Madhouse (1974)

Madhouse (1974)

Directed by: Jim Clark

Starring: Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Robert Quarry

The tagline to this film is, “If stark terror were ecstasy, living here would be sheer bliss!”, which is just about the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. You know, if blood was cheese, the hospital would be a restaurant! If the theory of relativity was the board game Monopoly, you’d get $200 for going faster than the speed of light! IF FROGS HAD WINGS THEY WOULDN’T BUMP THEIR BUTTS ON THE GROUND WHEN THEY JUMPED!!

A washed-up horror actor (Price) is haunted by the monster he played in his movies years later when similar murders begen to happen in real life. He lost his career after everyone thought he killed his wife and had gone crazy, and now they all suspect he might be schitzophrenic and the persona of the killer comes out when he’s asleep or something. It’s kinda like the plot to a Scooby-Doo episode, only with Vincent Price and Peter Cushing.

Vincent Price was an amazing horror actor, and while he generally got known for his roles as the bad guy, I actually think he does a lot better when he plays a poor suffering victim. I mean, just look at the guy’s face, he’s got a permanent puppy dog look to him… he just also happens to have one of the most amazing voices ever recorded. This movie isn’t very remarkable amongst the other 60’s and 70’s horror movies, and the twist ending can be seen coming an hour and a half away. But still, VINCENT PRICE!

Murder Once Removed (1971)

Murder Once Removed (1971)

Directed by: Charles S. Dubin

Starring: John Forsythe, Richard Kiley, Reta Shaw

Wow, John Forsythe looks pretty smug on that DVD cover. He really does look like the kind of guy who goes around murdering people and getting away with it. At least, he is if movies have taught me anything! This movie, specifically, since that’s what he does and that’s what he’s supposed to look like. Well anyway.

Forsythe plays a doctor who’s new to town and his practice is doing pretty good, until one of his patients reveals that he’s looked the doctor up and it kinda seems like he moved because he killed someone on purpose in his last town. Of course the doctor says this is preposterous, and goes on to say that right until he kills the guy with a fireplace poker. He blames it on a druggie teen he’d been treating and seems to get away with it… until he goes and tells the dead guy’s wife that they should hook up now because he killed her husband. She freaks out a little and her and a cop get together to find out if the doctor is really the killer. I won’t tell you what happens at the end, but boy howdy is it twist after exciting twist!

It’s a complicated enough murder mystery, though it’s not quite to the point where it’s an Agatha Christie story or anything. It wasn’t bad, though.

The Monolith Monsters (1957)

The Monolith Monsters (1957)

Directed by: John Sherwood

Starring: Grant Williams, Lola Albright, Les Tremayne

It sure seems like all these 50’s sci-fi/horror movies are all the same, but then again, you can say the same thing about all horror movies from any decade, pretty much. Since they’re just so damn cheap and still somehow viable to audiences with the simplest possible characters and plots, there’s really no reason for people to try very hard when they make ’em. So why have I wasted so many hours of my life watching the same shit over and over again? There are some questions which have no answers, and some which I would rather not know the answers to.

A bunch of scientists in lab coats try to figure out why a meteorite seems to grow every time it gets exposed to water, and how it turns people who touch it into statues. It turns out that the rocks eat selenium, and that’s what makes skin, and that’s why it freezes people in place. Also, after about an hour of movie, they eventually realize that it’s water that activates the rocks, despite the fact that it’s the most obvious thing and has been since the beginning of the film. Also it turns out that saltwater will destroy them, so they put a bunch of salt in a lake and blow up the dam holding it back so it destroys all the rest of the rocks. There are no monsters in this movie.

No monsters, but all the junk science you can fit into an hour and a half! It feels like the writer heard some garbage about what skin is made out of, then made a movie about it. Combine that with some shrinky-dinks from space, and there ya go, another dumb movie where some idiots stand around in a lab for most of the film.

Reasonable Doubt (2014)

Reasonable Doubt (2014)

Directed by: Peter Howitt

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Dominic Cooper, Erin Karpluk

I have a Reasonable Doubt about the quality of this movie!!! AAAA HAHAHAHAA!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Shoot me, put me out of my misery.

A lawyer hits a guy with his car one night while drunk, and decides not to stop and help the guy. Lawyers, amiright?! The next day he goes into the office to find that he has to prosecute against a guy convicted of killing the very guy he hit with his car! What are the odds? To make a long, predictable story short, it turns out that Sam Jackson actually DID kill the guy, and also he’s a serial killer whom nobody but our morally ambiguous lawyer fellow suspects because he himself failed to convict him.

It’s a pretty tedious thriller, but I liked Sam Jackson’s character. He’s a guy who was tortured and watched while his family was killed in front of him, so now he goes around killing random criminals released from prison as some sort of revenge. However, at the end, he’s got the lawyer’s family in the same situation he was in, and he completely fails to make the connection somehow. It’s like they spent the whole movie slowly nudging this character to this perfect place, and instead of completing the obvious character growth, they just shoot him and the movie’s over. Of all the places in the movie, why would THAT be the one place they don’t do the most obvious thing? THE ONE THAT WOULD ACTUALLY BE GOOD. Bah, humbug.

I Married a Monster From Outer Space (1958)

I Married a Monster From Outer Space (1958)

Directed by: Gene Fowler Jr.

Starring: Tom Tryon, Gloria Talbott, Peter Baldwin

You know what I really like about 50’s B-movies? They had to have ridiculous names so they could advertise them and kids would come and see them, but most of the time they were actually just low-rent sci-fi stories. Like, ACTUAL science fiction, and tricking people with ridiculous advertising was the only way to get people to watch it. Now they just advertise explosions and then fill the movie with explosions and everybody’s happy. Everybody except me. I’m never happy. I’m an awful person to be around.

A woman, get this, marries a monster from outer space!! That’s the plot! Okay, actually the plot is that her fiancee is replaced by an alien the night before their wedding (ISN’T THAT JUST WHAT IT SEEMS LIKE, LADIES?! HEY-OHH!!) and she slowly starts to suspect something, like the way he doesn’t remember things about his own life or knows what thunder is or how he strangles dogs. Eventually other husbands get replaced by the aliens too, and only our original wife knows about it and nobody believes her! But then the movie has to end so they DO believe her and they hunt down the aliens and have German shepherds rip out their throats.

It’s kind of a modified version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, only it doesn’t do a good job at building suspense because the audience knows what’s going on from square one, so all you really end up doing is yelling at all the stupid people who don’t see how obviously alien these alien guys are. They try to put in some stuff about how the aliens need women because all their alien women died out and now they can’t make babies, but they do this after a major plot point involving how the main lady isn’t getting pregnant. Apparently these aliens didn’t realize that different species can’t breed together, even if you do cover a melt a guy with gas and take his face. I’m glad I learned that from this movie instead of finding it out the hard way, I’ll tell you that much. Saves me a bunch of money in melting gas.