Happy New Year

 

May 2024 be a happy and healthy one for all my Blogger friends.

 

 

 

Sometime around noon on December 24th ...

 

From all of us to all of you, we wish that whatever you celebrate; even if it's only the coming of winter, that there is some magic mixed in with the love and beauty of the season.  A happy and a merry to all.  

And if you happen to be celebrating Christmas, Yule, Kwanzaa, or Hanukkah, we hope that your holiday season is everything you hoped for and that it is

 

 

The Mortuary Collection 2019

Since it's the middle of December, I felt that it was the perfect time to give a film review.  No, not a Christmas film, silly, I usually do those in October.  What we have today is a film titled The Mortuary Collection.  An anthology horror film (which you should know by now is one of my favorite type of films) directed and written by Ryan Spindell.  Starring is Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption, Pet Sematary 2 and LOST) as Montgomery Dark.  Dark is a mysterious mortician with questionable purpose who tells four stories about people who have passed through the doors of his funeral parlor.

 

 

Dark tells these stories to a girl who shows up at the mortuary claiming to be looking for a job.  The first story is sort of average and it concerns a woman who uses the bathroom while she is at a party.  She does what a lot of people would do:  she looks into the medicine cabinet.  What she finds in there she would never have expected, ever.  The next story, which was a step up from the first one, is about Jake, a frat boy who, meets a girl named Sandra.  He gets her into bed and in the middle of having sex with her he removes his condom.  The result is that ages old story of an unwanted pregnancy.  Only, it's not Sandra who is pregnant, but rather Jake is the one who is with child.  Exactly how did this happen and when the baby wants out, just how is that supposed to happen?  Some really good gory effects in this one.

 

 

The next story is a step back in quality and it features a husband taking care of his catatonic wife.  Everything he does is centered on taking care of her and he feels trapped and depressed as he sees life passing him by and he is just a spectator.  One day his doctor suggests he just kill his wife with an overdose of pain medication.  He takes the doctors suggestion to heart and things do disastrously wrong.  As I said, very average.  Back at the mortuary, Sam, the girl, tells Dark, she is really not there for a job.  She is there for the dead child who Dark is about to cremate.  She also informs him that she is not impressed with his stories.  Sam then decides to tell him a story.

 

 

The story she tells is about herself while she is babysitting a boy named Logan.  While she cooks dinner she watched a horror movie on TV but misses the bulletin concerning a mental patient who has escaped from a local asylum.  Soon after Sam finds a strange man in the house and the two begin to fight as the man tries to get to Logan.  He swears he is not the escaped patient but that doesn't stop Sam from killing him.  This all would be bad enough, however, Sam's story isn't quite over.

 

 

This all leads to the ending of the wrap around story which really might be the best part of the movie.  Not sure what that says about the rest of the film but I will say for a horror anthology this is pretty average but the one thing it has is atmosphere.  The film just feels creepy.  Brown seems to be born to play the part of Montgomery Dark.  Playing Sam is Caitlin Carter (Cinema Verite) who does a decent enough of a job and then goes even further with an over the top ending to her story.  Overall, I could see people giving this a higher rating than I will be giving it, it all depends on if it checks your boxes or not.  As it is I will give this three bottles of embalming fluid out of five.

 

     


  

 

 

 

I know it's the holiday season but we have some bidness to attend to

  

Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.

 

Sorry I've been bringing the mood down lately. I'll try to do better next time.

 

 

A Christmas Tradition (2023)

 This year it comes with a little touch of melancholy as we recently lost the great Shane MacGowan.

 

 

May he rest in peace that in this life sometimes proved difficult for him to find.

 

.

Timecrimes (2007)

 

There's something to be said for networking.  Even in the blogosphere as well as on Letterboxd networking pays off.  Welcome to story time with Cheeks DaBelly.  If you are reading this on blogger, I can also be found on letterboxd here:  https://letterboxd.com/CheeksDaBelly/ and if you are reading this one letterboxd I also have a blog which is here: http://themanholecover.blogspot.com/ .  For most of the year, the posts on my blog are few and far between but for one month every year, The Man Hole is alive with activity.  That month is October.  And the reason for all the activity, or another way of asking it is to say what's causing all dis?  Well, that's easy, October brings with it the best time of year, Halloween, and to celebrate I usually contribute to The Countdown to Halloween on blogger.  I try to watch as many horror films as I can and review them.  This year, I broke my own record with posting 64 films for the month.  That's more than two movie reviews a day.

 

I have a few regular readers who have been around for several Halloween's.  One of them being Caffeinated Joe.  You can find him here: https://wings1295.tumblr.com/  .  During this years countdown Joe asked me if I had seen Timecrimes.  I had not seen it and Joe recommended I check it out.  So here I am a month later and I can say I have now rectified that issue and I have indeed watched Timecrimes and I will give my review.  First and foremost Timecrimes is a Spanish language horror film about a man who time travels an hour into the past.  And then keeps doing it causing many different versions of himself.  Every time he does so his time traveling crimes or Timecrimes increase.

 

I'm a sucker for a good time travel flick and this is no exception.  Trimecrimes was written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo who has also contributed to two horror anthologies V/H/S: Viral and The ABC's of Death.  Both stories were one of the better stories in both of the films.  Even though this is a foreign language film for me, I took two years of Spanish way back when I was in high school.  Now, while I wasn't great with the language, even back then, I still retained enough that with the movie being subtitled, I still didn't find myself referring to the subtitles as much as I would if the film was Japanese or Korean.  Most of those I end up reading more than I do watching a film which is why to this day I have several horror films from Asia that I still have not seen.  Now I'm not sure if the film was supposed to have some element of a dark comedy but I couldn't help have a huge smile on my face for nearly the entire time.  Is it a perfect time travel movie?  No, but it sure does feel close to it.  I thank Joe for suggesting this one.  I'll give this four walkie talkies out of five.

 

 

Ouch, that looks like it hurts!     

  
 

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.