Monday, November 19, 2018

Trucker's Woman (1975)

Holy crap.  This movie is ridiculous.  After his father is killed in an accident, Mike Kelly drops out of college to become a truck driver.  He believes his fathers death wasn't an accident and wants to figure out who was behind it.

Mike teams up with mumbling old timer Ben to keep an eye on what is going on at the trucking company and to have meetings with other truckers.  If you're not paying close enough attention, you'll think Mike and Ben are have gone to an AA meeting because there's folding chairs and a podium.

When he meets Karen at a bar, Mike tries to follow her when she leaves. Then he becomes super creepy and shows up at her motel room.  When she asks him to leave, he hides outside the door until she opens it to check to make sure she's gone.  Ahhh, the 70s... where men could be rape-y and women would fall for their supposed charm.

Things go from bad to worse.  Mike is framed for having drugs in his truck. He discovers there is definitely corruption in the trucking industry and gangsters show up at inopportune times. Mike becomes a police informant and discovers Karen's father isn't a great guy. No one seems to notice that Karen appears to be wearing a bad wig.

Mike is played by Michael Hawkins who turns out to be Christian Slaters father.  Mechanic Diesel Joe is played by Larry Drake who later played Dr. Giggles.  Ben is played by Doodles Weaver.

Mike had to drop out of college because his father died.
Poor guy. He's just a kid




Sunday, November 18, 2018

Check Your Spelling, Movie

Are they bad spellers or did someone just make a typo?  Either way, it makes for amusement when it's on a DVD menu forever.

Dark Heritage title screen 


It's a Blooper Reel, not real (from The Stitcher)

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

The Gracefield Incident (2017)

Months after a car crash in which Matthew loses an eye and his wife loses their baby, they decide to spend the weekend at Matthew's bosses cabin in the woods. They invite two other couples and plan to have a fun weekend at the luxurious cabin in the middle of nowhere.  Matthew makes a fake eye and places a camera in it so he can record the whole weekend. Why? I don't know. How does he keep the camera running and how does he charge the battery? No idea.

The first night, a bright light streaks through the sky and a meteor lands in the woods.  Matthew and his friend go out to wander the woods and find where it hit.  There is a hole in the ground that Matthew sticks his hand into to see what made it.  Matthew is an idiot.  No good can ever come from this.  

Soon after he pulls a mystery blob of what looks like rock from the hole, a creature starts stalking them.  They decided not to tell the girls that there is something out there as they don't want them to panic. Because it's so much better to have something dangerous near you that you're totally unaware of, right? Am I right?

Things go from bad to worse as this creature doesn't seem to conform to the same gravity and time that humans do. There is talk that perhaps the creature is Bigfoot since his boss mentioned Bigfoot sightings in the area. But it's ridiculous based on the creatures movements and size.

Most of the video is shot from the point of Matthews eyeball. If you are prone to motion sickness, you'll hate the filmmaker for this.  I wish people who shoot point of view videos understood the impact of watching a film that literally makes you feel like you're going to puke.  It's only going to make your movie less likable. 

Also stop Blair Witching it. We don't need another movie where someone stands there not moving with their back to the camera, while someone tentatively shouts their name.  Yes, we get it. Something is terribly wrong.


Sunday, November 11, 2018

Tales from the Hood 2 (2018)

A horror anthology with a wrap around story about a rich,  white, racist, sexist, jerk named Dumass Beach who invents the Robo-Patriot - a robot that can police the populace and hand down sentences to those who commit crimes.  Beach hires Portifoy Simms to tell the robot stories about human behavior. Then the robot can use these tales to build a profile of unacceptable behavior and punish those who go past that line.

Here is a synopsis of each tale:

Good Golly - Two college friends, one white and one black, go to a museum of racist artifacts where they see a doll called a golliwog.  The white girl has a collection of the dolls and doesn't see them as racist since they were part of her childhood. After failing to get the proprietor to sell it to her, she comes back after dark to break in and steal it. Things go horribly wrong.

The Medium - After thugs accidentally kill a pimp while attempting to find out where he keeps his money, they kidnap a famous psychic in an effort to contact the pimp in the afterlife. As you can imagine, thing go horribly wrong.

Date Night - Two clean cut date rapists use a dating app to find two females and then roofie them while at the women's house. Thankfully things go horribly wrong.

The Sacrifice - a black politician is subservient to a white politician and is not true to himself in a bid to get more power.  His pregnant white wife keeps seeing a boy who she says wants to take their baby. The real story of Emmett Till is part of this morality play, and other tragic real deaths are referenced to hit home the point.

I'm not sure how it would affect anyone if they are not familiar with Emmett Till. But if you are familiar with history, then this story will suck the air out of the room. There were three of us watching the movie and when it ended, we were all silent and depressed. So if they were trying to make an impact, point accomplished. I'm just not sure if will impact those who don't know that Emmett Till was a real person who was brutally murdered. Also many people watch horror movies as a fun escape which this segment is not.

Keith David is awesome, as he is in almost everything. He's a lot of fun to watch. And of course you know that Beach is going to get what's coming to him, since he has no redeemable qualities.

One thing that drove us all nuts was that in Date Night, you actually have to watch four people play two rounds of Cards Against Humanity. This is annoying on it's own because who wants to watch someone play cards? But even more so because they keep track of who plays which card. That's not how you play it, people.


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