Horrorfind!

Hellraiser 8 review and thoughts on 9 are still in the works.  It's been a little busy at home.  The hubby Mike's and my cat Edgar has what may be a tumor in his eye, so our time, money and attention are mostly focused there.  A wonderful friend of ours has agreed to nurse him this weekend so that we can attend Horrorfind Weekend

Edgar squinting his bad eye

Last night we got in late and I was exhausted, so I conked out.  Mike hung out for a while and Ken Foree tried to bum a smoke from him.  Today we hit the vendors' room, and we got the full 6 DVD Creature Feature set from Gore de Vol's table.  Also, we checked out the hearse show and met other folks from the Mohnton Professional Car Club, which we recently joined.

So later on I'll post my Hellraiser 8 review and probably some pics of Horrorfind taken with Mike's Blackberry.  In the meantime, stay spooky!

Streaming Screamers #1.7: Hellraiser 7: Deader

Hellraiser 7: Deader


This one is from 2005, when filming low budget horror movies in eastern Europe was all the rage. (See: Seed of Chucky, Man With the Screaming Brain, The Cave, etc.) This time the star of our show is a British undercover journalist sent to check out a resurrection cult (The Deaders) in Romania. She finds the box in the hand of a corpse along with a video tape full with instructions. Then maybe she falls asleep and dreams she opens the box, or maybe she opens the box. Either way, she wakes up to start a brand new day and a trip down the rabbit hole.

First up: follow the tape's instructions. That part is neat because she has to go see this guy Joey that lives in a party train. Yes, you read that right, PARTY TRAIN. The last car of a train in the Romanian subway (as long as a full train on the inside) full of drunks, junkies, gypsies, artists, and lots of people having all different kinds of lovin'. Joey reluctantly gives our journalist the Deaders' home address.

The Deaders live in a place that's mostly made of catacombs except for the windowed office of the cult leader Winter. He makes a vague allusion to being part of the Merchant family. I don't know where that puts him in the bloodline between artist Merchant and spaceman Merchant, but I bet they weren't thinking too much about that. Actually, I'm pretty sure they weren't, because IMBD.com confirmed my suspicion that this wasn't even written as a Hellraiser movie, and they threw the cenobites and box and stuff in later.

The rest of the thing is a bunch of hallucinations about the journalist's violent and incestuous childhood, a sucking chest wound, a Romanian insane asylum, and some sort of war between Pinhead and Winter Merchant.

Over all, this one wasn't so bad. Clearly not a Hellraiser storyline, but there's a good amount of decadence, depravity, and gore. I also learned how one can pull a knife out of one's back.  I give it 2 brains out of 5 -- watch it once for the gore and creepy Romania scenery.

Streaming Screamers #1.56: Hellraiser 5 & 6

Warning: As usual, these reviews are SPOILERific.

First up,  Hellraiser 5: Inferno

Really, the trailer is all you need to see.

This is a cop story. A not very exciting cop story, until the cop starts losing his mind. Then it's not exactly exciting but at least surreal. People he's close to start turning up dead and he sees cenobites. At one point he goes to a body piercing place to shake a guy down for information, because it might be Hellraiser-y to show extreme lifestyles, but at this point the 90's were over, and we've all seen enough body piercing and modern primitive stuff.

The cenobite that gets the most play is just arms and a head that's had its lips removed. Apparently every cenobite that's had its lips removed must chatter. It's either some kind of rule, or your lips keep you warm in hell.

Anyway, it turns into a Groundhog Day loop scenario, and then they reveal that he opened the box before all of this started. It's the equivalent of "It was all a dream." Super lame.

 Moving on...

Hellraiser 6: Hellseeker

This one is basically 5:Inferno, except that the guy is a businessman played by Dean Winters (better known as Mayhem in the Allstate commercials), and he's married to Kirsty. Yup, it's the actual Kirsty. Did she sign a bad contract? Did she really need the money? Did they simply talk her into it? I wonder. She still looks good though.

Our main character, who I will call Mayhem, because that's how I'd rather think of Dean Winters, wants his wife out of the way because he's banging every other chick he can get his hands on and there might be an inheritance. Mayhem acquires the box and gives it to Kirsty as an anniversary present, she gets pissed off and opens it, and bing-bang-boom he spends the whole movie in a hell dream. That last bit is revealed at the end, so this is a huge spoiler, but trust me, I'm doing you a favor here.

I will say that the place where Mayhem acquires the box is like Hell's Kitchen, old school Chinatown, the docks, and a creepy sub-basement all rolled into one. Whatever city he's in (I think it's one in Canada) has the worst and awesomist bad neighborhood ever.

Together, I give these movies one brain out of five. They're awful.  Watch them if you're a completist, or just skip them entirely.

Streaming Screamers #1.4: Hellraiser 4: Bloodlines

The Streaming Screamers segment is all about films that are streaming legally for free online at sites such as Hulu and Fearnet. These sites are great for the living impaired on a budget, as all they require is a computer and internet connection.

Hulu.com has Hellraisers 4 through 8 up for free right now. They also have 3 available on Hulu Plus. I don't think I've seen 3, and this poor zombie doesn't shell out for Hulu Plus. Originally this post was going to include all four of these cinematic gems, but the write-up was taking forever. So here's the first segment Hellraiser 4, Bloodlines.

By the way, my synopses and reviews are generally SPOILERific. You have been warned.

Bloodlines is the Christmas Carol of Hellraiser, with Hellraiser past, present, and future all in one crazy tale. The ghosts of Hellraiser are all male members of the Merchant family played by the same guy.

The film opens with the future Merchant is a space ship, where he's built a fancy chamber with a remote controlled robot to open the box. Just when things are getting good, he gets busted. He sits down with a space cop (or private security person?) named Rimmer and becomes the narrarator. Even though Rimmer's a non-holographic woman, the presence of a space person named Rimmer was enough to put this into my head for days:

Suddenly the movie is a period piece, with a Marquis de Sade type chracter commissioning the box from a young toymaker. They also throw in some stuff about how they're in the age of enlightenment but this guy is an occult magician anyway, and with the help of his assistant, a bamboozled hooker, and the box, he will show them. Of course things go horribly wrong, and when the princess of hell, Angelique, shows up, she offs the Marquis dude and the toymaker. She seems pretty pissed at the toymaker, like "I will destroy your line" pissed. The toymaker has a son that survives.

Then fast forward: the great great great great great great grandson of the toymaker is some kind of artist/designer/engineer/giant toy maker, and he's getting a big award. Apparently the talent skipped a few generations, because Angelique suddenly becomes aware that the toymaker's line is still alive. Angelique tracks down Merchant and the box, which is inexplicably and conveniently built into a support beam in the basement of the place present Merchant is receiving his award, and springs Pinhead and his chattering dog. The three of them try to use present Merchant to open a permanent gateway to hell, everything falls apart, nobody wins, and Merchant's son lives on.

I should mention that Angelique walks around in a corset and is generally kinky and seductive in a way that no one in league with hell seems to be after this movie. Bloodlines is pretty much the last Hellraiser film with an s&m flavor to it, which I think makes a Hellraiser film. After this one, all of the Pinhead, the cenobites, and the other assorted agents of hell are slashers, mind gamers, and vehicles for morality tales.

Also, I think this is the last time that awesome hell machinery (not just chains) pops up and creates a new cenobite -- twin nordic-looking security guards that get twisted together.

When future Hellraiser returns, they're back on the spaceship, the narration is done, and the cenobites start hunting everyone down Alien-style until Merchant flies the cenobite infested ship into the sun. I forget if he escapes or goes into the sun too-- I just wasn't that invested in his character. But in all, I would call this the last enjoyable Hellraiser movie and the one I actually watched twice while writing this set of reviews.  I give it 3 out of 5 brains.

Tapes of Terror #1: Eternal Evil

VHS is a great way for zombies on a budget to get a horror fix.  Much like dope off of the street, quality and selection may vary, but a fix is a fix.  Hence this new blog, Tapes of Terror.

Today's Tape of Terror, purchased from the Goodwill for 99 cents + New Jersey sales tax is Eternal Evil, also known as The Blue Man.  My copy looked like this:

I picked this out of the large pile o' horror because it starred Karen Black.  Like many of her films, she was the best thing this movie had going on.

We start with a guy having an incomprehensible nightmare and getting woken up by his kid.  The guy goes to work, where we learn that he is a former filmmaker that now makes commercials in an awesomely 80's office building staffed by a weird french receptionist that looks like the chick from Dr. Caligari.

The body count begins when we lose someone connected to our main guy to a supernatural thing that isn’t  too heavy on the special effects -- maybe a harness and some air bladders.  The coroner gets the body and introduces our next main character, the cop.  He explains that the victim exploded inside, and that's unusual for a heart attack.

The next day, our main guy gets bitten by his father-in-law's dog, and that night, we learn that his kid is an insomniac that draws crayon pictures of the Blue Man, while main guy keeps astral projecting all over the place.

At some point he goes to see his new age girlfriend, who is -- you guessed it-- Karen Black, and he's all, "I'm scared, this astral project stuff in uncontrollable and wacky" and she's all "Keep doing, it you'll get better at it."  Her loft apartment is all mood lit with three big lamps on the floor.  Main guy and his wife have lamps on the floor at their house too.  Like, table lamps.  I guess no one in this movie reads at night, unless they lie on the floor when they do.

And while I'm on this movie's quirks, there's this dramatic flute riff in the background all the time.  It's supposed to be eerie but it sounds like there's going to be a kung fu showdown any minute.  Does this movie have anything to do with Asia? No.  Except that the very last scene takes place there, but the fact that it's Asia is not really relevant to anything, so I don't know if that's supposed to be foreshadowing or just new age-y or what.

***This is where the synopsis gets SPOILERific****

Back on the farm the father-in-law has a supernatural "heart attack" complete with minimal special effects, and when he shows up at the morgue, the cop gets suspicious.  It doesn't take too long to figure out that the only person connecting the two corpses is our main guy, so then we get more exposition at the office with the '80s decor and the french receptionist, who is now boning the main character's business partner.

The cop has started breathing down Karen Black's neck while watching main guy's last big film, which is a documentary about -- you guessed it -- astral projection and this old couple that say they move from body to body to escape death.  The cop tracks down Karen Black for some more exposition, and we find out she's got consumption (or some other kind of blood-coughing disease) and she talks just like the old people in the movie.  Oh, she's also a not very bright dancer and a lesbian.  Also, the weird French Dr. Caligari chick marries and then murders the main guy's business partner and then goes to meet up with Karen Black because she is, not surprisingly, also harboring a soul of Eternal Evil.

Meanwhile, the kid has been hanging out with the Blue Man, who turns out to be a big bully that makes him misbehave and then later makes him drink paint stripper.  Don't get too excited though -- we don't ever see the Blue Man.  He just tells the kid what to do off-camera or through some whispering.  Mom makes the kid puke up the paint stripper and then dies of a supernatural "heart attack".

So now that the bitch has gone after his family, main guy goes after Karen Black.  He's almost thwarted by the cop, but they all end up in a showdown together.  Karen Black and the weird French chick are killed, and the cop passes out.  After the big ordeal, cop quits his job and moves to Japan, which make the weird flute music finally fit, though I don't even remember if they used it in that scene. It's all over. Or is it???

Total body count:  6.  The kid recovered to eat ice cream in a heart-warming final scene with his dad.

Gore factor:  Negligible.   The one review of this movie on IMDB says that this was a made for TV movie, and I would not be surprised.

Best scene:  Most of the scenes with Karen Black.

Worst scene:  All of the "astral projection".

Something about this movie reminded me of Audrey Rose with the supernatural stuff and the kid and domesticity of the whole thing. That is the book, not the movie because I haven't seen the movie yet and was in fact not aware of the movie until the lady at the Goodwill told me about it when I picked up the book.

Overall, I give this 2 brains out of 5.  It was a little entertaining, but I would probably only watch it again on tv if there was nothing else on.