Blood Capsule #342

R.L. STINE'S PUMPKINHEAD (2025)

I'm writing this on the 22nd of October, but if all goes according to plan, this review should publish on Halloween.  So first of all, Happy Halloween!  I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate than to take a look at the latest R.L. Stine creation.  Oddly, he doesn't seem to have written this one.  It's not based on one of his stories, although it's informed by his childhood experiences.  Somehow.  The story of Pumpkinhead was actually "adapted" for an episode of The Haunting Hour, his anthology series that aired on Discovery Family in the 2010's.  Some details were changed for this feature, but apparently, it was always called Pumpkinhead.  And that's just not right.  Couldn't they come up with a title that wasn't already associated with a well-known intellectual property?  I'm digressing.  This flick is a Tubi original, and tonally, it will remind you of Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark?.  Having said that, it doesn't pull any gut punches.  Yes, death is involved.

13-year-old Sam moves to a quaint municipality that is headlong into a harvest festival.  Well, Sam decides to be a prick and steal a pumpkin from the man responsible for saving the town of Redhaven from destitution.  It soon becomes obvious that there is something off about this pumpkin.  Without spoiling too much, I'll tell you that we get to see an evil scarecrow, which sadly, makes Pumpkinhead the best "killer scarecrow" movie since 1995's Night of the Scarecrow.  This is a fun spookshow that will entertain kids and adults alike.  There are two major hindrances that hold this hayride back from glory.  The main character is aggressively unlikeable to the point that you begin relating to the supposed antagonists.  Also, we are asked to suspend disbelief to an improbable degree.  I try not to get too fussy when it comes to plot holes, but wow.  If you've seen Pumpkinhead, I'm referring to the trick-or-treating scene where the sheriff is hoodwinked into believing that his daughter has stayed in to hand out candy.  Again, wow.  Why didn't they simply leave instead of switching costumes with a couple of strangers???

Anyway, I dug the autumnal atmosphere.  Lots of orange.  R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead should be approached with low expectations, but I was able to chill out and have moderate fun with it.  You better believe that I'm deducting a half-Z'Dar for that title, though.

Why does 20 Buck Spin have a negative connotation?

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Blood Capsule #341 (Special Edition)

What's a Special Edition?  It's a series where I review one of my favorites.  These are films that would appear in my Top 50 or so (if I endeavored to compile such a list).

ANACONDA (1997)

My timing is impeccable.  Just a few days ago, the trailer for the Anaconda reboot dropped (I'm writing this in September).  My only question is, why?  Why is it a comedy starring Jack Black?  Whose idea was this?  My head is swimming with questions.  Now, will I see the new Anaconda?  Um, that's none of your business.  I can say that the original holds up seventy-three years later.  Of course, I rented it when it hit home video, and for some reason, we watched it in high school.  I mean, we watched it in class.  It must have been a slow day.  Anyway, I'm not going to tell you anything that you don't already know.  This movie rules.  Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube are hellbent on shooting a documentary on lost tribes of the Amazon.  Instead, they wind up shooting a "found footage" slasher where Jon Voight - playing himself - stalks and murders a family of green anacondas.  It's horrifying.  Sorry, that's the only synopsis you're getting out of me.

Catching Anaconda in 2025, I was struck by the plurality of animatronic effects.  Yes, the CGI is there (and despite being in its infancy, it's far better than expected), but the actors are working with convincing models of varying sizes.  I've always had trouble convincing models of varying sizes...I shouldn't finish that sentence.  All of the violence is stomach-churning, a PG-13 rating be damned.  Personally, I was bothered more by the makeshift tracheotomy on Eric Stoltz than I was any of the snake deaths.  Eric Stoltz on his own is enough to send me scurrying to the bathroom.  Pacing-wise, this flick is fleet-footed.  I don't really know how it spawned sequels (or a reboot, for that matter), but it's pretty much perfect as a cheese-flavored popcorn ball.  Okay, I do know how it spawned sequels.  I forgot that it fared well at the box office.  Even if you don't consider yourself to be a fan, you have to concede that Anaconda is superior to Boa, Python, and Boa vs. Python.

What's that?  A second Random Reptile Month on the horizon?  Not.  A.  Chance.  I'm more likely to dive into Random Jon Voight Month.  Actually, I'm more likely to dive into Jon Voight.

Now Playing #25

Dissection - Reinkaos

I'm a late bloomer when it comes to Dissection.  I've apprised myself of the classics.  Yes, there is something special about The Somberlain and Storm of the Light's Bane, but if I'm being perfectly honest, I...almost prefer Reinkaos?  Don't lynch me.  Okay, lynch me.  I've tried to "get into" the first two albums because as a metalhead, that's what I'm supposed to do.  But yeah, no.  I put off listening to Reinkoas, perhaps in response to its reputation as a subordinate clunker.  I genuinely don't get it.  Why is it scorned so?  The riffs are less melodic, but the leads are still silky smooth.  I dig the solos on "Black Dragon" and "God of Forbidden Light."  The title track, a layered instrumental, might contain my favorite bits of guitar lickery here.  "Dark Mother Divine" is epic, even if it's mostly mid-paced.  I have to say, if we had gotten a fourth Dissection long player, I wouldn't have been opposed to more material in this vein.  Oh well.

Hey, why do Satanists love dragons so much anyway?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Hooded Menace - Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration

In the lead-up to this album's release, I went back and devoured the entire Hooded Menace discography.  Geez, what a band.  As much as I'm enjoying Lachrymose, I'm going to start with some constructive criticism.  The guitar tone.  Dude, Fulfill the Curse and Never Cross the Dead are bone-crushing.  This record (and 2021's The Tritonus Bell) sounds homogenized.  The riffs themselves are fine, but they come off as sterile.  Maybe it's the shift in songwriting.  Musically, I hear just as much traditional metal as I do doomy death metal.  Exhibit A: The closing riff of "Pain Masquerade."  That's very nearly Skid Row.  Now, I love Skid Row, so that's not a gargantuan obstacle.  Whatever.  On the whole, Hooded Menace has retained their Hooded Menace-ness.  "Lugubrious Dance" is my favorite cut of blind dead meat.  I'm all about the fiendish leads.  The leads, man!

These tunes may not be stupidly heavy, but they're worth playing in your cemetery of choice.  Year-end list?  It's very possible.  Oh, the Duran Duran cover.  I usually skip it.  It is what it is.

Blood Capsule #340

CRAWL (2019)

Crawl is twelve minutes shorter than Rogue.  So I'm tackling Crawl.  Normally, I wouldn't let you in on my selection process, but you should know that I'm just as brainless as the movies that I review.  Perhaps that's unfair.  This flick does have a brain.  It has the heart, however, of a French "survival horror" endurance test from about fifteen years earlier.  It was directed by Alexandre Aja, and it feels more like his High Tension than Alligator.  But is that a good thing or a bad thing?  From where I'm sitting, it's merely a thing.  It does hit strange to watch a gritty, ultra-realistic take on the "nature runs amok" subgenre.  To that end, I was reminded of 1977's Day of the Animals.  Again, that's neither good nor bad.  Crawl tells the simple story of a woman checking on her father during a hurricane.  Tempestuous flooding forces them into the crawlspace where they butt heads with a deadly mongoose.  Kidding!  There are gators afoot and afloat.  What happens when the levee breaks?  If only it was just a Led Zeppelin song.

Crawl's sizeable budget allows for polished special effects that extend to cool, atmospheric shots of inclement weather.  Sometimes, stormclouds are creepier than monsters.  The characters are sympathetic, but bits of exposition that develop their backstories come across as forced.  I get it, though.  There are only so many ways to establish that two people have a fractured relationship.  Thankfully, the acting from Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper is on-point.  Props to the stunt crew.  This couldn't have been an easy film to shoot.  It makes me wonder what other reptile romps would have been able to accomplish with the same amount of money.  In any event, Crawl is a suspenseful, well-structured sit at the cinema.  If I'm being honest, I prefer Alligator and Lake Placid.  There is something to be said for cult appeal.  Recommended for fans of Doppler radars.

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Blood Capsule #339

THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE (1959)

I didn't recognize her, but Beverly Garland also starred in 1957's Not of This Earth.  Man, she is the cat's pajamas.  Sorry, I think I started in the middle of this review.  Let me back up a bit.  The Alligator People is a hard film to describe.  The story is relayed via narration.  An amnesiac nurse (that would be Garland as Jane) is sent on a sodium pentothal trip to recover repressed memories.  Her psychiatrists decide later that these memories are better left repressed.  What does she divulge while under psychoactive hypnosis?  I don't want to reveal too much.  This flick functions as a mystery, and part of the fun is stumbling upon plot twists along with the main characters.  I guess I can tell you that alligators are involved.  That much is obvious.  The less obvious stuff has to do with a secluded plantation, a radioactive cobalt ray, and gratuitous limb regeneration.  Oh, and Lon Chaney Jr. as a hook-handed drunkard who hates alligators as much as I hate paragraph breaks.

I need to rave more about Beverly Garland.  She anchors The Alligator People.  That's not to say that the other cast members aren't up to snuff.  They are, especially Chaney.  It's strange to fathom that he was only a handful of roles away from his last, as he's certainly spirited here.  Pun intended?  You be the judge.  I highly recommend this one, mainly because there is a payoff.  You want to see a gator dude run around the wetlands of Louisiana, and that's precisely what the film offers.  Are the make-up effects silly?  Yes.  And they are magnificent.  Ironically, I was reminded of The Fly.  Fox distributed The Alligator People on a double bill with Return of the Fly.  Who do we have to petition to bring back double bills, preferably at drive-in theaters?  No, Barbie and Oppenheimer don't count.

Rassle Inn #56

A scene from AEW's WrestleDream.

Every time I order an AEW pay-per-view, I question my existence on this blue marble of ours.  The fact is, I crave mindless entertainment.  And last night, it didn't get any more mindless than WrestleDream.  First off, I'll say that it was a fairly typical AEW PPV in that there were too many matches.  Of course, most of the matches were too long.  Are we actually supposed to react when there are ten false finishes in every single contest?  You could even argue that the wrong person won half of the time.  Case in point, why isn't Toni Storm the (only) women's champion?  She's the most over talent you have, bar none.  I guess the women's titles are going to be unified now?  I have so many questions and not enough answers.

Then you have the main event.  What the hell are they doing with Darby Allin!?  This isn't professional wrestling anymore, not when the scrappy underdog is effing waterboarded in the middle of the ring.  Eventually, Darby is going to be gangraped on live television.  Actually, he'll probably die before that could ever happen.  The bumps he took - before nearly drowning - were so violent and so unnecessary, Tony Khan should be arrested for aggravated assault by proxy.  What does this do for the Death Riders?  "Boy, those are some tough fellows."  Give me a break.  The fans in attendance were cool with the ridiculous nature of it all, but they have already bought their ticket, both literally and figuratively.

What do I mean?  I mean that PPV's like WrestleDream do nothing, absolutely nothing, to rope prospective viewers into watching AEW, much less pro-wrestling as a whole.  Tony Khan currently has a built-in audience that will never see an increase in number as long as he's the guy in charge.  For the love of God, give the book to someone else.  It doesn't matter what the "sickos" want.  The ratings are dropping.  If Darby Allin has a death wish, so does AEW.  Yes, I'm about doom and gloom today.  Sorry.  I'm not exactly happy with WWE right now either, so don't think I'm picking on AEW.  Where did A.J. Lee go anyway?  She'll make everything better.  She always makes everything better.