Day off movies

List: Rosemary's Baby, Room 237, Kiss of the Damned, Done the Impossible

I had a Sunday off and I decided while letting my domestic diva out that I would watch stuff I've been saying I'm going to watch for months. First off any one who knows me should be saying to themselves are you ok? Why are you cleaning every thing in the house?! I'm not Donna Reed by any stretch of the imagination, but for some reason I needed to clean and needed something to keep me going.

First up on the list was Rosemary's Baby. I know, I know, how have I not seen this movie. I have seen bits and pieces but never sat down and watched it from beginning to end. I'm glad I finally did. Even though the movie is dated it still plays well. I love Mia Farrow. Her voice grates a bit, but you kind of get used to it. All I ever remember from the bits and pieces I've seen was they lived in this awesome building in NYC, she gets knocked up by Satan, there's a group of old people yelling Hail Satan, and her baby **spoiler alert** is the devil's baby. Also that haircut. Practically anyone who has a pixie cut is striving for the perfect Rosemary. When Rosemary announces she's pregnant her husband gives her a glass of wine to celebrate and then proceeds to smoke like a chimney around her was interesting  Coming from the mind set of modern day where you can't breathe in the direction of a pregnant woman for fear of it instantly aborting the fetus seeing this made me laugh. I also noticed the similarities with The Devil's Advocate (another favorite movie of mine despite Keanu Reeves). The more I think about it the more The Devil's Advocate is practically a remake of Rosemary's Baby right down to the devil screwing the blonde neglected wife and no one believing her. The wife cutting her hair off, the neighbors all being part of the devil's plot, the wife being covered in scrapes and bruises after her "encounter" with the devil, crap now I'm going to have to watch them both and make a list. I digress, over all Rosemary's Baby still holds up as a creepy devil movie even now. The ending perplexes me but then again I guess it's the whole it's my baby and I love it anyway thing. Not sure if I would be able to do that if my I found out my baby was going to bring about the Apocalypse.

Next up was Room 237. If you've never seen Kubrick's version of The Shining go watch it and then watch Room 237. It's ok I'll wait. Now that you've killed 6 hours of your life how much do you want to watch The Shining forwards and backwards super imposed on itself? I would curl up on my couch with a bowl of popcorn and watch that in a minute. Ok so Room 237 is in essence a conspiracy theory wet dream all about the hidden meanings behind everything in The Shining. I knew I was in for a doosey of a flick when one of the first things said is that the cans in the store room are set up in a way to show Kubrick's feelings on the plight of the American Indians. Ok maybe, kind of a stretch, but maybe the whole movie is a political statement about how the white man plundered America and stole all the land from the Native American tribes across the country, or it's just a can with a profile wearing a headress on it. Then we get into how there's all these points where he deviates from the book and all these points are Kubrick's way of telling the world he directed the Moon Landing film. The rug in the upstairs hallway looks like the landing pads at NASA, the kid has an Apollo 11 sweater on, the room number was changed to 237 because it's 237,000 miles from the Earth to the Moon, and my favorite the key tag hanging in the door of room 237 says "ROOM No 237" and as the guy explains the acronym "No" was used in place of the word number back in the day and Kubrick used it here to tell us his involvement with the moon landing because the only letters that were capitalized were R-O-O-M-N which can be used to spell out MOON. Hey guy you failed to explain that when that acronym was used the the "o" was almost always lower case. My absolute favorite hole you can drive a truck through is the guy who talks about the kid riding around on his big wheel and we see a diagram being drawn on the screen at the same time. The kid rides straight down the hallway takes a left across the balcony above the lobby then makes a box around the elevator ending up back where he started but facing the other direction.(This is the map {other maps by this artist are used throughout Room 237}) The guy narrating the sequence makes comments about how Kubrick puts in pieces of the lobby in the background so the viewer knows where the kid is in the hotel. He actually says "there's the fake elevator...and there's a piece of the stained glass there. {Kubrick} didn't have to do that but he did." As if to say that Kubrick placed shots of the lobby below in certain areas of the frame. The guy was talking about camera trickery so at first I was going along with it. Then a bit later there's another scene where Wendy picks the kid up and the camera is facing the upper balcony. So Mr. Camera trickery guy did you not realize the the kid was on that side of the set? Or that the view from that balcony which over looks the lounge wouldn't include the stained glass segments of the windows in the lounge that are eye level from the balcony?

Next was Kiss of the Damned. This was reviewed on episode 69 of Devour the Podcast and after everyone's reactions I had to check it out. It has one of my favorite easy on the eyes actors Milo Ventimigila as Paulo. He's naked and buff and...sorry I was thinking of the scene were he gets bitten. Let me clean up the drool. The movie is artsy fartsy but worth a watch. I feel like it had so much it could have explored but only veered into alternate 1985 and then careened back into the correct timeline every other scene. Mimi feels tossed in to the film just to muss perfect Djuna's (pronounced Juna) pristine hair especially in the steam shower scene, oof needed a cold shower myself after that one. There's a whole scene about vampire vs human rights that only serves to set up Mimi plotting against Xenia, our vampire leader and famous Broadway actress to eat a virgin stage door fan (she doesn't do matinees as a theatre geek this line made me giggle, just like when Rosemary says she went to see The Fantasticks in Rosemary's Baby). Mimi meets a great end though. Watch out for those maids they can be murder.

After that I finally finished watching Done the Impossible. A Firefly documentary about all the Browncoats, fans of the series and the film Serenity. Adam Baldwin "Jayne" hosts for lack of a better term the whole movie. If you've never seen the show or if you're a Browncoat like me take the time to watch this movie. Joss Whedon talks about how the fans made this show and how they literally got the movie made.. The fans and the actors talk about how the show changed their lives. Browncoats of all ages tell their story of finding the 'verse and sailing through it with the crew of the Serenity. There's one girl who tries to explain how the death of Wash affected her and she simply bursts into tears. I fell in love with Firefly in college just after it had been cancelled. I can't explain why or what draws me to the series exactly but when I'm having a shit day or just need to lose myself in something a few hours I turn to Firefly. It has a strange calming affect on me and I find myself just sitting and smiling while watching it. Done the Impossible let me know that I'm not alone in my obsession with this little show that wouldn't die. Go see what a fandom can do when they band together and show Hollywood that they have no idea what is good and what isn't good TV.

Ok guys that's it for this week. I've got way more days off coming up that I think will be spent binge watching movies like today. Any suggestion?

Final Destination 5

I wasn't going to give it a chance after the last installment of the franchise, but I'm glad I did. The deaths aren't so far out there that there is no way in hell there could ever be the correct circumstances for them to take place as in past installments. I generally like the characters well except the douche who feels his girlfriend shouldn't have died and everyone else should have. There's always one.

Anywho, FD5 follows the same premise as the rest of them . Some one has a vision that death is about to get them and they freak out. A group of people follow them to safety only to be picked off one by one to settle death's list. Tony Todd does his job again of providing the key to survival and progress the mania. Although once you see the ending of the movie his "I've seen this before" speech half way through is an "ah ha" moment. Fair warning I will spoil the ending later. You've been warned.

Sam has a vision that the bridge his bus is on is going to collapse. He freaks out gets himself and a group of others to safety just in time to watch the bus and the bridge fall into the lake below. Now the fun starts. I'm not going to go through all of the deaths just a couple.

The first death takes place at a gym where Candice is practicing her gymnastics. Shit goes down and she ends up folded in half on the gym floor. There's a line about the first death after it happens that made me laugh. Olivia says she wonders how it doesn't happen all the time. I've thought that same thing many a time during the Olympics.

The 3rd death is Olivia's and it freaked me out. I wear glasses and would like to get Lasik. However after seeing the laser blind her I'm rethinking that decision. That poor teddy bear got his eye ripped off in the process. Poor teddy.

Now Tony Todd comes back as the how to survive death guy. He's wearing a coroner's jacket this time around and in past movies he was a funeral home mortician. I looked around at the various Wiki's and other info and everything said he was still a funeral home mortician but that coroner's jacket and medical examiner's van threw me off. Oh well. Nice to see him back after not being in the last movie.

Over all it is the same old same old for the franchise. Not as far out as the last movie which is good. I still can't drive behind a log truck on the highway thanks to these movies. The end of this movie is what makes it different and a nice change to the series.

Now here's where I'm going to spoil the ending. Go away now if you don't want to know. But come back for another installment of my musings later!!!





Ending Spoilers ahead!!!




So the whole movie Sam is talking about going to Paris to take this apprenticeship. Paris, Paris, Paris, it's mentioned 18 thousand times throughout the movie. We never see any type of newspaper or date anywhere, but we do see a pic of Olivia on the roller coaster from the 3rd movie. I'm mad at myself as a props master for not catching on to the lack of smart phones and the phones that we did see being so out of date. This whole movie is a prequel! Sam and his girlfriend survive (she was going to live anyway) only to end up on Flight 180 to Paris. We actually see Devon Sawa freak out and get removed from the plane. And then they die. It was a nice way to round out the series. If they continue to make any more sequels I'll still watch them but I can't imagine where'd they go from here other than to explain Tony Todd's background and how he knows so much.

Riddick

I just got back from watching the latest installment of the Riddick franchise. Now I have to say I'm a huge fan of the series. I love Vin Diesel as Riddick. I've seen all the movies, played both video games on multiple systems). I was fangirling hardcore when I heard this movie was coming out. And it's here.

Before I get into what I thought about the movie, might I suggest that if you're going to go see Riddick watch Pitch Black beforehand. There's a character that I knew was going to be a big reveal since they kept his name secret for ages and when he said his name I couldn't for the life of me remember why his name meant anything until Riddick filled in the missing pieces when they finally meet.

Ok on to my thoughts. Ummm, it wasn't what I expected. The theaters around me all had 8pm preview shows. I was excited since I could go early and get home to write this and not be getting to sleep at 4am (we've broken up, 4am and I. It's facebook official and everything). Then the gears started turning. Why was there an 8pm preview? Was there a meeting somewhere that the outcome was well we've moved the midnight preview to 10pm why not trial run 8pm and see how it goes or did this movie suck so bad that they needed to bilk every dollar out of us moviegoers by adding a preview at a time that most people would jump at. Unfortunately it looks more like the latter.

Don't get me wrong I didn't hate the movie, I just wasn't thrilled with it. If this movie was the second movie and Chronicles of Riddick was scheduled to come out in a few years then it would make way more sense. There would be a few plot things to fix like how/why Riddick ended up on the planet he's on, but since it's already been established that he's on the run all the time being chased by Mercs, then there's your how and why.

The first solid 20-25 minutes of the movie is Riddick wandering this wasteland he's been left on. There's barely any dialogue, which is fine since he's not a big talker anyway (we'll get into his dialogue later), and a random naked Riddick moment, but after a point it got old. They could have snipped a bit of this and shortened the 2 hour run time. Although for 2 hours it does go by quick.

Once the action kicks in however, Riddick is back in all his glory. The Mercs show up and all hell breaks loose. Riddick hunts them while they hunt him, nothing new, but still pretty awesome. One character, Dahl, was the only one that kept me interested of the supporting characters. She's the only female, she's tough as nails, and watching her beat up one of the guys more than once was great. She has a great line "I don't fuck guys. I do fuck them up on occasion." Made me like her even more. Other than that I was just waiting to see how Riddick killed the other Mercs off.

As I said earlier Riddick is a man of few words and when he speaks it's direct and to the point. For some reason this script kept putting words in his mouth that were completely out of character and sometimes that little smirk Vin Diesel had on his face I swear was because he was thinking "Am I really saying this?" He says "I'll ride it like I stole it" at one point and I understand it was probably a reference to Fast and Furious, but it didn't fit with Riddick for me. His dialogue aside, the action scenes for him were pure Riddick. The scene in the preview where he kicks the knife across the room leads to a spectacular death scene and everyone in the theater cheered (ok there were 6 of us in there so it was more of a group "that was awesome")

I'm not going to tell you don't see it. For the most part unless it's Sharknado I'm never going to to tell you don't bother seeing something. I'd wait until it's at RedBox or streaming on Netflix though. You can stop reading now if you don't want to read a spoiler about the end of the movie. I won't be mad if you do.

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So there's a scene near the end where Riddick gets stabbed by one of the monsters in the dark and has a hole in his chest the size of a tin can. The guy he's with throws a grenade of sorts that leaves white hot baseball sized pieces of rock on the ground near a slowly bleeding out Riddick. So what does he do? Channels Rambo and grabs one of the scorching hot baseballs and cauterizes the wound. I had a moment of "really guys?" He then proceeds to climb up the side of a jagged cliff fighting the monsters the whole way up losing his weapons the further he climbs and there's a shot of him beating the things with his fists while the thunder cracks and the lightening strikes (I almost ended up in a Meatloaf song there for a minute, anyway) it wasn't my cup of tea, but worked for the climatic ending I guess. In which Dahl comes down on a rescue tether and proceeds to straddle Riddick to tie him into the other harness and she asks him "Is this what you like?" as he grabs her ass while they're both hoisted into the hovering ship. I had to laugh at that moment. I saw it coming from a mile away, but it was great. Trust me I'd never say no if asked to straddle Riddick. Vin Diesel would have to at least take me to dinner first though :)

The Conjuring

Silent Hill 2 is next up, but since I just saw this I figured I would get this one out while it was still fresh.

The Conjuring 2013

Based on a true story...uh huh...

Ok this story may be along the same lines as The Entity (a favorite of mine) when it comes to being based on a true story and if that's the case I'm picking up my cross collecting habit again just in case. After seeing the movie I had almost changed my mind about the Warrens. Then I read up on the "true story" The Conjuring is based on and I went right back to my former way of thinking.

Now I respect Ed and Lorraine Warren for doing what they do, and I believe that they believe that they are doing good. However seeing this movie and looking into the happenings and aftermath makes me shake my head. I know better than to mess with certain things and there's a reason I don't watch too many possession movies.  It's too real for me. These events are things that could and really have happened. SAW is fake and awesome. The Exorcist (as I've already explained) freaks the fuck out of me!!

******Spoilers*******

Now some of the things I found out about the real story were quite interesting. The family isn't really sure how the Warren's came to know about their story. There was another paranormal investigator who came to know the family named Keith Johnson who had his own experiences in the house prior to, and since, the Warren's did their thing. Keith stills talks to the family and still visits the house. He says he thinks that the Warren's may have heard about what was going from someone in his group but isn't sure either.

The family lived in the house for a decade. Right after they moved in they start experiencing things but things didn't get really bad until a couple of the younger kids were playing with a Ouija board. It was after this that the spirit of what they think was a woman named Bathsheba came through and started torturing their mother. Now minus the Ouija board that whole thing is in the movie. The story behind Bathsheba told in the movie is pretty much word for word what the family found out about her.

There were other ghosts in the house besides her and the little boy in the movie. While the house was active the cellar and the barn on the property were the major hot spots. The current owners still have experiences now but nothing near as bad as what the Perron family went through.

The story that starts the whole movie is a story from the Warren's archives about a doll named Annabelle that becomes possessed and tries to possess them. The doll in the movie is this freaky looking thing right out of the movie Dolls. The real doll is a Raggedy Ann doll. Which makes me very happy I don't have one floating the house anywhere. Throughout the movie we see Annabelle in her locked glass case with a sign that says "absolutely do not open". You don't have to tell me twice.

We see the Warren's house a few times and we see their room of terror where they keep all the items they've collected over the years, including Annabelle. Ed tells a reporter we have a priest come and bless the room once a month. My question is who's going to take all these items after Lorraine dies? Are they going to someone who can keep them safe and/or the general public safe from the items? I think about these things so you don't have to :)

There's a line at the end of the movie that did make me laugh though. Ed is putting the music box from the Perron house in their room of terror and Lorraine pops in at the top of the stairs after speaking with the priest who is their go to guy "there's a case in Long Island he wants us to look into" meaning the Amityville case. The itty bitty cameo by the real Lorraine Warren also made me giggle. They guy next to me looked over at me like what is your issue so I told him and then he giggled too.

Over all I enjoyed the movie. I like Lily Taylor anyway so it was fun watching her be possessed and nuts. Like I said I'm not a fan of the Warren's, but this was a cool story and an interesting version of events. I'm on the hunt for copies of the books at some of my local used book stores. Go see the movie it's a good scare and even got me to jump a few times. You really start to feel for the poor family with everything you watch then go through.

Night kids!
Lola

Silent Hill: Part 1

Silent Hill - 2006 Part 1

Silent Hill : Revelation 3D 2012 Part 2
(So much Silent Hill goodness it couldn't be contained to just one post!)

*There are spoilers galore all over this thing so I would say go watch the movie or skip to the synopsis link then come back to the top and read away*

Since a friend is borrowing my Texas Chainsaw dvd I'm going to do Silent Hill for this post. I'm going to attempt to not devote my whole post to saying "that was in the game and it was so geeky awesome that it was in the movie too" for both of these, but that's going to be hard.

The History of Silent Hill-backstory: 

Back in the day there was a little console known as Playstation. It was a tiny little grey box that opened my eyes to the new revolution in video games, Crash Bandicoot!!! Yeah I was a sucker for those titles. Anywho, there was also a game that I wouldn't become aware of until much later in my gaming life, called Silent Hill. Now the big thing about Silent Hill was the graphics. Namely the fog. It was all encompassing and  made you as the player not be able to see a foot in front of you or see what was coming at you, so basically it worked like fog should! At the time it was high tech gaming graphics man!

After the first game came sequel after sequel that for once designers didn't change much and the players didn't bitch about what did change for the most part. Some die hard fans will tell you Silent Hill 4: The Room is the bastard step-child of the sequels and even most non-die hard fans will agree, but they still played it because it had the Silent Hill name. I haven't given it a chance yet so I won't comment on it either way. What I will say is that I've played scary games and I've played games that claim to be scary and all the Silent Hill games that I've played are scary and awesome!!!

 Hollywood moves into Silent Hill-It's a movie: 

Now I had heard through the wonders of the internet that someone had purchased the rights to the game series and wanted to make a movie. I had not played any of the games at this point, but knew of them and how creepy they were. When the trailers finally came out and on set photos started showing up it caught my interest to say the least. I went on a hunt to find the original games for my still worked when it wanted to PS2 and at that time was SOL. When I found out the the Borg Queen, Alice Krige, was starring as the big bad of the movie I was even more into it. I wear my Trekkie stripes proud people. 

I credit the first Silent Hill movie to starting my love affair with Sean Bean dying as well. But he didn't die in this movie you say? I know but it made me aware of the fact that he dies in practically everything I've ever seen him in up to and following Silent Hill (Game of Thrones and LOTR ring a bell?) I had no idea who Radha Mitchell was so I had no preconceived notions about her. Although now I always go oh that's the mom from Silent Hill. Anyway, I was very excited to see if they would be able to pull off the creepy feeling of Silent Hill that at the time I had only heard about.

The plot thickens...nope it's just the fog or ash whatever- The story:

The basic plot of the movie is loosely based on the game. The game is centered around Harry Mason who takes his daughter Cheryl on a vacation in the harbor town of Silent Hill. I guess the writers thought a mother/daughter story would be better for the general movie going public? The movie follows Rose (Mitchell), her husband Christopher (Bean), and their daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland also plays Alessa, Sharon's "twin"). Sharon is plagued by horrific nightmares of Silent Hill and is prone to sleepwalking because of them. After a particularly close call (she almost pulls a Gage Creed) Rose decides to take her daughter to Silent Hill and try to figure out why her daughter is plagued by this town. They run into a cop named Cybil Bennett (character from the game played by Laurie Holden {Walking Dead}) who thinks that Sharon may need help and follows Rose towards Silent Hill only to become trapped there as well. As much as I wold love to tell you the whole story here is a synopsis of the movie (oh and spoilers, it's a synopsis duh!) and you can find a full synopsis of the game here. On wards and up wards.

Now there are 2 stories happening concurrently during this movie and it may have confused people who had never played the games or made the simple connection of what the falling ash and fog meant vs the clear skies and sun. Christopher finds the note she left saying "I'm taking our crazy daughter to the town she wakes up screaming about every night to see if it will cure her. Bye honey don't forget to grab some milk." He rushes to the town only to find the gate closed (that his wife blew through earlier) and his way barred. We see many scenes where Rose walks through a hallway followed by Christopher and they can't see or hear each other, but they can sense each other. I thought this was a good story telling device to show that Silent Hill isn't part of our world unless it wants you. 

The actual story is a bit odd at times with how many stories you are treated to. If you're not someone who has the ability to follow multiple story lines in a movie you may get lost at times between what Sean Bean is doing in his world and what Radha Mitchell is doing in Silent Hill and/or Otherworld. Especially at the end. There's actually three different realities you are seeing throughout the movie. The Real World, Silent Hill, and Otherworld. The easiest way to tell them apart is how they look. The real world looks normal, bright and sunny etc. Silent Hill looks like a blizzard of ash and fog, gloomy and grey. Otherworld looks like hell, bloody and burnt. Got that covered right? OK moving on.

That would never happen on Wysteria Lane - Plot aspects that make you go hmmm -

I wasn't too convinced on the cult back story as to why they did what they did to Alessa. She's the bastard child of someone, but because her mother won't name the father the poor kid is labeled a witch and must be cleansed? And that cleansing takes place in a hidden room in a hotel in down town Silent Hill. The cult I know anything about is the cult of personality (great song!!) so who knows what crazy ideas get into their heads, but burning a child to death just because her mom is a slut is a bit out there. Alice Krige plays Christabella, the head of the cult, and she is divinely creepy. When we first meet her we have just watched Pyramid Head rip the flesh off one of her disciples like he was ripping glue off his finger after a heavy day of crafting in grade school. One of my favorite scenes in a horror movie ever. She leads everyone in prayer against the outsiders and says they will get what's coming to them yada yada yada. Throughout the rest of the movie she proceeds to walk that fine line between creepy and well uber creepy all the way until her demise from a one night stand with razor wire. That scene reminded me of the tree scene from Evil Dead (the original and the remake). She at one point figures out who Rose is looking for and sends her people after her and Cybil. It was a total Invasion of the Body Snatchers moment. 

Rose's phone drove me nuts as well. Rose had a Sony Ericsson T200 monochrome brick style phone. That phone was released in 2002-2003 so it was only 3 years old max when the movie was filmed and yet seemed ancient to me for some reason. It may have had something to do with me working for a certain giant pink cell phone company at the time so I was using Blackberries and Windows mobile phones all the time in stead of the basic monochrome phones. The one thing I kept saying throughout the movie was holy shit that phone gets great reception. I don't remember her getting it on the lanyard thing, where it spent the 90% of the movie, nor did I know anyone who used them because you phone became like Flava Flav's clock. It was just weird.

The nurse in the red sweater was another huh? moment. Her whole thing was that she was curious about Alessa while she was in the burn unit. Oh yeah she survives the burning and is brought to the hospital. I had no clue what this character meant in the grand scheme of things other than she was one of the first victims of Alessa's rage. Ok, but....why? Now when I had first seen the movie I had no clue she was so integral to the game. Now I still say she could have been much better character in the movie and knowing that Alessa started to mistake her caring for her as true affection not just a nurse's work makes her eyes make much more sense. 

Is that a Pyramid on your head or are you just happy to see me - The characters:

We see many of the "monsters" of Silent Hill, but none are more infamous in pop culture than Pyramid Head and the Brookhaven/Alchemilla Hospital Nurses. I was very excited to see them in the flesh. One thing I noticed about Pyramid Head was that he has no pants on, at least the actor in the movie didn't, I'll have to play the game again to check that out. The costume was amazing. The full head piece with bloody latex apron and giant sword was beautiful. I highly recommend watching the making of special feature on the DVD. It shows a lot about how they did what they did. For example watching Pyramid Head learning to walk in his crazy lifted shoes and how they got the guy bound in barbed wire in bathroom stall to crawl out (both played by the same actor btw).

The Nurses were what I was really excited about. I had heard about them, and seen screen shots, and seen hundreds of cosplays, but I wanted to see them in the movie so bad. I wasn't disappointed and seeing them react the same way they do in the game was even better. When Rose put her light on them and they started walking the click click of their heels was enough for me. The Armless Man is awesome as well. 

Cybil at first to me was just a means to an end character. A way to bring in a character from the game and have her be a part of the story line and not just a cameo at the gas station. I was ok with that, but she was still just there for me. Then the above mentioned scene happened and her back story was explained to Christopher and I changed my tune a bit. I was more happy to have her in the story and helping Rose after that. It didn't seem like crazy cop follows mother and daughter into strange town because kid had a freak out in front of her and mom sped off. By the end of the movie I liked her, I liked her even more when I started watching Walking Dead and realized who was playing Andrea. 

Alessa/Sharon is not someone I would ever want to meet up with in a dark alley like Rose does. Alessa has 2 incarnations not including Sharon, Dark Alessa and burned Alessa. Dark Alessa is wicked creepy but when she explains who she and Sharon really are and what happened you start routing for her. When Rose lets her come inside her so she can infiltrate the church I kind of had a hell yeah bitch moment. When she's skipping around while Burned Alessa is wreaking havoc she became my favorite character in the movie.  

OMG that's from the game sqee!-stuff that I didn't mention above:

Just before Christabella sends her goons after Rose and Cybil she points to a room on the floor map and tells Rose to memorize the way there. We see a shot of the map and it's styled like the internal building maps from the game. We also see this at the hotel briefly and the bus stop map is set up like the game town map. There are several characters from the game Cybil, Alessa, Sharon (Cheryl in the game), Dahlia Gillespie, Pyramid Head, Straight Jacket/Armless Man/Lying Figure, Nurses, Grey Children, Creepers, and Nurse Lisa. SH: Revelation has way more but that's for another post. I know there's more that just aren't coming to my brain right now. I'll update as I remember them. 

Ok this thing is almost as epic as the Silent Hill series and there's another post for the second game! I will end for now and try not to take as long with the second one. Please rip me apart for things I missed or feel free to add on to the list of game references in the movie. 

OK guys I promise there's something in the pipeline. Been crazy busy and haven't been watching many horror flicks in the past few weeks. However there are a few new movies coming out and a few Netflix items that have been intriguing me as of late. Silent Hill is the current topic I'm writing about and with 2 movies and a shit load of games to talk about it's petty epic.

Keep watching boils and ghouls I promise something terrible is about to happen.....

Lola

The Exorcist

1973
Director: William Friedkin
Starring: Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow, Mercedes McCambridge

Basic story: 12 year old Regan becomes possessed by the demon Pazuzu. Her mother seeks the help of "an old priest and a young priest" to free her daughter from this possession. (And the sales of pea soup plummeted)

Ahh, The Exorcist, it's a classic. I will admit that this movie freaked the shit out of me for years. I saw it one night and refused to watch it ever again. Then the 25th anniversary came around and I was working at the local Blockbuster video store. We got so much crap in to advertise for it that I felt like ok it's time. My SO at the time had never seen it either and we both said "let's turn all the lights on in the living room, sit on the couch and do this shit!!!!"

I decided to watch the special features first. I figured if I ruined the special effects and knew all the back stories on how everything was done then it wouldn't be as scary. Yeah I was wrong. While the way they made "help me" appear on Linda Blair's stomach was pretty cool and listening to Mercedes McCambridge's audio clips of rehearsing the demon voice was creepy and cool all at the same time. I was still freaked. The head turning around scenes still scare the shit out of me to this day!!!!

When the movie was originally released people were supposedly fainting and running screaming from the theaters. It has been stated that the scenes that caused most of these reactions were specific scenes where Regan is undergoing various diagnostic procedures requiring large needles to be inserted in her neck, etc. If modern horror movies elicited that reaction, regardless if it was the blood and guts or not, it would either shut down the horror heyday we've been enjoying or from then on we would get nothing but insane horror movies that aren't fun anymore. Look at the initial outcry regarding the first Saw movie. If The Exorcist were released today it would still be an awesome movie, but wouldn't have the same affect. I'm not saying that we're desensitized or anything, I just think it would be pure CGI and the impact that the practical effects made would be lost.

Think about it. They had to build a rig to make Linda Blair's head spin around backwards, not just CG it. The "help me" on her skin was created by building a false torso out of foam latex, painting the words on it with cleaning fluid and filming the chemical reaction. A heat gun was used on the forming words causing the blisters to deflate. Then the film was run backwards in editing making the effect look like the words were rising out of the skin. Mind Blown!!!! Guys I work in theater and have had the pleasure of working in haunted attractions. I understand the concept of how special effects can scare someone and how those effects are created. It still blows my mind. Fishing line attached to latex pieces on Linda Blair's leg and pulled from off screen created the effect of her skin being flayed as "The power of Christ" compels her to stop floating above the bed. Seriously check out the making of features on the anniversary DVD at some point. The amount of Macguyvering they did was crazy.

The movie still holds up today as some really scary shit. Every time I watch it I have to watch something with fluffy bunnies and unicorns afterwards. My brain keeps Linda Blair's contacts burned into my short term memory for at least 3 days. I tried reading the book at one point and it ended up getting thrown across the room. My ceiling fan was making knocking noises right as I got the scene where Ellen Burstyn's character hears knocking noises on the ceiling access door to the attic. I was done. Book was thrown, sleep never happened, have no idea where the book is now and it can stay where it is thank you very much. As much as I like reading the book and watching the movie version to see what's different this is one book I will leave unread.

While the movie does scare the hell out of me and I won't be adding it to my DVD library anytime soon, you will hear me request a young priest and an old priest at times when my laptop decides to do something funky. Pea soup comments abound in conversations about being sick. It's a classic and I will force people who have never seen it and call themselves horror fans to watch it. I'll just make sure all the lights are on and there's lots of My Little Pony ready to put on afterwards.

Ok. It's been a long day and now I need fluffy bunnies and unicorns.

Next up: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2013)

How horror became part of my life and why I think it's awesome

I want this blog to be the place where I can review the movies I'm watching and hopefully talk to other people who like horror as much as I do. For now here's how this mild mannered girl became a fan of creepy, scary, bloody disgusting things.

When I was 6 I asked my grandmother if we could rent Pet Cemetary from the local video store (yes there was a time long ago when you had to leave your house to rent a VHS to watch at home). She tried to tell me it wasn't a kids movie, but I wouldn't listen and she rented it to prove her point. At the part where the guy turns his head to the camera and half his head was missing I tapped out. Ginny was right it wasn't a kids movie, but while I was terrified of it then, now...I'm still terrified of it. Can't watch Pet Cemetary at all, almost 24 years later. Gage Creed still freaks me out.

After that I was a typical girl. Loved boy bands (NKOTB was the shit, yo), Barbie (although my Barbie had to marry my Michael Jackson doll because Ken had an accident where he lost both his legs), playing dress up (big theatre family so my "playing dress-up" often involved a stage with actual lighting and props), all the things little girls did growing up in the 80's and 90's. At some point I found Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine and never put a book of their's down for a solid decade. That's where my love of scary things started to grow.

I had always been into vampires (yes I thought they were sexy, still do, but not if they sparkle, vampires don't fucking sparkle), but I wasn't into horror movies just horror books. One Halloween while getting ready to go out I was watching Nightmare on Elm Street on AMC, and I got hooked into the movie. I had to watch them all after that. The long and short of it is that Freddie popped my horror cherry. He'll always be my first ::sniff::.

After that I was lucky enough to get a job at the local Blockbuster in my town and had free employee rentals to quench my thirst. I started at the beginning of the aisle and worked my way through the horror section one movie at a time. When I ran out of horror movies I started on the Sci-Fi and Action sections until there was something new. Back then horror movies weren't the bread and butter of Hollywood like they are now. There were times that I had to wait 3-6 months before a new horror movie showed up on the shelf. One of my co-workers had written and filmed a horror movie that was on our shelves (I know what was he doing working at a Blockbuster in the middle of Massachusetts? Again if his movie had come out now with the cast it has {Seth Green, Alice Cooper, Ted Raimi, Jeffery Combs} it would probably have lead to a career, but then not so much) He suggested other movies to watch that I had skipped over thinking they weren't very good just from reading the box. I never would have watched John Carpenter's The Thing or Meet the Feebles (not horror per say, but quite horrifying for some who grew up watch the Muppets).

Once I got into college I started working at the haunted houses in town. Oh I went to college in Salem (couldn't foster a love of horror anywhere better than the Halloween capital of Massachusetts). I had way more fun scaring the shit out of people all day than I should have!!!! This is also when I discovered survival horror games like Fatal Frame.

Now I enjoy sitting on my couch with a glass of wine or a good beer and watching the latest Hostel movie or enjoying a classic 80's slasher flick like Sleepaway Camp. Pinhead and Freddie are my favorite horror icons. I love Silent Hill (games and movies thank you). I've even tried to convince my father that underneath the all the traps and gore Jigsaw was actually trying to do some good for the world.

Enjoy!!