Sunday, January 20, 2008

Horror Movie Review #5: Art of the Devil

ART OF THE DEVIL
Directed By: Tanit Jitnukul
Release Date: 17 June 2004
Running Time: 96 min
Language: Thai
Horror Type: Witchcraft
Sex? - SOME
Gore? - YES
Momel's Rating: 4/5

A very good looking Thai woman executes her wrath on this very wealthy horndog after he impregnates her and, well, "shares" her with three of his equally horny friends. So what's a girl to do, most especially if she's in cahoots with some ass kicking Level 99 A-Class shaman with a black belt in witchcraft? She appeals to his devilish art, and it concludes in a visually painful array of torture:

1. Iron nails slowly force their way out of his head.
2. His son chokes on a sandwich and begins to cough shards of glass.
3. His other son turns mad and shoots his sister, his girlfriend, and himself in the head.
4. His wife dies mysteriously with her eyes wide open and with the length of her tongue curled outside her mouth.

And it's just warming up because our heroine has started taking a be-deviled interest in his very capital inheritance and the real estate that comes with it. Turns out that she'll need to practice the art once more because his other wife and kids have claimed everything he owns by virtue of legal practices. What ensues is a chilling carnival of carnage which includes death by eels, regurgitated razor blades, a diseased maddening that precedes suicide, two miscarriages, and, for effect that borders on overkill, a blond albino ghost with bad teeth.

It's a scary movie that powerfully simulates an already terrifying truth that is witchcraft. It presents this evil practice with such attention to detail; it shows the master occultist at work in the second floor of his urban barber shop, with his ceremonial gestures, requisite corpses. hair samples, and grilled still born foetuses. Art imitates life, and Art of the Devil does so with an endearing soft spot for detail.

Horror Movie Review #4: Gingersnaps

GINGERSNAPS
Directed By: John Fawcett
Release Date: 21 April 2001
Running Time: 108 min
Language: English
Horror Type: Werewolves
Sex? - SOME
Gore? - SOME
Momel's Rating: 3/5

Menstruating girls don't grow hair excessively scattered all over their developing bodies. Menstruating girls don't suddenly become lasciviously promiscuous like dogs in heat. Horny, yes, but excessive? Menstruating girls don't develop canine instincts, grow fangs, and they sure as hell don't grow a tail. Menstruating girls become women, and they don't become werewolves. Menstruating girls are all of these in Gingersnaps.

This movie follows the descent of two teenage sisters who started as boring enough, not to mention too cliche, with their consuming passion for death and dying. They turned lame as one of them develops lycanthropic (werewolf-ish) attributes after a very violent encounter with a, well, guess what, a werewolf. Like most werewolf movies where there's usually some sort of transmission involved, the supporting character finds out a cure to lift the curse. The climax usually is in how they try to administer the cure, because them werewolves don't take too kindly to sitting down still and saying ahhh.

Its a world of fun the first time around, but, unlike vampires, which are a whole hell sexier and less hairy, it starts to bite in the long run.

It's not scary, it's not even jumpy. It doesn't have much filler sex, which is weird since I believed the story on its own needed a lot of serious distraction. The kills are both uncreative, it's mostly bites, and reservedly scattered. And the only reason why I gave it a three is because of this decidedly tragic and altogether moving fate of their sisterhood so powerfully played out and appeals to anybody's inner drama queen.

Horror Movie Review #3: Ted Bundy

TED BUNDY
Directed By: Matthew Bright
Release Date: 22 November 2002
Running Time: 99 min
Language: ENGLISH
Horror Type: Serial Killers
Sex? - YES
Gore? - YES
Momel's Rating: 4/5

"I can't feel sympathy for other people, but I'm still human."

This guy keeps a well-organized drawerful of handkerchiefs, loves girls, steals groceries and plants and appliances, and masturbates in the street, right outside some girls apartment. Some black guy from an upstairs apartment looks down at him, screams "Oh God, you again," and throws water at him while he's jerking off. He's almost crying in his car as he drives away from the scene of his perversion.

He flunks out of law school, and is just beginning to flunk psychology. He looks forward to a good fuck, and he strangles his girlfriend when she refuses his dog-style kung-fu. He casually forces entry into his masturbatory fantasy's apartment, knocks her skull in with a crowbar as she sleeps, and, like the Grade A sadist he is, he relentlessly punches her on the face afterwards. He then goes back to his girlfriend's apartment to have chicken, like dinner-chicken. Afterwards, he breaks into another random girl's apartment in the same night where he forces the same wash and rinse crowbar action he observed earlier.

He asks his girlfriend to play dead, "don't even breathe," as he fucks her handcuffed person. And he's not singularly devoted, since he loves to chase other girls; he does so with a crowbar. He's still mildly murderous at this point since he goes on a killing spree later on.

This carnival of rape and murder follows the life of infamous serial killer, Theodore Bundy. At the same time, its a no holds barred depiction of this one psychopath who, in real life, gave hell to the 29 people he brutally ravaged and killed for pleasure. It is relentless and severe at the same time, and it follows a smoothly transitioning story which also included clippings from the actual capture of the real monster.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Horror Movie Review #2: Hostel

HOSTEL
Directed by: Eli Roth
Release date: January 6, 2006
Running time: 94 min.
Language: English
Horror Type: Serial Killers
Sex? - YES
Gore? - YES
Momel's Rating: 4/5


"Shit Man We're Never Leaving Here"

It's all so very simple: A group of three pussy hunting crack heads take a trip to Europe where, in a series of very clever manipulations, they find themselves checking in to this hole in the wall hostel. Little did they know that it's all a very ingenious cover for this underground operation where very very rich clients outbid each other for a chance to kill the hostel's guests according to their own torturous preferences. They pay $5000 to kill a Russian guest, $10,000 for a European, and $25,000 for an American.


It's all so very straightforward: The girls are pretty, and their tits are big. The kills are graphic, and the helplessness that comes with being privately tortured in a foreign country makes it all the more scary. The details are vivid, and those contribute well to this feeling of distaste so akin to that of hearing scratching nails on a blackboard. Its a no holds barred attempt to offend, and it translates well.

It's all so very brilliant: Eli Roth is a genius. He knows what sells, and is very excessive with it. He treats us to a morbid cornucopia of rape and murder, and he may be a little excessive for some, most especially with that very delicious ocular trauma scene with the Japanese girl on it. Restraint is not a common practice with people like him, and that doesn't really matter much because it's still a very good movie on the whole. You have to watch it, but it's not for those with very little intestinal fortitude.

Horror Movie Review #1: 28 Days Later

28 DAYS LATER
Directed By: Danny Boyle

Release Date: 27 June 2003

Running Time: 113 min.

Language: English

Horror Type: Zombies
Sex? - YES

Gore? - YES

Momel's Rating: 2/5


The only good thing about the "zombies" in 28 Days Later is we get to know the cause of their zombification right off the bat. And that's just about it, really.

A group of animal right activists infiltrate a monkey lab because they're the stupid bunch of tree hugging shit heads who know no better than to gatecrash a party which celebrates the maddening of highly diseased and equally infectious experimental monkeys.These primates, the test monkeys that is, are infected with rage, like anger-rage, so severely intensified that they cause the infected to become manic and murderous at the same time. It's a zombifying blind rage made very slightly interesting because it is easily transmitted through bodily fluids.

They turn an abstract emotion into a transmissible infection and they make a movie out of such a lame and uninspired concept. I don't get it. Anyway, these monkeys bite the reasoning out of our activists, turn them into zombies in no less than five minutes, and the movie, in spite of a very promising introduction, went bananas from that point on. They prolonged the overall lameness into several periods that are 28 days long, and their zombies are neither here or there. And that's a decidedly baaad thing for a zombie movie.

What zombies don't eat brains? What zombies don't mutilate and dismember in a mindless disposition? Well, the zombies in this movie does. The fact that they run makes a difference, but nothing beats old school mangling, and I'd rather have that over some very angry walking corpse.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Hold Your Breath, Please

If horror movies were magazine advertisements for perfume, I'd scratch and sniff. If horror movies were some guys balls, I'd still scratch and sniff. See, I've been enjoying the golden filth of movies earlier than my first screening of the Adventures of Milo and Otis in the Grade School auditorium. My first horror movie had that ugly freak Freddie Krueger eating pizza with screaming human heads for toppings. That was a singularly terrible childhood recollection, however delectable, but then it fast forwarded to a fuck scene some minutes later, and I was, oddly enough, mightily appeased. All the more interested if you may because weird and horny are some of my favorite impressions.

This specific interest is a 20-year relationship. And it's going strong with an abstract boyfriend possessing an irresistible bad taste, however clever and inventive and macabre and brutal, for entertainment. To tell you honestly, it's one of my lingering passions that survived puberty, ROTC, and my first homosexual encounter combined. And I will be writing horror reviews in my blog very very soon. I love to watch scary movies and that passion's paralleled only by my equally devouring passion to bullshit.

A blog just makes the translation all the more convenient. I'm talking about this blog whose writings reflect such inspiration and influence from some super weird gay prick who's been watching the same endearingly stupid shit for these past twenty years and counting.


That's The Phantom of the Opera, Linda Blair as Regan in The Exorcist, and a clip from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

Related Posts:
Explaining Some of My Favorite Movies

Peace

I claim no authority. I'm just a weird fag who loves to watch scary movies. In the course of this lingering weakness, I began to distinguish really good movies from that iredeemably diseased shit you can't even use for manure. I've been watching them freaky films for a lot of years now that I developed taste. Or bad taste. Which ever's more appropriate. See, I like my horror movies to border in between guiltless brutality and soft porn. That's a preference, and although I am still waiting for The Greatest Desensitizing Movie there is, I still maintain a soft spot for scary movies that capitalize on an effectively moving story all the same.

I am very partial with my ratings because I know what sucks, and I know what shines, and I'm not looking forward to an agreement or a challenge because it's all for good clean fun right off the bat. I won't even entertain arguments on account of it's just a scary movie, and you're probably weirder than my person if we start discussing, at your lead, why I think werewolf movies are the gayest.

The first poster is for Lucio Fulci's The Beyond, published in 1981, and the one on the left, City of the Living Dead, is from the same director published in 1983.

Saturday, January 05, 2008

A Very Strange Fancy That Is Guy de Maupassant Part 1

I just finished a very delicious volume of some of Guy de Maupassant's more interesting short stories. I knew it was a delightful find right off the bat on account of I've been reading the guy since 1993. Yes, it was that long ago, and it was some of his very simple works which glued that long name to memory.
He's this French writer, dubbed as one of the Fathers of Short Stories, who writes with a twisted appetite for tragedy in its very simple presentations.

He seals his stories from spoling; he avoids happy endings as much as he can. He has nothing against killing the main character in a heartbeat, as you would a candle after a power outage. He speaks of lost and unrequited love, of betrayal, of revenge, and he does it well, so well that he makes you root for his characters however pathetic they are right off the get go.

He strings his adjectives so effectively, it takes but a few to design, in creating a mental picture, his specific brand of sadness. He makes you root for a prostitute, he makes you feel sympathetic towards a dying old horse, he makes fun of the new found poverty of a middle aged couple, and he does it well with a deceptive plot so brilliantly engineered you'll never guess what happens next.

He lived for 43 years, and he masterpieced around 300 short stories in his lifetime. He sufferred a sexually transmitted disease towards the collapse of his sanity with his confinement in an institution for the mentally abandoned. He's horny, and he died in a nuthouse, but he wrote so freaking well he inspired me to write him something in return.

Related Posts:
A Very Strange Fancy That Is Guy de Maupassant Part 2

A Very Strange Fancy That Is Guy de Maupassant Part 2

I wrote in a recent post, in a gratuitous inspiration to kiss ass, the brilliant mind that is Guy de Maupassant. He is decidedly one of those authors I pay the most attention to. Too bad he's dead, and he died in a loony bin with raging syphilis to match. However, it is these little details that caused the attraction towards a magnificent writer, however dead, who was both horny and inspirational at the same time.

Here's a sampling of some of his works.

1. Ball of Fat

This here tells the story of Ball of Fat, a spirited prostitute, who suffers the betrayal of the same people she fed and redeemed from confinement. It was about some of the saddest fifty pages.


2. Vendetta

An old widow avenges the death of her only son with the help of his old dog Semillante. She starves the poor animal until it's frenetic. This was, however, the beginning of his training.


3. The Necklace

A woman borrows a necklace of imperial value only to lose it and the end of the day. Distraught, she surrenders herself to poverty in order to redeem her precious loss. The necklace has been paid for in full after she suffers ten years of very meager provisions. She then finds out at the end of ten years that it was fake to begin with.


4. The Mad Woman

A rich woman turns mad and locks herself up in her manor for several years, conceding her survival and nourishment to the care and services of her maids and help. War invades their territory, and the Prussians take over her property. She's left in the woods with nothing and no one but her cushioned bed to protect her from the stinging cruelty of winter, and she was never heard of again.


5. A Sale

A man sells his wife using her volume in water displaced from a large tub as currency. She thinks he's trying to drown her, presents this attempt at murder in the court of law, and he gets away with a reprimand.

Related Links:
A Very Strange Fancy That Is Guy de Maupassant Part 1

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

The Best Part of New Years is Not the Resolutions

No, its not the resolutions on account of nobody keeps them anyway. Resolutions are the in thing for the last few minutes of the expiring year, and so last year after the first few hours of the fresh year. Never make crappy resolutions you know full well, in your sleep, you'll be violating in a heartbeat. No, don't say you'll quit smoking because, unlike a hole in the head, that will never happen. No, you'll not lose weight. You're packing in two holidays worth of calories, and your losing weight, unlike a hole in the head, will never happen. No, don't say that you're keeping your resolutions this year with such finality because, unlike a hole in the head, that will never happen.

A heart attack is final. Your resolutions aren't.

That's a really lousy way to kick start the year. So stop making resolutions. Of course, in what might be a flash of tired inspiration, you can resolve to never writing resolutions no more. But that's crazy stupid, and totally nonterminating in itself because it is absolutely, big word alert, nose bleeding PARADOXICAL.

(Grins in satisfaction, I am so smart i'm using a very big word like PARADOXICAL)


According to Dictionary.com,
This makes for a great segue for yet another reference to philosophy. I'm referring, grinning wider in total satisfaction because I'm so suddenly smarter, to the Liar Paradox. Go crazy.





Altogether now. I swear to make no New Years resolutions no more.

Additional Credits:
Wikipedia

The Best Part of New Years is Not the Food

The Best Part of New Years is not the food on account of most people will be dirt poor from all that Christmas materialism anyway. They're probably serving Christmas leftovers for New Years, maybe add a few round fruits for superstition, and they're all set. Of course that spells C-H-E-A-P-A-S-S, decidedly, but its very possible that your neighbors are drinking eggnog and eating ham and cheese to usher in the New Year.

I am now reminded of one New Year's Post I wrote last year.

The Best Part of New Years is the Surgery

I have decided, in a heartbeat, to let my loser self spend New Year's Eve at work, tired and with a bad sense of longing to celebrate as we are doing technical support. That's a singularly unhappy thing on the whole. And it really isn't a matter of perspective on account of, sour grape alert, other equally employed people are blessed with the chance to usher in the New Year shit faced, pot bellied, and hopefully, surgery free.

Of course, I can choose to refer to some overworked excuse to skip work like diaria, diarhea, the shits and participate in the loud festivities. But I am singularly jumpy, and I curse easy over a firecracker anywhere in my breathing space. So I choose to celebrate in a very quiet environment with double pay, and delight in the following pictures of mangled severity.







Happy New Year to You! May you have fun welcoming the New Year and the celebration's universal appeal regardless of your time zone.

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