We Finally See What NYC Did With All The Dead Hobos Before Rudy Came Around in…

I don’t normally have problems discussing my problems with other people, whether it’s been drug abuse, my childhood, or even relationships, it has never bothered me to offer up a little self-depreciation. Self disclosure is not an issue, it’s necessary to being a healthy human being.

That doesn’t mean restraint is a non-issue. There are some people that don’t even know the meaning of the words “shy,” “self-dignity,” and “awkward conversation.”

When I was in high school, my friends and I developed a little in joke where we’d stop any weird talk by saying, “awkward conversation” to each other until it died down. It’s not because we don’t value other people’s personal experience, we just don’t want to know it all.

These days I deal with kids and adults who can’t leave any of their stones unturned, if you catch my drift. There’s one girl, who giggles a lot for some reason, who starts almost EVERY sentence with something like this:

“Oh, hi, I totally agree with you and I had a question. See, I was raped and abused by my father until I was ten years old and then beaten until I was seventeen. I would’ve left, but my mother kept saying she’d feed my fingers to the dog if I told anyone. Anyway, about that laundry mat…”

Awkward conversation.

And she never shuts up.

They used to drown people like her in the bathtub, why did they stop?

Anyway, all of this is to point out that I finally found something that I didn’t want to admit to anybody. The weirdest part is that it’s less of a skeleton than, say, the fact that I was addicted to cocaine and snorted lines off my family’s priceless photo album. For me that’s NOTHING compared to what I’m about to divulge to the wide open web.

I have a problem scoping out my boss’ butt.

Yeah, that’s it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not embarrassed because it’s a bad looking butt. It’s quite nice actually; the cheeks aren’t too big and it has just the right amount of bounce when she stamps her feet. Really, it’s probably one of the best I’ve ever seen and she NEVER wears underwear… you know, I should probably stop right there or I’m going to start sounding like a perv.

I can recall the moment when I realized I had a problem. One day I asked her to look at a water leak and she bent over right in front of me. At that moment my brain had a total momentary meltdown and I could not look away. When I tried to say something the only noise that came out of my mouth was that sort of mentally retarded drool-laughter. You know, the kind of gawking, guttural pervert laugh that autistic peeping toms make while there stuck up in a tree with a boner.

At that moment several things occurred to me:

I knew she was married.
I knew she had a kid.
I knew her husband could kick my ass.
I knew she was ten years older than me.
And I didn’t care.

I REALLY didn’t care.

Unfortunately I didn’t go to the University of Iowa, so I’m not up on the best butt grabbing techniques. It’s a shame because I’ve always been a hands on type of guy.

This week, we’re going deep, DEEP into the Big Apple’s core where a young art student named Alex, his knuckle-headed friend, and his tightly buttoned girlfriend deal with the evil spirit of Zachary and his undead followers. Not only has Alex moved into a dilapidated apartment, been seduced by a crazy interpretive dancer in leather underwear, and changed to an all chunky-yogurt diet, but he screwed up meeting his girlfriend’s parents for the first time.

None of this is abnormal for a college student, I would say he’s still on the upside of normal; however, that changes when the local unwashed poetry buff gets him possessed by the spirit of an evil cult leader and turns one giant sinus infection with a need to carve up random hobos and twenty-five dollar street hookers.

It’s still better going to Oklahoma State.

Actually, if it we’re for the seduced by a second-rate stripper thing, he’d practically be in the seminary. Of course his girlfriend isn’t pleased with his extra-curricular activities or his terrible complexion, so she engages him in a rough-and-tumble machete duel to the death until her hubby’s dismembered, pimply head is sitting on the counter with a meat cleaver stuck in the temple. Never mind what happened to REST of him.

All I know is that you do not stand up the virginal, goody-two-shoes chick because she will have no problems turning you into chicken chow-mein when she gets bored.

It’s a classic slather the cast in mysterious bodily fluids flick.

Get ready because it’s scorecard city:

+4 for random acts of violence against a destitute, +7 because the hooker doesn't mind mackin' it with a guy covered in bile down a dirty back alley, -3 for some REALLY bad free form poetry, +2 for extraneous sexed up dance number, +1 for tipping the hat to the Mummy, -2 because parents just don't understand, -2 because there's still somebody in NYC with an unbroken hymen, +9 for the climatic "lets dismember my hubby" battle, +2 for knife play, -1 for the expired yogurt, +5 for slime covered possessed pervert undergrads among us, -2 for gooey red light touch, -3 for the lame-o soundtrack, and +14 because we now know that evil supernatural cultists in skimpy spider underwear are no match for a woman during "that time of the month."

Any movie with this many dead prostitutes is worth checking out.

Starring: Robert Sabin, Mary Huner, Marilyn Oran.
Directed by Greg Lamberson (Naked Fear, New York Vampire)
Year: 1988.
Running Time: 85 min.
Label: Retro Shock-o-Rama.

Another "Repeat"

An updated review of "Slime City" will be appearing either today, tomorrow, or Thursday. It's kind of funny how I keep announcing review titles and never seem to get around to them.

All for the best I suppose, who REALLY needed another review of "Action Jackson" anyway?

A Reptile in Need of Upper-Plate Dental Work Drains Actors’ Spinal Fluid, Like That’s a Bad Thing, in …

NOTE: Yep, this is a redux review of one I did earlier. Live with it.


It’s been, what, a month since we started the new year and I’m already sick of all these new year resolutions. I don’t have anything against people trying to better themselves or their surroundings, but there is one common factor among all of them: they all, somehow, involve me helping them.

“But Steve, YOU have to keep me away from the ala carte at work,” one of my co-workers said, “do you want me to be FAT forever?”

“Listen, you need to help me,” someone told me, “do you want me to kick this Schnapps dependency or not?”

“Someone needs to take my son’s computer, he’s downloading porn at a mile-a-minute and I don’t want him to get that experience until he’s older… and out of the house. Changing his own bed.”

I’m not sure how people do it. Everybody’s resolution, that they’re supposed to work on, ends up being MY new year’s resolution for them. It’s like somebody got all these people together and told them that self-improvement goals were a group project.

I’ve always been under the impression that it was MY responsibility for my own resolution and nobody else’s, which is why I don’t make any. Every year I wake and realize I’m too tired for self betterment, but maybe next year. Of course, I appear to be in the minority.

The worst part is that all of these people want my help with their baggage and yet they think I need to make one of these stupid things too. Maybe it’s extra credit on the karma scale or something.

My neighbor, Gene Showalter, bugged me about incessantly between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Every time I went out to get the mail or go to the store he would be there with his thin rimmed glasses asking me about my plans for next year, “commitment is everything” he’d always say. Honestly, it got to the point that I just started ignoring him.

In the eleventh hour he cornered me while I was shoveling the drive way and asked me for the four hundredth time. Finally, I just said something stupid,

“You want to know so bad? I… I’m going to quit smoking, alright?”

“Terrific! How are you going to do it?”

“I don’t know. Patches or gum or something.”

“Great, great. Don’t worry ‘bout help either, I’ll make sure you keep it.”

And that’s when I knew I screwed up.

Now I’m going to have to try.

I don’t smoke a whole lot, I enjoy a cigar every now and then after work and that’s about it; however, I know Gene well enough than to think that he’s not going to be encroaching on every bit of my life for some inconsequential purpose. He’s an old guy with nothing else to do! I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even have a model train hobby or anything either.

Last night I went out back to have an after work smoke and there he was, looking out his bedroom window at me while I lit my lighter.

I think he’s stalking me. I may have to lock the doors at night.

Hopefully he’ll have forgotten by March because the lack of nicotine is NOT helping my people skills.

This week, I’m turning back time to revisit one of those ugly-guy-with-misogynist-tendencies-murders-suburban-women slasher movies from the early eights, but instead of having a sweaty, balding fat guy with a machete terrorizing the ladies it’s a scaly reptilian man (no, not Eric Roberts though I would like to see that movie) with no dental insurance sucking out their spinal fluid by French kissing a little TOO deep. In a surprising twist, the movie was not directed by Fred Olen Ray.

If you ever watched those greasy sleaze-bucket serial killer movies from the 70s where people just seem to wander around for an hour and a half while the killer, who seems to be in SOME OTHER MOVIE, goes about splitting heads without interference, than you’ll know exactly what to expect.

Several day players get turned into brainless cadavars and that’s all that matters, really.

If only we could’ve had a decent pair of headlights.

Originally known as “the Terror Factor” and “the Aberdeen Experiment,” this was the debut feature for William Malone, who got his start as a makeup man in movies like “Gargoyles” and went on to make everyone’s favorite public domain alien rip-off “Creature.” More recently he made “Parasomnia,” which has received rave reviews from people I wouldn’t trust to watch my dog for five minutes. Malone is also credited for designing the monster, which later was used in the movie “Syngenor,” one of those it’s not a sequel but it kinda is movies.

All that aside, lets look up that Scorecard:

+3 for the slimy kiss of death, -2 for the worst make out session ever, -1 for the random Raggedy Anne doll, +2 for being swallowed down a manhole, +4 for goo-filled sewer jamboree, -2 for roller skating filler, +1 for locking the car door, -2 for unlocking it seconds later, +5 for getting ripped off by “Terminator,” +8 for the Syngenor, -3 for Hollywood Spontaneous Recovery Syndrome, +4 for petty vandalism, +1 for paying in cash, -2 for vampire-lizard red light touch, +1 for shrewish dejected research assistants among us, +7 for amphibious Billy Zane look-a-likes among us, -1 for Jason Voorhees’ magic teleport technique, and +11 for creating a blight against God because--God bless you--the movies wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without it.

A region free DVD is available from Fred Olen Ray’s Retromedia Entertainment.

I say give it a look.

Starring: John Stinson, Diana Davidson, Jonathan David Moses, Toni Janotta.
Directed by William Malone (House on Haunted Hill).
Year: 1981.
Running Time: 93 min.
Label: Retromedia.

Life gets in the way...

Yeah, so I haven't had much time to sit down a write reviews lately, which is why updates will not be resuming until February at the earliest. School, work, and other responsibilities get in the way like that and I know you understand.

On tap for the return:

Forbidden World, 1982.
Alien Terminator, 1996.
Unknown Origin, 1995.

Shout! Factory Makes My Day.

I've been a fan of Shout! Factory since they released a series of Elvira DVDs bring her show, Movie Macabre, to the digital medium. They weren't of great quality, but it was piece of cult television that would've been woefully missed otherwise.

Now, Shout! is doing the fanbase one better. On January 14th, they announced that they've acquired the rights for Roger Corman's library. Immediate titles include classics like Piranha, Rock and Roll High School, and Humanoids from the Deep.

There will also be a double feature of Cirio Santiago's two only horror movies: Up from the Depths and Demon of the Paradise.

But that's not what I'm excited about.

They also announced LEGIT DVD treatment for those puke-o-rama interstellar classics the Forbidden World and Galaxy of Terror. Both are basically rips on Alien, but they are REALLY entertaining from what I remember. Even though I found myself a copy of Forbidden World on the internet, I'll be picking both of these up.