Doomed Movieblog

I had such a great time writing about my best and worst theater experiences that I thought I would come back and share some more of the worst (and the best). The more I write about the worst of these cinematic moments, the more I realize what an obnoxious bastard I was at the theaters for many years. Sorry about that everybody. I swear I have reformed and you won’t be hearing me talking shit or being an idiot no matter how bad a movie is.

More of the Best

Alien 3 (1992)

My mom dropped my friend Vick and I off at the theaters (Jupiter, Florida) on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. It was just before the end of the school year and our spirits were pretty high. Neither of us had any clue what the new Alien film was like but we couldn’t wait to see it. So yeah, holy shit, we were totally caught off guard.

Instantly, my most beloved characters from the first film were killed off before even showing up onscreen. Then the most grim and depressing of the Alien movies got moving. Alien 3 is totally depressing and a very bizarre film. I had never seen anything quite like it. To this day, this is still my favorite of the series.

What makes this experience so great is my friend Vick. Despite being from different countries (he was born in India), we were both 15 years old and both shared a bizarre sense of humor. Anyway, in a very harrowing scene, Ripley is attacked by a group of prisoners but they are not trying to kill her. Oh no, these guys have been without the comforts of a woman far too long and decide to rape her. Before they can, Charles S. Dutton shows up and beats the shit out of these dudes.

So why were we laughing hysterically at this scene? Is it the fact that nobody pierced Ripley? Were we so relieved that the day was saved that we couldn’t contain our joy? Not at all. For some reason, the “leader” of the rapists, just before violating Sigorney Weaver’s character, puts on his goggles, and makes this odd face like he’s about to do a back-flip or something. Despite the obviously serious tone of this scene, Vick and I were in stitches. For days after we saw the film, Vick would imitate this rapist’s trademark move and then do a booty humping gesture that was Oscar-worthy.

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

By the time I was 15, I was pretty much obsessed with Freddy Krueger. My sister Lorae and her boyfriend had introduced me to Nightmare on Elm Street when it first came out on video in around 1985. It was one of the most insane franchises in horror at the time and I had been a devoted fan (though it nearly threw me off with the abysmal 5th installment). Blame it on good marketing or something but my excitement for Freddy’s Dead knew no bounds.

I was able to convince my parents to let me see this one (by myself since nobody wanted to see it with me). Freddy’s Dead is by no means the best in the series but you couldn’t have told me that. This was the greatest horror movie ever made as far as I was concerned. Plus, I was really psyched about the 3-D sequences. With my 3-D glasses clutched in hand, I eagerly awaited the signal to be given to put them on.

When the 3-Dness kicked in and the dream-worms (or whatever they were supposed to be) came slithering off the screen, something in the back of my mind told me that this was all garbage. But it was somehow totally great in the moment. This was the first time I’d seen a 3-D film on the big screen and it won me over despite the convoluted setup. The roller coaster had me and there was no backing out.

More of the Worst

Out of Africa (1985)

Somehow I ended up watching this crap with my parents. I was 9 years old and bored out of my dumb brain!!! This is not a movie for children. This may not be a movie for anyone at all. What the hell else was playing? Couldn’t they have dumped me in some other theater? Oh wait, I just had a terrible thought. Did I want to see Out of Africa? Was this my own fault? Please God, don’t let that be the case. All I can remember from this experience is Meryl Streep getting caught in a brier bush and me squirming around in my seat through the entire film.

Hamlet (2000)

I always call this ‘Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet’ so people know which one I’m talking about. My friend Kelly Innes and I went to see this at Tampa Theater. Kelly claimed it was for class credit and I believed him. Things started out normally enough in this modernized Hamlet but we soon realized we were in great peril. In case you didn’t know, this is a fucking piece of garbage. Standout scenes include “to be or not to be” in Blockbuster Video (below) and Hamlet’s father’s ghost materializing in front of a Diet Pepsi machine. There is also an array of boom mikes in the shot and other flubs.

As we made our way through this steaming pile, I started laughing and goofing off. Once Kelly started turning red with laughter and offering his own heckles, I began to get louder. When we heard that other people were starting to pick at the film, it was all over. After that, I think everyone was then trying to laugh the film off the screen. It didn’t work but a good time was had by all.

Crash (1996)

Once again, the Tampa Theater screws me over. My friends Margarita Acevedo, Mike Fusco, Mike Jolley, Jeremy Krolak, and I went and caught David Cronenberg’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s book. Now I like Cronenberg but this is a terrible, terrible film. The theater was in complete silence during the film as everyone seemed to be completely enraptured by this SHOCKING and CONTROVERSIAL thing. All I could think of was, “Hey that dude just humped a scar on Rosanna Arquette’s leg!”

So the film lets out and our gang is walking back to the car when Margarita blurts out something to the effect of “Wasn’t that film beautiful!?”. We all went completely bonkers and started giving her shit. The consensus of the dudes in our party was that that was a SHITTY MOVIE. We dogged Crash all the way to the car and Margarita was (understandably) pissed at us. I think we probably ragged on the film during the drive home too. I emailed Fusco and he says he vaguely remembers some scar-fucking jokes taking place that night.

Passenger 57 (1992)

It took me years to figure out this simple rule: Do not under any circumstances go to the theaters on Friday night. Breaking this rule in Jupiter, Florida is especially heinous. However, I was 16 years old and didn’t give a shit because at that age, I was usually part of the ruckus. I believe I was there with my buddy Scott and we were less than impressed with this action-packed offering from tax evader Snipes.

I like to call this film ‘Wesley’s Wandering Boil’. First, I noticed that Snipes had a big pimple on his face. Then it disappears. Then it came back bigger than before. Then it is covered with a band aid. Then it disappears again. However, this was not what makes Passenger 57 such a sensational theater experience.

While my friend Scott and I were watching this film, my attention was drawn to some yelling on the other side of the theater. This guy sitting with his wife is turned around in his seat and is yelling at some hoodlums sitting behind him. In the blaring gunfire and explosions, I can’t make out what he’s saying. The teenage jerks behind the dude and his wife are very amused by this man yelling at them and are just kind of staring and smiling back.

Once that incident ended, I went back to not enjoying the film. Suddenly, more insanity erupted as the guy, pushed too far by the fuckheads, grabs one of the teenagers by the collar and drags him out of the auditorium. He kicks the door open, throws the kid out, and comes back to his seat receiving a wave of applause from the packed theater. About two minutes later, two police officers, the douchebag kid, and an usher come in and the guy is removed from the screening of Passenger 57 with his wife in tow.

See? I told you it wasn’t “all about me”!

In It For The Kills

Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies

Don’t Go in the House
Directed by Joseph Ellison
Released: 1980
Starring Dan Grimaldi, Robert Osth, Ruth Dardick
Running Time: 82 minutes
DVD Studio: Shriek Show

Donny works at a garbage dump operating the incinerator and lives alone with his mother. One day, he comes home to find her dead and he completely snaps. You see, when Donny was a child, his mother punished him by burning his arms on the stovetop. I hate to be judgmental but she probably should NOT have done that.

With evil mommy dead, the voices in his head take over and Donny starts picking up women so that he can burn them alive with a
flamethrower. He then dresses up the charred corpses in pretty dresses and poses them around the house. A friend from work invites him out to the disco and that’s when he really loses it.

Don’t Go in the House really caught me off guard. I was not expecting a film this trashy and grim to be made this well. The direction is tight and the cinematography is very good. The minimal soundtrack with blasts of discordant noise is perfectly suited for the film. There is also some wickedly cheesy disco thrown in for all of you who are slaves to the rhythm.

Dan Grimaldi turns in an awesome (though somewhat stiff) performance as Donny, a complete fucking nutbar. Even when someone is trying to be nice to him, it’s too late because he’s too far gone. Despite the plot’s similarities to Psycho, Grimaldi is careful not to channel Norman Bates too much. Who am I kidding? Donny is such a loser, he makes Norman Bates seem like a righteous dude.

You can call it jealousy (the phrase “SHIT! Why didn’t I think of that?” comes to mind) or you can call it humbled admiration, either way I have to give a shout out to one of the best sites out there: Kindertrauma. The Kindertrauma crew has given the internet a home for all those repressed memories the underbelly of pop culture has produced. Be it movie, commercial, music video, book, or toy; anything that scared you as a child may be lurking just around the corner at Kindertrauma. What makes Uncle Lucifer and Aunt John’s unsafe creation even more awesome is the Traumafessions where readers relate stories of childhood-destroying encounters with everything from The Shining to Beaker from “The Muppet Show”. They were even kind enough to allow me to air some my own egregious and terrifying memories.

My Traumafessions:

Alligator

Amazing Stories: “Go to the Head of the Class”

Dead of Night

Mike & The Mechanics - “Silent Running”

10 to Midnight

THE BEST

1. The Abandoned (2006)

The buzz around this movie was big. By big I mean almost nonexistent. I’d been reading about this movie from Spanish director Nacho Cerdà for a while and I was very, very surprised to find out that it was playing at my favorite theater (Starlight 20). After work that same day, my wife LeEtta and I went to see it. Including us, there were 5 people in the auditorium. The film kicks in and the volume is up too loud but it didn’t bother me at all. We were trapped in a super sensory overload attack for 99 minutes. I’ve had people tell me The Abandoned isn’t scary. I’ve also had people curse me for recommending it because it was too scary. Sorry haters but this film is fucking amazing.

2. Coraline (2009)

This almost made the number 1 spot on this list (but a dumbshit in the audience keeps it from attaining greatness). As a pre-Valentine’s Day celebration, we went to the theaters. Instead of the new Friday the 13th, which neither of us were that excited about, we opted for Coraline in 3D. This was a very wise move. Coraline is one of those fun and scary kids movies filled with moments of transcendent beauty. So yeah, there was this one dumbass chick whose medication had either just kicked in or had just worn off and wouldn’t shut the fuck up during the movie. Luckily, Miss Hot Topic was frightened into silence by many of the really freaky scenes hidden in Coraline and the rest of the audience was allowed to enjoy the film in peace.

3. Creepshow 2 (1987)

My sister Lorae and her fiance Steve took me to the drive-in one night. I was 10 years old and the triple feature was pretty strange: Italian cannibal film master Ruggero Deodato’s Cut and Run, Hot Pursuit starring John Cusack, and Creepshow 2. This was truly a magical evening. I got to stay out way later than I was allowed to and I got to see two R rated films on the big screen. The John Cusack comedy was kind of the wild card but was just boring compared to the other two films. I remember Cut and Run making me very depressed but then Creepshow 2 saved the night. “The Raft” was totally terrifying but exhilarating and I couldn’t look away.

4. The Ring (2002)

You watch a videotape and then you die in 7 days. That’s all I knew about this film when LeEtta (before she was my wife) and I were going to see it. This should be a great date movie, right? Instead of a hot date, we were clutching to each other in the dark out of sheer terror. Hours after we had seen Samara come out of that TV, we could still see her in the shadows lingering around the corners of our vision. I actually prefer Gore Verbinski’s version of this Japanese classic, mainly because of this wildly terrifying surprise first viewing.

5. Transformers: The Movie (1986)

My excitement combined with the rest of the adolescent crowd was almost too much to bear. When this movie started, the place nearly erupted into a nerd frenzy. The biggest revelation: Transformers: The Movie is just like the show except its better animated and way more violent. When Weird Al Yankovic’s “Dare to be Stupid” showed up on the soundtrack, it was a religious experience. Rest in peace, Ironhide.

6. Grindhouse (2007)

For anyone who didn’t get off their asses and go see Planet Terror and Death Proof along with all the fake trailers: SHAME ON YOU! My friend Matt Torrence (who doesn’t like horror movies) and his wife Rubis were kind enough to pick me up when my car was on the fritz and take me to the movies. The only downside to this experience was that I, having just gotten over a cold, was “the coughing guy” in the movie and got up several times to go and hack my lungs out in the lobby. But it was worth it, by god. Seeing this on the big screen with a vocal and jovial crowd was a friggin’ riot. The experience was an invigorating rush of fanboy love for all things trashy and splatterific.

7. Taxi Driver (1998)

While visiting some friends in Tampa, Mike Fusco and I went to the shitty theater (the one that did Rocky Horror every weekend) to catch a showing of Taxi Driver. This dump had posters up for upcoming showings of Alien and Clockwork Orange. In other words, this place was heaven for cinema obsessives like us. I’d seen this classic film on tape before but I had no idea what seeing it on the big screen would be like. I don’t think I blinked during the entire film. The print was beat up and scratchy and it made the film feel even more unpredictable and dirty than I could have imagined. When it was over, I felt accelerated and oddly happy.

8. Blair Witch Project (1999)

My friend Mike Jolley and I caught this one on a Saturday night after it had been out for a week or so and the word on the street was that this was the scariest movie every made. Well, it isn’t. However, this was a great time at the theaters. We had a great crowd that night and everyone was into the film. I remember a woman in the audience actually screaming for her mama. Classic. On the way back home, the night surrounded my car while Mike and I talked about the movie. We were actually scaring ourselves silly by discussing what we had just experienced.

9. Wicked City (1995?)

The dumpy theater in West Palm Beach that my friends and I used to go to (the one that did Rocky Horror every weekend) actually had a print of the animated 1987 film, Wicked City. This is perhaps the strangest experience on this list. At the time, it was very hard to be obsessed with anime. You could go to the video store and rent Fist of the North Star, Akira, Vampire Hunter D, Crying Freeman, and that was about it. As this violent and kinky freakout exploded across the screen, a lot of people were giggling nervously, especially during the tentacle business. Needless to say, I had never seen anything quite like this before. After the film ended, the audience, myself included, was confused and embarrassed. Good times.

10. Sling Blade (1996)

I don’t know if my friends were drunk or just intent on getting on my fucking nerves but I actually ditched them at their seats in the back row and sat alone in the front to catch this great indie flick. Shortly before this movie got really popular it was playing at a limited engagement at the dumpy theater downtown. I hadn’t heard anything about this film but something told me to get away from my cackling cronies and give it my full attention. Glad I did.

Honorable Mentions:

Desperado
Spirited Away
The Strangers
Starship Troopers
Jin-Rô: The Wolf Brigade

THE WORST

1. Major Payne (1995)

Even though I have never been paid a penny for babysitting, it seems like I was always taking care of younger cousins or kids that belonged to my mom’s coworkers. This is how I ended up watching this horrid thing in a theater full of bored children. Unless you’ve seen this piece of shit then you have no idea just how mind-numbingly terrible this was for me. Just watch this:

2. Boogie Nights (1997)

This is a great film which is why I SHOULD NOT have gone to see this at the theater located in ground zero of retirees in Palm Beach Gardens. Imagine watching porn with your grandparents. Now imagine if you had 100 grandparents. Okay? Got it? I’ll move on. This old bag behind me was totally offended by every frame of this movie and didn’t hesitate to tell her husband every five minutes that she “can’t believe they’re showing that; why do they have to show that?” My friend Rocky and I are sitting there trying to enjoy the movie and this rude idiot won’t shut up.

Finally, we get to the donut shop robbery and right after the violent shootout takes place, there’s this moment of calm. So what does this old bag do? She says, “Oh my, why did they have to show THAT?” I stand up, turn around, put my finger against my lips, and shush this woman like a grade school teacher. I was very proud of myself but Rocky was trying to sink under his seat to get away from the scene. That was pretty fun. Maybe this should be on the other list.

3. Clifford (1994)

So I’m in Great Falls, Montana visiting family when the prospect of going to the movies pops up. At first, I am relatively interested but then it dawns on me that I’ll be seeing this with my young cousins (ages 12, 8, and 5). The only safe movie playing is Clifford. I think if this movie was on TV right now, I’d probably get a laugh out of it. But being a crappy 16 year old with a chip on my shoulder, constantly trying to act cool, this experience was hell on earth.

4. The Transporter (2002)

So yeah, Ryan Hastings and I go see this movie and it looked promising enough. I was thinking “Hey, that guy from Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is in it. What could possibly go wrong?” I have been told that I am pretty much an idiot for digging on The Transporter like I should. I admit the fight scenes are awesome but the rest of the movie pretty much blows. However, Crank redeemed Jason Statham for me which I really wish I had seen in theaters. Anyway, back to The Transporter…

The best of the worst moments was when Frank and Lai escape from the bad guys by ducking into the water with scuba gear. They start swimming to safety and this beautiful music starts playing. Well, they keep swimming and swimming and swimming. I started giggling and then laughing out loud and Ryan starts telling me to shut up. Finally, he starts laughing. And they keep swimming and the other dozen or so people in the theater start laughing too. When the underwater sequence is finally over and Frank and Lai burst forth from the water, I started applauding. Someone in the back cheered and everyone was still cracking up. Yeah, I’m a douche.

5. Lost in Space (1998)

Kim, my girlfriend at the time, and I were so unbelievably bored in Port St. Lucie, Florida one afternoon that we actually paid cash money to watch this fucking wretched sack of ass. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I only ever watched the original show when I was bored out of my skull on Saturday mornings when cartoons were over. So why would a film version made over 30 years after the show went off the air be any better? Anyway, Kim and I were bored beyond belief and the only saving grace was the tremendously bad dialogue. We left the theater even more depressed than when we walked in.

6. Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever (2002)

Here is yet another piece of shit that LeEtta and I went to see while we were dating. Jeez, how desperate were we to go to the theaters? I think we should have stayed in and watched Real Genius or something. This film is unimaginably bad. For an action movie, it has the most pitiful pacing, stupid dialog, and a shitbox plot. Millions of rounds of bullets are fired into bodies but there’s not a drop of blood spilled. Yikes.

7. McHale’s Navy/Anaconda (1997)

Once again, boredom proves to be my undoing. My friends and I were desperate to see something, anything. Unfortunately, this was one of the worst weekends to go the theaters in cinematic history. Only ten minutes into McHale’s Navy and we were immediately roaming through the theater looking for a better option. We busted in on the first 15 minutes of Anaconda and stayed for the rest of it. Do I need to say anymore about this? Out of the frying pan and into the toilet.

8. Reality Bites (1994)

It is senior year of high school and I had just gotten dumped by my girlfriend (who wasn’t really my girlfriend but had tempted me into dumping a really nice girl for her and then turned around and dumped me for my troubles). I finally had my own car (which I would wreck a couple of weeks later) and I decided to go to the theaters alone in order to prove that Mandy (her real name) didn’t mean anything to me anymore. I run into a bunch of acquaintances from school and decide to join them to watch this film called Reality Bites. The trailers seemed to indicate that this film was speaking to my generation so I was pretty interested. Oh no. No. No. No. No.

After 20 minutes, I got up and walked out. I could not relate to these morons on the screen. They were too whiny for me (which is funny because in fact they weren’t whiny enough) and they did not relate to me at all (oh, I wish that were true). Now I know that the rotten mood I was in affected my enjoyment of this stupid fucking movie and that I would fall head over heels for other pretentious indie dramas but damn, this just sucked. To this day, I have never revisited Reality Bites. Ben Stiller would not be my friend until again until Zoolander which almost made the best list. Damn, the trailer makes it look like the most un-entertaining thing ever made.

What was I thinking?

9. Dawn of the Dead (2004)

For the record, this is a pretty decent horror film. My nerdy complaint is that, for me, zombies are slow and they should NOT be fast. I know that in Return of the Living Dead, the brain-eating variety are pretty light on their feet but that film is just so great that I’m willing to let it slide. The remake of Romero’s 1978 classic is not that great. When the zombies of the new Dawn of the Dead appeared to be taking performance-enhancing drugs, I was pretty annoyed.

That is a pretty weak complaint, I know. But the reason this god damn movie gets on my list of worst theater experiences is because I had heard to stay after the credits to see the bonus footage. Without giving too much away, one of the survivors gets a hold of a video camera and starts filming. We are shown little bits and pieces of this footage while some shitty Nu metal plays along in the background. Interspersed in between this are sped up shots of hungry zombies screaming at the camera accompanied by ungodly blasts of volumous noise. While trying to figure out what the fuck happened to these people at the end of the movie, I was getting beaten over the head with one idea: ZOMBIES. Oh really? Zombies!?!?! What? I didn’t know that I had just watched a movie about zombies!!!! Look here, Niven Howie (the editor), you fucking asshole, I GET THE POINT!

10. The Exorcist (2000)

God damn it! The re-release of The Exorcist could have been so awesome. But no, they had to go and create some pitiful monstrosity called “The version you’ve never seen”. While still astoundingly scary, Kim, my buddy Scott, and I were not pleased at all with the additional shitty audio effects and all the new digital tomfoolery mixed in to make the film scarier. All it did was annoy the fans of the original version and telegraph a few of the upcoming scares. Getting to see the infamous “spider walk” on the big screen almost saved this experience from being on this list. Almost.

Dishonorable Mentions

Bridge to Terabithia
Saw
Out of Africa
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Old School

I saw the remake of Last House on the Left today and now that I’m back in the relative safety of my own home, I feel comfortable enough to talk about it. My usual method for watching horror movies in theaters is thus: 1. Never go to opening night or sneak previews. 2. Attend the earliest possible showing. I do not feed off the energy of a packed house and I sure as hell don’t like listening to other people talking or heckling unless the film is embarrassingly awful. Catching a piece of shit on the big screen is rare for me nowadays as I rarely ever crawl out from under my rock. Anyway…

First of all, fans of the original: do not rejoice. I like the 1972 classic (itself a remake of The Virgin Spring) but I am by no means a fan. Wes Craven’s original is a powerful film; a visceral and unique experience but holy shit, it is flawed. Last House on the Left has crippling shifts in tone, the worst of which is the “comedy relief” provided by two bumbling police officers. I don’t know what those two knucklehead hippies, Sean Cunningham (producer and co-writer) and Craven, were thinking when they put that unfunny crap in their movie but it is really fucking terrible. These cops even get their own goofy little theme music.

This spoiler I’m about to drop is pretty minor but it gives me so much pleasure that I cannot help but blab about it. In the new Last House on the Left, Greek director Dennis Iliadis takes the funny cops out of the picture first thing, having Krug and company kill them horribly and sadistically. There you go. The police presence and all potential unfunny funniness are eliminated. Now we can get down to business.

The first things I noticed about the remake are the haunting soundtrack and the gorgeous camerawork. Cinematographer Sharone Meir is very versatile and the new Last House on the Left is both beautiful when it needs to be and frightfully claustrophobic when the shit hits the fan. The shadows and all the grimy details are all there, captured quite elegantly.

Though the remake tones down some of the gore, it still packs quite a punch. In the 2009 version, the rape and murder of the two girls is a grotesque and harrowing scene and it makes the graphic deaths of the evildoers all the more satisfying. Seeing the new Mr. Collingwood trade in a chainsaw (so effective in the original) for a microwave and I just about danced in the aisle.

By the way, the message of Wes Craven’s original film, revenge is bad and all that, has been totally wiped out. The demoralizing effect that the family has in exacting their brutal vengeance upon Krug (played brilliantly in 1972 by David Hess) and company is nowhere to be found here. This new film, produced by the creators of the original, subverts the theme of the hopelessness of revenge and gives the audience a pointless cathartic exercise.

I’m supposed to be criticizing but I’m not. Mainly because showing the parents feeling all squirmy inside about killing Krug, Sadie, and Weasel doesn’t necessarily mean that the audience will feel that way too. Despite what Craven’s original message was, I still felt totally satisfied, joyful even, when Mr. and Mrs. Collingwood dispatched those fucking scumbags in such a grandiose manner.

After I got back from the theater, there was a movie I’d set to record sitting on my DVR that seemed interesting. Turner Classic Movies had played something called Nightmare Honeymoon the night before and I couldn’t find a scrap of info about it in any of my horror movie references. What’s the connection? The original poster for Nightmare Honeymoon imitates that of the original Last House on the Left with the whole “It’s only a movie” bit. Very clever, TCM.

In it, Dack Rambo and Rebecca Dianna Smith play David and Jill, a newlywed couple who witness a murder on the night of their honeymoon. After his new wife is raped and he is nearly done in by the killers, David goes after the men responsible. Careful, I’m about to spoil this one. When he catches up with the psycho and his dumpy buddy, our hero kills the son of a bitch. The interesting thing is that Jill, who has been trying to stop her husband from taking revenge this whole time, sees how easily he dispatches their tormentor, she snaps. She begins kicking the dead body (of the man who raped and humiliated her) screaming, “It’s not enough!” over and over again. And by God, I agree with her.

The new Last House on the Left is totally irresponsible entertainment. It plumbs the depths of horrible human behavior and shows it being punished severely. The lack of a message will be sending critics and fans of the original right through the roof. But I paid to see this remake and I really enjoyed the film so I guess I’m part of the problem. Every review I read seems to say that the remake is devoid of heart. Oh no! How could Wes Craven have let this happened?

I can’t help but be reminded of Funny Games and how when I watched it, I could almost see the director of that film was wagging his finger and chastising me for “enjoying” his violent spectacle. Sorry Mr. Haneke, but at least Dennis Iliadis stays out of my dang face! Passing judgment on your audience by making a relentlessly depressing and sadistic film? The fuck is that about? Watching the Last House on the Left remake will not make me lose any sleep tonight, I promise. The fact is, I’d rather watch something with a cheesy séance sequence and a spooky atmosphere but here I am just the same.

Look, either one digs watching violent films or one doesn’t. Hiding behind a gory and bloody film’s message (if it even has one) doesn’t make a person a more responsible viewer than the next. The point of horror is to invoke revulsion and fear and the point (intentional or not) of these rape-revenge deals is to disturb us and then reward us at the end when evil is punished. Do you ever feel guilty after riding a roller coaster?

Boring afternoon? CURED! (Thanks Nafa.)