Seance: The Summoning

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.2 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0.5 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

First off, I’d like to apologise for my recent silence and lack of reviews. I’m in a mad, desperate rush to submit my MA dissertation before the end of the year, and my guess is that it’s gonna get a whole lot worse before it gets better, but I’m gonna try to update things as often as possible. All work and no play makes James a dull boy, after all 😉

Anyways, what to say about Seance: The Summoning. In all the years I’ve been watching shitty horror I’ve never come across a movie quite like this one. To say that it was a rollercoaster to watch is an understatement, and at no point did I ever know how to feel about what I was watching. It’s either one of the most bigoted movies against Christianity ever made, or it’s one of the greatest pieces of Christian propaganda that’s not so cleverly masquerading as a horror movie. At points it’s painful to watch, other times it’s a fun b-movie, and there are also times when you feel it’s pulling itself together nicely. The actors seemed to learn how to act as they went along, so on that front it starts painfully and ends somewhere that’s slightly above average. On the whole I really just don’t know how to feel, but for putting me through so many ups and downs I declare it to be a High Level of Awful. Take that movie crew et al.!

OK, who forgot to pack the malevolent spirit?

Sara is a delightful born again Christian girl who just wants to make the world a better place through Christ’s love. To do this, she’s going to help her friend Eva out with a seance. Because Jesus wants you to summon up the spirits of the damned. Eva comes from a long line of psychic mediums who have perfected their craft over the generations. Her grandmother was burned as a witch by the Catholic Church, but those were less tolerant times and you make do with the hand you’ve been dealt. While the two girlfriends are sitting in a park chatting about life Eva decides to give Sara a tarot card reading. What follows is the most vague and subjective insight into the nether realms you’ve ever heard, but it serves to inform us that, before being reborn, Sara was a very, VERY bad girl. Not that that should come back to haunt her or anything later on…

“Have a seance” you said. “It’ll be fun!” you said. Stupid bitch.

The girls meet up with Joey and Marcus in the park, whereupon they hatch this ingenious plan: they’ll drive a hearse to the morgue for uncollected bodies (hobos, druggies, prostitutes etc., so you know these are some angry spirits) and hold a seance after they’ve inspected the corpse freezer. Joey, in addition to being a security guard at said morgue, is busy doing his unspecified degree in something paranormal and wants to record Eva contacting the dead. Marcus is a stone cold atheist and is only tagging along because a) he wants to bang Lisa and b) if Eva can’t summon up a spirit, she has to dance in a bikini at all of his DJ gigs for a specified amount of time that I can’t quite recall. I reiterate: awesome plan guys!

Now you might experience a slight sensation of extreme agony…

Now, as every reasonable person knows, it’s never a party until someone goes home devastated. In the process of summoning the dead it comes out that Marcus isn’t so much an atheist as he is a closeted psychic. It explains so much really. With the secret out and his friends telling him that it’s OK, that they don’t care if he’s interested in talking to the dead, and that there’s nothing to be ashamed of because he was born that way, the resident evil spirit (see what I did there?) sees a soft target and possesses him. Armed with the powers of hell and an ability to roll his ‘r’s with such power it would intimidate the most hardened latino, Marcus is intent on controlling the whole world. It’ll be up to Eva and Sara to use a concoction of psychic power and Christianity (and a little rubber tubing) to banish this evil back to the hole it crawled out of.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• No seance is complete without some Satanic apple juice.
• Satan has his own brand of seance-ready candles.
• Blondes think that a red flashing light is the highest form of security for a building.
• Sending a woman with a camera to a toilet next to the corpse freezer in a morgue is an excellent way to come on to her.
• Why does a morgue for unclaimed bodies need a family waiting area?
• Good Christian girls have a really powerful right hook.
• There’s nothing more unattractive than a closeted spirit channeler.
• There’s no high quite as good as an embalming fluid high.
• Demons are trained to be back up strippers in case times get tough in Hell.
• Never tell a demon your secrets – he’ll be running all over town airing your dirty laundry.
• In the event of friend’s demonic possession, sex is your best weapon against them.

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House of Blood

Year of Release: 2006
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.7 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0/5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

As any semi-regular visitor to this blog will know, I’m up for pretty much anything. Extraterrestrial vampire whores, sharktopodes, gay vampires, killer cartoon characters, shit monsters (no really – monsters made out of shit), I’ve seen it all and lived to tell the tale. Even with this experience under my belt, rarely have I encountered a movie as utterly banal as House of Blood (aka Chain Reaction). As often happens I could totally see what they were going for (a kind of The Village meets Triangle meets The Shawshank Redemption kind of vibe), but it was so poorly and unoriginally put together that all you’re left with is this steaming pile of self-righteous movie filled with characters fond of using big words but having no idea what they actually mean. Also, it’s a bit longer than your usual crapfest: at just over 100 minutes, it drags the pain out a lot more than most movies would dare to do.

Eye, speaketh like a tool doth I.

Douglas Madsen is just a regular doctor who frequently laments the loss of his parents roughly 50 years ago when he was but a wee lad. That is until one day when Fate decides to throw him a curve ball and Douglas lands up with a set of completely different, but somehow interlinked, problems. Going out on his rounds (in a densely wooded area with no people) Douglas finds his car plowing head first into a truck transporting criminals to another prison. After a small shoot out and the brutal death of several policemen the criminals abduct Douglas, thinking that he might be useful in treating one of their own who has been shot. The criminals steal the dead policemen’s clothes and run into the forest to make their escape. Why they didn’t just POSE as policemen in the outfits I don’t understand, but this seems to be the path the director wanted to take.

Lamb’s blood gravy, just like mama used to make it.

When the criminals went down to the woods that day they didn’t realise they were in for a big surprise. They thought that the rundown, seemingly abandoned cottage in the middle of the forest with no electricity and hidden by a dense and mysterious fog would be their salvation; shockingly, it wasn’t. In this cozy little cottage that would’ve sent Goldilocks running for her life lives a quaint little family that speaks a dialect of Ye Olde English that would irritate the most hardened of Renaissance Fair goers. Despite the obvious language barrier between the residents’ archaic tongue and the criminals’ constant screams of “shut the fuck up!”, with a little persuasion (at gun point) the family can be rather hospitable and agree, under duress, to help the guys out with their wounded friend.

Sweety, you’ll never find a husband going around looking like that.

Alas, all is not as it seems with the mountain-dwelling family. It’s all been perfectly civilised up until one of the criminal’s has to have his arm amputated with a machete. Things go a little awry at this point. In a move that I’m putting down to sheer indecisiveness from the script writers, the family turns out to be a group of undead-zombie-vampire-cannibals, who Douglas has to escape from. This might have been tolerable, but the joke is that this is only half the movie. Douglas does escape, only to find himself in some bizarre loop of consciousness, and the movie decides to repeat itself. The second time around he’s accompanied by a different group of criminals, but it’s essentially just watching the same movie twice with a little tweaking here and there. In summary: no acting skills, no English language proficiency, no shame.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Being shot in the arm usually means that the whole thing has to be amputated.
• ‘Friendly fire’ refers to friends getting together to gun down policemen.
• Statistically there is a one in a billion chance of a doctor crashing into a prisoner transit van.
• Sheep remain remarkably calm whilst you slit their throats with a blunt knife.
• To hell with salt – pour blood over your food, it’s just as tasty.
• You should live your life in such a way that the Count de Sade himself would envy you.
• Sociopathic lusts greatly outweigh psychopathic social obligations.

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Sands of Oblivion Ft. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2007
Genre: Fantasy / Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.7 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

It’s been a long time since Tropical Mary and I went along with the hero Odysseus to the Isle of Mists as part of our mini collection of historically inaccurate movies. This movie wasn’t even supposed to be like that; I just wanted a Syfy Original to accompany The Asylum’s Nazis at the Center of the Earth. If one studio can be so much fun, surely the two back to back can only be even more fun (infinitely funner, in fact)? Well, fun it was! Made when Syfy still spelt its name properly, Sands of Oblivion comes from the golden age of Syfy movies. It’s stupidly ridiculous with far too much attempted manship and far too little acting, the plot’s wafer thin and the Egyptian god Anubis is running around California. It’s a b-movie fan’s wet dream really…

Let my actors go!

So we want to tell a tale about a wrathful Egyptian god killing off young archaeologists in modern-day California. This was the concept that the makers of this little film wanted to run with, so somehow we need to get said wrathful Egyptian deity to the good old US of A. They accomplish this by taking us back to 1923 to the set of Cecil DeMille’s movie The Ten Commandments. I myself haven’t seen this silent beauty but I gather that they needed a lot of Egyptian props for it. In the deserts of California DeMille constructed a remarkable set on which to film his movie, with a number of the props looking remarkably authentic. On the set a young John Tevis buries a few of the movie’s trinkets in a time capsule, hoping that, 1000 years from now, some other young explorer may come across it.

They’ve discovered a 3000 year old Etch-A-Sketch.

Or something to that effect at the very least. Flash forward a few decades and we land up in the present day where Alice Carter and her team of student archaeologists are excavating the old movie set. John, now well into the Autumn of his life, and his suave and studly grandson Mark are also running around trying to find the old man’s time capsule. Now at first I was wondering why a team of archaeologists would be excavating an old movie set, but then we’re told that it’s because the tides are about to come in and flood the desert. I was still confused about the excavation, and now I was wondering where the hell the ocean was going to come in from. Anyways the old man finds the box but accidentally falls into one of the set’s rooms, breaking an ancient binding spell and unleashing a very angry (and corpsey) Anubis on the sands of California.

Bad doggy! BAD DOGGY!!

Now, prior to hitting play on this movie, I had already come to terms with the fact that the director and his team would not have the knowledge or will to check Wikipedia and understand that Anubis was neither a malevolent nor corpse-like divinity. Fact of the matter here is that he’s angry as hell and out to kill as many young archaeologists as he possibly can. In addition to pure brute force one of the main ways that he will do this is by unleashing the ten Biblical Egyptian plagues. Why an Egyptian deity would unleash Christian plagues is something that makes absolutely no sense, but I put this little pondering aside as well and continued to watch the movie. Alice and Mark will have to find a way of defeating Anubis in a way that seems to have been made up as the movie went along. It makes little to no sense, but again the sheer ridiculousness of it makes it an absolute must watch.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• The Egyptians were big fans of using decorative pentagrams.
• Blowing up an entire crate of phosphorous will only result in some mild charring of the immediate area.
• An ancient deity can be quite easily contained in a wooden shed.
• Ex husbands are easily tempted by the promises of malevolent Egyptian spirits.
• Archaeologists don’t want to hear about the boils on your ass.
• Drawing a Wadjet eye free hand won’t yield good results.

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Friday the 13th: The Ultimate Movie Marathon

Welcome to a tale of joy, a tale of wonder, a tale of murder, friendship and redemption in the aftermath of terrible tragedy. I’m talking, of course, about the ultimate movie marathon: all the Friday the 13th movies back to back. I thought the idea up a while ago when it dawned on me that I hadn’t seen all of them. No horror fan worth their salt should have to say that. The plan evolved over time: originally I was going to do it solo, and then it was only the first 9 movies. When I mentioned the idea to Stygian Mole he was thrilled and wanted to join in. Now, as the old saying goes, where there’s a Stygian Mole there’s a Tropical Mary, and now both of them were going to join me for this movie marathon. Word got out a little more and before I knew it one of my cousins got involved. Lacking a Twitter name, he will simply be referred to as the Occult Specialist. Because he’s a goth.

The plan came together beautifully and we all assembled on the chosen day. Armed with mattresses, blankets, 16 litres of Coke, many bags of snacks, money for pizza halfway through the evening and several boxes of cigarettes we were ready to take on the monumental task that lay before us. We started at 10:30 in the morning; Tropical Mary and I would alternate between movies when it came to the live tweets. About 3 movies in it was decided (and instigated by Tropical Mary) that we should watch Jason X and Freddy VS Jason as well, just to make it a complete adventure. At times it got very frightening and we went through a rollercoaster of good scares, funny one liners, horrible outfits, good movies, terrible movies, you name it, we saw it. It came to an end at 5 the next morning; +-18 hours and 11 movies later we had finished what we set out to do. By this point most of the movies had just blurred together into one giant slasher fest, but it was completely worth it. This will be the first of our Ultimate Movie Marathons and, while we decide on which horror series to tackle next, I will give you a brief rundown of each of the movies 🙂

FRIDAY THE 13TH

Year of Release: 1980
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 6.3 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

Where it all began, back in the day when flannel was all the rage and Kevin Bacon was running around in a speedo with absolutely no shame. It doesn’t feel right to compare this movie to the rest of the series since Jason is nowhere to be found. Long before the supernatural Jason that simply wouldn’t die there was poor little Jason who drowned at Camp Crystal Lake when the camp counsellors weren’t looking. To avenge the death of her little boy Pamela Voorhees, Jason’s mother, stalks the camp and kills anyone who tries to get it going again. The tragedy has led her to develop a split personality with Pamela and Jason taking turns at controlling the body. The Jason personality is out for revenge and the kids will have to try and survive a storm and make it through the night if this series is going to reach the ridiculous heights it eventually does.

The franchise’s first entry owes a lot to Psycho and is a good example of a simple slasher movie done right. Failing all else it should be seen as a valuable history lesson to any young and aspiring horror fan. Also, while this movie doesn’t have Jason in it in any serious way, it did begin the wonderful Friday the 13th tradition of having someone predict the horrible DOOM! that awaits the series’ various horny teenagers.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• At some point in the 80s the world was struck by a debilitating shirt famine.
• Watching Kevin Bacon prance around in a speedo is guaranteed to make you feel like a pedophile.
• Butchering a snake is a sure-fire way to make yourself feel manly.
• Evidence from a crime scene should always be handled senselessly.
• Peter Stuyvesant is the perfect after action satisfaction.
• When all your friends are missing and you’ve found a bloody axe you should definitely go check the generator on your own.

FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART 2

Year of Release: 1981
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 5.7 / 10
Level of Awful: Low

The first dip in the series. After our bowl-haired heroine beheaded Pamela Voorhees in the first movie the powers that be needed to introduce a new killer to keep the series going. Enter Jason Voorhees, the slashing madman who would go on to become synonymous with this series of movies. It’s still early days and Jason doesn’t have superhuman strength and power and the hockey mask isn’t anywhere to be seen. This movie also began the second great Friday the 13th tradition of having a flashback to the previous movie before any of the action begins.

Bowl-Hair has been brutally murdered after discovering Pamela’s head in her fridge. It turns out that Jason didn’t actually drown all those years ago and, having witnessed his mother’s murder, has come out of hiding to seek revenge. Five years later another bunch of kids is trying to re-establish Camp Crystal Lake. Like the kids in the first movie none of our new characters wants to hear about the DOOM! that awaits them on the seemingly tranquil shores of Crystal Lake. Jason, meanwhile, since he’s not the sharpest machete in the shed, is incapable of understanding that these kids had nothing to do with his mother’s death and is taking them out one-by-one. This becomes particularly amusing when a kid in a wheelchair gets an axe to the head and takes a little ride down a flight of stairs. This, unfortunately, was not enough to dig this movie out of snoresville. The main problem is that, by the time the end comes around, you feel like you’re only halfway through. The story wasn’t developed enough and you don’t particularly care who makes it and who doesn’t. The four of us were actually a lot more emotionally invested in the puddle with a rock in the middle of it that cropped up from time to time. Quite honestly I feel that the puddle actually deserved a place in the end credits.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• While 1980 had a great shirt famine, 1981 experienced a terrible Kevin Bacon famine.
• Hair care products really weren’t a very big deal back in the 80s.
• Ginger kids do not, in any way, look good in shorts made from their mom’s kitchen curtains.
• Before engaging in sex playing a harmonica is a great way to get both yourself and your partner in the mood.
• Placing your back to an open window is never the best place to hide.
• Hippies, despite their calm demeanour, can be remarkably resilient in a crisis.

FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III

Year of Release: 1982
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 5.2 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

Ah, the first of so many things. This movie was definitely a step up from the last one and marks the first appearance of Jason’s hockey mask. The machete still isn’t the weapon of choice but we can let that slide. It was also the first time a movie in the series was available in 3D. I sincerely wish I could’ve watched this movie in a theatre with the old red and blue glasses 🙂

We’re not gonna take years to pick the story up again so this movie takes place the day after the second one. Jason’s alive and kicking and in need of some new clothes. Two dead people and the unexplained fate of a cute rabbit later and Jason’s all decked out and ready to go. Elsewhere a girl named Chris is getting ready to take a holiday at Crystal Lake. A few years before that (a made-up flashback tells us) she was attacked by a mysteriously deformed stranger and this holiday’s geared towards her facing and overcoming her fears. She’s accompanied by her friends that’re the usual bunch of idiots, nerds with a Jew fro, jocks and sluts. Along the way they also end up with three uninvited members of a bike gang, all of which Jason’s gonna have a lot of fun with. None of the horror that’s about to unfold would have happened, of course, if any of the kids had listened to the local town drunk that warned them of the DOOM! they’d come across around Crystal Lake.

This movie established the archetype Jason that was used in the rest of the movies; since the four of us all had our idea of what Jason should be like (based on more recent developments in the character) this made the movie a lot more enjoyable. While the pace was even slower than the second one the killings were far more in line with the Jason that we’ve all come to know and love.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Wearing hair rollers automatically turns a woman into a nagging hag.
• A ‘Thriller’ outfit is only truly complete when you attach a racoon’s tail to it.
• Horny teenagers are known to juggle apples and oranges despite many sayings advising against similar practices.
• The Jason Voorhees is a well-known ambush predator native to camp-based territories.
• There’s something wrong with a group when the hippies make the final surviving four.
• Jason will not be defeated by a simple spade.
• Jason – creating one mental patient at a time.

FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER

Year of Release: 1984
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 5.4 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium

Now we’re at the point where the series started to get cheesy. We’re also at the first concluding chapter of the series 😉 After an all-encompassing flashback that recapped everything we just watched, followed closely by some exploding credits, our story got under way. After a clean up crew has picked up the littered bodies from the third movie and taken Jason to the morgue our mask-bedecked psycho slasher comes back to life and kills a few hospital staff members before making his way back to Crystal Lake.

Given that movies 2, 3 & 4 all take place within a matter of days it’s absolutely amazing that yet another bunch of fools would want to take a little holiday up at Crystal Lake but, lo and behold, we have another group of stupid teenagers on our hands. To mix things up a little we also have a mother-daughter-son combo living across the way from the stupid teenagers. Far too many of their names start with the letter ‘t’ to make remembering them possible but one thing remains the same: teenagers are always in the mood for a little slutty premarital sex. When not engaging in slutty premarital sex they spend most of their time thinking about having slutty premarital sex (and trying to pass off having a stroke as dancing). With Jason becoming angrier and angrier as time goes on be sure to look out for one of the best deaths yet: harpoon to the groin! This movie introduced the character of Tommy Jarvis to the series’ canon and it’ll be up to this remarkably capable child to bring down a killer. It says something about people when a 10-year-old can succeed where fully grown adults can’t…

The movie ends with Jason being violently hacked to pieces with a machete, supposedly bringing the series to a close and ending Jason’s reign of terror once and for all.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Nurses are known, at times, to wear their dignity around their ankles.
• There were still no hair care products in 1984.
• 10-year-olds usually have the necessary qualifications and expertise to become car mechanics.
• A screwdriver can fix most of the problems your car’s engine may experience.
• Pants are for the weak!
• It’s completely normal to allow strange men you picked up on the side of the road to take your 10-year-old son up to his room unaccompanied.
• Your friends’ corpses double up as effective force fields.
• Jason disapproves of your crass, homophobic humour!
• Erectile dysfunction was a necessary ailment for men to wear 80s shorts.

FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING

Year of Release: 1985
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 4.2 / 10
Level of Awful: High

Our sanity was still intact but sadly the quality of the series was about to take a drastic downward turn. As the people behind the scenes clutched at a few more straws to come up with a story line the level of gratuitous breast shots went up and flannel, which had been in a steady decline since the first movie, decided to come back with a vengeance. If you pay careful attention you’ll notice that the majority of the kills in this movie are simple rehashings of Part III. A New Beginning is also the second movie in the series to not feature Jason as the killer. While this may have been the new beginning it would take a lot of glossing over in the movies to come to wipe these events from our minds.

4 years after the last movie 10-year-old Tommy Jarvis has SORASed and looks to be somewhere in his early 20s now. Traumatised by the death of his mother and Jason’s attack on him and his sister he has spent the time since then being shunted from one mental institution to another. On this particular day he’s being taken to the Pinehurst Halfway House, a little secluded spot in the woods for troubled teens. The idea is that those that live there must work to earn their keep and learn how to become productive members of society. That plan’s all well and good until one of the kids with anger issues takes an axe to the back of the weird kid obsessed with candy bars. It also doesn’t help that two of the kids have this constant need to go off and have filthy premarital sex in the corn field next door. The farm belongs to as trailer a hick as you could possibly imagine and her son (who, by the looks of it, would probably fit in at Pinehurst just fine) and this woman’s determined to shut this special haven in the woods down right away.

And then the killings start. The killings are good (man, tree, belt, face, pressure) but the movie isn’t paced very well and most of the kids are painfully irritating so the balance is a little off. With Jason dead Tommy becomes the natural suspect. After all, the killings started up right after he arrived. The truth, however, is far more lame. With very little imagination or thought expenditure our little group of 4 guessed who the killer was (mainly because he’s creepy and focussed on a lot more than his character seemingly deserves) so there’s no suspense in waiting for the revelation or clever twist to make it all worth it. All in all, a very disappointing 90 minutes.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• (Plumber) crack is whack.
• There is no dignity in dying in an outhouse.
• Stew always tastes better when you add just a hint of human blood.
• Black kids don’t scream.
• Chainsaws are a lot more effective weapons when you fill them up with diesel.
• Paramedics have to undergo intensive insensitivity training before they’re given the job.

JASON LIVES: FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI

Year of Release: 1986
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 5.4 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

After the progressive downward spiral of the last two movies myself and the assembled company were really glad to see that this movie turned things around. Sadly this wasn’t to last but Jason Lives was one of my personal favourites of the day. With A New Beginning being the utter disaster that it was there was a need to bring Jason back as the killer, and it’s in this movie that he becomes the supernatural homicidal maniac that we’ve all come to have a great big soft spot for. This also seems to be the point where the series stopped taking itself seriously and decided to have a little fun with Jason’s character. Also, 6 movies later, one of the many camps we’ve been subjected to finally had children in it!

Tommy Jarvis is back and he has a lightning rod! Freshly escaped from the loony bin and the memory of A New Beginning forgotten Tommy’s gonna dig up Jason’s corpse, pour a gallon of petrol over it, set it alight and rid himself of the memory of the 4th movie. This plan backfires a little when Jason, who was very dead to begin with, is stabbed with a very long metal pole by a rage-filled Tommy. A storm appears out of nowhere and lightning strikes the metal rod, re-animating Jason’s corpse. A new and improved Jason is born and he’s out for revenge and murder!

The town of Crystal Lake is now known as Forest Green, an attempt by the locals to forget the horrors that have occurred there and bring a little more tourism to the area. Jason, however, will never forget his way home and, luckily for him, yet another bunch of fools has gone and reopened the original Camp Crystal Lake. Tommy makes his way into town to try and warn people but, when his story about bringing the rotten corpse of Jason back to life falls on deaf ears, he teams up with Megan, the sheriff’s daughter, to try and save as many people as he can. Tommy has to outrun the cops and become an amateur expert in the occult in order to (once again) bring Jason’s reign of terror to an end – this time by tying a noose round his neck, tying it to a rock and dropping him to the bottom of the ever-infamous Crystal Lake. Full circle and all that.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Grave digging is a brilliant way to gain a little closure in the aftermath of a tragedy.
• Dumb white boyfriends will be the downfall of their smart white girlfriends.
• Despite being a little corpsey Jason has some really tight buns on him.
• Manly gingers are known for their intense exercise routines.
• It can be difficult to tell the difference between two people having sex and two people having a simultaneous fit.
• Gas stations are great for picking up milk, eggs and manuals on the occult.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD

Year of Release: 1988
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 4.7 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium

And thus the roller coaster of quality in the Friday the 13th franchise begins again. At least we were being offered some cheesy goodness with this one; it was a nice warm up to prepare us for the unrelenting hell that would be Jason Takes Manhattan. While the killings became slightly more gruesome in this one (it does, after all, have the infamous sleeping bag scene in it) and Jason becomes even more of a rotten corpse, the inclusion of telekinesis and girls with age-old daddy issues just seemed to be clutching at even more straws. This was also the point for me where reality and film began to blur, most likely the effect of over 12 hours of movies and near-toxic levels of sugar, caffeine and nicotine in my blood stream.

Little Tina Shepherd is a troubled girl. Living in an abusive household, she’s frequently subjected to hearing her mother being beaten by her father. One night is one night, however, and Tina’s had enough. After rowing out into the middle of the Crystal Lake (where Jason just happens to be floating around) and tapping into her raw, limitless psychic powers, she causes the pier her father is standing on to collapse, along with its roof, sending him into the water with enough extra wood to pin him down there. Tragic, so tragic.

Daddy issues make women scary and volatile at the best of times, but throw in some uncontrolled telekinetic powers and you just know all hell’s gonna break loose. Tina, along with her mother and doctor, have returned to Crystal Lake 10 years later to help her overcome her crippling guilt over killing her dad. Next thing you know Tina’s sent out some crazy psychic vibrations in the wrong direction and, Bob’s your uncle, Jason’s alive again. Luckily for him there’s a whole group of randy teenagers also renting a house nearby and the air is rife with booze and premarital sex. It’s gonna take Tina, all her psychic powers, a loveable jock and the penitent spirit of Tina’s dad to send Jason back to the bottom of the lake.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Even as the 80s drew to a close hair care products were an unheard of luxury.
• Grammar are grammar like woods is woods (side thought: told you we were losing it by this point).
• Wearing an all-denim ensemble is guaranteed to result in your death.
• Whilst still a member of the mullet family, the toplet mullet is a distinctive style with its own brand of awful.
• Sedans don’t function well as off-road vehicles.
• Having telekinetic and pyrokinetic powers doesn’t automatically mean that you’re useful in a difficult situation.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN

Year of Release: 1989
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 4.1 / 10
Level of Awful: High

If the sounds of an animal dying a particularly harrowing death could be interpreted in cinematic form it would take the appearance of Jason Takes Manhattan. A more appropriate title for the movie would have been Jason Takes a Small Boat, a Back Alley and a Sewer System. By this point I had virtually lost all touch with reality and this little gem wasn’t doing anything to help me out. You can completely see why unleashing Jason in late-80s New York sounded like an amazing idea, but rarely has a great concept been so utterly screwed up as it was in this movie.

So, after the events of the last movie, Jason is once again stuck at the bottom of Crystal Lake. Two teenagers, caught up in the steamy passion that is premarital sex, don’t notice when their boat’s anchor snags an underwater power line, electrocuting the entire lake and once again bringing Jason back to life. After killing the two teenagers and procuring a new hockey mask Jason sets out to begin a new reign of terror. Fortunately for him Crystal Lake has developed a tributary system that lets the water out into the ocean. Arriving at the sea Jason grabs hold of a boat full of graduate students heading for Manhattan, and you just know there’s gonna be lustful premarital sex going on in those wood-paneled cabins. Prepare for yet another round of DOOM!!!!

This story focuses on Rennie, an awkward girl suffering from unexplained anxiety, who mysteriously begins to have visions of Jason drowning as a child. The purpose of these visions (which occur with irritating regularity) is never really explained, nor is a reason for Rennie having them in the first place forthcoming. Nevertheless, while Rennie may or may not be suffering the side effects of drug experimentation, Jason’s killing people. Jason keeps on killing people until the boat eventually docks in Manhattan, whereupon he starts killing even more people. Let loose in a city full of neon graffiti, punks and angry, drug-addicted hippies, it’ll take Rennie, her odd visions, her meek boyfriend and Manhattan’s entire population simultaneously taking a dump to take Jason out this time round.

As a side thought this movie inspired Tropical Mary and I to come up with a new Friday the 13th movie – Part XII: Jason VS the New York Ho. Now there’s an ultimate showdown for you!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Polony nipples are the devil’s playground.
• Stephen King wrote his original manuscripts with an ink pot.
• There’s a good chance that Jason is the kid from The Grudge.
• There was murder on the dance floor but even that didn’t kill the groove, DJ.
• Jason was rolling, rolling, rolling on the river.
• No one in 80s New York had the faintest idea how heroin worked.
• Jason disapproves of premarital rape.
• Never let a woman high on heroin drive the escape vehicle.
• With great moustaches come great responsibility.
• Toasty fried Voorhees – Just the way mama used to make it.

JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY

Year of Release: 1993
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 4.1 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy

And the dance of death for this franchise continues. Unlike previous movies, however, this one’s not even going to try and explain how we got from part 8 to here. Jason’s back and that’s all you need to know. By this point I think the people behind the franchise were so desperate to pit Freddy and Jason against one another they would do just about anything to make that plotline feasible. Sadly this was the best they could come up with. To think that, until Jason X was released 8 years later, fans had to deal with this as the concluding chapter makes me more than just a little sad.

So Jason, by means unknown, is back. The FBI, in the 4 years since his ‘rampage’ in the New York sewer system has also set up a special task team to deal with him. They hire their bustiest agent (one who just looks like she’d be ready to have premarital sex at the drop of a hat) to lure him into a cabin in the woods before the snipers blow him to kingdom come. But evil runs much deeper than the shell it inhabits and, when the coroner discovers Jason’s heart is still beating, the essence / soul / spirit / demon / black corn syrup of this demented killer unleashes itself and begins possessing people.

To drive this plot along it turns out that Jason has a half-sister that, surprisingly, has never been mentioned until this very day. Through her Jason also has a niece. In order to be reborn he will need to possess one of them and morph their body back into his. The malevolent twist in the tale is that, while he needs to possess one of them, they are the only ones capable of sending him to the inner most circle of hell. Jessica, the niece, will do this with the help of a mysterious mystical dagger which one member of the Voorhees family managed to come into possession of in a time that isn’t mentioned. In amongst all this she’ll have to save her baby, face issues surrounding her divorce, deal with the fact her boyfriend is trying to kill her and realise that a demon can enter a corpse not only through the mouth, but also through the vagina. Failure to overcome all these obstacles will result in certain DOOM!!!!!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Some thongs become so buried there’s no point in ever trying to dig them back out.
• Soul smears can be used to test for the presence of pure evil.
• A fun weekend includes smoking pot, having premarital sex and getting slaughtered.
• 20 to wonder llama and stroking pods (again, this was very late into the day and our ability to comprehend the English language was going into decline).
• Mouth to mouth soul regurgitation is a tricky, but highly effective, skill to learn.
• Prophecies sneak up on you from out of nowhere.
• Before shooting someone policemen often drop it like it’s hot.
• The aliens will eventually send Jason to hell.

JASON X

Year of Release: 2002
Genre: Horror / Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 4.3 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

Ah, the movie that inspired this day of Jason madness. You can read my full review for this entry here. In my opinion this is one of the best movies in the series, and, since me and my loyal crew had been glued to the TV for over 12 hours at this point, it was definitely a welcome break after the mind-numbing awfulness that was Jason Goes to Hell.

FREDDY VS JASON

Year of Release: 2003
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 5.7 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

A hush fell over the room; was it possible that we were only one movie away from finishing our epic movie marathon? Had we really been going for around 15 hours doing this? Yes, yes we had. I’ve seen Freddy VS Jason a number of times, but I was ready to go into it with fresh eyes (figuratively – in a literal sense my eyes felt like sandpaper and I think I’d lost the ability to blink at this stage) and see how the series had led to this point. It was 10 years after the release of Jason Goes to Hell for the franchise and one epic day for us, but Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees were finally going to have their showdown.

We’re not at Crystal Lake any more kids! After the events of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare and Jason Goes to Hell the movies’ respective killers are both trapped in, well, hell. Jason, not being much of a bright spark, probably doesn’t notice, but Freddy’s pissed off as hell (see what I did there?). The parents of Springwood have figured out a way to keep him out of their children’s dreams (and if it requires some mind altering drugs and forced detainment then so be it). Freddy needs to find a way to make the kids afraid again, and Jason’s just the psycho to do it. Disguised as Jason’s dear sainted mother Freddy convinces him to return to life and pop over to Springwood for a little murder spree. If people start to think that Freddy’s doing it, Freddy can make his come back.

Everything’s going fine until it turns out that Jason’s very greedy when it comes to his killings. He wants to kill everyone himself, and neither him nor Freddy is really prepared to share. Trapped in the impending chaos are Lori and her friends and, a bit later, her boyfriend Will, who’s been locked up in a mental asylum for a few years now. The dangers they face are astronomical – they can’t sleep, no where in town is really a Jason-free zone, their parents are after them and there’s hardly any free time to squeeze in a round of premarital sex. Prepare yourselves for the ultimate movie bad guy showdown!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• The exposed breast 100m dash is a gruelling athletic event.
• Women will trip on anything, even things that aren’t there.
• If your girlfriend’s a smoker you should only kiss her after she’s had a menthol.
• Clever kids will run out the house in a group after discovering one of their friends has been brutally murdered.
• Kids have more blood in them these days but it’s a thinner consistency.
• If you love your kids – drug them.
• Smug parents should be rated 1 – 10 on the Eric Roberts scale.
• The glam rhythm will get you.
• Conversations about your enforced convalescence at a mental asylum are awkward.
• You can get good distance with a glam kid.
• Jason disapproves of premarital porcine sex.
• The alarm clock is mightier than the horse tranquiliser.

FINAL THOUGHTS

And thus it all came to an end. Somehow the four of us had gone from watching the first 9 movies to watching all 11. While Stygian Mole and the Occult Specialist were familiar with the franchise I realised I had only seen parts 1, 3, Jason X and Freddy VS Jason, while Tropical Mary had only seen Freddy VS Jason. The two of us have been friends for many years now but this experience only cemented the very strange and highly dysfunctional bond between us. The sugar come down the next day was a bitch, but it was well worth it. At the end of the day Michael Myers will always own that special place in my heart reserved for your favourite fictional serial killer, but Jason is special to me as well now. When the going was good it was great, when it was bad it was downright abysmal. But how many people can say they dedicated an entire day to watching all the Friday the 13th movies back to back with one another? Probably quite a few, but it makes us feel hardcore anyway 🙂

One last time I’d like to give a very big thanks to my three crew members; I don’t think I could have done this alone and they certainly did make it a day to remember. Thanks to Stygian Mole, the final death and breast scores were 177 kills and a Breast-O-Meter reading of 23.5. This translates to a death-to-breast ration of roughly 4:1.

Of course, the problem that came in after we had finished with this movie marathon was what we were going to do next. Well, some of us are a little sketchy on the events of A Nightmare on Elm Street, and it would bring the final movie of the day together nicely were we to watch the other franchise that led to it being made. Maybe, just maybe…

BUY THE FRIDAY THE 13TH COLLECTION AT AMAZON.COM

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats

Year of Release: 1977 / 2003
Genre:  Horror
IMDB Rating: 4.8 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy
Breast-O-Meter: 3 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

This movie’s box proudly proclaims that Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is a ‘lost horror film of the seventies’. Now, there are some lost things that would be incredibly useful if we could find them, but then there are some things that are lost for a reason. This movie was lost for a reason: it’s terrible! I’ve read a few reviews and some people go on about how adventurous one-time director George Barry was and how the movie’s really insightful and artistic and moving, but it’s really not. It’s crap. It’s a killer bed – how frightening can an inanimate object be? And that’s just the beginning of the silliness! Of course I’m not here to make people’s minds up for them; carry on, dear reader, and I will grant you a little insight into the (bland) horrors of Death Bed: The Bed That Eats.

Sometimes you just have to smoke those pesky ghosts out of your mansion.

Deep in the middle of nowhere there exists an abandoned mansion that, for as long as time can recall, has attracted frisky young couples looking to make the beast with two backs. If these young couples make their way into the basement they will find a luxurious bed that will suit their needs perfectly. One day such a couple makes their way to the mansion and finds the bed. The girl’s a little shy and unsure of whether she’s ready or not, so the guy whips out a single candle, 2 apples, a bottle of wine and a bucket of chicken to try and get her in the mood. Whilst they begin to experience the initial wave of sexual tension brought on by their mutual unattractiveness they fail to notice something that’s a little bizarre: the bed has a digestive system. It would appear that the bed can open itself up and drop things into a vat of digestive acid that forms the stuffing of the mattress. Not quite content with a bottle of wine, two apples and a bucket of chicken it then decides to eat the couple, drawing them in and digesting them while making nom-nom-nom sounds.

Why is the shoe bleeding?

Now, since the bed can neither move nor speak nor stalk in any traditional sense of the word there has to be something that tries to tell the audience what the hell’s going on half the time. This job falls to an unnamed ghost trapped behind a painting in the room with the bed. Like so many others this ghost was also the victim of the bed but is unable to do anything other than carry out never-ending monologues that try to keep the movie shuffling along. Soon there are more people at the house – they’ve come up here for a little relaxation since the house is going to be sold off soon and one of the girl’s is the realtor. Their names are Black Girl, Hippie Girl and Girl in Ugly White Shoes. Girl in Ugly White Shoes doesn’t want to be there, and she’s the first to be eaten. Black Girl is on the menu, but for some reason the bed can’t stand the sight of Hippie Girl, so much so that whenever she enters the room the bed’s insides start bleeding. Now, granted she certainly isn’t the prettiest thing out there, but there has to be something more to this sudden repulsion than unfortunate facial features.

This is what happens when your OCD takes over your exfoliation routine.

There comes a point in movies such as this, however, when you need to take pause and wonder why exactly we have a man-eating bed killing off young, innocent, horny victims. The answer is very simple: back in the day there was a demon that took on the form of a tree. One day a young maiden happens along like something out of a Celtic folktale and the demon falls madly in love with her. Since most women aren’t generally attracted to trees, however, he turns into a breeze and begins to caress her. Since the breeze seems to have done the trick he now needs to come up with a place to have his way with her, and he magically conjures up an enormous bed in the middle of nowhere. They make their way to the bed but since humans and demons aren’t meant to be having sex with one another (the offspring suffer from terrible identity crises) the woman dies and the demon becomes very sad. As saddened demons do, he begins to cry blood and some of that blood begins to drip onto the bed. This blood possesses the bed and allows it to take on the life form that is currently un-stalking the mansion. It had terrorised many parts of America in its day but, because it ate everyone that lay on it, it was eventually moved into the basement and forgotten (because it ate everyone who knew about it). So now it lies there, patiently waiting for its next meal to need to have sex. Black Girl and Hippie Girl are going to have to face this monster head on if they ever want to escape and sleep in a normal bed again!

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• You don’t need to open your mouth to speak.
• Despite only having enormous amounts of stomach acid man-eating beds leave distinct teeth marks in apples.
• Demons have a very rigid sleeping pattern.
• Crosses bleed up the way.
• Women think that you need to bring flowers to the countryside.
• Everyone, at all times, should have a picnic basket on them in case of emergencies.
• You don’t need tendons or muscle to hold bones together.
• Trapped ghosts are rather emo and like to paint their nails black.
• To destroy a man-eating bed you need to get an undead woman (who isn’t a not a zombie) with a lumpy arse to have sex with a man with no hands (who mustn’t take his clothes off) in the middle of nowhere.

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