The Leopard Man

After a publicity stunt goes wrong, an escaped leopard terrorizes a small New Mexico town... or so it would seem. The Leopard Man once again pairs up producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur for another stylish and atmospheric horror film. Plot-wise, The Leopard Man is almost an anthology. There are characters that we follow throughout but the movie will occasionally introduce new characters that exist only to be killed off a few minutes later. The religious imagery throughout the film gives off serious Guillermo del Toro vibes. In some ways, The Leopard Man is very much ahead of its time but it's still a movie that will be primarily enjoyed by audiences that appreciate films of its era.

Rating: 66%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Uninvited

A bunch of Spring Breakers end up on a Wall Street tycoon's yacht with a deadly, mutated cat. It's simultaneously better and worse than it sounds. When the cat isn't killing people, they use a real cat. A big, fluffy, orange cat. It's not menacing in any way. But, when it's killing time, they use an unconvincing cat puppet with a second unconvincing cat puppet coming out of the first cat puppet's mouth. Now, if that description of the cat puppets didn't make a whole lot of sense to you, rest assured that seeing it for yourself in the movie won't make very much sense either. Let's just say that Uninvited is not a good movie, but it definitely is a good time. The practical special effects in the movie are particularly bloody and over the top. The acting isn't great, but the movie does feature performances from character actor icons George Kennedy and Clu Gulager. George Kennedy sleepwalks through his performance. Clu Gulager, on the other hand, makes some big choices with his part. I laughed a lot while watching Uninvited. It's going on my list of favorite bad horror movies, right next to Prom Night II.

Rating: 59%

(image from Wikipedia)

Tales of Terror

Tales of Terror is made up of three short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, with Vincent Price playing a different character in each story. The first story, "Morella," is about a young woman reuniting with her alcoholic father (played by Price) after decades apart. The young woman, Lenora, was blamed for her mother's death and was sent away to be raised in boarding schools. After returning to her father's house, the ghost of Lenora's mother kills everyone and burns the house to the ground. In the second story, "The Black Cat," Peter Lorre plays a miserable alcoholic. After a renowned wine taster (played to the hilt by Price) steals his wife, Lorre's character gets his revenge by entombing the wine taster, his wife and their black cat in the basement "Cask of Amontillado"-style. In the final story, "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," Vincent Price plays Valdemar, a dying man who agrees to be put under hypnosis at the moment of death. The devious hypnotist, played by Basil Rathbone, traps Valdemar's soul in limbo and attempts to extort Valdemar's widow. Of the three stories, "The Black Cat" stands out the most because it's the only one of the stories that has any humor in it. Lorre and Price play very well off of each other and their wine tasting duel is easily the most memorable part of the film.

Rating: 63%

(Image from Wikipedia)

The Incredible Shrinking Man

Scott Carey was a typical man, living out the 1950s equivalent of the American Dream. But after a chance encounter with a mysterious fog bank, he begins to shrink. At first, no one believes him. Before long, his diminishing size becomes undeniable. Scientists struggle to understand his condition, working feverishly to find a cure. Scott's dwindling size begins to put stress on his marriage. No longer able to work, his attempts to cash in on his infamy only lead to intense public and media scrutiny. He withdraws further and further into himself as he shrinks, taking out his frustration on his wife. Then one day she accidentally leaves the front door open and Butch, the family cat, gets into the house and begins to hunt Scott like it would a mouse. Barely escaping the cat, Scott is then trapped in his cellar, where his life and death struggles truly begin. Even though I don't think Scott is a particularly sympathetic character (he's a chauvinist who comes really close to cheating on his wife at one point in the movie) he has the pathos of a film noir character. He narrates the film, mythologizing his journey along the way. The Incredible Shrinking Man actually has a surprising amount of depth. I can see how the themes of the movie could be interpreted in a number of ways. It can be enjoyed easily enough on a surface level, but I'm also willing to bet that there are some Men's Rights Activists out there praising the movie and using it to justify all sorts of repugnant shit.

Rating: 70%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Cat People

Oliver and Irena meet one day at the zoo. Their chance encounter by the panther cage soon blossoms into romance. Before long, they're married. But all is not well for the newlyweds. Irena is troubled. Something from her past is haunting her. A terrible secret that begins to drive a wedge between Irena and her husband. Something that no one else could possibly understand. Something that could kill them both. Cat People might be the classiest horror movie I've ever seen. It's practically not even a horror movie. If it weren't for the fact that a woman transforms into a panther and kills people, it would almost be film noir. It's a fantastic looking movie, 1940s styles and designs drenched in expressionistic shadows. It's a slow burn but it has atmosphere up the wazoo.

Rating: 71%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Sleepwalkers

 

A mother and son vampire monster duo arrive in a small town to suck the life force out of a local virgin, only they don't count on some heroes - a buncha domestic cats, the soul vampires' one and only weakness! It's majorly silly, but like why not watch it?

RATING: 68%

Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever

Here's something that few people can say or would admit: I bought Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever on DVD. Don't judge me. Now, did I buy it because I thought it would be good? No. Did I buy it ironically? No. I bought it because, as someone who loves Christmas specials and also once received a Grumpy Cat shirt as a gift, I felt it was my duty. And I'm honestly glad I watched it on DVD. Because, before the special played, there were trailers for other Lifetime movies and something called Gummibär: The Yummy Gummy Search for Santa, which looked like garbage. I was left thinking that there was no way the Grumpy Cat special could be as bad as what I saw in the trailers. And it wasn't. It was fine. It had a few laughs. Aubrey Plaza was perfectly cast as the voice of Grumpy Cat. I didn't hate it.

Rating: A Grumpy Cat Mug%

(Image from Amazon)

Pet Sematary

 

A family moves to rural Maine just off a busy highway where they befriend Herman Munster, who helpfully directs the father to a secret resurrection burial ground whenever the family cat dies. The cat comes back, the very next day even, except it stinks and is extra jerky because of going against the laws of God and nature and science and etc. Hey I'd still do it to bring back any of my dead cats. As you can guess, the movie is not just about bringing pets back from the dead whenever the family's toddler is killed by a semi truck in a wild example of poor parenting. First, they shoulda put a fence around their yard as soon as the kid was almost hit by a truck months earlier. Second, the kid runs like 50 yards toward the busy road while the whole family watches and it only dawns on them to try and stop him when they see a truck in the distance. Anyhoo, the kid dies and is buried and his dad is like hmm, maybe I'll dig him up and try that titular sematary again. In movies and shows people are always digging up graves but I hope I never have to do it - it seems like hard work! The kid comes back a little jerkier and killier and nobody lives happily ever after but at least Denise Crosby gets in the last... jab.

RATING: 78%

Cat's Eye

This is an anthology of Stephen King shorts, adapted by King himself, that maybe is more Twilight Zone than true horror. Anyway, the first one is about a dude who hires a company to torture his family if he doesn't quit smoking (um divorce city?), the second segment is a fantastic short about a gambling dude who forces a tennis player to walk around the ledge of the twentieth floor, and the third segment a cat fights a troll for Drew Barrymore's soul (bad but good creature effects I guess). Anyway, it's a good PG13 horror movie to catch late at night on TBS or something.

RATING: 60% (82% for the second part alone)

Kuroneko

A couple women are murdered and worse by some samurai so they turn into cat ghosts trying to get revenge on all samurai ever which goes pretty well until the older woman's kidnapped son/younger woman's kidnapped husband (same guy) shows up. It gets real sad!

RATING: 71%  

Star Trek - "Catspaw"

The crew meets some really gothy aliens into witches, ghosts, curses, dungeons, black cats, etc. Lots of great spooky moments.

RATING: 72%

(Alternate Ending)

House (1977)

This Japanese haunted house movie from the 70s won't scare you, per se, but it is sincerely the most surreal piece of nightmare fuel I've ever come across, including Jodorowsky. The plot is your average high school girls on vacation to a house haunted by the ghost of a woman's loneliness who wants to eat them type fare. It is 40% surreal humor, as when a cat dances and meows a song, 40% surreal terror, as when a girls severed fingers play the piano that bit them off, and 1800% weird nonsense. Toho studios told the director, an art director known for nonlinear experimental films, that they were tired of losing money on comprehensible films, and asked him to make something incomprehensible. Success! I've got to recommend this movie with full marks, since you'll never see anything else like it in your entire life.

RATING: 81%

Cat People

This past Saturday the Kalamazoo Alamo Draft House had a four horror movie marathon, which sounds great on paper but by hour eight sounded less great. Anyway, the gem of the night was Paul Schrader's Cat People, a movie I would never have guessed was a horror movie by the cover. It's about a couple of were-cats who turn into panthers after having sex with non-were-cats and can't turn back into people until they kill somebody. You know, typical were-cat fare. It's really well directed, and great performances from all the cast and you also (SPOILER) get to see Ed Begley Jr.'s arm ripped off. The other movies were Night of the Creeps, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and Humanoids from the Deep in case you were wondering.

RATING: 78%

Sun Bronzed Greek Gods by Dom

I just think it's so precious that every band is way into EPs now. Too bad nobody buys physical albums anymore - the sizing of the packages used to be part of the charm. And this EP? Well, it's got a couple good songs on it I guess, but it sounds, I dunno, like a band I'm totally going to forget about in a year or so? But I'll probably forget about two beers I bought for $5 once, too, so the price makes it nice.

RATING: 63%

BlackBerry Curve 8900

Yesterday I lost my beloved Blackberry Pearl, so today I went out and bought a BlackBerry Curve 8900 to replace it. There really is no easy way to say this, but the Curve 8900 makes the Pearl look like a piece of refried digital crap (sorry Pearl!). This thing is amazing. The Curve has all of the features of older BlackBerry models, but they are vastly improved. The internet is fast and looks like real internet, the camera takes surprisingly high quality photos, and it also plays very good quality videos (although I'm not exactly pleased with T-Mobile's choice to demonstrate this by selling the phone with a John Mayer video already on it). In short, it's amazing and I'm in love. And this time it is password protected.

Rating: 88%

The FURminator

At $22.99 + shipping, the FURminator might seem like a crazy waste of money, but I swear to you it was worth every penny. That picture is an actual photo of all the fur that came off of Thelonious the first time I used it on him. And then I went back later and used it some more and got another pile that was about the same size. I cannot for the life of me figure out where this cat was hiding all that loose fur, but he actually looks and feels thinner now. And now when I pet him I don't get loose fur flying all over and sticking to my face and stuff. In short, this cat brush is the greatest thing I've ever bought for my cat and I highly recommend it even with the high price tag.

Rating: 90% (10 off for it being so damn expensive)

My Cat Thelonious

The only bad thing about Thelonious is that he has a tendency to sneeze on my roommate and guests. Otherwise he's quite adorable and friendly. And very cuddly. All the things a good cat needs to be.

Rating: 95% (5 off for the sneezing)