy, gauzy dresses that always seemed to sway around her as she danced.  She loved to dance.  She loved music.  She just, loved.  Maybe she was a witch, who knows, and I guess it begs the question "Was she a good witch or a bad witch?".  Seeing as how she was responsible for giving me the best friend I have ever had for the past (nearly) 40 years I would say she wasn't a good witch or a bad witch.  She was the best witch!  And I will do my best to make sure when Cerpts and I get together for a frolic in the future that he will go back home without any shit on him.

 

 

Mother Goddess, Father God, I release myself from those who have left this plane and let them walk the blessed gardens of the Summerland.  

As they enter a dream from which rebirth will arise, I give thanks for the time spent together and invoke their protective light to guide me.

 I light a candle to bless this day with the splendor of fire, the freedom of the wind, the stability of earth, and the depth of the sea.

 Sun and Moon, grant us birth.  Grant us life, death, and rest.  For we shall meet again when our souls leave this world.  

 Guide me through the night and the sun-lit days.  Merry part and merry meet.  In soul and heart, Blessed Be.

 

photo credit from the cover of The Summerland by Elizabeth Cheryl

 

  

Saw X (2023)

 

With a mix of trepidation and enthusiasm the Horror Honey and I went to see the most recent installment of the Saw series, Saw X.  This entire month of October I have done an entire Saw series re-watch.  Actually not all were re-watches Spiral was new to me and for the life of me I know I watched Jigsaw but I couldn't recall a thing about it so that felt new as well.  Other than one other couple in the theater, we had the entire place to ourselves.  Once again Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, and Costas Mandylor return as John Kramer, Amanda Young, and Detective Hoffman.  This film occurs after Saw and before Saw II in the chronology of the story.  It's been given the cute label of an inbetweenquel.  Yeah, they're just making shit up now!  John's tumor is getting worse and he only has a few months to live.  During a cancer support meeting he meets a man named Henry, Michael Beach from Patriot's Day and One False Move who is dying of stage four pancreatic cancer.  A few weeks later John sees Henry again looking healthier than he had before.

 

 

Henry tells John about an experimental treatment he received from a Norwegian doctor.  John is able to get in contact with the doctor's daughter and she agrees to treat him in their Mexico facility.  John is taken by taxi from the air port to the clinic and meets Cecilia (Synnøve Macody Lund from The Girl in the Spider Web) and her team which includes Mateo (Octavio Hinojosa Martínez) an anestesiologist, Valentina (Paulette Hernández) a medical tech, and Dr. Cortez (Joshua Okamoto) who is to perform surgery on John.  While there John also meets a girl named Gabriela (Renata Vaca) who Cecilia has cured as well as another patient named Parker Sears (Steven Brand from Mayhem and The Scorpion King) who just recently had surgery and treatment for throat cancer.  After the surgery to remove the tumor John begins his recovery and he is given a bunch of drug cocktails to take two a day for a week and he should be fine.  He asks Cecilia what else there is to do and she tells him to go live his life.  Which she hopes will be long and happy.  Soon after, John realizes the entire thing was a scam, in fact he never ever received surgery.  He decides to get his revenge on them all with the help of Amanda and Detective Hoffman.

 

Well well well, we get a Saw film with a lot of character development and a ton of story.  Sure there's traps and "games" to play but they all come in the second half of the film.  One trap we do see early on but that actually ends up being just a daydream John has about playing a "game" with a hospital orderly who has sticky fingers.  I mean for the most part I always root for John and his traps but this one really gives you a reason to root for him!  I have to say this is not the movie I was expecting.  Half of it is unlike anything we have seen in a Saw film before but when the traps begin, holy crap are they brutal.  This might be the most cringe film in the series.  There's gore, brutality, and violence that we are used to and I almost want to say this is the most we have seen of those aspects in any Saw film but I'm not sure.  It's close if it's not I will say that.  Kevin Greutert directs here again after also directing Saw VI and Saw 3-D.  Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger who also wrote Jigsaw and Spiral also served as writers here.  Saw X was originally to be made earlier, when Spiral was made, but this was moved back when Chris Rock went with the Spiral script instead.

 

 

Ten films in and we have the most John Kramer in any Saw film to date here in Saw X.  Also for the first time Bell added some lines into the script, putting some extra dialogue into the finished product.  Seeing as how several years has passed and Bell and Smith are older now they considered de-aging the characters but last minute decided to go with them as is.  All in all this may be the most polished film in the entire series.  While there are less traps, each one seems so much more severe than some others and let's admit it, the traps are what we are there for.  Saw X reinvigorates the franchise and makes me wonder where they will go next because there will be another one, of that I'm sure.  With a budget of $13 million compared to a box office total (as of this writing) of just over $60 million the numbers are heading in the right direction in order to receive a sequel order.  Surprisingly this installment has received the best grades of all the Saw films from critics.  While I won't go that far, I will say it is the best since Saw III and I will give it three and a half scam artists out of five.  Again without quarter star grading, I bump it to three and a half but second guessing myself this might be a bit lower of a score than Jigsaw making this, IMO, the fourth best film in the series.  I do recommend this to Saw junkies and it also might make a good jumping on point for new fans of the trap king.

 

 

Happy Halloween!

      

 

 


 

Grimm Final Thoughts

 

"There once was a man who lived a life so strange, it had to be true. Only he could see what no one else can—the darkness inside, the real monster within, and he's the one who must stop them. This is his calling. This is his duty. This is the life of a Grimm."

When it comes to making TV shows whether it's a half hour sitcom or an hour long medical show it takes some planning.  You need to have an idea where you want to go with your story.  Comedy might be easier as the story lines don't need to be too deep.  If you're making a medical drama or a courtroom drama type show you probably need even more planning.  Now take into consideration a police procedural drama, now add elements of the supernatural, fantasy, horror, and throw in a dash of fairy tale and you are boxing yourself in.  Grimm is a specialized series that was a one of a kind offering.  It wasn't a spin off of another more well known series, it didn't have a big name attracted to it, and it didn't come with a built in fan base.  Everything about Grimm however had a feel about it that made you instantly fall into their world which was basically the same as our world but with a little added zest.  To do something like this it takes more that a great ability to tell a story.  Most writers have at least one good story in them.  Then they have to do that over 120 times over the course of six years.  One hour at a time.  Well, that is like catching lightening in a bottle.

 

 

When I first watched the very first episode of Grimm (yes I was a fan from day one) I was emerged into this world where people could morph into fairy tale creatures.  And they were not all the cute and cuddly things we think of from our childhoods.  The makeup and creative ways they made these Wesen go from every day humans like you and I to horribly ugly, sometimes gorgeous, but always remarkable creations is masterful.  All of these actors I had never heard of before except I knew David Guintoli was from the Real World/Road Rules/MTV family but they were reality shows.  Could this guy pull off acting?  In a show like this?  Yes, he can.  Everyone in the cast was just about perfectly cast.  Since I knew nothing about these actors, they WERE the characters they were playing.  The skill that these actors showed over the course of six seasons is so impressive that to this day I still have a hard time seeing Sasha Roiz in anything and not being suspicious of him.  Renard was hard to trust and then when you did he would do something underhanded that made you look twice at him.

 

 

Grimm gives us a mythology, a folklore in which everything feels a little familiar and at the same time unlike anything you have experienced before.  I'm not a shill for Grimm, they don't pay me to say this but in the world of good TV there's LOST, Heroes (at least the first couple of seasons), The Leftovers, From, that all fall into this category of television.  Different is good.  Doing different well is another story.  Making it interesting for six seasons and watching all these characters develop more and more even when you thought there was nowhere else to go with them takes a talent.  Of course the creators did admittedly run out of ideas and that's bound to happen.  I'm just glad they were up front about it and didn't drag it out.  Towards the end things did at times feel like it was being drug out or we were getting filler episodes that didn't progress the main story.  That's OK though, that gave us episodes like Blind Love that I wrote about a few days ago.  The episode did nothing in the long run, as I called it, it was a pallet cleanser.  It was that last deep breath before diving into the part of the pool where your feel don't quite touch the bottom.

 

 

As is the case with many TV shows Grimm was able to take issues in our society and adapt them to their world.  Intolerance, bigotry, biases, acceptance, and diversity were constantly shows to be alive and well in the world of Wesen and Grimm.  We saw the Wesen version of racism when Munroe and Rosalee were married.  Stephen Carpenter, David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf were the main writers and producers of the show.  Stephen Carpenter was mostly a writer of screenplays before working on Grimm.  Some of the films he wrote for are The Kindred, Blue Streak, and Servants of Twilight.  Greenwalt also worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it's spinoff Angel.  Kouf comes from a feature film background as he served as a writer, director, or producer or a combination of the three to such films as Class, Stakeout, Rush Hour, and Disorganized Crime.  I also want to talk about the man behind the music of Grimm, composer Richard Marvin.  Marvin has worked in both film and television with films like U-5700 and Surrogates under his belt and in television before he worked on Grimm he wrote the music for Six Feet Under.  The theme the show used in the first season was replaced in the second season and was used for the rest of the series run was so kick ass that most times when given the opportunity to skip over it or fast forward past it, I usually rock out to it.  Usually this rocking out consists of me banging my imaginary hammer against a just as imaginary pipe.  But oh, what music it makes.

 

 

In 2017 there was an attempt at a spin off show which would feature a new Grimm and a new set off characters but the pandemic and now the strike has put a possible permanent hold on anything new but I will keep my fingers crossed.  The show has also had one novel published as well as a comic series.  Currently it is running on Comet in syndication but I have to warn you it is censored and edited so they are not the original episodes you would be seeing but sometimes something is better than nothing.  It is also available through streaming services like Peacock and the WB.  As with all shows they end but something about this cast was special.  Giuntoli and Tulloch (Nick and Juliette) are still married today.  There is also a podcast that is still updated fairly regularly (most recent was in May of this year) titled The Grimmcast which features Claire Coffee (Adalind) Tulloch, and Bree Turner (Rosalee) where the three discuss episodes of the show.

 

 

The setting of the show, Portland, Oregon is nearly a character in the show as well.  From the stark city streets to the lush forests that make up the area where it is based as well as filmed is at times bleak (the city) and rainy to mysterious (the forests) and just plain rainy.  Well, it's Portland, whaddaya want.  Filmed entirely on location some of the scenery is breathtakingly gorgeous and at times you could imagine little forest folk flitting around just out of view.  So many shades of green in one area gave it an otherworldly feel and look that was not lost on me.  So I've reached the end of the show as well as the month (almost) and now I've reached the end of this post.  Here's hoping to see a revival of this one in the near future in some form or another.  And as always thank you for reading my ramblings.  It was fun to go back and dissect a show again like I did for LOST so many years ago.  It was a different experience this time as I did it long after the show ended so I had more of an inside scoop of where plot points were going so it made it a little easier to write.  If I spoiled the show, which if you haven't seen it I certainly must have, however I don't think I've made it impossible for anyone to get into it fresh and discover Grimm for themselves anew. 

 

 



    

 
  

 

I Drink Your Blood (1971)

 

 Well, here we are, we made it to the big day and there's no telling how many posts we will get through today but I'll be watching and writing up until the doorbell dings it's last dong.  So let's jump into the best day of the year with a grind house flick from the early 70's just loaded with hippies.  Not only are there hippies but we have Satan worshipers, lots of bad actors, and some of that "L" drug that makes you crazy.  I Drink Your Blood begins with a group of hippies who are also Satan worshipers getting stranded in a small town after their hippie mobile breaks down.  I mean, really, one of the best parts of the movie was this damn car.  I loved it and would drive one in an instant.  The town they are in is close to being an abandoned ghost town with more houses and buildings empty than are occupied.  They are holding some ritual in the forest and one of the local girls, Sylvia sees them and they rape and beat her before she can get away.  She struggles back home where her brother and grandfather live.  The grandfather goes to confront the hippies who are staying at an abandoned hotel. 

 

 There's rats getting killed and a chicken being sacrificed (I think they might have been really killing the animals too I mean it sure looked like it) and a rabid dog running around and a dam being built.  The dam is responsible for all the people moving away but the guy behind it, Roger, is also dating Mildred, another townie.  At the hotel, the grandfather is beaten and forced to take LSD.  His grandson, Pete, comes looking for him and the hippies allow the grandfather to leave although he is on a bad acid trip.  Pete is nearly attacked by a rabid dog but he is able to shoot and kill it with a shotgun.  He then goes home and draws blood from the dog.  He goes back to the family's bakery where they are making meat pies.  He injects blood from the rabid dog into the pies and then gives them to the hippies to eat.  Which they do, and afterwards they go ape shit.  Foaming at the mouth, killing each other, and just general running around creating havoc.  The only person I actually have seen before this is Lynn Lowry who plays one of the hippies named Carrie.  She's been in The Crazies, Shivers, and the 1982 remake of Cat People.  This was her film debut.  Since there is no law enforcement in the town of just forty people, Mildred talks to Roger and he says he will bring some of his men from the dam and straighten out the hippies.

 

One of the hippies, Andy, doesn't want to be with them any more and develops feelings for Sylvia who also has feelings for him.  The construction workers instead of helping end up just mixing in with the hippies and having one big party with them.  The grandfather, who is a veterinarian recognizes that the hippies have rabies and the interaction of the disease and the drugs they have been doing is making them go crazy.  Soon the construction workers have rabies as well and go on a rampage.  It's actually more comical than frightening.  The movie bounces back and forth between corny and disturbing.  Especially when one of the hippies, who is pregnant and infected, decides to impale herself with a wooden stake right in the stomach.  This was originally rated X when it first came out and was released as a double feature with I Eat Your Skin.  This is a grind house exploitation film at it's finest and while it's very polarizing if you know what you're getting going into it you should be OK with it.  Graphic violence with lots of nudity.  I'll go ahead and give this three and a half frothy mouths out of five.  I'll be back later with more as the day has just begun.  Happy Halloween!!  👻👾💀

 

        

Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy (1989)

 

A few days ago I watched The Stepfather and today I'm coming right back with the sequel The Stepfather 2.  The film is directed by the master of the horror movie sequel, Jeff Burr who has directed Puppet Master 4, Pumpkinhead 2, and Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3.  Terry O'Quinn is back as Jerry Blake who is in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.  He seems to be making progress with his psychiatrist Dr. Danvers who allows Jerry to have his sessions without his restraints.  This proves to be a mistake as he is able to kill his doctor and escape from the mental institute.  

 

 

Jerry relocates to Los Angeles and assumes the identity of Dr. Gene Clifford, a marriage counselor.  He moves into a house across the street from Carol Grayland and her son Todd.  Carol is played by Meg Foster (They Live, The Lords of Salem, and Ticket to Heaven) and Todd is portrayed by Johnathan Brandis (It, The Neverending Story 2, and Ladybugs).  This time Carol isn't a widow she's just separated from her husband Phil.  Making things messier for Jerry or rather Gene, is that Phil returns and wants Carol back.  Gene kills Phil and makes it look like Phil took off again.  With Phil finally gone, Gene can once again work on becoming a stepfather.  Sort of a prerequisite for a movie titled The Stepfather 2.

 

 

Things once again gets a little hairy for Gene when Carol's friend Matty played by Caroline Williams (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Hatchet 3, and Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 which makes her seem like the horror sequel queen) looks into Gene's mail.  She finds a photo of the real Gene who is African American, UH-OH.  This one isn't as good as the first one.  While I liked Foster here better than Hack from the first one, Johnathan Brandis, who is usually very likeable, nearly disappears into the background here.  It's still serviceable and if you watch the first one and like it, or are a Terry O'Quinn fan or are even a fan of Meg Foster and her gorgeous eyes, I would recommend it.  But still with all that in mind I will give this two and a half table saws out of five.  

     

6/12 - Zerstörer Shrugged 6/13 - The End

 

6/12 - Zerstörer Shrugged

We have arrived at the penultimate episode of Grimm.  Zerstörer is German for "destroyer" and who is Zerstörer you are probably wondering.  Remember last time I talked about the skull that Eve saw in the mirror?  That's Zerstörer.  A few episodes ago Eve used a spell to let her slip through a large mirror into another dimension.  In that dimension, which was a more feral version of ours and also about four hundred years in the past, Zerstörer is a devil like creature that controls the mirror dimension.  Nick soon followed her through but the two of them could not do much in the way of damaging Zerstörer.  The two found themselves trapped in the mirror dimension and on the bad end of an ass beating compliments of Zerstörer.  Diana figures out a way to get Eve and Nick back to our side of the mirror.  What everyone didn't know is that  Zerstörer came along with them.  There is a side effect of Eve going to the mirror dimension and then coming back and that is she has lost all her Hexenbiest powers.  After Diana pulls them both back she looks at Eve and tells her she's different. 

 

 

Now everything isn't bad news, there is some good news.  That good news is Trubel is back in Portland as well.  She brings with her the information that every cell of Black Claw has been destroyed and the group no longer poses a threat.  With this episode there is a feeling of going full circle as the cottage in the woods that was featured in the very first episode makes a return.  Nick, Adalind, and Renard think this will be a good place to hide Diana from Zerstörer.  When Zerstörer enters our world (through the mirror in a gas station bathroom), he arrives naked and steals the clothes from the first man he sees, sort of like The Terminator.  It seems that in our world, when woged, Zerstörer looks like a normal human with blond hair and a tan.  Is he Rocky from Rocky Horror?  Also in Terminator fashion he goes to the police station and totally destroys the place.  With so little left to get through there were likely to be deaths.  For those of you that rode the roller coaster that was the final few episodes of LOST knows that when a show is ending, nobody is safe.
 

 

As the circle closes around Nick and the time grows short to tell this story, we see Diana back at the cabin in the woods very shaken.  She doesn't truly know how powerful she is but it is worry-some when we see her being so frightened.  Renard and Adalind do their best to reassure Diana she is going to be safe.  They almost sound like they meant that too.  So the basic needs for this skull guy, is he wants to take Diana for his child bride and he wants "the stick".  There is also talk of him being there for Kelly as well but that is never explained.  Now the stick is by far the bigger of the two issues that needs to be addressed.  Rosalee and Munroe discover that according to his families Wesen bible, the stick is a piece of Zerstörers' staff which is the most powerful weapon in the universe but it has to be reunited with the piece that Nick has for it to be fully functional.  It has some power now in the state it is in, a great deal it would seem, but with the stick added back it is the end all be all weapon.  While Zerstörer is walking around Portland looking like Rocky Horror, we see his stick turn into a huge snake and take out a bunch of guys giving him a hard time.

 

  

Nick leaves the cabin where Renard, Adalind, and Diana are hiding to go meet Hank and Wu at the precinct.  Before he leaves Nick tells Adalind he loves her for the first time.  Crap, it's not the last time is it?  When Zerstörer attacks the precinct everyone there dies except for Nick.  Sadly, that means we say goodbye to Hank and Wu this episode.   Wu morphs into his primal form and attacks Rocky but Wu is impaled by the staff and dies right there on the floor in Nick's arms.  Hank fires dozens of bullets into Rocky and it does nothing.  Hank is killed and Nick becomes enraged.  He attacks and is thrown around the precinct like a rag doll.  For Hank and Wu, their deaths happen very fast and we are never given enough time to mourn their loss as this episode ends with a predictable To Be Continued.  
 

 The title is a nod to Atlas Shrugged a novel by Ayn Rand which in my opinion reflects the fact that the society we know in the Grimm world is about to be destroyed so another one may be born.  The quote for this episode is "You shall break them with a rod." which is a quote from The Bible specifically Psalm 2:9.  The Psalm predicts the destruction of any rebellious nation when He returns to earth to establish his kingdom.  I liked how the human form of Zerstörer seemed to mimic that of the pre fall Lucifer description reinforcing his "devil" comparison.  The first time the show has gone biblical as far as I can remember.  One to go.  Let's all take a deep breath and jump into...

 

6/13 - The End

This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend
The end of our elaborate plans
The end of everything that stands

                                          The End by The Doors

 

 

Back at the precinct Nick wakes up and tries to use the stick on Wu and Hank.  It doesn't work.  Trubel comes in and surveys the scene.  Nick tells her they have to kill Zerstörer but since bullets have no effect they will do it the old fashioned way like their ancestors did.  They need to cut his head off.  Nick sends Trubel off to the cabin to be with Adalind, Renard, and the kids.  Nick heads to The Spice Shop.  At the shop Munroe finds a mention of defeating the ultimate evil.  To do so they need "the strength of ones blood" which reminds Rosalee of a potion called Force du Sang.  The potion is not easy to make as it requires the blood of a Grimm, a Hexenbiest, and another Wesen.  It must all be added to the potion at the same time.  As they are making the potion Nick shows up and tells them about Hank and Wu.  Munroe and Rosalee leave with the potion that still needs the blood.  Rocky Horror shows up at the shop and Eve attacks him with a dagger but he is easily able to use telekinesis to force her to stab herself in the stomach.  Rocky vanishes and Eve tells Nick she has no regrets.  Nick tries to heal Eve with the stick but it doesn't work.  Eve dies.

At the cabin Munroe and Rosalee tell Renard and Adalind about the potion.  Nick arrives and tells them Eve is dead.  They need to add the blood to finish the potion.  Now!  Adalind, Rosalee, and Nick all hold their hands over the cauldron.  Renard holds a dagger over their hands.  He hesitates.  Trubel pushes his hand down plunging the dagger through all three of their hands.  Their blood mixes with the rest of the concoction.  Rocky Horror shows up and in his human form he slams his staff down and everyone is knocked down except for Diana.  She willingly leaves with Rocky.  Renard gets up and chases them outside and tries to attack to no use.  Rocky stabs him in the chest with his staff, killing him.  Outside, Munroe brings the finished potion and throws it in Rocky's face.  He screams in agony but then recovers and acts as if nothing happened.  Rocky slams the cabin door trapping Trubel inside with Kelly.  Rocky has an axe that Adalind, using her power telekinesis, takes from him but Rocky is able to take it right back.  He slashes her in the chest with the axe.  Her final words to Nick are "Save Kelly and Diana.".  Rocky drops his staff and Rosalee picks it up.  The staff turns into the giant snake I had mentioned before.  The snake bites Rosalee on the throat and then does the same to Munroe.  Killing them both.

 

Rocky goes back into the cabin and recognizes Trubel as a Grimm.  His staff turns into a rope and he strangles Trubel with it.  Only Nick is now left with the children.  Rocky tells Nick that none of this needed to happen and if he gives him the stick he will revive them all.  To prove this Rocky touches Trubel's body with his staff and she is brought back to life.  Rocky cannot kill Nick and he cannot take the stick from him either.  Nick must give it willingly.  Nick wants to give him the stick but Trubel tells him he can't as it would end all of humanity.  The two of them begin to fight now.  Trubel gets the stick and runs away with it.  The stick glows red and burns her hand forcing her to drop it.  They begin fighting again and Nick is able to overpower her and get the stick back.  He heads back to the cabin but a voice cries out "You must not!  You cannot betray us and what we are.".  The voice belongs to his mother.  His aunt Marie is with her.  They tell him he can't do what he is about to do.  He says he wants his friends back.  They tell him about the power being in the blood.  Nick tells them he already tried that and it didn't work.  They say the blood they are talking about is Nick's blood.  The power of the Grimm.  All three of them together can conquer any evil if they fight together with all of their ancestors. 

 

 

The three of them go back to the cabin and Rocky Horror again asks Nick for the stick.  Nick drops the stick on the ground and tells Rocky to come and get it.  Zerstörer battles all four Grimms with Kelly and Trubel stabbing him with daggers.  Zerstörer falls and drops his weapon.  Maria cuts off one of his arms with her sword.  Nick picks up Zerstörers' staff and when he does the stick glows green and rejoins the staff making it whole.  Nick turns to Zerstörer and says: "You wanted it? Here it is!" and stabs Rocky Horror right in the chest with the staff.  As Zerstörer dies a tendril of black smoke comes out of his mouth.  

Nick thanks Kelly and Marie for stopping him and asks how they knew he needed help.  They said they could "feel" that he needed them.  They mention that Trubel felt it too, that's why she came back.  Kelly says they are all descendants of the first Grimm and the staff must be protected as it is part of a much greater power.  Kelly tells Nick to take good care of her grandson and says she likes his name.  Trubel comes over marveling at the fact that the two of them were able to beat Rocky.  Nick asks what she means by "the two of them" and looks around and Kelly and Marie are gone.  Nick looks around and sees that even though Zerstörer is dead, his friends are also all still dead.  Diana comes out of the cabin and asks where the other two went.  Meaning she could see Kelly and Marie.  Nick has one last idea to bring everyone back to life, the staff.  Just then, Trubel calls to Nick to look at  Zerstörers' body.  It has turned to ash and goes up into the air as a swirling dark cloud.  The cloud begins to pull the staff and Nick up into it.  Nick tries to withstand it but cannot.  Up he goes. 

At Munroe and Rosalee's house Nick comes crashing through a mirror with the staff in hand.  Diana tells Adalind; "It worked, I got Nick back for you!".  Nick is surprised to see everyone alive again and hugs everyone telling them how glad he is to see them all again.  They are just as happy to have him back.  It appears only Nick and Diana know what really happened.  Diana recognizes that Eve has her Hexenbiest powers back.  Diana said she was afraid that Zerstörer was coming back but he's not now because he is dead.  Munroe looks at the staff and asks where it came from.

  

Twenty years later, a male voice narrates as he writes in a book.  He is sitting in a trailer in the woods.  The man concludes his narration by saying,  "I know it's true, because my father told me so.".  Just then a young woman's voice calls the man "Kelly".  She tells him to get ready because Mom and Dad are waiting and they have Wesen to kill.  She adds that the triplets (Rosalee had an ultrasound a few episodes ago and learned she was pregnant with triplets) are coming too.  She opens a cabinet loaded with antique weapons and pulls out the staff.  The man signs the diary entry "Kelly Burkhardt" and leaves the trailer with the staff.  As she is leaving the trailer, the woman turns back and with her eyes glowing purple she closes the large book.  Embossed on the cover of the book is a large letter "G".  

 

The episode ends with The End on the screen and then the words Thank You which is translated into 32 languages.  The quote for the final episode was also taken from The Bible again, specifically Psalm 23:4 "Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.".  I'll be back for one more Grimm post to wrap all of this up tomorrow.  Toodle Pip. 

 

  

 

 

          

Decadent Evil 2 (2007)

 

 I thought Decadent Evil was so good that I just had to search for the sequel.  OK, not really but I am a sucker for Charlie Band films.  Especially if they have puppets in them.  So here we are with my shame on display for all to see.  The sequel features the same stripper vampire with a heart of gold Sugar and her clueless boyfriend Dex.  It also has Marvin the homunculos tagging along with them.  It has Phil Fondacaro doing the voice over work as he narrates Sugar, Dex, and Marvin's quest to bring Ivan back to life.  In order to do that they need the blood of a vampire king.

 

 Like the first one, one of the main setting for this story is a strip club.  Lots of dancing girls doing it in the buff if that's your thing.  There's also some really good music in this one.  Charles Band is on board again as director and producer with writing duties going to Domonic Muir who also wrote Critters and Evil Bong.  I was thinking with all the nudity and the raunchy sex Charles Band puts in his films I have to wonder if some of it was just so he could put a lot of the moments from auditions, filming, and countless re-watches into his spank bank.  He's gotta be sitting somewhere with an old VHS tape of Decadent Evil 2 just doing all kinds of mean nasty ugly things to himself.  No?  OK, moving on.  

So the trio (I didn't call it a threesome because, well, eww) find out the vampire king owns a strip club.  Dex and Sugar get jobs there to get to the vampire king.  Now here's the deal, they revive Ivan from the land of the dead only thing is when he revives, he's not played by Fondacaro instead this time we have a different little person playing the role, Ricardo Gil.  Don't get me wrong, he's not bad it's just I heard Fondacaro's voice earlier so I assumed he would be in this physically as well.  This one looks cheap with the CGI and special effects mostly look bad.  The story is basically the same just the names have changed.  At this point homunculus sex is expected in a Decadent Evil film and this one did not disappoint.  Once again Marvin gets to get his groove on.  While this one isn't as good as the first one there is some decent songs from the house band.  Gave the first one three stars I'll dip down to two and a half horny homunculusesses out of five for Decadent Evil 2.  If you know what to expect going in and with Charles Band and Full Moon Productions which you should, then you won't be let down.     

Spiral (2021)

 So Spiral isn't about John Kramer, the Jigsaw killer, but rather a copycat Jigsaw killer.  Spiral is from "the book of Saw", we know that because the extended title tells us this.  There's even a picture of John Kramer just to make sure we get the point driven home.  Chris Rock plays troubled detective Zeke Banks who is going through a divorce and just got word one of his best friends, a fellow detective, was murdered.  Dan Petronijevic (He Never Died and Soldier's Girl) plays Detective Mark Bozwick or "Boz" as he is known to his friends, chases a thief down an alley or a sewer or something like that and is attacked by someone wearing a pig mask.  He awakens suspended in the subway in a Jigsaw like trap and when given the choice to live or die (he has to tear out his own tongue in order to live) he dies when a train hits him.  Zeke and his new partner William Schenk played by Max Minghella (The Social Network and The Internship) are assigned the investigation.  Samuel L. Jackson plays Zeke's father and retired police chief Marcus Banks.

 

 

A detective who ignored Zeke's call for backup when Zeke was just an officer almost causing Zeke's death is abducted and placed in a trap next.  Detective Fitch,  Richard Zeppieri (Rub and Tug and Code Breakers), must allow a device to rip off all of his fingers or be electrocuted.  He also fails and dies.  Soon, some of the officers in the precinct begin to suspect Zeke is responsible for the murders.  At each scene they find a tape recorder with the familiar instructions "Play Me" written on them.  Not quite as gruesome and gory as the other Saw film but still pretty graphic at times.  It does make me miss Tobin Bell who is not in the movie but the ghost of Jigsaw hangs heavy.  And the voice on the tape had me searching through the list of cast names looking for Allison Janney because the voice on the cassettes sound just like her!  Spiral is directed by Darren Lynn Bousman who also directed the second, third and fourth films of the series.  Yeah, back when the original series run was still good.  Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger who also wrote Jigsaw and Saw X do the writing for this as well.

 

Take out the "Saw" elements of the story and it's just an average serial killer police investigation story.  Rock performs well here while being forced into doing most of the heavy lifting.  As a big fan of the Saw franchise, as Chris Rock is, you can tell he "gets it" and knows what makes a good Jigsaw story.  Jackson is good in a supporting role and gets as many "F" words in as he can.  The story is very generic though and when I figured it out about twenty or thirty minutes in I kept hoping I was wrong but alas I wasn't wrong.  The box office numbers (which I'm not sure how to read anymore really) tells me it made twice as much as they spent making it but does that warrant more films going forward with this branched off (which they could do if they wanted) story?  I guess time will tell.  A television project based on Spiral has been listed as in early production.  As a hardcore dedicated Saw fan I was entertained even if I did know the ending twist before we were even halfway through.  I'll give it three Mr. Snuggles puppets out of five.  It's closer to two and three quarters but we don't do quarters here.  Now off to see Saw X I go!