HALLOWEEN HORROR CHALLENGE -MOVIE 13 GHOULIES GO TO COLLEGE

GHOULIES GO TO COLLEGE aka GHOULIES 3 (1991)
D. John Carl Beuchler
LIONSGATE DVD
 Full Frame

There is no denying the GHOULIES movies are some retarded shit. Each one gets dumber as the series goes on, but they are consistent in their lunacy. You get what you pay for with a GHOULIES movie. I mean how can you expect anything else when the poster art is a little GREMLINS rip-off monster climbing out of the toilet. 

But I admit to a soft spot for them. I caught the first two for the first time only recently when THIS-TV played them back to back last October. I shocked myself by how much I enjoyed them. They were dumb as hell, but kinda charming. Especially in this day and age of CGI overload, little blatant puppet creatures wrecking havoc is very entertaining. 

This entry has the F/X creator John Carl Buechler taking the directorial reigns and he goes all out to try and prove he is not some F/X guy with no directorial chops. We end up with ANIMAL HOUSE on a fraction of the budget with gooey never convincing monsters running amok. he jams every conceivable gag you can think of on screen and then some. Nothing is too low or stupid for this movie! It actually becomes kind of admirable by the end. 

The local college is having their annual "Yank War" in which the competing fraternities try to out do each other with new and crazy pranks. One Frat brother (who is unfortunately channeling Pauley Shore) finds an old Ghoulies comic book that contains the incantations to bring the little bastards to this realm. Various people almost read it aloud until angry teacher Ragnar (Kevin McCarthy who is clearly never afraid to sink as low as the material calls for) actually does it. He sets the Ghoulies in motion, YOJIMBO style to make each frat think the other one is doing the nasty stuff they are responsible for. There's shower scenes, pillow fights, a panty raid and lots of naked women (which was missing in the previous PG-13 entries). 

The Ghoulies themselves are never impressive or even very good effects. But Buechler embraces that and has them cracking jokes, talking, walking around and in a few scenes swinging giant hammers and golf clubs. It becomes really surreal, especially once he has them put clothes on, dressing like Fraternity assholes. My girl friend walked through the room while I was watching this and was taken aback by how CUTE they were. And she is right. Especially the one wearing the ball cap. 

I should hate myself for enjoying this as much as I did, but I refuse to live with regrets. It is dumb as the law allows, and funny as shit. I watched the edition in the LionsGate 8 film horror pack and it looked really good to me. But don't pay the insane prices assholes who horded that DVD are asking. Now that Halloween Season is upon us it is finally showing up all over at K-Mart and Walmart stores for $5 like it was always intended. 

Watch for a supporting role from Jason Scott Lee who would only a couple years later be playing Bruce Lee in DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY and would go on to many action roles. Here is a skinny, geeky Frat brother. 

Review © Andrew Copp

HALLOWEEN HORROR CHALLENGE Day 2 THIRST (2009)

Last night I unofficially launched my Halloween Horror Challenge with the couple of HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR episodes I watched. Tonight is the first feature film in the challenge this year. And yes I am fully aware that I am a week ahead of schedule, but I want to try to get as many in as possible this year.

THIRST (2009)
D. PARK CHAN WOOK

FIRST LOOK PICTURES

2.35

This very quirky vampire comedy is a strange creature indeed. Coming from the director of OLDBOY one expects it to be left of center. But this films throws the compass out entirely to find its own unnatural bio-rhythms.

Kang Ho-Song stars as a priest named Sang Hyeon, who chooses to go to a secluded hospital to be part of an experiment to help cure a deadly disease called EV. In doing so he understands he takes the risk of dying from the communicable virus. But during the process he ends up with something worse. He becomes a vampire, but yet is still carrying the disease as well. He becomes a martyr figure to all those suffering from fatal afflictions, all of whom ask him to pray over them in hopes of a cure. They even camp out in tents like an I-Phone sale in hopes of him laying on of hands. Working the hospital he meets a family he spent a lot of time with when he was an orphan child. Because the eldest boy Kang Wu ( Ha-Kyun Shin) has what appears to be cancer. Sang ends up living with the family and falling into a torrid affair with Kang Wu's wife (and former adopted sister) Tea-Ju (a blistering performance by Ok-Bin Kim). Soon there is murder being plotted and more characters entering the Living Dead fold.

While this is a vampire film, and therefor already part of a VERY tired sub-genre, there is NOTHING normal about THIRST. Tonally it is a bizarre and quite gory black comedy. But under the surface it is thematically about poison relationships, weather they be between couples or even one's relationship with God. The vampirism is treated much more like a medical virus that brings out the worst in each character. Making them MORE of what they already are. Sang-Hyeon is a gentle God fearing man at the start and slowly, almost against his will becomes a monster who will kill to satiate his lusts. Tea-Ju on the other hand takes to being a monster quite easily, lying, cheating and ultimately killing, a lot, to meet her new needs. 

But even with all the heavy thematic elements the film still succeeds at being funny and scary too. It never tries to be a knock you out scare fest. Instead the movie is a slowly creeping up kind of nasty scare that candy coats the bullet with quirky humor.

A great change of pace horror film for those looking for something quite a bit different.

Review © Andrew Copp

Halloween Horror Challenge OCt 11: VAMPIRE GIRL VS. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL

VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL (2010)
D. Yoshihiro Nishimura, Naoyuki Tomomatsu
Sony
HD Video

From the directors and F/X teams behind the 2008 hit TOKYO GORE POLICE comes this outrageous gore, monster, comedy that, frankly, I don't even know how to begin to review. Is it a good movie? No, not really, but it IS a constantly inventive one. Watching VAMPIRE GIRL VS. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL you are sure to see things you have NEVER seen before, and a few things you probably never will want to see again. Every frame of this movie is jammed packed with color, movement, texture and lots and lots of spraying gore. If ever there was a movie that was practically begging you to pay attention it is this one. It is NEVER boring, every second pops something new for you to lock your eyeballs onto. But Jesus, at some point it almost becomes sensory overload.

The movie opens with a crazy, crazy scene of our lead Vampire Girl (Yukie Kawamura) facing off with a trio of doll faced school girl monsters. She dispatches them them gorily, stripping their skin off in long spirals and popping their skulls out, stacking them on the beach before her boyfriend Jyugon Mizushima (Takumi Saitô) begins to narrate the tale ahead of how they met. Jyugon is the only real available boy in school and he is cornered by Keiko (Eri Otoguro) the pushy hot girl in class and soon he is her boyfriend. But the new transfer student Monami sets her eyes on him and gives him a chocolate candy with her own blood in it. Before he knows it he is craving blood and wanting to be with Monami the Vampire Girl. What none of them know is that the hot school nurse and school assistant principal are doing experiments in the basement. The two girls are out to fight each other over their new boy toy until he becomes a vampire too and Mizushima ends up with her head blasted open on the pavement. Soon she has become the experiment of the school staff and the nurse is murdering the best students of the school to collect the parts to recreate her as the best fighting monster possible.

This write up doesn't even begin to do justice to the complete insanity of this thing. From the opening scene of over the top of comedic slaughter to the scene in the classroom where we meet the students which is the most racist thing I have seen in a movie since THE ETERNAL JEW. There is a subplot about a group of girls who have remade themselves a faux Black girls by wearing make up and fake afros and big cup lips and giant spears and every other horrible stereotype and racist thing you can think of. I guess I can reason it out as to be a commentary about people trying to go to extremes to be people who they are not. But my god it is terribly extreme and offensive. I guess that is the point.

There is also another subplot about ritual cutters, a group of teenage girls who cut themselves to be part of a group. They end up in a competition of who can cut themselves the most and best, complete with a trophy. The girls are all anemic and eat cabbage to keep up their strength.

But the meat of the movie is the battle between the girls. It becomes a big F/X battle with body parts switching places, blood becoming solid becoming actual weapons. It really is the epic battle the directors set out to achieve, even if it is kind of stupid. With severed arms becoming spinning rotors to make people fly and things like that. Frankly this movie would probably work a lot better if you were really really high. I rarely say that since I am not a stoner, but in this case, well it fits.

I was a big fan of TOKYO GORE POLICE because with all the insane imagery, way over the top gore, and bizarre psycho sexual set pieces, there was a strong political and social subtext tying it all together. With VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL it is almost like they set out to make some really weird teen movie and are only lightly touching on any kind of social context at all. The stuff that makes that other movie hang together is mostly missing here,and that is a shame.

I'm not a fan of the new Japanese insane cinema like MACHINE GIRL or ROBOGEISHA with cute girls with machine guns pupping out of their assholes and thousands of gallons of blood. That shit is amusing for about a minute but then the twelve year old in me starts asking for a context for it and gets severely disappointed. TOKYO GORE POLICE had the whole package. This movie almost has it, then goes back to the candy colored insanity. It is never boring for sure, but it is pretty empty unfortunately.

Review © Andrew Copp