Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (1992)
Few horror franchises are successful enough to make it past the 4<sup>th</sup> installment. Even fewer reach the double digits. Friday the 13<sup>th</sup> made it to 12, Halloween made it to 10, and both Hellraiser and Nightmare on Elm Street dropped out at 9 (so far). Few people realize how close the Amityville franchise is on this list. Since the remake, 9 Amityville films have been made (not counting Bloodbath at the House of Death, a Amityville spoof). While most people shrug off sequels, one strange thing stands out about this list. Each franchise held their own (ignoring the remakes) and created a bounty of quality sequels. You can pop in any volume of Nightmare on Elm Street (again, besides the remake) and you will be entertained and surprised! Well Amityville 1992 falls right in these footsteps. With some first class horror movie acting and a genuinely scary story, It’s About Time still stands as my favorite in the series, and it’s number SIX!
Thoughts on Re-Animator, Lovecraft, and Teenage Obsession
As a latchkey kid coming of age in an incredibly unstable household in the early 90s I gravitated toward the spooky, the strange, and the macabre. Lunch time discussion with my twisted chums rarely ascended above who had seen the goriest film or read the creepiest story over the weekend. Andrew Guthrie, all red hair and freckles, tended to lord over the conversation with spot on retellings of Hellraiser 2 and Stephen King’s “Tommy Knockers.” Soon, 6th grade turned to 7th and Andrew moved away, leaving me with a hole of horror to fill.
Trick Or Treat
I’m one of those idiots who never misses an opportunity to incessantly speak about my childhood growing up in the epitome of white picket fence small town mid-west. I also have a definite colorful case of White Girl Syndrome that really tends to rear it’s ugly head in autumn and probably isn’t going away any time soon, so of course I have extremely vivid memories of Halloween.
The first Halloween I remember was in 1997. I was in the first grade and I remember sitting next to my nemesis and fellow brownie scout Jessica Lambursky, who happened to be really fucking jazzed on the fact that she was going to dress up as Posh Spice for our class Halloween Party after recess. She was going to wear her older sister’s belly shirt crop top and a metallic skirt and she kept taking it out of her book bag and showing everyone on the bus.
A Daydream of Death Hungry Fiends
I was sitting in a coffee shop in Hollywood waiting on an actor that was running late thanks to a bout with food poisoning (it’s a dangerous thing having breakfast at Denny’s) and it struck me that America could do with a new serial killer. What began as a crass thought while eavesdropping on the conversation of a group of very fit solipsists turned into something very real and nostalgic.
Fuck Pirates of the Caribbean
NOTHING MAKES SENSE IN PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL!
-Why are the pirates clothes cursed?
The moon reveals the cursed pirates as decayed bone people, but why do their clothes change? From, you know, piratey, to super ripped up. Can they not change their clothes? Or no matter if they change their clothes, the new outfit, in turn, becomes cursed?
-Why is the ship cursed?
The pirates are cursed because they stole gold that was cursed. I get it. Why is the ship cursed? The ship didn’t steal anything. Even when the curse is lifted, the ship stays looking like shit. I don’t think that’s very fair to the ship.
Thrift Shop Tech Review: GE Tape Cassette Walkman
So Kill Pretty had this horrible idea of assigning me to a tech review column. When I told them I knew shit about technology—which they should’ve gathered, since Nacho had to explain to me in full detail, as if I were an intoxicated infant, how exactly Twitter worked—they came up with this idea of me reviewing vintage electronic equipment. So this is my initiation.
Hard To Die (1990)
As we all know, killer brain movies are a dime a dozen. We’ve all seen brains from outer space descend on a small town and a Rambo type character must swoop in to save the day. What puts “The Brain” in a different category than the hundreds of other killer brain movies is it’s a metaphor for being a teenager and the angst of being misunderstood in a brainwashed society run by television. Stupid parents and all their rules! Oh, it also has a huge fucking brain that eats naked girls!