Saturday, October 10, 2020

31 Days of Horror: Bloody Stuff Vol. 2


 A few days ago I posted about a bunch of horror flicks I bumped into this year, but wasn't going to devote a full review to. Guess what. There's more. Let's get to it.


Crawl
(2019) 

A huge hurricane leads to flooding down in Florida. Huge flooding leads to alligators being in some unusual places chomping on folks who ignored the evacuation notice. Dumb but fun creature feature that knows not to stick around any more than 90 minutes. By that point our suspension of disbelief is hanging on by the thinnest and most frayed string imaginable. Realizing this, the movie just abruptly throws in the towel.


1BR
(2019)

A young woman moves into a very pleasant apartment complex and soon finds out her neighbors aren't as nice as they first appeared. Presents a disturbing situation but doesn't create as much tension as it should. Too narrow a focus and too short a runtime are to blame. It whips by before we're fully invested. Strong third act mostly saves it despite it all being wrapped in an easy metaphor.


Frankenhooker
(1990)

Jeffrey Franken is about to marry the girl of his dreams who is, of course, named Elizabeth Shelley. A horrible lawn mower accident cuts her up into pieces and shreds most of her. Good ol' Jeffrey preserves her head and sets out to get her a new body using parts from the local hooker population. Darkly funny, weird, and cool practical fx all on a shoestring budget. This is the epitome of so bad it's awesome.  


Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama 
(1988) 

Some sorority girls are holding an initiation in a bowling alley after business hours while some nerdy dudes spy on them. Soon enough, an evil imp shows up and, well, things. Odd mix of aliens (I mean imps), slashers, and sex that 80s did best. Shouldn't work but something about it clicks. Never fools you into thinking it's legit good but you can't stop watching. 1st watch since USA Up All Night days.



The Babysitter: Killer Queen 
(2020) 

The kid from 2017's The Babysitter is now in high school and still dealing with the effects of what happened to him. Bada-boom, bada-bing, he finds himself going through the same thing, more or less. Mixes the first movie with Scott Pilgrim vs the World and turns both up 1000 notches in all the wrong places. The result is constant, obvious, & eye-rollingly bad references to other/better movies and other pop-culture only interrupted by way over the top cgi gore. Where the original was a triumph of ridiculous, this one tries way too hard to be so bad it's awesome and fails on every level.




10 comments:

  1. I do remember both Frankenhooker and Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama but I'm not sure if I remember seeing them both in their entirety. I have no interest in watching The Babysitter Killer Queen as I just don't like McG in general and I now have a bigger hatred towards Bella Thorne and how she used OnlyFans.

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    1. Frankenhooker is especially fun. I used to watch it all the time back in the day. It was a hoot to revisit. Yeah, McG usually sucks, but the first one was pretty good. This one is just terrible. And that whole Bella Thorne OnlyFans thing was off-putting, to say the least. Either do it or don't, but don't make a mockery of it and cheat people in the process.

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  2. I should rewatch Frankenhooker one of these days.

    I enjoyed Crawl because it doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is. It's a big, dumb monster movie. It's Deep Blue Sea with alligators and without giving them an intelligence boost. The characters are rock stupid, though, so arguably the gators are still smarter than the people. But really, it's just watching half a dozen people get chomped, and sometimes, that's more than enough.

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    1. I agree 100% with everything in this comment.

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  3. I really like the first Babysitter movie but the second one was so bad it made me angry.

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  4. Frankenhooker sounds like a film I have...The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.

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    1. Take that movie and infuse it with loads of cocaine, nudity, and practical gore.

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  5. Well you sold me on Frankenhooker. I have Crawl in my Prime queue and just haven't gotten to it yet. I apparently need to watch these Babysitter movies. Everyone is talking abou them.

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    1. Frankenhooker is grade A trash. Crawl is also a blast. The first Babysitter is fantastic. This one, not so much.

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