But now, I thought it was time for real horror. Or rather, the horror of a total lack of horror, as I sat through a marathon of the five worst horror films of all time.
The spirit (so to speak) of the marathon was to find five horror films that are really, truly unwatchable. So we made a few ground rules: no campy cult classics (sorry, Plan 9 From Outer Space). No accidental entertainment value (like Troll 2, one of the greatest comedies ever made). Shameless goreporn was out (tough break, Cannibal Holocaust).
That left us with these five unbelievably horrible horror movies, which I watched back to back. It was a bit like eating an entire McDonald's franchise: tasty at first, until your entire body rebels violently, and you spend the next few hours screaming, while sitting on top of a porcelain object (a Hummel figurine, in my case).
Silent Night Deadly Night 2
Oh, dear Lord. Not this series again.
This movie is justly infamous on the Internet for one scene: GARBAGE DAY!
That's the director getting shot, by the way. Good for him. He should try it in real life.
For those who didn't suffer their way through my suffering of Silent Night Deadly Night 3, the concept of the original movie was about a killer Santa Claus, a concept that was so complex and layered that by the second movie they'd completely ditched it.
The basic plot is the brother of the killer Santa from the first film is talking to a psychiatrist about his terrible past, and then he lays out his terrible future by ... going on a shooting spree. Dressed as Santa, of course.
There are two big problems with this movie: first, it's absolutely not scary. Second, they badly recycle about half of the first movie. I realized this the first time an actor suddenly changed within the same scene: it was from two different movies.
It also yields one of the weirdest moments in film history: after this movie's flagrant disregard of continuity, down to splicing in moments of the first film, they actually bothered to count the shots the main character uses. He has a revolver, he fires six shots, then he runs out of ammo.
Out of all the things they could have focused on, THAT WAS WHAT THEY PICKED? Was the suspension of disbelief strained beyond the point of no return when the actor who apparently could switch between two faces in his childhood fired seven shots out of a revolver? Really? Really?!
The Edge of Hell
It's a little surprising that two of the 1980s most prominent art forms, slasher movies and hair metal, didn't coincide more often. Jason never crashed a Whitesnake concert, Freddy never turned into a nine-armed vacuum monster to kill Def Leppard fans ... maybe the slashers thought hair metal fans were already in the grip of something far more terrible and insidious.
Enter Jon Mikl Thor, the '80s trifecta of manliness: hair metal vocalist/guitarist, award-winning bodybuilder, and slasher movie actor. Unfortunately, all of this was negated by his being Canadian.
As the leader of THOR, Canada's fifteenth favorite heavy metal band, he put out a bunch of albums you've never heard of, and as an actor, he put out a string of movies that brought the term "Canadian horror" to new lows. But nowhere did he bring it lower than this movie, also known as Rock 'n Roll Nightmare.
I'm just going to ruin the ending for you, because this guy fighting cheap rubber Muppets to bad heavy metal really is much funnier than it sounds (and trust me, I know how funny it already sounds):
Yes, you just saw a one-eyed, latex version of Beaker. And it was hilarious.
The Mangler
Wait, what's a Tobe Hooper movie based on a short story by Stephen King and starring Freddy Kreuger doing on this list? Especially since it had an actual budget! Shouldn't it be good?
Yeah, you'd think.
Part of the problem with The Mangler is that it's a killer laundry machine. They tend to just, you know, sit there. If you don't go near them, problem solved. The movie tries really hard to make the Mangler scary, including having another moment with a haunted fridge (no, really, there's a haunted fridge. They kill it by shooting the compressor. Really.) But there's just no getting around the fact that they're inanimate objects, even if they do occasionally suck in a little old lady and grind her up.
So they solved that problem by having the Mangler grow arms and legs, possibly through the energy of Tobe Hooper sacrificing what little remained of his dignity to give birth to a painfully cheesy CGI effect.
Here's what's really tragic: this movie had two sequels, and they were both light-years better than this. Not that The Mangler Reborn is any great shakes, but at least it's better.
Neon Maniacs
Essentially, it's a horror movie about a bunch of costumed weirdoes running around San Francisco killing people, and the teenage girl nobody will believe, because apparently a random samurai running around San Francisco killing people will go completely unnoticed. Even when he lives under the Golden Gate Bridge with a bunch of other mutant freaks in various theme costumes. We're introduced to this motley crew of murderers at the beginning of the movie, with full-color glossy headshots that may have come from their casting agencies.
What's so bizarre about this movie is its absolute insistence on not being scary at all. Even though our villains are a bunch of mutated, disgusting freaks, they're still a lot more appealing than their teenage victims. In fact, the teens are so obnoxious that it seems like the killers are doing a public service. Each murder scene seems lovingly timed to suck all the suspense, horror and interest right out of the scene. I was now four movies in, and doing a lot of checking of my watch.
Also, I'm all for suspension of disbelief, but these guys aren't exactly hiding. They're running around San Francisco and crashing underneath one of its most prominent landmarks. Why is the city putting up with them? Were all the cops in the '80s busy beating up gay men in the Castro? What?
The Gate
If there's one thing this marathon taught me, it's "never trust a trailer." All those weirdly awesome moments in the trailer are, actually, in this movie. And the retro special effects really are that good. It's just that those are ALL the awesome moments in the movie, and it takes forty-five extremely painful minutes of kids talking to each other to get there.
No wonder Stephen Dorff pretends this movie doesn't exist: we're pretty sure anybody would be embarrassed to say they were in it. Even Gary Busey would turn this one down.
Seriously, there is good stuff in this movie, but it's a relentless death march of boring conversations to get to it. The kids have all the personality of the Jersey Shore cast after they've passed out in a pool of their own vomit. The teenagers are all idiots. And the ending is a miserable cop-out.
Still, those effects are pretty awesome. You can see why they're remaking it. In 3D. With Bill of "Bill and Ted" behind the camera.
I could add to this if I remembered the name of it. It had a teenaged girl who ends up running through blackness being chased by a hairy monster that looks a lot like Sully from "Monsters Inc." I was about 10 and was laughing. My sister was around 17 and was scared Shakespeareless.
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