Big Freakin’ Snake (2023, directed by Dustin Ferguson)


People are being killed in snake attacks across Los Angeles and the sheriff and a scientist are determined to discover why.  The Sheriff says that there hasn’t been a snake attack in over 40 years.  His father dealt with the last batch of attacks.  Now, it’s time for the new sheriff to pick up his father’s legacy and discover why people are dying from snake attack.

Could it be because of the big freakin’ snake!?

Nah, son, that snake’s not that big.

There actually is a big snake at the start of the movie, which slithers its way through Los Angeles and wraps itself around a building but most of the movie is just scenes of people screaming at normal sized snakes that don’t appear to actually be aggressive.  A lot of familiar B-horror folk show up to get bitten but the special effects budget only allowed for one actual snake attack to really be shown.  If you’ve ever wanted to watch Brinke Stevens fight a rubber snake in a bathtub, this film is for you.

Big Freakin’ Snake is short, only 40 minutes long, and it is obviously not meant to be taken seriously so I can’t criticize it too much.  But for a movie called Big Freakin’ Snake, it sure didn’t have many big snakes.

Music Video of the Day: Prison Sex by Tool (1993, directed by Adam Jones)


When a song has a title like Prison Sex, you can be sure that it won’t be a happy one.  Tool’s Prison Sex is a song (and a video) that was judged to be so disturbing and depressing that MTV actually removed it from its playlist after viewers complained that it was freaking them out.  Despite removing the video, MTV still nominated for a Video Music Award for Best Visual Effects and the video was later riffed on by Beavis and Butt-Head.

The video was directed by Adam Jones, who is also Tool’s guitarist.  Along with his musical interests, Jones also worked in stop motion animation and was even a part of the team that brought the dinosaurs to life in the original Jurassic Park.  This video makes good and macabre use of his talents.

Enjoy!

Bunni (2013, directed by Daniel Benedict)


On Halloween night, two couples leave a Halloween party and, while walking down the street, discover a deserted building.  One of them recognizes the building as being a former sex shop and he insists that he and his friends break in.  Unfortunately, for them, the sex shop is not actually deserted.  Bunni (Cat Geary), a woman who was raped 18 years previously and got a gruesome revenge on her attacker, is also in the building and she’s looking for more victims.

Bunni is full of gore, much of it shown in closeup.  Things that other films would cut away from, Bunni zooms in on.  If you want to see a man get his dick chopped off and then have the severed member stuffed down his throat in close-up, this is your movie.  If you want to see guts literally pour out of a body, this is your movie.  If the main reason you’re watching this movie is for the gore and the sense of transgression, more power to you.  You will like this film.  But me, I would have traded the gore for a compelling plot or at least one interesting character or maybe just one scene that, visually, reached above the level of a youtube video.  Some people will find what they’re looking for with this movie.  I did not.

Evil Obsession (1996, directed by Richard W. Munchkin)


11 models have been murdered in Los Angeles and Margo (Kimberly Stevens) fears that she could be next.  She’s been receiving threatening notes and feels as if someone is watching her and her boyfriend, Bill (Michael Phenicie).  She hires a private detective (Mark Derwin) to protect her but it might be too late because Homer (Corey Feldman), the man who has been sending her the notes, has already enrolled in the same acting class of Margo.  After Bill turns up dead, Homer is assigned to be Margo’s new scene partner.  Is Homer moving in for the kill or is someone else responsible for the murders?

This mix of erotic thriller and horror was one of those movies that used to show up on a late night Cinemax in the 90s, where it could be watched by teenagers who kept one eye on the screen and one eye looking out for their parents.  Corey Feldman starred in a lot of these films and in this one, he gives a twitchy and occasionally funny performance as the nerdy Homer.  Homer is the most obvious stalker imaginable and it’s hard to believe that Margo, who is so concerned about being stalked that she’s hired a private detective, would not look at Homer and immediately realize that he was the culprit.  Feldman overacts but he at least provides the film with the energy that is missing from the performances of Kimberly Stevens and Mark Derwin.  Even better is the performance of Brion James as the autocratic and pretentious acting teacher.  Watching him, I got the feeling that James probably could have based his performance on any number of Hollywood acting coaches.

Music Video of the Day: Voyeur by Kim Carnes (1982, directed by Russell Mulcahy)


The music video for Kim Carnes’s Voyeur is another music video that was initially banned from MTV and other music shows because it was considered to be too suggestive.  The video features Kim Carnes watching and being watched in a red light district.

This was another video directed by Highlander’s Russell Mulcahy, who perhaps did more than anyone to perfect the early music video aesthetic.

Enjoy!

The Demolitionist (1995, directed by Robert Kurtzman)


In the future, America is overrun by crime.  Mad Dog Burne (Richard Grieco) and his brother, Little Henry (Randy Vasquez) escape from California death row.  Mayor Eleanor Grimbaum (Susan Tyrell) wants the Burne brothers captured and she wants to be able to show the voters that she’s tough on crime.  When brave police officer Alyssa Lloyd (Nicole Eggert) is killed by Mad Dog Burne’s gang, she is brought back to life in cyborg form by Prof. Crowley (Bruce Abbott) and, after a training montage, she is let loose on the streets as a police-backed vigiliante.

The Demolitionist owes an obvious debt to Robocop, with Nicole Eggert miscast as an expressionless cyborg who launches a one-woman/one-machine war on crime.  The main problem is that The Demolitionist has none of Robocop‘s wit or its subversive subtext.  Nicole Eggert is no substitute for Peter Weller and Richard Grieco is no Kurtwood Smith.  “Booker’s a good cop!” I said whenever Grieco showed up.

The only interesting this is about the cast, which is full of horror veterans.  Jack Nance plays the prison priest who counsels the Burne brothers before they escape their scheduled executions.  Reggie Bannister plays the warden.  Sarah Douglas plays  a surgeon.  Joseph Pilato is one of Mad Dog’s followers.  And playing Mad Dog’s second-in-command is none other than Tom Savini.  Finally, the city’s most popular journalist is played by Heather Langenkamp!

The Demolitionist demolishes almost the entire town but she still can’t come up with any way to make this stale Robocop rip-off feel fresh.

 

 

Music Video of the Day: Lonely In Your Nightmare by Duran Duran (1982, directed by Russell Mulcahy)


For today’s music video of the day, we have the second video for Duran Duran’s Lonely In Your Nightmare, to go along with the first.

Both videos were directed by Highlander’s Russell Mulcahy.

The Shadow People (2017, directed by Brian T. Jaynes)


On a rainy night and after nearly crashing their car into a ditch, Andrew (Bug Hall) and Megan (Kat Steffens) arrive at their new country home.  Andrew is a writer.  Megan is a painter.  At first, their new home seems like the perfect place for both of them to practice their art and work on starting a family but then Megan starts to see strange people standing around the house.  She fears that they could be the Shadow People, evil spirits that her grandfather told her about.  After Megan realizes that she’s lost her necklace, her visions start to get more extreme and violent.

The Shadow People starts out as a really good haunted house film with a good performance from Kat Steffens and a lot of effective jump scares.  It works up until a scene where Megan suddenly speaks in a demonic voice, as if she’s been possessed.  Later, some of the spirits speak in the same voice and it sounds so much like autotune that it takes you right out of the movie.  The spirits are much more effective before they start talking but the movie still has a good twist ending and Kat Steffens’s performance is never less than great so The Shadow People is still worth it.

Top-billed on The Shadow People‘s poster is C. Thomas Howell.  Howell actually only has a few minutes of screen time, playing a mysterious minster whose role in the story only become apparent in the film’s final moments.