'NIGHT OF THE CREEPS'........THRILL ME!

Night Of The Creeps (1986)   Happy Halloween to one and all!  And here's BQ's all-time best bet for an awesome beer 'n popcorn Halloween night........

                  Long before Wes Craven went all meta with the 'Scream' movies, writer-director Fred Dekker had already pumped out a couple of wildly entertaining horror movie pastiches......this one in 1986 and following it up in '87 with the much beloved "The Monster Squad".

                  What more could you possibly want?  This movie's got it ALL........creepy little midget aliens, slimy little alien slug parasites skittering about, freshly escaped lunatic serial ax-murderers, Frat boy Zombies, horny nerds, screaming sorority girls, exploding heads, death by power mower........(we could go on and on, but you simply need to see this to believe it.....)

                    And best of all, becoming an instant horror-movie legend......Tom Atkins as the irascible, brutally sarcastic police detective trying to unravel the tangle of bodies......both dead and living dead......spitting out his standard phone greeting to anyone brave enough to risk calling him.....

                ......"Thrill me!"

                  Thrill him the movie does........as he takes on a horde of obnoxious fraternity bullies who've been zombie-fied by the alien slugs......( to the the sorority girls, he barks out his immortal line, "The good news, girls....your dates are here. The bad new is.....they're dead.")

                     We don't want to spoil any more Halloween fun by going into more detail...just sit back,kick your feet up and watch.......scoop up the rest of those Reece's Pieces you didn't give out to the trick-or-treaters and gobble 'em along with the popcorn while you enjoy this......

                      A guaranteed, funny spooktacular, BQ scares up a full 5 stars for "Night Of The Creeps" (*****), a bona fide, genuine fright night FIND OF FINDS.

                        Boo!

'WITCHFINDER GENERAL' ('THE CONQUEROR WORM')........TORTURE PORN STARS......

Witchfinder General (a.k.a. The Conqueror Worm) (1968)   It just occured to us.....we could have easily applied the sub-heading of yesterday's post on "The Masque Of Red Death" to this film too.....

             'Vinnie Price goes medieval on your ass'.........

              This time our beloved veteran boogeyman finds himself in Cromwellian England......as Mathew Hopkins, a travelling torturer who wanders around the countryside, pocketing bags 'o coin for ridding the villagers of suspected witches.....

                Aiding and abetting him is his loathsome sidekick Robert Russell (John Stearne)a gleeful sadist specializing in perforating the stripped bare backs of his agonized, screaming victims......

                 Are we having fun yet? You betcha!

                This became a cult horror film for all sorts of reasons.........starting with its upped level of torture, blood, misery and sheer nihilism that pre-dates our own era's 'torture porn' films like Eli Roth's 'Hostel' and 'Hostel 2'.......

                  Its very young director Michael Reeves died of drug overdose at age 25, not long after this film was released........leaving behind at total of 3 feature films as a credited director.  And there's no telling where this talented kid's career could have taken him.

                    Reeves famously clashed with Price, whom Reeves was ordered to cast by the film's distributor.....(who else but drive-in trash-compactors American International)......

                    We can understand why.....Reeves wanted a down-to-earth, all too human actor to play Hopkins (Donald Pleasance was his ideal pick).....and had little use for the grand, theatrical, hammy flourishes that Price established as his 'brand' in horror films.....

                       They battled furiously, but eventually Reeves wore out Price to the point where the actor delivered the most subtle, naturalistic performance of his long horror career.........and it served the film well.  Unlike Price's work in the Roger Corman 'Poe' films, where you're almost encouraged to chuckle at the actor's overstated evil, his Mathew Hopkins is a deadly serious, hellish force to be reckoned with.  You'hate him on sight and pray for his gory comeuppance.......

                      And oh does he ever deserve it, as Reeves unfolds a swift panorama of hangings, stabbings, drownings, stake burnings and even some assorted blood-spurting gunshot victims.  By the time the film concludes, no one has escaped hell.......they're all either horribly butchered drying or driven completely mad.  It's one of the best feel-bad movies ever......

                    (Upon seeing the film, Price finally realized Reeves' intentions......and generously thanked him for a film that boasts what critics consider one of Price's most skilled performances...)

                        Energized by a richly orchestrated score by Paul Ferris, "Witchfinder General" remains a must-see for all horror fans......4 stars (****) you can't miss making it a Happy Halloween with this one.......

'THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH'.........VINNIE PRICE GOES MEDIEVAL ON YOUR ASS.......

The Masque Of The Red Death (1964)    While this may be the least scary of the Vincent Price/Roger Corman/Edgar Allen Poe films, nobody can deny it's the most lush and stylish.......

                    This film's more like wandering through a carnival fun house with a Medieval Depravity theme.......ooooo,plauge-stricken people bleeding through their pores!.......oooooo, devil worshipers stabbing themselves!.......ooooooo, a depraved midget with a child ballerina as his bride!

                     Your Master of Disaster for all this festering fun.......Prince Prospero, who could only be played by that snickering hambone, Vincent Price.

                       The Prince decides to hold an all-night bash for his equally hateful nobles.... all of them taking refuge in the Prince's castle while the Red Death turns the countryside peasants into bleeding raw meat........

                        But wait! Who's that red-hooded mysterious figure lounging up against a tree......sounding like he's planning to make the Prince's orgy of evil a one night stand......literally.

                          And what will happen to the sweet little peasant girl (Jane Asher) who's been dragged into the festivities........will Prospero defile her  as she races through the castle rooms, all of them more brightly color coded than that horse who trots through  the Emerald City in "The Wizard Of Oz".....

                         As you may have gathered from our description, the movie's deliriously nuts from beginning to end........and a non-stop visual feast, courtesy of its master cameraman turned cult film director Nicolas Roeg. Unlike his previous Poe horror adaptations, the ever lightning-fast Corman shot this in England, where he had access to sumptuous, expensive sets originally built for "Becket" and "A Man For All Seasons"

                        So with all the eye-popping sets and Corman's swirling, perpetual-motion tracking shots, the overall effect is like watching a Renaissance fair gone rogue, populated with drug-addled cosplayers......

                         We don't even want to think about what sheer hell a director would catch  today, if he tried casting a little girl as a midget's wife and then used an adult actress to dub in her lines. Yes , it's every bit as strange is it sounds and looks........but for a movie that borders on phantasmagorical, it's perfect.

                       You've got to love Hoptoad the Midget, though...….tricking a serial rapist sleaze (Patrick Magee) into donning a gorilla suit so he can set him on fire while the horny bastard's in
mid-debauch...…(as Jim Carrey would say in "The Mask"......it's smokkkkkin'!)

                        No, something this studied and dreamily lurid won't scare you.......but still remains one of BQ's goodies that captures the over-the-top, goofball Halloween spirit like no other movie.....
4 stars (****).......pop in it and grin like pumpkin....

MONDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP...........SPECIAL ONE STRIKE AND YER OUUUTTTTTTTTTT!" EDITION

               World Series fans boo Baby Orange, chanting "Lock Him Up!"........ in related news, Attorney General Barr convenes a Grand Jury to investigate and indict the entire stadium crowd........

                Baby Orange makes sure that Russia is first on the list of people to thank for killing the Isis leader......and once again, Putin puts the "peeing on the whores" photos back in his office safe......until needed again.

                Baby Orange's "press secretary" minion snipes that General John Kelly was 'unequipped' to handle the 'genius' of Baby Orange.........(and we know what you're thinking but we did not make this up.....)........Gen.Kelly does admit that upon accepting the job of White House Chief Of Staff, he refused to undergo the mandatory lobotomy operation required of all White House staff and cabinet members......

                Baby Orange trumpets "He died like a dog!" about takedown of the Isis leader....and thereby makes himself the greatest ever recruitment ad for 1000's more future Isis terrorists ......and also promises he'll never use Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric as human shields when when New York 3rd District cops show up with arrest warrants.............

                  But enough madness for today (until the next 'round)........back tomorrow with more Halloween horror goodies........you know, fictitious horror instead of the real horror of Baby Orange headlines.......

'ANNA'.......LUC-WARM SPYJINKS......

Anna (2019)    It didn't even occur to us that this one snuck in and out of theaters in ten minutes due to director Luc Besson being accused of sexual no-no's among his crew......

                 We just thought it disappeared cause it blew chunks......

                  Then again, the wobbly wheels of the once busy Besson Movie Machine were already coming off....... with the total failure of his sci-fi hodge-podge "Valerian and...." ...oh, who cares what the hell the rest of it was called......

                   Heavy, heavy Deja Vu here........Besson struggles to haul this movie into profitability by making it an amped-up version of his greatest hit, "La Femme Nikita"......

                  A Russian hit-babe (supermodel Sacha Luss) does look spiffy and spry as she kicks and shoots the living shit out of endless amounts of thugs, bodyguards and soldiers....

                   But sorry, Luc......a hot girl beating people up does not make a movie, even if she pokes some dude so many times with a fork, his face looks like our own middle school acne..........you forgot it only worked for you in the past because you were smart enough to use real actresses.....

                 Not this time. As an actress-model.......well, she's a super....uh.....model.

                  The epic smackdowns only take up a few scenes, though.......the bulk of this movie's ungainly, overlong script deals with Luss in lust with her competing spy handlers, a CIA suit (Cillian Murphy) and a KGB Komrade (Luke Evans)......

                  Workin' two sides at once proves way complicated for poor Sacha (not to mention the audience too).....and forever lurking in the back seat of a car, sits the odious Olga (Helen Mirren), a heartless KGB Medusa-In-Chief......(Mirren looks like she's waiting for someone to drop dead so she can eat....)

                    Besson no doubt thinks he's enormously clever by backing up into flashbacks every 20 minutes or so to further explain the story's various reversal-of-fortune twists.........and these tedious tricks drag on the very end of the film......

                   Overall, though, it's not nearly as horrendous as some critics would lead you to believe......(more likely they were reviewing Besson's off-the-set #MeToo accusations).....and we've seen far worse versions of the same movie.......(try Jennifer Lawrence's "Red Sparrow", for instance)

                   Therefore, 1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2) for a director trying to save his career with a way-too-long rehash of one of his old, far better films.  Kind of sad, if you think about it for any amount of time......

                    But then.....this movie's so not worth thinking about......for any amount of time.

'DR.JEKYLL AND MR.HYDE' (1941)........ID HAPPENED ONE NIGHT........

Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1941)    Everyone's got their own favorite film version of  Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale........ this one's ours.

              It's the very epitome of  MGM's Golden Age of iconic stars and high gloss........what an all-star lineup.....Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner......and directed, naturally, by the studio's in-house master of blockbusters, Victor Fleming ("The Wizard Of Oz", "Gone With The Wind")

             Tracy, ever the actor's actor, wouldn't resort to rubberized monster makeup to transform himself  from the gentle, gentlemanly Dr. Jekyll to the hideous Hyde...…

              With minimal use of facial appliances, the actor became both inhuman and all too human at the same time......an insidious Id released from the subconscious who's equally a rampaging bully and violent sexual predator.....

                You could think of him as the Victorian Harvey Weinstein.....

               Film critics of the era, a pompous bunch of cultural snobs, generally mocked Tracy's no-holds-barred, over the top performance as Hyde...…(but then these guys mostly sneered at horror movies, and they also infamously panned "The Wizard Of Oz"....so what did they know?)

                Those dolts are long gone, and the passage of decades has raised the reputation of both the film and Tracy's skilled attempts to scare you without fake fangs or blood dripping claws...….

                The other key performance here comes from Ingrid Bergman as Ivy,  the pathetic doomed barmaid who arouses passion in both the innocent Jekyll and the rampaging Hyde.....

                78 years later, the film still has the power to make you cringe...…...In Ivy's terrifying ordeal as she's trapped and emotionally and physically destroyed by Hyde......an operatic but still frightening depiction of a poisonous, abusive relationship.

                  And we're still amazed by that startling, delirious fantasy of Jekyll-Hyde, in which the tormented Jekyll imagines himself a frenzied charioteer whipping his two horses, the barely clothed Bergman and Lana Turner (Jekyll's worried, aristocratic fiancé.

                 It's far from a blood-soaked shocker, but "Dr.Jekyll And Mr. Hyde" remains a brilliant, classy artifact from a bygone era of filmmaking...….and always worth a Halloween viewing.
BQ, like the old MGM lion, roars out 4 stars (****)

WEEKDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP..........MINIONS AMUCK!....COLORADO WALLS!.........HUMAN SCUM!

               We do have a pile of oddball horror movies to post about........but how could any horror film compete with this?   

                RAMPAGE OF THE MINIONS!........more mindless than living dead zombies!  The feckless flash-mob from Hell itself!   The Walking Brain-Dead, posing as GOP congressmen, storming the impeachment inquiry depositions!   With truth-telling diplomats having the same effect on them as a crucifix did on Christopher Lee's Dracula!  

                ATTACK OF THE HUMAN SCUM!........Baby Orange quakes in terror at the thought of any Republican who might grow a spine and more than few brain cells!  "Human Scum!" he tweets at them.  Thrill to the sight of Baby Orange sending his un-scummy Minions into battle to crash impeachment testimony......as well as weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and Joe Biden's home bathrooms.....

                 ALL IN ALL.....IT'S JUST ANOTHER PRICK AND HIS WALL.....Baby Orange claims his border wall is rapidly being built as we speak.......in Colorado!   Sleep tight, America.....trust Baby Orange to keep Mexican rapists from swarming over the Rocky Mountains and inundating Denver!  

                   VICTORY IN SYRIA......the thrilling new war story in which Baby Orange declares a major victory...….for Vladimir Putin....

'THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW'.........AND ON EVERYBODY ELSE, TOO.......

The Blood On Satan's Claw (1971)    We've no real idea what the Brits who cobbled this one together had in mind here........

              It's juicy fun to watch, even if it looks like the filmmakers made it up as they went along.....

              Early on, we think there's some kind of hairy monster bedeviling, so to speak, a whole village of 17th century English country bumpkins........

               And for random crazed superstitious villagers enraged by the devil, nothing beats the 17th century........at one point, they even try the old 'throw the witch in the pond to see if she floats' routine......always a showstopper.....

                The hairy beast, however, takes some time off and the satanic mayhem is turned over to the village teens, led by an overheated blonde with Halloween Shop eyebrows......

                And for those you unimpressed by Halloween Shop eyebrows, Satanic Sally or whatever her name is, has no problem shedding her clothes.......(always a big plus for fans of R-rated horror)

                 More chaos ensues, including a poor possessed girl who spouts a hairy patch on her leg........which the village doctor (who prefers bleeding out his patients to heal them) slices it off with the finesse of a coked-up Beverly Hills plastic surgeon......you'll mutter 'ouch!' all the way through it.....
                Not one minute of this makes any sense, but in the hands of classy British actors, it comes off crazier than a parlementary Brexit debate.......

               Senseless but never boring, we'll manage to bleed out 2 & 1/2 stars for this nasty little dollop of creatures, devil-babes and woebegone witch hunters......it's a hella good time.

'LOOKER'...........CRICHTON INVENTS CGI.....IN 1981!

Looker (1981)   Let's be honest here........

               Michael Crichton, the master of mega-selling, semi sci-fi thriller novels (The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park) functioned as a barely competent film director after he moved into that arena....

                He depended heavily on the cleverness of his own scripts to see him through,. most of them  based on his own books.

                 A true cinematic stylist might have elevated them into something more than they were (as Spielberg did with 'Jurassic Park')........but with Crichton at the helm, the best he could give his material was TV level moviemaking.

               At least he learned enough to point his camera in the right direction.....toward the actors.

               His 'Looker' screenplay is sort of a snarky, satiric thriller that aspires to brutally lampoon television's hypnotic grip on a mindless, consumerist society.....(and its obsession with physical perfection....)

                 A worthy goal indeed, but Crichton was no Paddy Chayefsky ("Network") when it came to raging against sinister corporate moguls manipulating a gullible couch-potato populace.

                 Crichton's swipes at subliminal TV ads and the sedated home viewers they target never go beyond surface, facile, 'Saturday Night Live' skit level.........but they do have you smiling.

                But where he excels is his uncanny. prescient grasp of future technology and science........imagining computers advanced enough to animate digital copies of human beings.....and replace flesh and blood actors.......

                 Say whaaaaaaat????? Computer people?  That can't possibly ever happen, right?

                 Ooops......wait a minute.........

                 Which brings us to "Looker"s premise......in which a plastic-surgeon-to-the-stars (Albert Finney) discovers his beautiful  TV model patients tend to die right after he surgically touches up their already gorgeous bods and faces.

                 Finney finds out the babes get bumped off once  they've been computer copied by an evil media CEO (James Coburn) and his techie minion (Leigh Taylor Young). The girls' cyber-doppelgangers live on, however, to perform (free of charge, naturally) as perfect specimens pushing floor wax and cars to all us dopey, tube-addicted mouth-breathers.......

                 It's all breezy and entertaining enough, but you can't help wishing there was a better filmmaker than Crichton in control of it.......

                  For example, Crichton's oblivious to Albert Finney phoning it in with a bored, listless, is-it-lunch-yet performance......and he's wastes the only live wire in his cast that he lucked into.....Susan Dey, doing a game, funny turn as a gum-popping, wisecracking model who's next up on Coburn's digital hit-list.

                 Too bad, cause based her work here, the right directors could have turned Dey into a romantic comedy force to be reckoned with.......

                  But as we mentioned earlier, the film's inherent inventiveness allows it to scrape by as a brief but witty little suspense item........and a remarkable, ahead-of-its-time preview of things to come...... the very essence of Crichton's art.... blending cutting edge science with standard popcorn thrills 'n chills......2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

               

'IMAGINARY FRIEND'.........AND REAL LIVE TRIPE......

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky (2019)    Want to know what BQ really thinks of this book right away?

              Good, cause we're not waiting til the end of this post.......

              Overpraised, overwritten, repetitive to the point of madness.....easily the worst book we've read this year...(or any other year for that matter....)

               Yes.....you guessed it.....our lowest, foulest rating....an A.F.H.......an ABOMINATION FROM HELL.

               This author, much praised and beloved for his YA book and film "The Perks Of Being A Wallflower", spent almost a decade producing this current monstrosity.......

                And it feels like we spent a decade trying to endure it in its entirety.......literally a punishment from hell.

              Starting it, it seemed promising.......at first it read like an ambitious attempt to duplicate one of those enormous Stephen King epic novels in which children are pitted against overwhelming supernatural evil....(a la "It" and King's collaborations with Peter Straub, "The Talisman" and "The Black House")

              But Chbosky possesses none of King's talent and storytelling skills.......as his pages pile up, he hurls endless amounts of fantasy/horror sequences like paint-filled balloons splattering against the wall.

               None of it's coherent, the mythology's labored and the same type of sequences get repeated ad nauseum........as if Chbosky thought writing the same scenes over and over again for hundreds of pages would scare you silly.

                 Exhaustion, rather than fear set in as we plowed through this book.

                 And that's when a reader begins to realize that this is nothing like a Stephen King book. It devolves into an unbelievably tedious religious allegory........nothing more than a 700 page Sunday Morning sermon delivered by pompous Pastor who never shuts up.......

                  Somewhere toward the end of this mess, Chbosky delivers his BIG GIANT TWIST....which caused us to foolishly breathe a sigh of relief, thinking we were somewhere close to the end........

                 No, not even close.......the books drags on and on for another eternity, once again repeating the same stuff we'd already suffered through about 6,000 times.

                Speaking of repetition, ....the BQ rating again:  An ABOMINATION  FROM HELL.

                This is one doorstop novel with only one usable function.......

                 As a doorstop.

                And once again, a vital BQ warning:  PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE AUTHOR BLURBS ON THE BACK COVER OF THE BOOK JACKET...….THEY'RE ABOUT AS RELIABLE AND TRUTHFUL AS THE CRAP TRUMP SPEWS OUT AT HIS RALLIES......

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.........LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE MINIONS!

              It occurred to us more than once that watching Baby Orange and his Presidential Trainwreck  is like watching the SPECTRE miinions in the early James Bond films........

               In those movies, arch-fiend Blofeld employed vast armies of these guys, always outfitted in spiffy costumes.......red or white jumpsuits, identical black scuba wetsuits......and for winter wear, colorful orange ski jackets with black striping on the sleeves........

               Now that's what Baby Orange's woeful collection of  toadies, sycophants, mob lawyers, extortionists and overall creepizoids are missing........

                 Why don't they all have matching outfits?

                  And what a gloriously repulsive line-up they are.......

                 Mulvaney.......Mr. "Get Over It!" himself.....proving to Baby Orange that this is what happens when your staff consists of 'Acting (Your Job And Name Here)"

                  Barr......the mutant toad currently posing (badly) as Attorney General.  Never got the memo that he's supposed to pretend he's "America's Lawyer".......he's more like Al Capone's lawyer...

                  Giuliani ........the clown prince of  what passes for Baby Oranges foreign policy.... operating as Agent 000 in charge of proving Joe Biden and his son were responsible for the rise of ISIS and the attack on Pearl Harbor.......

                  Stephen Miller.......rising up direct from Baby Orange's Vault Of Horror......especially enjoys feeding live cockroaches to jailed immigrant children in his spare time......

                   Rep. Jim Jordon and Rep. Matt Gaetz .......Baby Oranges's very own barking guard dogs.....with Jordan playing the snarling Doberman and Gaetz as the yapping Pekinese......

                 Kelly Ann Conway.....the Babbling Harpy Of Alternative Facts.......enough said....

                Seriously.......can't Baby Orange supply a appropriate volcano and snappy uniforms for this bunch to hang out in?

                 Preferably an active volcano........with a whole lot of lava........