Unknown Sequels

There are times I will run across a movie that I had no idea was made. Mostly I mean movies that maybe I had thought would make a good movie, from comics or TV shows or whatever else my mind thinks of. Mostly I mean sequels though. Take the movie The Blob for example. I knew there was a remake to the film but I didn't know there was once a sequel made to the originaly film. One day I was just clicking at random on horror movies on Netfilx, I ran across a movie called Beware! The Blob (1972) and thought "What's this?" I almost bumped it up in the queue but figured I would just get around to it eventually. That time is now and I can't say, after watching it, that I am glad for that.

As you can tell from the picture, Beware! The Blob was directed by Larry Hagman. He was also in the movie somewhere but I managed to miss him because he plays a hobo. What I did see for the opening credits was a kitten. It was walking around, rolling around, basicly just being a kitten out in a field. Believe it or not, this does play into the actual plot of the movie...kinda sorta. The kitten ends up being food for the blob you see. Chester (Godfrey Cambridge) has a frozen sample of the blob in his freezer. When his wife leaves it sitting out it thaws out and once again, the blob is on the rampage. The first person to see it, and live, is Lisa Clark (Gwynne Gilford). She sees Chester covered by the blob and somehow knows he is being desolved by it. She jumps in her track and races over to her boyfriend's place and runs Edward Fazio (Richard Stahl) who becomes a somewhat important character later on in the movie. Bobby (Robert Walker Jr.) heads back to Chester's with Lisa. As they pass Edward, who is now agrueing with the Sheriff (Richard Webb), he points out Lisa to the Sheriff and they both go see what is going on. Of course they aren't believed until it almost to late!

Beware! The Blob has very few effects in it. Mostly they just envolve the blob being in front of the camera. There are only a couple of shots that try and give us an idea of how big the blob is getting with each feeding. One of the nice things about the remake was that they actually tried to show what the blob did to people. You will find nothing like that, not even a suggestion outside of what someone says, here in this movie. The acting is ok, not great but not bad either. I will get into what I thought was wrong with the acting here in just a little bit further into the review. From what I was reading, this movie features a lot of people from 70's TV. This is a bit before my time so I don't really know if this is true or not. I do remember Richard Stahl from a couple of different shows that came later. Robert Walker Jr. I think I know from somewhere but can't place him. The one person that I knew right away though was Dick Van Patten who plays a scoutmaster. Acording to his troup, something happens to their scoutmaster but we never see that.

As much as I wanted to like this sequel, I just couldn't. The acting was playing it off as a somewhat serious movie for the most part. There was some acting that played it off like the camp movie that it is but the lead actors were treating it a little more serious and it is the contradiction that spoils Beware! The Blob for me. If you want to make a campy movie then that is fine by me but go all out with it. I did enjoy some parts. How they finished off the blob and what happened right after I have to admit was pretty good but the ending alone doesn't save this one. If you like campy movies then you might give this a try but I know I will stear clear of it from now on.
2 out of 5 Wondering if my older readers had any "clackers"

Old Is New Again

A little over a year ago, I reviewed the 2005 version of House Of Wax. To be honest, I don't really remember if I had ever watched the original movie or not. Since Netflix has the movie on dvd now I decided this would be a good way to catch it. The dvd is a double feature of sorts. Not only does it include the original House Of Wax (1953) but also the movie that it was remake of, The Mystery Of The Wax Museum (1933). So the question is, should I make this a double feature review? Oh ok, you all talked me into it.

If you watch both of these movies then you will see that House Of Wax is more of a true remake than the 2005 remake was. The Mystery Of The Wax Museum starts off in London where Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill) has a wax museum. He shows his creations to a man that is interested in trying to get them into the royal gallery. However, Igor's partner Joe Worth (Edwin Maxwell) has other ideas. He wants a return on the money that he has invested and figures the quickest way to do that is to collect the insurance money after the place has burnt down. Igor tries to stop him but the place burns down around him. 12 years later in New York City, a new wax museum is about to open. We find Igor, in a wheel chair and now unable to sculp because of his burnt hands, getting ready for the grand opening.

There is also a female reporter (surprised me in a way that a female would be given such a big role in so early a film) Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell) who is on the verdge of losing her job if she doesn't come up with a big story. She finds one when she happens to be at the police station when the report of a corpse being taken from the morgue. While at the wax museum, she makes a discovery, one of the wax figures looks a lot like the corpse that was so recently reported missing. Her friend Charlotte (Fay Wray) has caught Igor's eye. He is still missing what he considered his greatest work, Marie Antoinettem, who he thinks Charlotte would make the perfect model for.

House Of Wax pretty much follows the same story. There are a few changes so this isn't a straight up remake but you can see that the two movies are very close in story. The 2005 remake is a completely different story when placed against these two films. House Of Wax sees Vincent Price take over the lead role which has had a name change to Henry Jarrod. Phyllis Kirk plays Sue Allen which takes the place of the Charlotte role. Sue Allen is who puts everything together this time since it is the woman she is living with who is killed and shows up at the museum later. The main difference between the two films is that the reporter role has been taken out and the scared figure is seem a lot more in House Of Wax.

With both films being much older you won't find any effects outside of makeup effects. In both cases they did a good job with the scared makeup. The acting is where both films shine through. Vincent Price wins out for my choice between the two lead actors. Then again, Price is hard to beat when it comes to horror movies. As much as I like Fay Wray, she wasn't given a very big role in this one. Towards the end of the movie, all she would do is scream a lot. Not saying that Phyllis Kirk didn't do the same but she was given a lot more before that time. Glenda Farrell was good as the reporter but her New York accent and how fast she talked at times was making it a little hard for me to understand everything that she said. The one person that surprised me most was Charles Bronson. He doesn't have a speaking line since he is a mute in the film but you can see he is going to be an action star right away since he gets a big fight scene with Sue's boyfriend as he tries to save her.

One problem I had with both movies is that Ivan/Henry is supposed to be wearing a mask in order to hide that he is now scared from the fire. This was one hell of a mask! No one catches on that it is a mask he has on and the mask moves in a very realistic way, probably because it wasn't a mask until the big reveal. An interesting side note to this. From what I was reading, Fay Wray didn't know what the makeup was going to look like until the mask was broken away. She wasn't there before hand to see what it looked like so prehaps her reaction to it is more realistic because of this.

Both films are interesting to watch. The Mystery Of The Wax Museum because of the way people dressed and talked, the words that were used as well. Seemed like all the women had thin eyebrows. I know it is an odd thing to notice but I did. The version I watched on this dvd was in color. I don't know if it was filmed that way or if it was added in much later. I did read one review that said it was filmed in "two-tone color" which is why some of the wax figures were actually real people. The lights used to film it in two-tone color would have created to much heat and would have melted the wax. From what people have said, you can see some of the wax figures move or blink at times. I never noticed but then it has to be a pretty big movie mistake for me to take notice of it. I don't study the film like some people do in order to catch every little mistake.

House Of Wax was interesting to watch because it was orignally filmed in 3D. Sadly the dvd transfer was not in 3D but you can see where things would have been in 3D still. A man with ball paddles on opening night trying to get people to go into the museum. The balls being hit towards the camera. Some ladies dancing and the camera zooming in durring the high kicks. As a kid I remember some movies on TV being in 3D. My dad having to adjust the TV for the movie and me trying to sit there waiting for the movie to start with my 3D glasses already on. So it would have been nice to have seen this movie in 3D. If you happen to find this double feature dvd, or just add it to your Netflix queue if you have that, then I would suggest you check it out. Neither film is great but they are fun to watch.
3 out of 5 Check for wax the next time you go to a wax museum! (for both)

Something Is Creeping

This movie was sent to me via Netflix in early January. January 10th if you really want to know. I was going to review it and another movie or two before getting to the tribute. Nearly two months later, I'm just now getting around to it. I probably haven't gotten my money out of Netflix durring that month and I'm barely going to this month I think. The good news is I was actually in a movie mood today so maybe my spirits are getting back to normal again. I have some older movies to get through, including this one. I like these movies because, for the most part, they have to fall back more on acting than todays films do. Todays films still have some good acting in them but it seems the writers and directors of today use special effects more and more to try and get the scare across when the older movies show us that you don't always need effects to do that.


The Creeping Flesh (1973) isn't a real old movie but its getting there with each passing year. Emmanuel Hildern (Peter Cushing) is back from Papua New Guinea with a discovery that he is very excited about. He believes he has discovered some bones that predate earliest known man. The skeleton is very big and seems to be able to hold itself together very well even though it gets moved around at times. While cleaning it with water, Emmanuel is shocked when flesh starts to grow where he was cleaning it! He cuts the finger off at the second finger joint but must later in the film the whole finger is gone. Even so he starts to examine the blood and comes up with a theory. He has a book that talks about a god like race that was highly devolped and also very evil. Legend has it that a big rain storm would get the bones wet and the evil would sweep across the lands. This explains why the bones were found deep in a cave at least.


Emmanuel has a bad habit of ignoring everything and everyone while he is in his lab. This includes his daughter Penelope (Lorna Heilbron). She is trying hard to get her dad's attention since her mother died long ago...or did she? While checking his mail, he gets a letter from his brother James (Christopher Lee) telling Emmanuel that his wifed died while he was on his trip. Emmanuel goes to see his brother who happens to be running an insane asylum where Emmanuel's wife was under a doctors care. Of course Penelope eventually finds out and isn't all that happy with dad.


Emmanuel finds out that the cells from the blood of this "god" attacks and infects our own cells. From this he feels that evil is a disease that can be cured and sets about doing just that. Although he doesn't find the cure, he does find a way to keep the disease from taking over our own cells. Or so he thinks anyways. We see that while it works at first, it doesn't work over a period of time. Instead of waiting, Emmanuel injects this into his daughter. What happens to Penelope? What happens when James discovers that Emmanuel may have a cure for madness that James has been seeking as well?


I wasn't expecting much from The Creeping Flesh because it came out in 1973 and also because it was rated PG. I wasn't expecting much and I got even less. The growing flesh was done using stop-motion which is something you just don't see anymore. The monster, or whatever you want to call it, was something I was curious about. I figured that at some point we would see what it would look like fully fleshed out. I was curious to see how it would look because the skeleton is so oddly shaped. They were smart in not showing us what it looks like fleshed out until the end of the movie. It was also a major disappointment. It had no eyes but yet manages to see everything all the same.



The acting is great however. Most reviews praised The Creeping Flesh because of Cushing and Lee being in it together. Lee gets top billing even though his character is really just a secondary character. Cushing plays the main character and his acting gets to range out in this one. Heilbron also does a great job. She is very believeable as the sweet daughter and also as the more violent insane daughter.


For me, The Creeping Flesh fails with the story. It starts out interesting enough but then gets a bid side tracked with a side story about a guy that escapes the asylum. While this does eventually run into the side story of Penelope, it does take a little to long to bring both stories together and even then it doesn't come together with the best results. They kind of leave the skeleton behind for a while when all this is going on and never really explain what will happen once this skeleton has come back to life. Is it truely evil? Does it really cause madness like it did for Penelope or was that something inherited from her mother? The Creeping Flesh ends up leaving more questions than answers in the end. It also drags along with nothing or very little happening at times. Unless you are just a big Cushing and Lee fan, I wouldn't really bother with this one.
2 out of 5 Missing fingers

Pranks Gone Bad

One day while looking through Netflix, I came across The House On Sorority Row (1983) and I remembered seeing a review, don't remember if I actually read the review but I did before I started writing my own, over on Final Girl's blog. Final girl gave this movie high marks and I have noticed that a lot of people do the same thing. I agree with Final Girl most of the time. We seem to enjoy the same type of movies for the most part. This time though I will have to go against her and seemingly everyone else as well. Maybe after Final girl reads this we can fight it out if she wishes. She is older so I think I can take her.

The House On Sorority Row starts with a woman giving birth. After the birth the doctor tells her that is he sorry and the woman screams. Years and years later we pick up on the story again. This time though the woman is the den mother, Mrs. Dorthy Slater (Lois Kelso Hunt). She closes her house to the sorority girls for the summer. She is very demanding that everyone is out of the house by June 19th. Vicki (Eileen Davidson) has other ideas though. Since this is it for her and some of the other girls, time to set off into the world you see, Vicki wants to throw one last party. The only problem is, Dorthy doesn't want them there, at all. After Vicki gets busted, along with her waterbed, having sex with her boyfriend, Vicki swears to have her revenge on Dorthy. With the help of the other girls, she comes up with a plan. Vicki has a gun and plans on scaring Dorthy with it.

Meanwhile, we see Dorthy visiting with a doctor (Christopher Lawrence). The doctor is worried about something and doesn't want what he did all those year ago to get out. While back at the house, the girls start setting everything up for the party. When Dorthy discovers this she isn't to happy. The girls took her cane and placed out in the swimming pool. The pool is all dirty looking because Dorthy won't clean it if no one swims in it and the girls don't want to swim in it with it being so dirty. Anyways, they get Dorthy out by the pool and pull the gun on her. The first shot was a real one to make her think they are being serious. After they get her into the water, Vicki fires off a few shots which nothing happens. When Dorthy grabs Vicki she shoots again and Dorthy acts as if struck and falls into the pool. When they pull Dorthy out they discover that she is dead. Katey (Kate McNeil), who is basicly the main character, wants to call for help but is talked out of it by her sisters. Once the party starts, people start to disappear. Is it Dorthy, alive after all? Could it be someone else?

The effects that can be found in The House On Sorority Row, with the exception of one, are very poor. Even director Mark Rosman complained about the effects and said he had to find ways to shoot around them. One way he did this was to show what was happening off screen by using the shadows of the people. We still know what is happening even though we never get to see it. The one effect that I did like was a head in the toilet. Turns out it was very easy to do, just put a fake toilet around the person's head and there you go!

The one area this movie did stand out in was the acting. There are some lines that are said in a funny way when not meant to but over all the acting was good. Kate McNeil and Eileen Davidson both do a wonderful job. The other women that play the sorority sisters are Janis Ward, Robin Meloy, Harley Jane Kozak (who I was trying to figure out where I has seen her before durring the whole movie, turns out I remembered her from the movie Necessary Roughness), Jodi Draigie and Ellen Dorsher. Michael Kuhn and Michael Sergio have smaller rolles as a couple of the boyfriends.

The House On Sorority Row isn't the worst of the slashers to be found but I could never really get into the story to much. It was nice that the girls brought this onto themselves instead of just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It has a fairly normal run time at and hour and thirty two minutes but it still felt overly long to me. Maybe I have just watched way to many horror movies because the plot was very easy for me to figure out. Just about ever review I had been reading said this one was an underrated movie. I didn't think that at all. One scene that made me roll my eyes some was when one of the girls is being stalked and she ends up getting sick. The killer didn't see her go into the bathroom as far as I could tell. She gets sick and flushs the toilet. Way to go girlfriend, I'm sure the killer won't notice that sound. After thinking about that some more though I have decided I could see myself doing that very same thing. Flushing the toilet is almost a reflexive action. Like when someone is taking a shower and I tell myself not to flush the toilet but I do it anyways. Not to be mean but because it is just something I am in the habit of doing.

Ok so this movie didn't impress me all that much. I am very much in the minority though so maybe it would be worth it for all of you to check this one out. It isn't often this happens to me. I don't always agree with the majority but for the most part I see things the same way. So my dear readers, I will leave it up to you if you want to watch this one or not. Now if you excuse me, I need to go train some for my upcoming fight with Final Girl.
2 out of 5 Since when did sedatives cause hallucinations?

Tribute: Jamie Lee Curtis

I had planed on doing this post like a month earlier but things didn't work out like I had hoped they would. Plus, at the time, I still couldn't decide who to give tribute to. There are so many women that I could give tribute to and at the same time my mind was coming up with a total blank on the subject. The hardest part for me was deciding on who should be given the title of Scream Queen. Like Final Girl has said, the title is thrown around a little to much now days. It doesn't have the same meaning as it once did. Once upon a time you had to be in several horror films before you became known as a scream queen. Now days if you are in just one movie that happens to be memorible, you are given the title right away. Not to long ago Spike TV had a horror movie awards show in which they had a scream queen award. While I agreed with the winner, Kate Beckinsale, I didn't agree with most of the women they had nominated for the award simply because they had only been in one horror movie. So for me, I wanted to find someone that had been in 3 or more horror movies, perferably even more than 3. Without further ado, my tribute to my first scream queen: Jamie Lee Curtis.

Jamie Lee Curtis was born on November 22, 1958 in Los Angeles, CA. Her parents are Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Both are actors as well. She has an older sister by the same parents, Kelly Curtis. She is currently married to Christopher Guest and they have two adopted children. Jamie got her first break in TV. She was able to be on the same show as her dad, Operation Petticoat. While on break from that show she landed the role of Laurie Strode. As probably all horror fans know, the was the lead roll for Halloween. From there she did a few more horror movies before landing a roll in Trading Places. From there she didn't do any more horror movies, her last being Halloween 2, until the year 1998 when she repraised her role of Laurie Strode for Halloween H2O: 20 Years Later.

The most odd thing I found about Jamie Lee Curtis is a rumor that seems to have been around for a long time now. I personally had never heard of it before now though. The rumor is that Jamie Lee Curtis was born both male and female. In otherwords, intersexual. That is why she was given the name Jamie Lee and also why she has chosen to adopt instead of having kids herself. The rumor has it that she had an operation as a baby to "make" her female. No one seems to know if this rumor is true and I guess Jamie Lee herself has refused to comment on it. I can care less, she looks all woman to me!

Jamie has been in a lot of movies that I have managed to catch over the years. I don't really have a favorite movie I can point at but I decided on Jamie because she has been in her share of horror movies. Mostly when she was just getting started in movies. I'm pretty sure I have watched all of the horror movies she has been in. According to A German magazine, she is about ready to retire from acting. I've always enjoyed her movies. The only movie I didn't like her role in would have been in The Fog. I felt in that one she was just there the biggest part of the time. No real fault of her own I don't think though. So there you have it, my first scream queen tribute. I hope you all liked it since I don't think I did a very good job with it! As before, a review will follow so keep reading if you will.

The movie I selected to review for this tribute would be my second favorite horror movie that Jamie Lee Curtis was in. That would be Prom Night. Prom Night starts off with a group of kids playing a variation of hide and seek. They hide from the person that is it and when the person is done counting they yell out that the killer is coming. A bit strange, I have to admit but then I used to play ghost in the graveyard so I can't say much. They are playing this game in an old run down building that is very big. A smaller group is walking by, we find out this group is family, two sisters and a brother. The middle sister wants to see what is going on so hangs back and eventually joins in on the game but the others don't seem to like this so take the time to scare her by telling her the killer is coming and chanting kill over and over again. They do what they inteded to do, scare the girl but by doing so, she falls to her death. The kids swear to never talk about what happened and they take off for home.

Six years later they are all in high school and getting ready for the biggest night of the year, prom night. Robin's (Tammy Bourne) family is still troubled by her death. It seems that it has hit her mom the worst. Kim (Jamie Lee Curtis) is the oldest sister and is unknowningly dating Nick (Casey Stevens), one of the kids that was there when her sister was killed. Out of the four, he seems to be the only one that acts troubled by what happened. At one point he even tries to tell Kim but is unable to do so. Wendy (Anne-Marie Martin) is the one that made everyone swear not to talk about what happened and up until we start to get to know them now, has been dating Nick. The last two would be Kelly (Mary Beth Rubens) and Jude (Joy Thompson). It starts with a man sitting by a list with each of their names on the list and he calls them. In a half whispered voice, he basicly tells them that he will be seeing them tonight.

The main problem with Prom Night is that it is so easy to know who is doing the killing. This would have been solved by a simple fix really. Instead of telling us the back story of what happened to Robin right away, they should have held back and told us towards the end of the movie. Because we are told right away what happens to Robin, it is easy to figure out who the killer is and why he is doing the killing. To make matters worse, when the killer is calling up his intended victims, they flash back to each of the kids so we know who is who. The writers try and throw us off the trail by added a side story or two that gives other motives but they are not that convincing to make you believe it is someone else.

That and the fact that there really is next to no gore to be found is what keeps Prom Night from being a true classic. The acting is where this one stands out. Jamie Lee Curtis gets her groove on durring a truely disco moment. The biggest surprise to me, even now, is Leslie Nielsen. I have always watched him in less than serious rolls. I don't remember him in a serious roll except for Airplane and even that wasn't a serious movie. He just acted somewhat serious to get the comedy across better. David Mucci also has a fairly big roll and is involved in one of the side plots. He is the bad boy of the school.

The best moment in Prom Night for me was when the first kill happened. We don't get to see the throat being cut open but we do get a close up of her face and the film slows down even though the killers voice is still in real time. I thought that was a pretty cool kill. So not everything is bad about Prom Night. I just thought it could have been so much better if they had told the story in a slightly different way. Since this took me three days to type out, ran out of time sunday and had big time headache yesterday and part of today, I hope it turned out alright. I'm hoping to start posting again at a more regular way, lets see if I am able to yes?

3 out of 5 Being killed by one swing of an axe = one wimpy killer

Something Different

Since I have yet to watch another movie, I decided to try my hand at a different form of review. A few months back I decided to read a book by Stephen King. I have read some of his books in the past. The hardest to get through was his book It. I say that because I was very busy at the time so on some days I didn't read at all or just managed to get a few pages in. But mostly it was because I found it hard to figure out where in time I was in. If you have read the book then you know that the central characters are in basicly two different stories that are tied together. The present day and when they were much younger. The problem I had is that since it was the same characters in each story, it took me a little while to figure out if they were in the present or in the past. It was a little confusing but in the end I still enjoyed the over all story.

With Cell, I never had such a problem. Cell's main character is Clayton (or Clay) Riddell. Clay is in Boston trying to sell his art work/story to a comic book publisher. To his delight, he manages to make the sell. Now all he can think about is calling his wife with the good news and getting back home. He is hoping that this sell will help with his rocky marriage. His wife thinks he should give up his dreams and find a job that helps pay the bills so now that he has sold a story he is hoping that this will change her way of seeing things. By the way, the story and art described by King durring this sounds a lot like his Dark Tower series which I understand is now a comic book.

Before heading back to his hotel room, he decides to stop and treat himself to some icecream. There is a woman in front of him talking on a cell phone and then two teenage girls stop behind him, one talking on a cell phone and the other listening in. While he is standing there waiting and thinking about his wife and son, the lady in front of him drops her phone. Before he can really say anything to her about it, she attacks the icecream vender. Just as suddenly, the teenager that had the phone behind him attacks the lady and even kills her. The other teenager can't seem to remember who she is or where she is and runs off straight into a street lamp poll and starts to run into it over and over again before running off. In fact, all around him things are getting very weird. People are attacking each other and even animals. Cars are crashing everywhere and he starts to hear some explosions. As the world falls apart around him, he meets Tom. Together they make their way to Clay's hotel where they eventually meet up with Alice. Tom turns out to be a gay man while Alice is 15 and quickly became my favorite out of the three characters. Together they decide to make their way north, back to Maine where Clay lives to see if his son and wife were effected by whatever happened to everyone that has a cell phone. Clay's son has a phone and that is all he can think about.

After a day or so they start to see that the "phone crazies" are starting to behave differently. They are seemingly becoming smarter and they are changing. Could this be the start of a war between those that are still normal and the "phone crazies"? Will Clay reach his wife and son? Will they even survive long enough?

Stephen King does a great job at describing what is happening in the world he has created. We don't know that this has happened everywhere but it makes perfect sense that it would have happened everywhere. There are times though that I was wishing he had gone into a little more detail than he did. I understand you don't always want to tell to much, let the reader fill in what he/she thinks should be going on. That can make for a better story if the reader has a good imagination. I feel that I do but, like I said, I had wished that Stephen King had explained the story just a little better.

One thing I have noticed about Stephen King's books is that I always come up to at least one section of the book I feel like I have to force myself through because it either really slows down or I get completely bored with it. I never had that problem with Cell. It starts just a little slow, telling us about Clay and what has been happening in his life up till this point and it expands on that some later in the story. Even so, it is interesting since we get to know Clay and even Tom and Alice to a point that even when one of the three is killed, don't want to say who but I was pretty disappointed, the other characters will pick up the slack and still keep the story moving. The story will slow at times but never to a point that I felt I had to force myself to get through that section to get to the next.

I figured one or more of the main characters would be killed. The hero never dies does get very old and quickly. It just isn't very realistic in my mind. While I was mad at King for the character that did get the axe, it didn't make me so mad that I didn't want to know how the rest of the story played out. The ending was also a bit of a disappointment since King ends the story just as something important is happening. Even so, I really enjoyed the story. So much so that I have managed to read just over half the book, the whole book is 353 pages, in just two days and that is something I have never done before. I tend to be a slow at reading, taking everything in and often rereading things just to make sure I understand everything or to try and figure something out I felt I missed. Not his best story for sure but still a very good one. If you like to read you might give this one a try!
4 out of 5 At least I didn't get mad like I did with Interview With A Vampire

I'm Back

Well everyone, I finaly sat down and watched a movie. I wanted to thank everyone real quick for their thoughts and well wishes for me. They were all very much appreciated. I was only going to do a small write up about Fay as part of a review but the more I thought about things, the more I felt like I had to let things out and this blog was a way to do that. Plus I didn't want everyone to worry about me, to much, because I wasn't around writing up reviews. So once again, thank you all.

The movie I watched today is one I watched about 3 or 4 years ago because I had been reading about it some and it sounded interesting to me. I have it on VHS some where but tonight I watched it on DVD. I went ahead and got Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972) through Netflix because I was interested in seeing if there would be any good extra's. If you happen to be wondering the same thing, there isn't any. Just the trailer and a small photo gallery. An interesting side note is Bob Clark, the director. He has gone on to direct Black Christmas and the first two Porky's movies. He also is a producer for the movie A Chirstmas Story. There is also a remake in the works for this film that will be directed by Bob Clark once again.

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things starts with Alan (Alan Ormsby) taking his theatre troupe to some island that has a cemetery on it. He has a plan you see. He has a spell that will raise the dead but first he wants to scare all of his friends. He has two guys go out there ahead of time and set things up to scare them. They look much like the zombies that will pop up later on and they do their job very well. Alan decides to try out the spell but nothing happens, or does it? Maybe they just didn't wait long enough. Anyways, they take the corpse back to the cabin that is on the island and hang out with it for a good while. In the mean time, the dead start to rise out of their graves and they aren't to happy about it!

The effects aren't the best there can be but remember, this was made in 1972 and the movie is rated PG. The rating alone should tell you that you won't find much as far as effects go. There is some blood to be found but it is used very sparingly. They did a good job with the zombies here. Although there are a few that look a little to blue but it doesn't take away from anything. The acting was pretty good. At least I enjoyed it well enough. You will also find Valerie Mamches, Jeff Gillen, Paul Cronin, Jane Daly, Roy Engleman, Robert Philip, and Bruce Solomon. The one person I decided to talk about in a little more detail is Anya Ormsby. Everyone else seemed pretty normal but not Anya. If anyone should get an odd character award it is Anya. She seemed to be totaly into what was going on or maybe her brain was just fried from to many drugs. Either way, her character (also named Anya) really stood out from the rest.

In truth, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things isn't a great movie. It is a dark movie, some people say it was filmed dark on purpose so you have to turn the lights off in order to see it better. It also moves pretty slow for the first half of the movie. Alan talks a lot and I do mean a lot. All information comes from him and seemingly only him. It is a rare moment that he isn't talking. I liked his acting though so it didn't bother me as much as it has some people but at the same time, it would have been nice if they had allowed the other actors to act a little more. I think the reason I enjoyed this one is because I really wasn't expecting a whole lot out of it. Being a PG movie you pretty much know right away that it isn't going to be a gross out movie like other zombie movies tend to be. Not much blood, no nudity and no swearing can make for a boring horror movie if not done right. I can't say they did everything right here, the plot isn't what you would think of as special but it is a fun movie. If you can get passed the first half that is. Don't expect to take a lot away with you at the end of this movie and I think you will enjoy it as much as I did.
3 out of 5 Sail boating zombies