Sixteen Body Snatchers From Hell

I'm not 100% healed up (I'd say I'm at 88%), but I'm well enough to resume my duties as a bullshit blogger.  Didn't feel like writing a bona fide review, so I'll just...y'know, blog.  I've consumed quite a bit of pop culture in the last eighteen days.  As of right now, I wanted to discuss Sweet Sixteen, a disregarded slasher hatched in 1983.  I don't know why, but I was expecting to be fatigued by this flick.  Maybe it's because I haven't heard much cheering from the gore groupies I know with regards to Sweet Sixteen ever since it landed on DVD. Chances are, you haven't scoped it either.  You're missing out, big fella!

My apologies if you happen to be a female.  What I'm trying to intimate is that this stabradoodle (you have my permission to use "stabradoodle" in casual conversation) is totally worth subletting.  I wish that sentence made more sense.  Fuck it!  The death sequences are banal, but everything else is put together with surprising discernment.  The acting is natural, the pace is even and the identity of the killer caught this dullard off guard.  Look, we all know I'm a slack-jawed plonker.  You don't have to rub it in, despite some no-name on IMDb claiming that the twist was predictable.

Oh, the screen grab?  That's a man approaching an alien ship in 1968's Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell.  It's a little stylish and a lot wonky.  Would you believe that it's a Criterion release?  The film was included in a box set called When Horror Came to Shochiku right alongside such benders as The X From Outer Space, The Living Skeleton and Genocide.  It's not bad, but if I'm being honest, I drifted off to sleep toward the end.  I can recommend what I saw, though.  Does the phrase "forehead vagina" mean anything to you? No, Goke wasn't directed by David Cronenberg.

I just might check in tomorrow or the next day to give my impressions of the Royal Rumble.  And Raw.  And Smackdown.

Bad Day

Sabbatical.  Accident today.  Thought I broke my leg, but I didn't. Hurts, though.  Hand still hurts.  Long story.

Blood Capsule #69

SLEEPWALKERS (1992)

"Cop kabob!"  Fuck, don't you just love cheesy one-liners in cheesy horror films of yesteryear?  Even the bad ones (I'm talking suicidally bad) put a doltish grin on my face.  That's how I would describe my impression of 1992's Sleepwalkers.  It's stupid...God, it's stupid, but it made me forget the world for 91 minutes.  I appreciate that because I'm currently nursing a (possibly) broken hand, and I'll take any frowzy, frou-frou entertainment I can find.  Going in, I didn't realize that Stephen King adapted the screenplay from his own unpublished story.  What is it with him and icky subject matter?  If I had only read It and watched Sleepwalkers, I would wonder about his preoccupation with prepubescent gangbanging and incestuous pussy monsters.

Mick Garris directs it all with a cool, imperturbable stasis (you'd never guess that it was a scrambled shoot).  I dug the steady pans and the rich lighting.  The occasional hiccup editing?  Well, I blame the studio, although a heft of juicy gore did escape their imposed scissors.  The acting is better than I was expecting.  Madchen Amick is a peach as the virginal, lily-white Tanya.  I actually wanted her to live, which I'm told is a good thing.  And I'd give King credit for crafting down-to-earth characters, but unfortunately, I'd also have to give him credit for plot holes and haphazard dialogue.  Seriously, what the fuck was up with the black policeman?  There comes Johnny with his pecker in his hand?  He's off to the rodeo?  What???

Sleepwalkers is fun.  Not as fun as, say, playing board games with anthropomorphized soft pretzels, but still.