The wife and I had a meeting shortly after 1:00 and I knew that I needed to tackle the ever-growing laundry situation, so I found myself up and at 'em early to get some of that taken care of before we had to be in a meeting. The wife had meetings of her own in the late morning, so while she dealt with that I consumed copious amounts of coffee and snagged a little something off the To-Watch Pile to pass the time.

Sheitan is a truly bizarro French film starring one of my favorite actors, Vincent Cassel. It's about a group of youths who retreat from the city to a rural area where one of their acquaintances has a home, which is looked over by caretaker Cassel, in what is quite frankly the creepiest role I ever care to see him in. The film isn't straight up horror per se, instead it ventures into a strange unsettling 'stranger in a strange land' feeling that you find in a lot of Miike or Lynch films, which is almost worse. The guys there are basically trying to get laid, but the females play it coy and this manages to distract them from the increasingly weird goings on around them in the large rambling house, the tensions building into a disturbing and violent finale. It's a great flick, well worth a look if you're the adventurous type.

The wife and I ran our little errand, then grabbed a late lunch on the way back to the house. She had to visit the allergist in the middle of the afternoon, so I settled in to eat and watched a few re-runs off the TiVo. My food settling, I decided to pop in the next thing off the To-Watch Pile, which was the equally disturbing French film Inside, in which Beatrice Dalle attempts to cut a baby from the belly of a really pregnant woman, killing anyone who interferes with this idea. I know a lot of people take issue with the CGI baby images used throughout the film to indicate the rough ride the kid has while his mother is being tormented by this crazy bitch, but I honestly don't mind it; the gruesome nature of the rest of the film makes up for it in my book.

The wife got home midway through the graphic abuse of the pregnant woman, and since we'd seen it before she retired to the bedroom to return a few phone calls, then returned to checkout the third film of the day. Believers was a flick that I recalled liking pretty well, a tale about an apocalyptic cult who take two EMT drivers captive when they try to help a member of the group, forcibly indoctrinating them into their wacky beliefs. One of the guys goes for it, the other continues to struggle and this leads to some of the film's downfall: it's just too long. Had they shaved at least 10-15 minutes off the running time, eliminated one of the escape attempts, maybe this would feel a little pacier, like it had some kind of momentum, instead it kinda limped along to the finish. I still like the ending, it just seems like we could get there faster, y'know?

We caught up with the normal Thursday night fare, Community, the live episode of 30 Rock and The Office, then this week's Fringe. Fringe continues to play with my emotions by putting the Walter character in danger; I caught myself saying "No, no, no, no" aloud, in much the same manner that Cleveland does on Family Guy when his house gets destroyed and he falls from the second story in his bathtub. As I say every week, I really really hope that this show's ratings remain strong, as it's a nice mix of sci-fi in a real world setting, populated by charming characters.

Be seeing you.

Tag, you're it, Baggy Eyes! Movies, To-Watch Pile, Halloween, Sheitan, Vincent Cassel, Inside, Beatrice Dalle, Believers, Television, TiVo, Community, 30 Rock, The Office, Fringe, Family Guy

The sinuses tried to kill me in the small hours of the morning, leaving me feeling like shit most of the day. Dunno if this is due to allergies or what, but man did I feel groggy and miserable most of the afternoon, a handful of Advil finally setting most of that right.

While eating my late lunch I popped in the next thing in the Masters Of Horror set, which turned out to be Larry Cohen's Pick Me Up, about a pair of serial killers who happen to run into one another along a deserted stretch of highway in what I would assume is the Pacific Northwest, though I don't think we're ever given a state or anything. The story of two serial killers competing for the death of a particular hitchhiker, it's an interesting cat/cat/mouse game written by David Schow, a writer whose work I've enjoyed in the past. The only thing is that this felt like it'd been padded out from 45 minutes to fill the full hour, almost feeling like it would've been better served as a normal television broadcast filled in with commercials to hit the right running time. Oh well, it's a pretty decent little flick, worth a look.

Diving back into the To-Watch Pile in the late afternoon I decided to break out the recently acquired 2-disc version of Dead & Buried, a flick that I hadn't seen in quite awhile but was still enough of a fan of to upgrade the single disc version that I had. A series of gruesome murders begin to happen in the small coastal town of Potter's Bluff, leading the sheriff on a merry chase to figure out who the culprit may be. We as the audience know pretty early that it's his fellow townsfolk doing the killing, but the reveals about why will have to wait for the final reel. I dig the film quite a bit, it's got some nicely fog-drenched scenes and some creative deaths, give it a look if you've not seen it.

Since I'm a whore for the idea of themes I next popped in a little flick called Dagon, which I have some history with. See, back in the day, I rented this one from our local video store and was in the process of trying to discern what the thick accented villagers were saying when the disc began skipping. I take the disc out and realize at this stage that the DVD I'd rented looks like it had spent a few months as a coaster in a rather rough bar, making a viewing experience all but impossible, as it continued to skip, leaving me with chunks of plot excised and wondering why the fuck I was still watching. Over the following years I've had several reliable sources tell me how I'd missed out and that the movie is worth another look, so I finally grabbed it for $5 on sale a decided to give it a go at my leisure. While I'm not a huge Lovecraft fan, I was pretty impressed with this after all, as Ezra Godden (his performance equal parts Bruce Campbell and Jeffrey Combs at turns) plays a stranger in a creepy village, forced to try and fight his way out when the devolving fish-people locals turn on him. It's worth a look, though no one can tell me the CGI bits peppered throughout the film aren't groan-inducing; that's something I do have to stick behind.

The final film of the evening was Bob Clark's early horror/comedy Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, which I'd always been keen to see based on my love of his films like Black Christmas and even Porky's. The film is a low budget affair about a troupe of actors, led by a mean-spirited director who takes them on an overnight trip to an island that's home to a cemetery for criminals and the indigent. They dick around, confirm what a giant asshole the director is via his abusive dialog towards everybody, then a seance brings things home with a bunch of zombies. The flick is an okay watch, but I was annoyed that no one ever turned on the director and beat the shit out of him, as he wasn't an imposing figure or anything, just a sardonic asshole, so you'd figure someone would eventually get a bellyful of it and lay his ass out, but it never happened. Oh well, I guess you can't always get what you want.

We called it a night shortly afterward, and now here I am, doing this dumb shit again.

Be seeing you.

Tag, you're it, Baggy Eyes! Movies, To-Watch Pile, Halloween, Masters Of Horror, Pick Me Up, Larry Cohen, David Schow, Dead And Buried, Dagon, H P Lovecraft, Ezra Godden, Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Campbell, Children Shouldnt Play With Dead Things, Bob Clark, Black Christmas, Porkys

Managed to oversleep again today; my body is rebelling in the strangest ways that it can to ruin my life.

The day played out as they have recently: Lunch and the first film of the day, a re-watch of The Skeleton Key, which I recalled quite liking and had picked up as part of a 2-pack at Big Lots on one of those type of excursions. I really dig this flick, it holds up well on a re-watch and the overall Voodoo themed storyline is a lot of fun, occasionally reminding me of something Alan Moore would've worked into his Swamp Thing days. It builds some decent mysteries and tension as Kate Hudson settles into a job in a remote mansion, caring for an older gentleman whose recent stroke has left him unable to move or communicate. Peter Sarsgaard is always reliable and he has a turns as a lawyer helping the older couple settle their estate. I have to say that the supernatural themes of the flick appeal to me a great deal, as films that I tend to find unnerving are the ones with more of a supernatural bent, slashers don't really bother me at all when it comes to the horror genre.

The wife had another evening meeting that started around 5:00 or so, so she checked in briefly with me before heading out to do that and I moved on to another re-watch for the evening with Greg McLean's Wolf Creek. The movie really struck me with how gorgeous it looks before everything gets all bloody and grimy in the second half, hell it could even function as travelogue footage up to a certain point, it's that sharp looking. It holds up well, I'm happy to say, and I was kinda sad to already know what fates awaited the unsuspecting tourists who run into a creepy redneckity type of guy in the Outback, as they are charming people.

The wife got home towards the end of the film with a pizza for dinner, so we dig into that and watched yet another Big Lots purchase (possibly the other half of that 2-pack I mentioned earlier?), the fairly average slasher film Cry_Wolf. The biggest selling point is cute little redhead Lindy Booth, though we also have a young Jared Padalecki in there as well, who I now know only as Sam Winchester on Supernatural. The whole flick is more of a whodunnit than straight horror fare, but I figured it fit the mood well enough.

So I guess for those of you keeping track at home we could say that today was a fairly middling, 2000's themed horror day. Nothing great per se, but nothing that made me wanna throw shit either.

We wrapped our evening with last week's TiVo'd Ghost Hunters, which actually bothered me a little bit more than the usual stuff I kinda feel like I have to put aside to enjoy the show. There's been things they've shown on the program over the years that made me say wow, that's interesting and possibly unexplainable, but lately they've really started to press my patience with some 'evidence' that feels a little shaky at best. Tonight's instance was one of the guys telling whatever spirit might be in the room with him to supposedly go to another room and whisper a certain non sequitur word into a teammate's ear, which we're meant to believe happened on two occasions, surprising the 2nd guy completely. This is meant to be proof of supernatural happenings, as one guy had no idea what the other one was doing, which is all well and good, but also ignores the fact that this is something that could've been planned out while they set up for their investigation, and the team who is normally pretty skeptical doesn't even acknowledge this idea at all. Oh well, I guess after so many seasons of this type of shit you have to do what you can to keep the show alive.

Be seeing you.

Tag, you're it, Baggy Eyes! Movies, To-Watch Pile, Halloween, The Skeleton Key, Kate Hudson, Peter Sarsgaard, Wolf Creek, Greg McLean, Cry Wolf, Lindy Booth, Jared Padalecki, Television, TiVo, Ghost Hunters

The wife spent some of the day picking up the Office and sorting some of her odds and ends that'd kinda piled up while she was otherwise engaged with all of the past few month's worth of fundraisers and the like.

We visited a bit about this and that and what is going on with the rest of the week, then I showered and got ready to grab a little lunch for us. I ate while catching up with this week's Venture Brothers episode before popping in the next thing from the To-Watch Pile.

Hell High was something out of the High School Horrors boxset that Shriek Show puts out, and I have to admit that the Joe Bob Briggs commentary that the cover promised made me slightly nervous, as the last thing I read that he did a commentary for was a total stinker. I'm not going to say that this was that much better, but it did have a fairly simple through line, where the other flick was just a Gawdawful mess from beginning to end. The basic story is that a little girl accidentally kills a couple teens when they break her doll and she tries to pull a prank on them, but the deaths go unexplained. 18 years later she's a very high strung high school teacher with a class filled with the cartoonishly douche-y kids that I'm sure exist somewhere but I thankfully haven't had to experience myself. Kids try to pull a prank that escalates into a near rape (I'd hate to see what they don't call a fucking prank, eh?) which sends the already fragile woman 'round the bend and she starts killing her attackers. Good for her, because fuck 'em. It was a rather average watch, the performances definitely drag it down in places, but it felt like a fairly middle of the road slasher/revenge fare.

Next off the pile was Hitcher In The Dark, an alleged Giallo from Umberto Lenzi, which is in actuality a slasher type film in which a goofball in enormous Ray-bans cruises around in an RV, luring women in, trying to make them resemble his mother, then raping and killing them when the whole 'mommy' thing doesn't work out. It stars Melrose Place's Josie Bissett as his latest victim and she's pretty cheesy in her role trying to bargain with him and talk her way out of things (she actually fucking believes that she's conned him into letting her go at one point? Really, lady?) and what passes for our 'hero' is her boyfriend that she has earlier caught making out with another girl, so he's a real knight in shining armor, as you may well imagine. It's worth a look if you wanna see some Bissett boobs briefly (I'm like Stan Lee with the dumbass alliteration here), but those aside it's not that interesting. Also good for a laugh: Lenzi interview in which he claims (with a straight face, mind you) that this film would be the perfect thriller except for a tacked on ending the producers forced on him. I fucking marvel at his self congratulation, that's all I'm saying.

The wife stepped out for a meeting and I decided to change the pace a bit and popped in a foreign film for a change, a little something from the Big Lots bins. Voice is a Korean film that was evidently made as part of the series of films that includes Whispering Corridors and Wishing Stairs, films that are all set within girls high schools and feature a mystery surrounding a ghost lurking in the halls. The flick has some odd moments of exposition to explain all of its twists in the final act, but it looks great and moves along at a brisk pace, so I was pleasantly surprised by this one, as it was in a pack of movies for $1 or thereabouts. Not a bad little purchase, but don't let the cover mislead you. I don't know who went apeshit with the Photoshop on the cover, but nothing even remotely like the picture happens in the film.

The wife got home, we caught up a bit and had some dinner to accompany this week's Mad Men before calling it a night. I'm going to try and get this wrapped early, as I feel I need more sleep than I've been getting, having spent the day in a rotten mood for no apparent reason.

Be seeing you.

Tag, you're it, Baggy Eyes! Television, Venture Brothers, Movies, To-Watch Pile, Halloween, Hell High, Joe Bob Briggs, Hitcher In The Dark, Umberto Lenzi, Josie Bissett, Melrose Place, Voice, Whispering Corridors, Wishing Stairs, Mad Men

I overslept today, but not as late as I probably could've, so I was up in the late morning sipping some much needed coffee and flipping through the newspaper.

Noon came and went eventually, so I stepped out to pick up some takeout Chinese food for our lunch. We chilled out with some lunch and gave the new Nikita series a day in court, as there were five episodes piled up on the TiVo and I was thinking that the next episode wouldn't record unless I got my ass in gear and got at least a couple of those watched and deleted before next Thursday. The show is actually pretty watchable, but nothing really blowing my skirt up like, something like, oh say, Human Target did last season, but it's still fun to watch a hot gal like Maggie Q blast her way through tons of faceless baddies in her pursuit of bringing down the government organization that turned her into a killer. I'll ride it out for the season, see where it goes.

The wife caught a nap after awhile and I ended up starting a little Euro-Horror flick off the To-Watch Pile called Tragic Ceremony. The film wasn't all that I hoped it might be, ending up being more of a meandering ride through a satanic mass and the ensuing fallout our hippie leads when I was expecting a full-on Gothic horror flick instead. The idea is that a group of four take refuge in a deserted looking villa in a rainstorm, only to find themselves in the middle of a Satanic ritual. It starred Camille Keaton, granddaughter of Buster Keaton and later star of the highly controversial I Spit On Your Grave as the female lead, but she has little to do here, as she spends about half the film in a quasi-possessed and blank state once they arrive at the villa and the evil hijinx ensue. While the flick played out I even took to the interwebs to see what the general consensus was as far as reviews went, only to find one that went on forever about the film, its themes and even the talent behind it. The reviewer obviously got much more out of it than I did, as I would rate it as passable at best, whereas this dude was going on like it needs to be in everyone's video library as an underrated gem or something. Maybe I wasn't in the right mood? Oh well, it held my interest for the most part and the wife and I had fun cracking jokes at it.

It was just before our normal Sunday evening television fare was meant to start, so I popped in another one of the Masters Of Horror discs, which happened to be John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns, which was one of my favorite episodes upon the initial viewing. I really enjoyed the concept as well as the visuals Carpenter puts together in his tale about a film that drives people mad; I really hope that a new Carpenter film happens soon, as I've heard that he finally has something in the pipeline, but that he also had a seizure at a convention very recently. Here's hoping that his health hasn't begun to fail.

We had some leftovers for dinner and settled into the usual Sunday evening fare, finally wrapping things in the bedroom with a new Dexter off the DVR. We're only three episodes into the season and have already got me hooked on his current dilemma, which includes Dexter trying to get back into his normal killing routine and the possibility of having to deal with a surprise at the end of the episode. Great show, still engaging several seasons in.

Be seeing you.

Tag, you're it, Baggy Eyes! Television, TiVo, Nikita, Maggie Q, Human Target, Movies, To-Watch Pile, Halloween, Tragic Ceremony, Camille Keaton, Buster Keaton, I Spit On Your Grave, Masters Of Horror, DVD, John Carpenter, Cigarette Burns, Dexter, DVR

I ended up sleeping in later than I had intended today, so by the time I was up and coherent it was basically time for lunch. I picked up food for the wife and myself and we tucked into that and some television from last night, new episodes of The Soup and The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret, the new David Cross comedy on IFC, which has been funny but also feels slightly formulaic as far as his foibles and people's reactions to them. I suppose I was expecting something edgier, more in line with his stand-up than what I'm getting here.

We hopped into the whole Halloween/To-Watch Pile nightmare again with Cat's Eye, the Drew Barrymore starring anthology film from Lewis Teague in which a brave stray cat does battle with a tiny troll living in the walls of a family home. It was a flick I think I rented a decade ago on VHS, but remembered little about, particularly the last story, which seems to be what everyone else remembers most about it. It's a decent little timewaster, though aside from the final story it's not what I'd call straight horror, but if we start splitting hairs this month I'll end up watching nothing but shitty zombie cheapies and then putting a bullet in my head by the 17th or something.

The wife napped in the late afternoon while I popped in a film that I'd not seen in awhile and only recently realized that I happened to own under an alternate title on a cheaply produced DVD that'd turned up in one of my infamous DVD lot purchases from e-Bay. What film, you ask after that meandering half-paragraph run on sentence? Wait patiently, you demanding reader-ass, I say.

The film in question is Baba Yaga, an Italian film based on the comic work of Guido Crepax, whose name some of you might recognize from the pages of Heavy Metal Magazine. The title refers to the witch (played by Carroll Baker) that our lead Valentina meets (Isabelle De Funés) one fateful night. She spends the rest of the film trying to fight of Baba Yaga's sexual advances and her insidious influence as it creeps into her life. The film is directed by Corrado Farina, which I found slightly confusing at first, as this cheap-ass DVD blatantly lies to me on the cover and proclaims the director to be Umberto Lenzi, which a fair amount of interweb research has confirmed simply is not the case. Why this is so far off base is anyone's guess, I suppose they figured they might move a few more units if they mislead you with another 'name' thrown on the cover. Couple that with the poor presentation (full frame, obviously pulled from a murky VHS source) and I was making a mental note that I need to dump this disc and pick up the legit version that Blue Underground has available sooner than later, as I do rather like the film. It's slick and stylish, with interesting use of jazz music and a fun, arty approach to the material.

The wife and I gave the Trilogy Of Terror disc a spin, as it's been forever since I'd watched it, possibly since it first hit DVD several years back. This one is very similar to Cat's Eye, in that it's an anthology of three tales, but people only really remember the one big one, the Zuni fetish warrior installment as Karen Black does battle with the animated statue and its mouthful of sharpened teeth. I mentioned watching this film on Twitter and that if no one heard from me again it would be because the Zuni warrior had gotten me. A few minutes later a Twitter friend made me LOL with the reply that she could picture the Zuni warrior riding the Yorkie to attack me, which I found entirely plausible, because that fucking dog would throw me under the bus to save her own life in a heartbeat. The film holds up, but I did find myself waiting a little anxiously for the 'money shot' of the last story, as the other two shorts aren't all that fascinating to me. Oh, well.

The season being upon us, I've also been trying to figure out a few things to break up the monotony of watching film after film after film, so earlier today it occurred to me that I have both seasons of the Masters Of Horror series that have been hanging around waiting for a re-watch, though I'm not actually counting them as part of the To-Watch Pile, as they're television items. With that in mind I popped in our final DVD selection of the day, Dario Argento's Jenifer, which was adapted from a Bruce Jones/Bernie Wrightson story that's about as old as I am. The episode holds up, adding a little filler to the original short story to pad things out to the prescribed hour long format but is overall a solid (occasionally straight up gross) viewing experience.

We breezed through this week's episode of Supernatural off the TiVo and then called it a night. I should also note that I was happy to see them finally show Sam doing push-ups and sit-ups after 5 seasons. They've never once even vaguely addressed that these characters work out or do any sort of combat training, yet they're constantly eating shitty food and mixing it up with all manner of beasties. It was just nice to see them even finally acknowledge that the characters have to do something to maintain their physical appearance. Show me someone boxing later in the season and all is forgiven.

Be seeing you.

Tag, you're it, Baggy Eyes! Television, The Soup, The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret, David Cross, Movies, Halloween, To-Watch Pile, Cats Eye, Drew Barrymore, Lewis Teague, DVD, Baba Yaga, Guido Crepax, Corrado Farina, Carroll Baker, Isabelle De Funes, Trilogy Of Terror, Karen Black, Masters Of Horror Jenifer, Dario Argento, Bruce Jones, Bernie Wrightson, Supernatural, TiVo