Shouting Grounds

In an effort to saturate the Grounds with movie reviews, I’ve been combing the *ahem* libraries for some golden oldies. This time around, it’s George Romero’s Creepshow. I remember this movie from when I was a wee lad, and that it both intrigued me enough to watch it over and over again and that it scared the shit outta me. I’ll slice this review up to follow the serial nature of the movie, so follow along…minor spoilers ahead

Father’s Day
Not as creepy now as it once was. A group of smarmy republicans assemble every Father’s Day to honor their dead grandfather, who was rumored to have been killed by their mother with a marble ashtray because all the fucker did was bang on his chair with a heavy cane screaming and calling her Bitch all the time, complaining that they’re all just after his cash. If you ask me the fucker got what he deserved… In the end, it’s not as scary as it used to be. Satisfying though.

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill
Stephen King (who wrote the stories) stars as a hillbilly’s hillbilly that finds a meteor on his land. Everything the meteor touches (or touches it in the case of King) begins to quickly overgrow with some eerie-ass grass…and not the smoking kind. While he begins to turn into a Chia Pet, he dreams about selling the meteor off to a local college to pay off his debts. More quirky than scary.

Something to Tide You Over
An old school tour de force, starring Leslie Neilsen and Ted Danson. Ted’s sleeping with Leslie’s wife, and Leslie wants revenge. Again, I can’t blame him. He’s got a strange CCTV fetish and a love for the tide. Probably my second favorite of the five serials.

The Crate
A couple of buddy professors secretly loath the ultra-controlling drunkass whore wife that one of them was unlucky enough to marry…to the point where the dumbass married to her daydreams about killing her. One day, a janitor at the college they teach at finds a crate hidden under a stairwell marked “Arctic Expedition, 1854″, all hell literally breaks loose. My favorite of the five stories.

They’re Creeping Up On You
EG Marshall is a particularly annoying SuperRepublican, living alone in a spartan apartment built to seal out pollution, germs and bugs. He obsesses about cleanliness while screaming at people on the phone, ordering them around and buying up companies. He gets his…and this story was the hardest for me to watch when I was young. An telltale quote, said by a woman’s voice on the phone to EG, “I hope you get cancer in the worst place!”

The best part of the movie is the way Romero mixed in the serial comic content with the live action content, tying the stories together with a short story about a kid killing his shitty dad. Each of the stories use comic-cell style overlays and crazy lighting throughout to link the comics to the live action…good stuff. Also you’ll notice that in each story, the people that meet their end have it coming, while the protagonists are usually people you also loathe…which in a way makes the world the stories are based in a little easier to believe, i.e. everyone’s human.

Arousal Factor – Magic John Stone for Creepshow – Snapped to Attention

Another new review topic, a brainfart of our man Redscape called “Why you keep bringin’ up old shit?”. We intend to use this category to review old movies, games, music, etc. And my old I mean ‘relatively accepted as in the past’. Spoilers are mute because we’re going to assume that you’ve either seen, read, played, heard, etc…what we’re talking about.

Blade Runner – The Final Cut

So I’ve finally made it COMPLETELY through Blade Runner without falling asleep. My previous attempts numbered (3), each time just making it past the point where Edward James Almost makes his strangely asian-speaking debut. And while this is “Why you keep bringin’ up old shit?”, I am reviewing Ridley Scott’s “Final Cut” of the movie, just because if I’m gonna watch the damned thing might as well be the ulti-version.

I gotta say, it’s great to see a young and healthy Harrison Ford in a movie. One of the reasons that I’m holding my enthusiasm for Indy IV is because of his age. It was also good to see a good old classic 80’s representation of the future, just gives you that warm and fuzzy feeling inside. This movie starts out like it’s going to go 2001 style, extremely slow shots with Space-Mountain music that lull you to sleep…and then some asshole shoots a repub through a wall in one of the better over-the-top handgun-blasts I can remember. The rest of the movie ebbs and flows from slow 80’s-scifi pace to action movie pace, never quite slowing enough to lose you but never going over the top.

This vision of the future has been played before, although when it was new it might have been original. LA’s a huge city with enormous skyscrapers and monolithic structures built over the husk of the old city. There are tons of asian influences, no doubt when we were sure Japan would buy up the country. It’s dreary, dirty looking and full of smog and rain. Deckard’s (Harrison Ford) apartment looks like a cabin on a spaceship and is on the 97th floor of somekind of superbuilding. Everyone seems grimy, sweaty and tired of life. A great outlook.

In any event, I’m not gonna run down the whole jist of the story. Suffice it to say there’s some ‘Replicants’ (very-human looking androids) running around looking for someone to tell them how to live longer than four years, and Deckard’s job is to race after them and shoot them with his burpgun all the while giving that trademark Harrison Ford what’s-going-on look. I’m sure there’s a deeper meaning here, but I just watched the movie and haven’t had decades to argue it with my buds. The rest of the cast is pretty good, nobody was too shitty. Meh.

All in all, not a bad movie. I’m glad to have finally seen it, but I don’t think I’ll watch it again, at least not for a long time.

Arousal Scale – Magic John Stone for Blade Runner – A Magic John Bone