Christine is a movie about a jealous car who gets mad and kills people. Also, it repairs itself, so in my opinion it almost might be worth it? It's a high quality 80s horror movie, which means the characters are pretty likable and the dialogue is sharp, but there's almost no blood at all. According to Wikipedia, you should "See also: The Love Bug." I always knew Herbie was up to no good (Start the clip at 5:30 to see what I mean).
Alligator is way better than it has any right to be. An unapologetic, low-budget, Jaws rip-off that manages to find the perfect balance of schlock and awe. The titular alligator even looks surprisingly good, thanks to the mixture of practical special effects with old timey forced perspective shots. The plot of Alligator is pretty standard for this type of movie: our hero, Robert Forster playing a balding cop, teams up with a sexy redheaded reptile expert to find and stop the renegade gator (renegator?) before it's too late. Throw in Henry Silva as a whacked out big game hunter, a subplot involving a shady chemical company, sleazy reporters, a big wedding, and some kids getting killed at a birthday party and you've got yourself one heck of a movie.
I miss the horror anthology - the movie like Creepshow or Cat's Eye that is actually a combination of 3-5 shorter horror movies. Trick r Treat was pretty good last year, but this is a phenomenon that seemed to exit with the horror boom of the early 90s. Anyway, this particular horror anthology is not that great, but at least it has Vincent Price in his twilight years I guess. The best stories are the last two, in which a glass eating carnival freak tries to break his contract, and a cruel Union soldier is held captive by a group of maimed Civil War orphans. If you're going to watch a movie from the end of Vincent Price's life that features an undead fetus beating up an old man, I suppose it might as well be this one.
A spaceship hidden by Halley's Comet unleashes sexy space vampires and boredom upon London, mostly boredom. Tobe Hooper directed Lifeforce for Cannon Films, the notorious studio behind countless Chuck Norris flicks and the American Ninja franchise. I was actually surprised by the special effects and production value featured in Lifeforce, but even with all the spiffy spaceship sets and exploding vampire zombies, there isn't too much to get excited about in this movie. The mostly British cast come across as too prim and austere, even as an apocalyptic vampire plague threatens to end all life on Earth. Not even a sexy vampire chick, who spends most of the movie completely naked, and a slightly unhinged performance from Steve Railsback can save the film. But I suppose if you're in the mood for a movie that features Patrick Stewart being forcibly drugged and restrained, then Lifeforce just might be the perfect film for you.
You gotta feel a little bad for Lucio Fulci - in the 70s and early 80s, he was an Italian horror movie director at the same time as Dario Argento, and it seems like Fulci always lost whenever they were compared. It's easy to see why; Argento's movies are pretty straightforward, linear narratives shot in bright colors, while Fulci's movies are disjunctive, shadowy affairs which eschewed plot in favor of more expressionistic imagery and tonal atmospheres. On VHS, Fulci's movies looked terrible, but I've found as an adult I appreciate them a lot more than Argento's movies. As far as this one goes, there's like some gates of hell that might be opened and some dudes try to stop it? I'm not exactly sure, but there's a scene where a lady pukes all her guts up and also a scene where live maggots pour from the windows into a house, what more do you want?
I'm just gonna put this out there: A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge is quite possibly the gayest horror movie of the 1980s. It starts off with Jesse and his family moving into the old Thompson place on Elm Street, the same house from the original film. Things start to get strange for Jesse after he finds Nancy's diary, detailing her dreams and dealings with one Mr. Freddy Krueger. Soon enough Jesse is running from his horny girlfriend, spending a suspicious amount of time with his rarely dressed rival from school, and picking up his creepy gym teacher from an S&M leather bar. The people behind the film have since claimed that they were unaware of the film's homoerotic subtext, which could very well be true, it was the 80s after all.
31 Days Of Horror Movies # 1
I was reminded of this album the other day when their song "Levitate" became available for download for the game Rock Band. Unlike Bootsauce, I Mother Earth was an early 90s Canadian band that actually had listenability and a really great first album. I listened to this CD basically a million times in high school, but popping it in the other day it held up pretty well. Their second album, Scenery and Fish, is terrible in every single way, but for some reason Allmusic gives it a good grade, so the lesson is come here for your arbitrary ratings first. I mean, at least at a rate of two or three times a month.
I've mostly been avoiding the recent resurgence of 3D movies, so I have no idea if Piranha 3D is indicative of the overall experience and/or enhancement that the 3D gimmick is supposed to offer. I personally haven't been to a 3D movie since I saw Captain EO at Epcot in the late '80s and all I really recall from that flick are the puppety type creatures singing and dancing alongside Michael Jackson. What I can tell you about Piranha 3D is that it has more blood and nudity in it than I have seen from a mainstream, theatrically released horror film since the Friday the 13th remake. And as far as horror remakes go, Piranha 3D manages to be one of the better ones made in the last few years, on par with the Dawn of the Dead remake from 2004. I recommend checking the movie out if the title or trailer piqued your interest at all, but don't feel like you need to see it in 3D, nothing will be lost when the movie hits DVD. 
DC - "Let's hire a famous writer to write an industry changing book!"
If The Expendables was a pasta, it would be testosteroni. The film's major draw, in that it features virtually every major action star from the last thirty years, is also what keeps it from being a fully satisfying movie. With so many characters in the mix there isn't enough time for any of them to develop or, you know, have more than two lines. The plot, what little there is, is somewhat reminiscent of the last Rambo movie. But let's face it, no one goes to see a movie like this for plot, character development and/or narrative arc. You go to see stuff blow up real good and, trust me, they got that part covered.
I don't like this album as much as Astro Creep, but that could just be nostalgia? I mean, they're virtually the same record. Anyway, how can you go wrong with lots of rock, roll, and also audio samples of the greatest Star Trek episode in history.
Professor Nugent and a handful of his anthropology students go deep into the woods to investigate some disappearances that may be linked to a sasquatch living in the area. The monotony of their journey is broken up by the Professor's tales of sasquatch-related murders, including but not limited to: a woodsman who gets mutilated with his own axe, two Girl Scouts who get stabbed to death, and a biker who gets his dick ripped off. Their investigation takes a turn for the worse after they meet Crazy Wanda, a mostly mute hermit who, years earlier, was raped by the sasquatch. This low-budget foray into bigfootery features terrible acting, limited lighting, synthesizer noise (as opposed to synthesizer music), multiple flashbacks with flashbacks, plot points that go nowhere, and characters that appear ominous at first but ultimately never reappear. The sasquatch itself looks as though they threw a bag of hair clippings at a guy covered in tanning bronzer.
Treasures & Trash is a pawn shop in Moncton, New Brunswick (1063 Mountain Road). On a recent trip to Treasures & Trash, I noticed that they had a freezer case near the door that was full of steaks. I'm not sure how it is that a pawn shop acquires a freezer case full of steaks or who, for that matter, would want to buy them. The quality of the goods available at Treasures & Trash, at least as far as what I saw on my last visit, is quite low. Also, the staff can be quite surly and are not above having heated arguments with people about what may or may not be stolen goods.
Shot on video and distributed by Troma. That's basically all you need to know about this movie, but the plot is some rednecks accidentally put nuclear waste into their moonshine. Then they become zombies. I have seen this movie about ten times.
This is it! The Ultimate Fantastic Four finally get to travel to the main Marvel Universe and meet their counterparts. Just kidding, Mark Millar invents the Marvel Zombies universe instead. I guess it's fine, even if Greg Land's art looks like he traced a bunch of pornography.
A Beer For Every State #10 - Montana
A Beer For Every State #9 - Washington
Maury Chaykin (1949-2010) was a character actor who worked extensively in film and television over the last 35 years. Though born in America, Chaykin started his acting career in Canada and would go on to do countless Canadian films and television shows. Chaykin is part of the "oh hey, it's that guy" school of character actors, having been in more than 150 movies and television shows but never having gained serious name recognition outside of movie geek circles. You may remember Chaykin as the witness in My Cousin Vinny who says the line "No self-respecting southerner uses instant grits."
This is a movie about a devout Christian cop from Scotland who goes to some weirdo pagan island to solve The Case of the Missing Girl. It's ok, but it's totally revered as one of the best horror movies ever made by basically everybody who ever lived on Earth in all of history, which is not an accurate assessment if you ask me. It's complex though - on the one hand, this Christian cop is kind of a dick when he hears about the kids being taught pagan faith instead of about Jesus etc, but on the other hand *SPOILERS* they burn him to death as a sacrifice to their harvest god which isn't so hospitable in my humble opinion *END SPOILERS*. One other lasting contribution this film made to society is that it spawned a remake, which spawned BAM!
This album by Japan, Adolescent Sex, is a pretty good post- punk record. Imagine New York Dolls with way more keyboards. As always here's some links to songs of theirs, but I'd like to point out that we'll now get the most unintentional search result hits since Laurie posted that review of a picture of preteen boys wearing tight pants. In conclusion, welcome, perverts!
Moon is a pretty good movie in the subgenre I just made up called "Space Crazy Movies." Those are movies that take place in space (or deep in the ocean, like The Abyss), and feature one or more characters going crazy OR ARE THEY? Also, like 2001, Sunshine, Solaris, and RocketMan starring Harlan Williams. The plot is Sam Rockwell is mining for moon rocks alone and then starts going crazy OR DOES HE?
I'm not sure if it qualifies as a genre unto itself, but I love semi-serious autobiographies written by comedians. The first one I can remember reading was Drew Carey's Dirty Jokes and Beer: Stories of the Unrefined, which alternated between dick jokes and dark, personal anecdotes. Sarah Silverman devotes a large chunk of her book to her family history, her early battles with depression, and her bed wetting issues (hence the title). There's not a whole lot in the book about her comedy career, though she does take time to discuss some of her more controversial jokes/performances and there is a chapter devoted to her TV show, The Sarah Silverman Program. David Cross' book (I Drink For A Reason) could have been much better had it been written in a similar fashion.
A Beer For Every State #8 - New York
I'm no expert on the works on Charles Bukowski, but Post Office is the the third Bukowski novel that I've read in the last two years. I started reading his novels (I'm not too interested in his poetry) after I had read something on the internets that suggested that Chuck Palahniuk's fans wouldn't know a good book if it bit them on the ass so they should pick up Bukowski's Ham on Rye. Seeing as I couldn't stand the Palahniuk novel I was reading at the time, that sounded like a pretty good idea. Post Office is Bukowski's first novel to feature his semi-autobiographical stand-in Henry Chinaski, though it focuses on a period of his life that comes after the events of later novels such as Ham on Rye and Factotum. I'll avoid ending this review with any hyperbolic praise for Bukowski, as most of his fans are wont to do, all I'll say is that there is already another Bukowski title lined up on my Amazon wish list.
Eating the Dinosaur is a collection of essays written by Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman is an author who's work I had been more or less avoiding for the last few years. His name always seemed to pop up in articles and on websites that I liked, but I always found the praise of his work to be a bit fawning and his responses in interviews to be a bit off-putting (which sorta comes up in one of the book's first essays). Though, in the end, I quite enjoyed the book and found his essays both entertaining and interesting (even the ones about sports). Topics discussed in the book include: journalism, the similarities between Kurt Cobain and David Koresh, basketball, voyeurism, time travel, Garth Brooks' alter ego Chris Gaines, football, ABBA, laugh tracks, Pepsi's advertising strategies, irony, literalism, the lyrics of Rivers Cuomo, and a critique of the Unabomber Manifesto. 
#23 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List
This storyline starts with a support group meeting in a church basement to help people whose lives have been affected by Daredevil in some way. Eventually, it turns out one of them has a demon baby living inside of him, and thJESUS I'VE NEVER EVEN READ THE ILIAD WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE???
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It only took twenty-three years, but they finally made a decent sequel to Predator. Predators goes out of its way to make you remember just how awesome the first Predator movie was by recycling some of the original film's score and by putting the Predators back in a jungle setting. Despite the occasional pause for some exposition, the movie keeps up a good pace, moving from one action scene to the next. The special effects are good, with lots of 'splosions and minimal crappy CGI. The performances from the human characters are also uniformly good, even That '70s Show's Topher Grace (no, really).
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