Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

I just wanted to watch <b>Re-Animator</b> with Joe Bob insert trivia and monologues – a part of the big marathon he thought was his final horror hosting gig that broke Shudder’s site – even though I plan to watch it again this Sunday (I own the Anchor Bay box special edition from 2007 with Herbert on the cover, a fake re-agent included, and a ton of special features I will be revisiting in full). I was in the mood for this warped bloody mayhem. While watching this tonight, I couldn’t help but think to myself throughout…this is really fucked in the head, isn’t it? That scene where Dean Halsey’s lobotomized reanimated corpse with mad eyes and bloody mouth, hypnotized by the “mesmerist” decapitated head of Dr. Hill (his head held in his separated body’s hands!) kidnaps his daughter, Megan, and strips her fainted body of all her clothes…I couldn’t help but just remain aghast at the gall to direct that and leave it in. How that was able to go to any theaters remains astonishing

While watching <b>Watcher</b>, I didn’t feel like this was anything necessarily original but still quite well made. I have really welcomed the return of a camera that either takes a deep breath, captures movement in a space, doesn’t jerk around or go crazy, and glides and moves patiently. And I think Monroe and a camera is a marriage made in heaven. Okuno clearly knew Munroe was born to be not only in front of a camera but followed by it. It isn’t just that she is captivating on screen, but Monroe is a fantastic actress. You feel that drag of being in Bucharest without friends or family while her man (Glusman of Gaspar Noé’s <i>Love</i>), in marketing at a firm, is always working late and often, not to mention, becoming increasingly frustrated with Romanian language leaving her in the dark. When her man and friends speak to each other, Monroe’s sense of isolation can be felt so palpably. Thing is I can watch Monroe walk through a supermarket even if she wasn’t t

So in the 90s TBS (Turner Broadcasting Station), had a show called “Movies for Guys who Like Movies”. Yep, the tough guy movies that I’m sure leaves a good many of today’s audience waking in a cold sweat and glad that they aren’t party to that sort of content anymore. Let’s just say today’s TBS audience with Seinfeld, Friends, and Big Bang Theory maybe doesn’t stick around to chomp on their stogies, pop open a Budweiser with their teeth, or gather around the Poker table in the kitchen while “Lethal Weapon” or “Road House” is on the television for the 100th time. Well, I couldn’t think of any movie more fit for that old timeslot on tough guy TBS than <b>Tango & Cash</b>. I mean Kurt Russell in his jeans and boots with a laser scope on his gun while taking the car of some poor guy with his sacks of groceries  in a parking garage and chasing after one of kingpin Palance’s hired guns, knocking both doors off causing crashes that eventually lead to capturing the hitman (in a

There is just something viscerally satisfying in seeing Vanessa Williams, successfully removing her hands from a chair handle binding, breaking a coffee glass over a scumbag weapons dealer as well as Arnold calling up James Caan's betraying mentor in the US Marshals Witsec program while he is stuck in a limo with two other government bureaucratic trash suits telling him on the phone, "You have just been erased." This after a swaggering, confident Caan tells his cohorts that he'll just murder Williams' whole family and friends before they tell the truth about manufactured and sold (but never taken out of the docks) electromagnetic weapons. "They caught a train." So, so satisfying. Anyway, the ridiculous plane sequence where Arnold avoids a wrecked engine on fire, is able to avoid it flying right towards him by firing off a gun, and is able to unwrap himself from his suffocating chute, only to open another before landing on an abandoned car in a junkyard a

I think this is that film in Van Damme’s filmography where he really cared the most about the character, story, and performance. I think there is something very important to Van Damme here about a deserter from the Foreign Legion and illegal immigrant in California, heading to LA to help his sister-in-law and niece when his brother was burned in a drug deal gone wrong and left to die, using underground and street fights with help from a “promoter” and manager, Joshua (played by the absolutely wonderful Harrison Page). Cynthia (Deborah Rennard), basically the alpha sleazebag except as a sexy blond instead of some disgusting frat jock douchebag, sees big money in Lyon, looking to exploit him as long as he lasts. Brian Thompson is her tagalog in a suit, the two of them sipping champagne in luxury limos while dining in fancy restaurants and grinning ear to ear as human animals pummel the living shit out of each other for their amusement and financial benefit. Joshua later reveals to Lyon (

Underworld is basically a Gothic soap opera action horror hybrid.  Viktor burned alive his own daughter through the sunlight because she dared to love a werewolf, Lucien. Lucien swore to get even by locating a “pure blood”, Michael Corvinus. Michael’s blood, when crossed with Lucien and Selene’s, will give him the power of both. Then you have Michael and Selene falling for each other. Viktor, an ancient vampire with a certain disdain for werewolves (they are servants, only good as help) would never allow his daughter to marry one. And history repeating, Viktor, looking at Selene as a daughter he turned when human (and murdered her family for their blood he fed from), wasn’t about to let her do the same with Michael if he could help it. Selene, told her family were killed by werewolves by Viktor, spending however long hunting them down and executing them. So the plotting is basic Gothic soap. Add in Kraven as this vampire now in charge of the coven Selene’s a part of, supposedly to be

I have to start writing less for Letterboxd and maybe keeping anything too long on the blog. I had decided earlier in the year to try and not add as much to the blog this year, but Letterboxd is intended more for a few sentences, not multi-paragraph reviews. The review Sophie would probably have been the Lelievres’ precious little maid, tasked to cook their meals, tidy their house, see to their every need, and keep her quaint itty bitty room with the discarded secondary television set if Jeanne had not entered her life, inspiring her to "act out" when the family makes her mad (or as Jeanne felt, "taking up for yourself").  She can’t read, is easily manipulated, says very little, stays on task, etc. Befriending the postal worker, Jeanne, might have been the worst thing fate could have handed Sophie. Who’s to say? I can’t imagine serving the entitled Lelievre family, but, still, what happens to them, obviously, I could never condone. Chabrol concocts quite a melodrama

This might be a new Game of Thrones show but the pursuit of power and that Iron Throne is just as much an obsession. Dany never truly got to sit on the Throne and truly be the Queen of the Iron Throne. A king is selected named Viserys (Considine), first of his line, with a wife who can't bare him a son. And he was obsessed with that to the point that he sacrifices his wife, only for the baby to die not long after he was cut from his mother's belly. All that time, the daughter, Rhaenyra (D'Arcy), is there feeling as if she's just being passed over without a chance to prove herself. With her mother dead, Rhaenyra is eventually chosen to be next in line instead of Viserys' brother, Daemon (Matt Smith, who is going to win an Emmy, I'm sure of it), considered by the Hand of the King, Otto Hightower (Ifans), to be a liability (or much worse, considering as he's put over the City's Watch to make sure law and order is kept in King's Landing, using that autho