The Legend Of Sorrow Creek

Here we are again, folks. Back one more time to Midnight Horror Collection Vol. 8. Up on the block this time is “The Legend Of Sorrow Creek” which stars... no one I've ever heard of and is only 74 minutes long making it the shortest movie on the disk. Yes, even “Last Vampire On Earth” was longer than this. Anyway, time to grab some rum and regret many of the choices in my life that have led me here.

[Editors note: I wrote this one when I'd had about 3 hours sleep in the 40 hours previous and hadn't eaten in about 15. This devolves into “Zombie Dearest” review levels of rambling by the end. You've been warned.]

      One thing I've noticed in all of these and in my own movie making experience, it's obviously pretty simple to do opening/closing credits really well. It's everything in between that tends to fall apart. Some screaming and whimpering and flashes of an old black and white picture then a girl running and reciting a prayer in an attempt to ward off the “unclean spirits” that are chasing her through the house I guess. Or are just in her mind, either or, but it looks like they might be for real since they're rattling door knobs. The spirits seem to have caught up to her since she's now ignoring the cries from her husband on the other side of the door that the house is on fire (silly crazy lady dropped a candle) and is stepping up on a stool to hang herself. After dropping a blood soaked knife so I'm guessing there used to be more than just her in the house. The husband has some fucking terrible lines and he is not good at delivering them. Thankfully that's all over, the title shows up and we're transported to modern times with some park ranger looking guy standing in a forest.

      Before we go any further, I have to point out that this is fucking terrible quality video on this one. It's almost too pixilated to see what's going on. I don't know what happened 'cause it was fine for that first scene but now... I assume it's leaves on the trees instead of large squares of different shades of green. The guy coming up to talk to the park ranger... probably has a face instead of pinkish looking blocks. This may end up being a deal breaker on if I can watch the rest of this if it doesn't clear up, it's seriously that bad. There are honestly $100 video cameras out there that take clearer videos (I know 'cause I used to have one). There's no excuse for this poor quality.

      So the guy that's coming up through the woods to talk to Mr. Forest Ranger (his name is Jonas... it's awesome that I got to make those two totally different song references for just this one guy, I hope he survives just 'cause of that) is some sort of professor or grad student or some researcher at a university (name of Daniel). He flat out says it's “rare [his] research comes in handy” so this guy is well on his way to a job at a bookstore when his studies are finished. Oh good, he's a sociology student writing his doctorate on the effect of local superstitions on abandoned communities. I think we may have found someone to take away the “I hate money or ever having nice things” award from the professor of ancient medieval cults in “Return To House On Haunted Hill” (yes I know that guy must have made some money since he had the “best treasure hunting equipment available”, but whatever).

      Now, in overly-pixilated form, we find out that, even after his condescending laugh when Jonas calls what he's studying “ghost towns”, Daniel doesn't really know dick all about this place and needs Jonas to explain it to him. I can't tell through the crappy video, but I bet Daniel has “smug asshole” as his default facial expression.

      And... now I have to backtrack on all of that 'cause, even though Daniel said he thought Jonas would know more since he was from the area, all Jonas gave was “everyone around here was told a story about the place to get them to stay out of the woods as kids” and Daniel goes on a historical rant ending with the place being fully abandoned in 1899. After that, in the 20s, a salvage crew from a neighbouring town went in but three were never found and the other was found dead, blah blah blah, standard spooky story stuff. I still can't get over how bad this video is (though it sometimes gets better which just pisses me off all the more that the rest of it is fucked up). Oh, one thing about this, I guess the legend has it that Sorrow Creek was “founded on the very spot where the devil fell through the earth on his way to hell”. That's actually a pretty good card to play in your low-budget horror movie. I can't think of anyone that's played that one before (and yes I'm being serious, I'm probably missing something obvious, but I can't think of any right now).

      Hmmm... guess the legend goes that crazy lady's husband cut her eyes out, hung her as a witch, then burned their home down before running off into the woods “never to be seen again”. A bit different from what we saw happen, but I guess history is written by the winners and/or the unclean spirits.

      Cut to a pair of idiots (the first shot of them has one with a fish hook through his hand and the other apologizing for it) and their attractive(ish) lady friends out in the forest by a creek (if you can imagine that). The guy with the hook through his hand is too much of a pussy to pull it out himself so one of the girls has to do it for him. They do something smart by saying he should disinfect it, but then follow it up by doing something really stupid by trying to head back to the cottage in an entirely different direction than the way they came because, as the blonde (haven't heard her name yet) said: “it took us over an hour to get her that way, I think it'll be quicker if we follow the river back”. Asked if she'd ever gone that way before, she replies “no, but...” and then the rest isn't important because it's a no and that's how you get lost in the woods. The brunette (Jessie) agrees with her so, since the two guys are idiots and also in relationships with these two (looks like the blonde is with the hook-er and Jessie is with the hook-ee), they go along with it. This is followed by many shots of random parts of the forest interspaced with shots of them walking. They are lost.

      Hook-ee is named Toby and apparently as well as having a brain problem (standing in a place where he can get stuck by a fishing lure) and a “being a man” problem (needing one of the girls to take said lure out of his hand), he also has a heart problem wherein if his heart rate gets too high he has to take medication to regulate it. This is likely important for later on. Also, I guess he's not dating/hasn't been dating Jessie for too long since she doesn't know this and it's for her benefit they're going through all of this. Hook-er's name is Dean, by the way.

      After stumbling on some ruins (hint: Sorrow Creek), we finally find out blonde is named Kayla. Jessie splits off from them to try and figure out something that was carved in one of the trees in the middle of the ruined village, and everybody else keeps going on their trail they've never been on to a cabin that's in the opposite direction. I'm honestly not sure who is being more stupid in this case. They do end up back at the cabin, though, so I guess that makes it Jessie since she went off on her own in a horror movie.

      Ugh, romantic sub-plot crap. Dean (I really want to keep calling him “hook-er”) does some round-a-bout shit with Kayla talking about their future kids “one day” and it goes back and forth with them almost getting engaged but not actually 'cause neither wants to say it first and blargh. And I guess Kayla is a wannabe writer. And... god is this crap boring. Start killing people already! Minor plot point: Kayla and Jessie are sisters. Start killing people! Side note: the crappy romantic music those two were listening to outside on a swing set (yes, that cliched) was actually coming from a stereo that Toby was listening to up on the porch by himself. Man-card: revoked.

      Hey, look at that. If I say it two times shit does start getting real in this movie. Jessie calls a phone that hasn't worked in years and is heard crying on the other end talking about someone/something being “all around her”, then she screams and the line goes dead. Toby tries to use the phone to call the police (it having been established before there's no cell service where they are... which also makes it odd Jessie used hers), but the line is dead. There are no animal noises or anything out in the woods. Holy crap, there's still almost an hour left and I've already written this much. Buckle up kids, this one could go into overtime.

      Kayla is freaking out a bit, but as Dean is trying to comfort her, he sees a figure walk by outside the window. Instead of thinking that it might be Jessie, they all make a break for the car because... everyone involved spooks easily? Turns out the keys are in Toby's room, though so no quick escape and someone has to go back. Shame about that, actually, 'cause it turns out not to be Jessie but a guy in overalls and a flannel shirt with what... appears to be... a bucket over his head (the pixels, they are enormous!). Aside from it obviously being some brand new clothes, it's supposed to be crazy lady's husband from the start 'cause you caught a flash of him wearing this same get-up. Again, even though he disappeared in 1899 and this is over a hundred years later, he's still wearing stuff that people would nowadays.

      I just noticed something. Why are the goddamn headlights working if they don't have the keys in the car? My cars headlights stay on for a bit after I take the keys out, but this time they didn't even put the keys in there so that's no excuse. And it's not like I'm mistaking the lighting as something else, they are actively trying to make it look like it's the headlights lighting up... garbage-bag head? Seriously, poor quality film making on two accounts in this scene.

      Oh for fuck's sake. It's just his hair and he was facing the other way. Fuck this video quality.

      Dean actually comes up with a half decent plan (as long as you overlook the fact that they're freaking out over some guy wandering around on their property and skip over “hey, let's see what's up with him” straight to “flip the fuck out and lose our shit”) and they try to put it into action. It doesn't go so good because suddenly something happens to Dean and he wanders away from the cabin (where the car keys are) down the road. Toby, sitting in the car as back-up in case something happens, decides “not yet” because he's scared. That's not the reason he gives, but given what we've seen, that's what I'm guessing it is. It's okay, though, since it turns out to be Jessie wandering out of the woods that spooked Dean into abandoning their plan. She, unfortunately, is cut up on her back like 73 times (something Daniel said the one body from the 20s salvage team was found to be).

      Toby's found some old parchment in his room after getting the keys. Wisely, he decides not to fuck with it, puts it back and leaves. Husband is outside the window looking in for this, of course.

      Armed with the keys and a need to get Jessie to the hospital, they instead decide to have Kayla talk to her for a while. Jessie starts screaming to “make them stop”. At which point everyone else runs out of the room and decide that the best course of action is to lock the door rather than get the seriously injured and psychologically traumatized girl to a hospital.

      At this point I'd like to tell a story. Recently, while I was working, I happened to see a young deer, barely a hint of antlers on him, out in a field. As you know, deer are known to be skittish creatures, often running away from the slightest sound in case that sound may be a hunter or other predator. Evolution has made this an ingrained habit in the deer mind; it's better to run when you don't need to than stay and find yourself over-run by coyotes or shot by a hunter. This young deer I recently saw, was having none of that. He was not just standing in the field, frightened and alone (though he was alone from his own kind), he was not just willing to let the hunters and predators of the world chase him and force him to cower. He was going to take a stand. And, as Travis Sickle, Michael Douglas in “Falling Down”, and all others before him, this deer was going to fuck some shit up. There was a coyote in that field, but he wasn't the hunter in this case. Oh no, this coyote was on the run. This coyote, this mighty, deer-killing machine, bred for centuries to hunt prey such as this deer, was on the run. He was on the run from this lone deer barely sprouting antlers. That, my friends, is courage on the part of the deer. Courage to stand against nature and say “fuck you, I'm not taking this shit anymore”. Why do I bring this up, you ask? Because, these three young, able-bodied 20-something characters in this movie, when faced with any situation at all, not even one slightly threatening mind you, show less courage than that buck who was only a few months old.

      Toby's heart is fucking him up, Kayla is running to get his meds, and Dean is trying with all his might to keep a bedroom door closed to keep a screaming and crying girl who is basically bedridden by her injuries locked inside. If a few ballsy deer ever see this, we as a species are all fucked.

      Jessie stops screaming and Dean decides to open the door to check on her. Remember when I called these two guys idiots? I'm not saying he shouldn't be opening the door to try and help her. I'm just saying that, given that he's already fully committed to “she's fucking crazy, we need to lock her away instead of take her to a hospital”, he should stick with that or not have made that call in the first place. Jessie seems passed out, though (likely from loss of blood), so no harm no foul. Except for with Toby and Kayla since she “gave him too many pills” and now his heart rate is too slow. Fucking stupid people in this movie. Toby wants to go to sleep and, since the guy with a slow heart rate who may die from going to sleep is probably the best judge, Dean and Kayla decide to let him. At this point I don't think any supernatural force has to do anything, these idiots will all die over the weekend on their own.

      There is some shady logic going on in this next scene. I can't make sense of it and Dean's trying to explain it in calm, soothing terms so that drunks and/or traumatized almost-fiance's will buy into it. Still not buying it, Dean, you gotta step it up a notch.

      He doesn't, some time passes, they fall asleep on the couch, and Jessie gets out of bed. She stumbles through the hallway as if she's someone that's lost a lot of blood, tries to get into Toby's room (hey, even the satanically possessed and/or cursed need to get laid every once in a while) but can't, and then stumbles down the hallway towards the living room. Worth noting: at this point I can't tell if she's supposed to look like a zombie or if she's just shuffling as a regularly possessed person. The pixels make it hard to tell what level of make-up went into this scene.

      Whoops, looks like it wasn't Toby's door she tried the first time 'cause door number two is actually his room and now she's standing over his sleeping/dead body. He's just sleeping 'cause he wakes up in time to see her grab a conveniently placed cleaver and start slashing up his back. The others get there in time to see her finish off Toby, then wake her out of her trance long enough that she realizes what she's done. She then slits her own throat in front of her sister and we get to see Kayla cry into Dean's shoulder some more while Dean cries over her back. This has seriously been every other scene since they first realized Jessie wasn't there.

      After some more crying, Dean goes into Toby's room to see the bodies and make sure they're dead. This results in more crying on his part. It also leaves Kayla alone to have the Husband walk by in the background. More crying and (in a case of “seriously, have you never seen any crime show ever?”) Dean hugs/moves/the bodies/otherwise incriminates himself all the while crying even more. I... I think the people that made this movie think that 'crying = acting'. Oh, okay, I get it. Dean was going in there to grab the keys from Toby's body so he and Kayla could leave. Still doesn't explain all the crying. Suck it up, princess, there's shit to be done to keep you and your woman from joining those two. Tears are for later when you're trying to turn this whole thing into comfort sex.

      Dean and Kayla try to make a break for it. It doesn't go well because the car is now in several pieces (which, added together, would not be enough to equal a full car) on the lawn. This ends in more “acting” on both their parts as they cower in a corner of the kitchen. Dean gets mad. You wouldn't like him when he's mad... 'cause it means he cries some more. Kayla comes to the conclusion that it was “that place in the woods” and this all happened because they let Jessie stay there on her own.

      After some more crying, they remember there's a boat. But it needs gas. But there might be some in the shed. But Kayla doesn't want to be alone so they both have to go for it together. Then it turns out there's almost no gas left. But it might be enough. Too bad Dean spills it when he knocks over/cuts himself (it's hard to see, fucking pixels) on a chainsaw after seeing the ghost of a woman with her eyes gouged out.

      Turns out it was a cut from the chainsaw. To his leg. And less severe than road rash or falling on a little bit of gravel. This caused him to drop the gas can they needed to escape, need to be helped inside the cabin, and also need to be bandaged up more than any action hero who'd been shot ten times would need. All while crying. Seriously: when bad-ass deer see this movie, we are all fucked.

      Oh god, now there's even more crying. Like two minutes straight of crying before Kayla “hears something” and goes to check outside. Dean wants her to stay and cry some more, but she's all cried out (for a couple minutes at least) and goes out to see the swing swinging by itself and a purse hanging on the door. Turns out it was Jessie's purse and this is enough to set both of them off crying again. Dean gives a bit of sound advice by trying to tell Kayla to run for help because “whoever out there knows [Dean & Kayla are] trapped”. After some crying and her all but accepting his almost proposal, she runs off into the woods. Dean then opens up Jessie's purse to find the markings she found on the trees and a digital camera that was never mentioned before now. Whatever, let's see what she got pictures of before all this started.

      Pretty standard stuff. Pictures of the group, Dean cries over it, etc etc... some shadowy figure in the middle of the trees, a ghostly figure of a hanged woman, some more shadows you can't make out 'cause the picture is so fucking pixilated, and we're on to Kayla running down a road. She is on a road. And looking into the forest to try and find which way to go to get help. She is not following the paved road to town, she is looking into the woods from where she came. At this point the ghostly woman showing up should probably just take her out of her misery since she's too dumb to live. Ghost Husband shows up to help Ghost Wife, but Kayla manages to escape since fortune smiles on fools and small children... or however that saying goes. She's fucking stupid is what I'm getting at.

      Back in the cabin nothing is happening. That doesn't stop Dean from trying to hobble away from the stairs and out the back door even though his leg is perfectly fine (despite what the bandage would have you believe) and, I repeat, there is nothing going on in the cabin. He does manage to crawl out to the shed that is now apparently attached to the back porch of the house, but then does nothing but look around like a dumb human caught in the headlights. He does manage to find more gas for the boat... when he knocks it over on himself and into his eyes. This leads to a figure showing up, the screen going black, and the sound of the wrench Dean had grabbed (or something) hitting something flesh sounding.

      Now back to “Survival of the... Fittest? Part 2” with Kayla wondering around the woods, finding... some sort of wooden coffin-like structure, climbing in, and then placing the lid back over top of herself. Of course some shadows flick across the top where the light is coming in and she has to cover her mouth to keep from “acting”. Spikes start being driven into the top of her hidey-coffin, and she starts “acting” again. Then the spikes stop for a while and there are some other sounds of movement. Almost like the boat (I assume it was supposed to be a rowboat) she was in was being cast out into the lake. Which it was. She does manage to get out, though. Although without any reason or even any suspense that she might not since it was literally “she's trapped and being pushed out to sea... her head is popping up outside the boat!” and that's it. My buddy Ian described “Wagons East”, which Chris Farley died making (as I'm led to believe or at least vaguely remember) as: “oh look, we're almost there...! ...We're there!” But that's because the guy died and you couldn't finish the rest of the movie (again, may just be pulling this out of my ass, I have been drinking after all), this time it's just “oh, she might not survive...! ...She survived!” for no reason. Anyway, nine minutes left and she's feeling her way through the forest. With weird noises going on. Then she falls down and finds... the ruins of Sorrow Creek like they did plus a bag hanging on a tree. The bag is leaking blood and then...

      She drops the flashlight and there's a voice over like there was at the end of the opening credits scene, the sound of a knife slicing out eyeballs again, and Kayla putting her newly carved out eyes into the bag and hanging it back up before taking a noose out of frame. Some moths flicker around and then the “shock” of Kayla's feet swinging after she hangs herself.

      Now, the answer to the question I've been asking, what the fuck were Daniel and Mr. Forest Ranger My Name Is Jonas involved in this movie for? Turns out they found Kayla's body but none of the other three (...just like the four man crew in the 20s...) after the cabin burned down (...just like the home of crazy wife and husband...) the week before. And...

      I actually shouldn't make fun of this ending. It's actually pretty good. The movie itself, technical difficulties and ridiculous amounts of crying aside, was pretty good. It really could have used the extra 16 or so minutes to establish reasons for them to be so scared and everything, but this surprised me. Once you get beyond the crappy video quality and the fact they cut out a lot of the build up that would really make it a much better movie, it's not bad. For all my bitching about there being too much crying, the acting was half decent and it was generally better than I expected after that first scene. I'd say somebody should pull an “Evil Dead” on this one and remake the same movie but with a bigger budget and a more fleshed out plot. I don't see a Bruce Campbell in this cast, but you never know. Best of the collection so far.

Asylum

Okay, back from the dead like one of the many terrible Return Of The Living Dead sequel, we're going to take a break from the Midnight Horror Collection this time. Instead, what's on the block is a movie on Netflix called “Asylum”. Why? Because why should I use a service like Netflix to watch good movies that I might actually enjoy when I can use it to watch bad movies and get drunk to them? Also, for those of you that are interested, I did try to do an audio recording of a different movie review with Julie, but realized three things after the fact: 1. I have a terrible speaking voice. My joke about it sounding like cow shit going through a meat grinder actually isn't that far off. 2. There are large portions of time when I do this with other people where we don't talk about the movie or anything going on in it at all. And 3. Trying to do an audio recording of this just means I'd have to sit down and transcribe what was said into blog form anyway. So fuck that noise, on with “Asylum”.

      Credits and creepy music over old pictures from inside an asylum. At least they seem to have a basic grasp of how to start a horror movie. Then again, the credits have been the highlight of more than a couple of the movies I've talked about so let's not get our hopes up. Getting straight into the action, there's a couple kids (a boy and a girl) standing on the stairs listening to their parents fight in a different room. Looks like they can see into the living room where their fighting and mom is trying to get dad to go back on his meds. Dad is complaining about something or someone coming for him. But they only want him so they'll leave mom and the kids alone if he's not there. Which ends with a self-inflicted gunshot to his head right in front of his entire family. I suppose, in real world terms, that's better than turning the gun on everyone else first, but still gotta think the invisible monsters he was fighting get the points for that one considering how messed up his kids are likely to be from it.

      I guess it was a dream/memory 'cause next we see a fairly good looking college girl (“Madison”) waking up when her mom drops her off. Who's mom drops them off at college? Mom doesn't seem to want to let her go, but since they pretty much say older brother Brandon is dead to, you can kinda see her not wanting to let the last of her family out of her sight.

      Hey, you know that crappy Dave Matthews Band sound of music and other crap people in the 90s tried to pawn off as the type of music college kids listened to? Imagine an even blander, more generic sound of that. That's the music playing on this stereotypical college campus. Seriously, nothing but stock photo city so far. Including an old creepy looking repairman/janitor/whatever and an over-zealous rent-a-cop. The repair guy says the new dorm Madison is moving into is haunted. Since it's the old asylum from the pictures in the credits and only half renovated, I'm going to guess it probably is.

      Madison makes her way through the dorm up to her room only to find some scuzzy-douchey looking guy standing in her doorway drawing something. I guess that's slightly better than if he were shirtless playing an acoustic guitar, but either one would fit him nicely. Madison does what I think we all would like to do in that situation and pulls out her mace (although she stops short of actually spraying him which I don't think I would have in that situation) in order to get him to move out of the way. He creepily stares at her as she goes in. In real life that'd be stalker behaviour, in the movie he's probably going to end up the love interest.

      So mom gave Madison a present with a note saying “Brandon would have wanted you to have this” and it turns out to be a necklace. Putting it on and looking at herself in the mirror, Madison is suddenly choked by the necklace which has become barbed wire and has to rip it off. I'm no expert, but with a history of mental problems in the family like she has, that might be a warning sign since, as soon as it's off her neck, it turns back into a regular necklace.

      More crappy music plays and we get to the mandatory orientation. Mandatory orientation? I guess that's a thing at this college. Also, go figure, scuzzy-douche is there and introduces himself to the girl who was so disgusted by him she almost maced him in the middle of a brightly lit, witness filled dorm hallway. For some reason she doesn't finish the job but instead introduces himself and continues to stand by him as Super-Jock shows up to tell Scuzzy-Douche that “there are some hot fucking bitches in this place” before looking over at what turns out to be (when she turns around) a rather slutty looking blonde and saying “you've got really nice tits”. Nothing but class and winners all around and worth noting that he hadn't actually seen her tits yet when he said that to her. She was into his rather forward approach, though, since she decides to stop talking to the guy she was standing with before and come over to join our motley crew of ghost fodder. Madison takes this time to find some scrawny, nerdy looking loser (who also turns out to be only 16) and go introduce herself to him. His name is String because he... plays with string a lot. Also, out of nowhere in this so far all-white school for the master race, there's a Hispanic girl named Mya that... just showed up and everyone goes along with it. Yay first day of college... I guess.

      The grad student councillor shows up and starts to do his bit, with Super-Jock trying to be funny and talking over him. This guy also looks like a pretty huge douche and even goes by the nickname “Rez” but he does make the plot point that this is the first group of students to live in this building in over 60 years. Then the tour starts as more crappy music (possibly the same crappy music as before since I'm betting they only bought the rights to one song). Three things to point out here: the tour group has suddenly devolved from probably around 50 people to just the main six; some of the students that were at orientation are already in the parts of the dorm (TV room, poker table, etc) that the tour is going through; and Rez makes a point of talking about the “brand new, unbreakable glass” between the hall and the gym area. I'm guessing that's a set up for something later.

      Mya shoots down Super-Jock, but the slutty blonde (who only now introduces herself as Ivy) is all for it. This being a movie that seems to be following a cookie-cutter approach to story, I'm guessing we see her naked within half an hour and dead within five minutes of that. Also, Scuzzy-Douche is named Holt and Ivy is all over him too but she figures Madison wants him so I guess she backs off a bit. They come to the bordered off section of the dorm and it turns out Rez is the only one with the key since no one is allowed in there. The lights flicker once and everyone goes off on the next part of the tour.

      Later that night, Madison is wandering the halls and finds a picture of her brother in a trophy case. This being in the middle of a thunderstorm that showed up after a completely cloud free day, she hears someone crying further down the hall and goes to investigate. Naturally, it's her dead brother who talks to her about not fitting in and being just like their dad before shooting himself in the ghost head. Of course when her crazy-ass looks back, he isn't there because he's already dead. Sign number two that something might be wrong with her.

      Right after this, Madison decides it's time to go interact with her group of hastily cobbled together college stereotypes and Super-Jock pulls out a bottle of tequila and a string of “triple XL” condoms (he literally says the line “I'm kinda hung... nicely”). He's really cementing himself in the role of “first person I want to see killed in this movie” with his continued dickitude. Mya this time joins in on the teasing of String by Super-Jock, but he takes a big swig of the bottle and gains acceptance from the group. He then goes on to fill in everybody on how this new dorm of theirs used to be a mental asylum. Going online to show everyone the research he did into the place, String grabs Holt's laptop even though Holt tells him it's “got a security password”. This is no problem for String since he's apparently the “kid that crashed eBay”. Not sure that's how you're supposed to do product placement, eBay, but good try. Everybody gets a kick out of this fact when he backs it up by breaking into the laptop in two seconds and begins explaining that the place was run by a crazy doctor that did a bunch of lobotomies through the eye sockets and a bunch of other torture stuff on his teenage patients. Ivy makes a point, out of nowhere, of saying “scary stories are sexy”. Betting it's fairly soon she's naked. The crazy doctor, having been discredited, started killing his patients until they led an uprising and killed him (the standard “his body was never found” tag is attached as per generic horror) which leads to the question: why was he still allowed to be performing operations on his patients after being discredited and having a psychotic breakdown? You really dropped the ball on that one, medical community of 60 years ago.

      Rez shows up and says no drugs or booze in the dorm, then leaves. This and the rest of the story convince everyone they need to go over to the abandoned side of the building. String hacks through the lock that only Rez has a key for and away they all go. Funny part of the movie so far: after Super-Jock literally knocks a door off its hinges and onto the ground, he tells the others to be quiet and someone, I think String, calls him on it. Otherwise it's just standard kids poking around a haunted house stuff and calling on the ghosts. Also, there's a prosthetic leg in there because why not?

     They find the doctor's office and start looking through the files. Never actually pausing long enough to let you read anything in them, they just scan over the pages and have Madison say “my god, he really was a psychopath” and expect you to take her word for it. This coming from the girl that's having delusional breaks from reality as it is, but we'll leave that for now. While she's reading the files, however, everyone else wanders off leaving Madison to go searching for them alone. She's found by rent-a-cop and makes up the story that she “heard someone screaming and the door was unlocked” so she went in to check it out. Rent-a-cop is more concerned about getting her out of the off limits section than following up on her “I heard someone screaming” story, but whatever, we all know it was a lie so we'll just let it go since we're a third of the way through the movie and nothing supernatural has happened yet.

      Everyone else is fine, by the way. They're all sitting back in the common room not even worried about where Madison went. They're happy she covered for them even though they seem to have forgotten there were six of them when they went exploring in the first place. Rez happens to be walking by right at this time and rent-a-cop chews him out because there's not supposed to be any students in the abandoned section. Turns out there are three key cards for the door (Rez gets one, rent-a-cop another, and creepy handyman the third) so Rez is a liar. He's also high on my list of people I want to see killed. Not the least of which is because he. Very suddenly and without provocation, grabs String like he's about to start hitting him or throwing him around or something when String steps in to defend Madison. Super-Jock actually comes to the rescue by grabbing Rez the same way he grabbed String and we're given a nice look at how, in a truly anarchist society where there are no rules and no government or other body to enforce order, the physically weak will be preyed on by those stronger and so on up the chain of dominance. Just kidding. I mean, that stuff actually happens in this case, but it's totally unintentional and I just made that up. Sounded like something from a stereotypical college class, though.

      Madison goes to check on String, who has run to his room, only to find him packing up to leave and on the verge of tears. She reassures him that everyone thinks he's cool and that he's smarter than “the rest of us put together”. You can just see the look in String's eyes 'cause he thinks he's going to end up getting laid out of this and then the crushing defeat in them when she adds “you remind me of my brother”. It's really sad and I shouldn't laugh 'cause I've been friend-zoned almost as quickly, but I still do. He decides not to pack up and leave right that instant and she goes back to the rest of the bunch.

      Thoroughly defeated in his attempt to have sex in real life, String turns to the lonely nerd's most faithful companion, internet pornography. I assume, anyway, we don't actually see what he's looking up on the computer 'cause the lights go out and a disembodied voice starts telling String he “knows things about [String's] past”. That's a bit of a mood killer when all you're looking for is some “alone time”. After being transported back into the green-lit room from his childhood, String's drunken mom stumbles in with a bottle in her hand and wearing not a lot more than a T-shirt and bathrobe. She then goes on a drunken psychologically abusive rant that ends with her voice changing to that of what I assume is the ghost of the doctor and saying he's going to kill him. The doctor himself then takes the place of his mother and starts talking down to String about “the pain he suffered” and talks about the time String tried to hang himself. It's at that point the doctor puts his hands on String and suddenly the string String had been playing with gets larger and longer (ha, it's a joke about the porn he didn't get a chance to watch) and wraps around his body and neck, killing him.

      Next morning, everyone but Madison and String are playing poker, when Madison comes in and asks where String is. Going to look for him, she sees a ghostly figure in a lab coat walking across the hallway and disappearing. Remember, family history of seeing things and again she doesn't say anything to anyone about what she saw just goes and investigates herself. Getting to the hallway she saw the guy in, she sees the door leading into the asylum close and decides that's enough investigating and knocks on String's already open door. It swings open and she sees him hanging there, tied up and dead. She screams and runs to get help. This is where the sense ends since, when she comes back with rent-a-cop and other rent-a-cops, they also decide to bring with them Rez and everyone else from the group to come take a look at the dead body. That... seems like something that isn't likely to happen. Oh, and of course when they get to String's room, his body isn't there anymore. Madison is convinced she actually saw him in there, so rent-a-cop does the sane thing after hearing String was on the verge of leaving and says they'll check with his parents to see if he went home. Holt (aka Scuzzy-Douche) decides to jump in on Madison's side and calls rent-a-cop a “glorified security guard” and tries to tell him how to do his job. Rent-a-cop's rent-a-cop buddy reacts the way anyone in their position would to that by saying “I'm going to pretend you didn't say that”. Likely his only line in the movie since they go off to look for String likely never to be seen from again (original rent-a-cop will probably be back, these other two... probably not).

      Super-Jock is now working out in the gym with the unbreakable glass (shirtless of course because it's not like anyone else might want to use those without having his sweat on it). Then goes, still shirtless, to talk to Mya who is studying in the room across the hall. After shooting him down again and asking if Super-Jock (I finally heard his name and I guess it's “Tommy”) didn't get enough attention from his mom as a kid, Tommy says “if there's one thing I don't want to talk about it's my mom”. And then goes on to rant about his mom and how he used to be fat. Mya seems to be at least warming up to him after it, though, so I guess opening up about your deepest insecurities and pain to a girl you met literally the day before is a good ice breaker? Must be since she turns around and tells him that her ex used to beat her up and she doesn't want to talk about it. Then she goes on to talk about how she doesn't let people get close to her because she's afraid they'll learn her secret to a guy that she just met the day before. Really? These two have these big dark secrets they're trying to keep from the world and they just talk about them like it's nothing? At least Will Ferrell in Austin Powers took three questions before giving out Dr. Evil's plans, these guys take just one “what do you mean?” and they're spilling their guts. And not in the way you'd expect halfway through a horror movie.

      Hey look, the build-up to a shower scene. But it's Madison instead of Ivy that's about to get naked so there's a twist. Uh oh, looks like the drain isn't working and the shower won't turn off. Also, the shower is apparently totally water-tight and fills up to her knees within ten seconds of being on which are two things I have trouble believing about the showers in a dorm in a renovated mental asylum. Oh, and the door won't open. We do get to see some underwater T&A, though. Both T and A and, if you don't blink, maybe even some underwater full-frontal. Go figure that the wholesome looking good-girl main character would get naked before the slutty looking disposable friend. The shower is completely full of water at this point, but we cut to outside in the bathroom and her screams for help are clear like they're not underwater at all. Oh yeah, the shower and bathroom are attached to her dorm room. Meaning that each dorm room has it's own bathroom. Combine that with the implication that they're all one person rooms as well (why else would Madison have found String instead of his roommate?), plus how nice and clean the rooms are and, given the only thing I know about living in dorms is what I've gathered from TV and movies and one friend that lived there, you've sold me on living in the place haunted or not. Seriously, this dorm seems to kick a lot of ass. Private bathrooms and unbreakable glass in the gym? If I wasn't already finished university I'd sign up for next year. I know there's at least one room available.

      Back to the movie. Ivy comes in and finds he hugging her knees in an empty shower instead of swimming to stay afloat in a full one like she just was. Madison says it wouldn't turn off, but Ivy turns it off without a problem. Another sign there's something wrong in Madison's head or actually spooky asylum stuff? Doesn't matter 'cause now it's time for the two of them to open up about their secret tragedies. Naturally, since it's in Ivy's nature, it starts off with Ivy saying that Madison's brother, who she sees in a picture beside the bed) is gorgeous. This leads to Madison talking about how he died a year ago and the two bonding over not being crazy since it turns out Ivy used to (or possibly still does since she says “it feels good”) cut herself. I'm also not being an insensitive dick with that last line (okay, I probably am, but for different reasons) since that's pretty much what Ivy says word for word (“why show me?” “because I'm not crazy... and neither are you”).

      It's night again, and now Mya gets a knock on her door. Turns out to be Rez just “checking in on everybody” 'cause they're all freaked out about String and stuff. You know, checking in on everybody by bringing a bottle of wine to drink with Mya. Just the way he's talking makes him rise above Tommy (for now) in people I want to see dead soon. A few glasses later, their laughing and Rez is sharing a story about how he got locked in a storage closet naked. He then awkwardly tries to transition that into hitting on Mya. This does not go well for him. She starts out politely hinting that she wants him to leave. He decides this is a good time to force a kiss (and more) on her. She, quite rightly, grabs and crushes his balls a bit when he won't stop. That gets his attention, although his parting shot is “you just messed with the wrong person”. Lucky for Rez it seems Mya won't get the chance to file any charges against him 'cause the lights flicker and she's transported back to Stereotype City. Or at least her old apartment where mariachi music is playing and everything is decorated the way a white person with no contact with anyone of any other culture and a severely racist upbringing would think a Mexican apartment would be decorated. Her scumbag ex-boyfriend is there, of course, and starts yanking her around by the hair before pulling a switch blade on her and throwing her into a mirror. He becomes the doctor and scalps her. I'm not sure whoever wrote this has their stereotypes quite right.

      Now Madison is looking up “insanity” on Wikipedia. I paused the movie and checked, and it turns out the page she's looking at, though definitely Wikipedia, is NOT the Wikipedia page on insanity. Though it does use the same picture at the top of the article so I wonder if maybe that was the actual page before some edits and a formatting change? Hard to tell but props to them for at least knowing that the only way anyone in college researches anything is by using Wikipedia. Holt shoes up to talk with her and asks what she's doing. Madison, instinctively, closes down her browser and answers “nothing, just... messing around”. Now, not to start stereotyping as bad as this movie does, but whenever anyone asks anyone what their doing on the computer when they're looking at a blank desktop and the answer is “nothing” (not even the “just messing around” part), the real answer is ALWAYS “looking at porn and masturbating”. In fact, no matter what the answer they give you is, if they're sitting there with a blank desktop on the computer screen, you can bet they were looking at porn before you walked in to interrupt them. Holt, obviously missing the fact Madison wants some “alone time” (even though in this one and only case she was looking up something important... likely before the porn), tries to get her to come with him to look for String. She refuses, and then starts to talk about the “really weird stuff” she's been seeing and tell him about her dad and brother shooting themselves. To a guy she met three days ago. When she says “maybe I'm just like them” i.e. “crazy”, Holt comforts her by saying “not even close”. Remember, he's only known her for three days and she's confessed to seeing weird things including String tied up and dead when no one else saw it. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say he actually thinks she is bat-shit insane, but is banking on the old “the crazy ones are better in bed” rule and rolling the dice on her sleeping with him before she goes totally nuts.

      Of course, in his own words, the possibility of her being crazy because it runs in her family “doesn't matter because [she's] talking to a recovering drug addict”. Wait, what? I get that this is the only place in the history of the entire world where everyone shares the deepest, darkest experiences and fears with everyone else they meet in less than a week, but how do those two even compare let alone one cancel out the other? But fuck logic, we've got an anti-drug story to tell here. Turns out Holt “used to do a lot of drugs” and was supposed to be watching his little brother one time. After “shooting up with heroin” he heard his brother fall around into the pool. Holt jumped in, ripped through the pool cover, and performed CPR, but it was too late; he killed his little brother. Again: wait, what? That pretty much sounds like he did everything he could possibly do to save the kid. A fact made doubly impressive considering he was on smack at the time. I mean, I've never done the stuff myself, but I've seen Trainspotting and know that heroin is a “downer” so Holt leaping into action like that... fuck, I've been completely sober and not bothered to answer a call for help from my siblings until the show I was watching went to commercial. Granted there wasn't a life threatening situation involved, but you get the point.

      Creepy repairman Mackie shows up outside Madison's room and says it's “too late to stop the doctor”. After she chases after him and Holt chases after her, he goes on to talk about the ghost of the doctor roaming the halls. Holt tries to get Madison to come back to her room 'cause he was really close to getting some survivors guilt pity sex, but she wants to stay and listen. Apparently the doctor only goes after “troubled souls; like you and your friends”. Mackie leaves and the lights flicker.

      The next morning, rent-a-cop tells everyone that the only two people missing from the dorm are String and Mya. Rez says he was “just talking” with Mya in her room even though he was the last one to see her. Tommy gets in another Super-Jock comment of “shut the fuck up, you're hitting that shit?” in the middle of a serious conversation, but the main point is Mackie's hat was found in the abandoned section but no Mackie. Rent-a-cop makes promises of finding the missing kids and getting to the bottom of it, then restricts everyone inside the dorm where two people have already gone missing mysteriously in three days. Not saying that's the reason he didn't make it onto the force, but it probably didn't help.

      Madison comes to the conclusion that maybe it's Mackie that's been killing people and just using the legend of the doctor as a cover. Even Holt calls bullshit on that, but no time for argument because we need to cut to that night and Tommy working out again (shirtless, of course). This time the doctor does show up. Go go unbreakable glass! Not quite yet. Tommy gets sent back to his kitchen where his obese (in his words from before his “whole family is obese”) mom is bringing him another plate full of food. She tells him he hasn't been eating enough and he isn't going anywhere until he eats everything. They argue and she says, word for word, “I will not love you if you get skinny”. What. The. Fuck. She then becomes the doctor who shows his physical dominance over Tommy (remember the lesson with him, Rez, and String from before?) by lifting him up by the throat and continuing the verbal assault on him before throwing him on the table, crawling on top of him, and pinning him to the table by stabbing him through the wrists (conveniently crossed behind his head on top of each other) with a carving knife. Also, the way the scene is shot and the looks on Tommy's face through it, you kinda get the feeling you're watching a rape. It's not really horrifying, just disturbing for entirely different reasons than a horror movie should invoke. So yeah... the doctor starts cutting off Tommy's tongue and then his lips and generally mutilating him. Doesn't show him killing him, but it's implied.

      Cut to Madison and Holt sitting on a bed and getting close while talking about the weird things that have been going on and how Mackie might be a psychotic killer. Time for them to kiss, obviously. They start getting into it and suddenly the asylum decides to cock-block Scuzzy-Douche by turning the lights out and slamming and locking the window. It's enough to get them to stop, get out of the room, and see that the rest of the dorm is without power too. Although when confronted with the obvious “where is everyone?” question, they decide to go check downstairs rather than knock on someone else's door. Why? Because we've already used the lines “I won't love you if you get skinny” and “you being crazy doesn't matter because I'm a recovering drug addict” so fuck logic, that's why. Finding that the door to the stairs is locked, Madison decides to call Tommy. Not someone like rent-a-cop or even Rez who might have a key or at least some semblance of pseudo authority in this place, her Super-Jock friend. That's gotta be a blow to Holt's ego. In a time of crisis the girl he's hitting on has the immediate reaction of “I'm going to call this other guy I know”. For no reason at all, there's no signal but they see that the light is on in the gym (but nowhere else) so they wander through the dark hallway to check that out never once thinking that there might be a problem since, you know, everywhere else has lost power. Given what's been going on in the past three days, I think it's safe to say that, with the power out to the building and the doors downstairs locked for mysterious reasons, the smart thing to do is not to go looking into the one room that has lights on.

      They find Tommy, still alive for a second, choking on his own blood with the doctor standing over him. Tommy dies and the doctor turns to come at them. Thankfully, Mackie is standing behind the doctor and hits him with a shovel. I'm almost halfway through a 40 of rum and even I can point out that A: if he's some psychotic ghost, a simple shovel shouldn't bring him down like it does, and B: if Mackie was back there the whole time, shouldn't he have maybe used that shovel beforehand to save Tommy? Although maybe he just got tired of his Super-Jock schtick like I did and wanted to see him offed, too. Can't really blame the guy.

      Anyway, all three of them (since Mackie caught up to them in an instant) run and hide in a supply closet while the doctor walks after them. The doc taunts them, calling Mackie by name, and then goes of to find someone else to kill. Everyone breathes for a moment and Mackie tells the story about how he used to be a patient at the asylum in it's last days. He was even the one the doctor was performing a lobotomy on when the other patients rose up and killed the guy so we get some flashbacks of enraged teenagers rescuing an 11 year old Mackie with lobotomy spikes in his eyes from the doctor. The former patients then string the doctor up in one of the torture contraptions he'd used on them and one girl draws the long straw and gets to stab the picks into the doc's eyes. Now, they only show her doing it (and then all of them walking away to leave him to suffer), but either the rest of them took turns doing it afterwards or she won the goddamn lottery 'cause you gotta think they ALL wanted to be the ones to stab him in the eyes. Young Mackie finds a drain pipe to crawl through to get out while everyone else runs out the front door, and then we're back to the present.

      The decision is made that, since they can't get out through the stairs, they'll use Mackie's key card (good thing Rez was lying when he said he had the only one) to go over to the asylum side and get out through there because I guess ghost magic to lock the doors in the dorm doesn't work over there. Fuck it, less than 20 minutes left, keep rolling. Ivy is wandering through the halls on her own talking about it being “so messed up” that the power's out. Lucky for her it's the other three that get to her before the doctor and she starts running along with them rather than questioning. Suddenly they have flashlights (something they said they needed to get but were never shown getting) and are in the asylum side still running for their lives. Ivy still doesn't know what's going on. The doctor shows up because, you know, he's a ghost that haunts the entire place not just the dorm side and goes after Mackie to “finish what he started”. Rather than try to help the only guy that knows the layout of the place, Madison, Holt, and Ivy decide it's time to run away on their own. Way to be dicks. Although it turns out to be a good thing since Mackie dies two seconds after they leave him. Also, Ivy gets left behind because her needlessly short skirt isn't as easy to run in... I can only assume since they were all in a group before but she's the one that gets separated and trapped by the doctor.

      Even from the start Ivy's flashback is unsettling. A spotlight is shining in her eyes and then she turns around to see a child's bed with a prominently displayed sign saying “daddy loves Ivy” on the wall. Yeah... there's a camera and her dad wanting to “play another game” there telling her to be quiet 'cause they “don't want her mother to hear” while they “make another movie; just [her] and daddy”. That's when the doctor shows up and kills her. No jokes this time 'cause... yeah.

      Madison and Holt make it down to the basement where the vent young Mackie crawled through to escape is. Remember, they had to run down the stairs past whatever door was on the main floor to get to the basement in order to search for this vent. Rather than a vent, they first find the bodies of everyone the doc has killed in the course of the movie. Including Ivy so that means the doctor is now free to come after them since that's how evil spirits work. They do find the vent and manage to pry the grill covering it open, but not before the doctor shows up and Holt tries to fight him with a pipe that was just lying around. As you might guess, this leads to Holt being thrown back into the pool at his parent's place trying to save his brother. The doctor shows up as the brother as Holt tries to give CPR, but is stopped from killing him by Madison who, having come back from the escape vent she was crawling into, hits the doctor with that useful lead pipe causing him to stab himself through the arm with his own lobotomy needle.

      They both crawl through the pipe with the doctor removing the needle and then ripping off his lab coat to reveal the gimp costume underneath (to be fair, this is what he was in when he was strung up on the wall and the patients killed him; it was one of the “therapy” rooms in his hospital... I don't understand it either).

      You would think that, since the doctor has been limited to the asylum for 60 years, once they escaped through the vent it'd be fine. Not so since, for no reason whatsoever, the doctor shows up out in the open on the other side of the tunnel in a broken and abandoned factory. In the middle of the day, mind you. I mean, it was pitch black night a few minutes ago when they were running for their lives, but now that they're going to be outside it's a clear day. And the doctor is there. And there's a forest and no other buildings around even though they were just on a university campus which was (presumably) in the middle of a city. How long was that tunnel they crawled through?

      Trying to escape, Holt helps Madison by boosting her up onto a ledge through a fence. And by that I mean he “shamelessly grabs her ass as he boosts her up through a fence on a ledge that she probably could have pulled herself up to just as easily”. They don't even try to disguise it or anything. This is just the scene where Scuzzy-Douche grabs the main character's ass. They run across some train tracks with a train almost running them over since that'll stop a ghost (hint: it doesn't), then run through the aforementioned forest that showed up out of nowhere until Madison trips over the largest most obvious branch in the woods and falls. As you might assume, the doctor is there to great her when she looks up.

      Some more running since the doctor didn't feel like doing anything more than just standing there menacingly at the time, and this time it's Holt that falls down a clearly seen hill in the middle of a brightly lit forest for no reason. Trying to keep him from looking foolish, Jill came tumbling after. Sorry, MADISON came tumbling after. Anyway, Holt manages to defy all laws of logic, natural selection, and spit in the face of humanity being the dominant species of the planet by getting his leg trapped between two logs no more than an inch and a half across and then not being able to get it free or even reach his arms down to try and move one of the logs. Seriously, he just lies there jerking his leg around like it's caught in a bear trap or something. At least try to use your hands your fucking idiot.

      Anyway, the doctor shows up and, I shit you not, tries to sound like Marlon Brando in The Godfather. His line, delivered in an actually not too bad impersonation, is “There's no point in... running”, Seriously, if Don Corleone was wearing a BDSM suit and holding lobotomy knives over top of a trapped college kid and a terrified other college kid, this would be what it was like. That thought alone makes me laugh and really undercuts the tension they're trying to build with this scene. In fact, I'm going to go back and watch it again just to make sure that's what it sounds like. Yup, that and the next line the doctor says are clear cut NAMBLA (National Association of Marlon Brando Look-Alike) applications (South Park, come on now, if they can joke about it so can I). Anyway, the doc moves in for the kill on Holt again, but this time Madison cries out for the good doctor to “help” her. The doc goes for it and, despite Holt's protests, he goes over to dispense his murderous form of tough love therapy on her.

      Paused the movie and time for wild speculation. I'm betting I know how they end this. Remember how so far whenever the doctor has killed people he takes them back to their original trauma first? And how he takes the form of the person that caused their trauma and goes out of his way to re-enact it before ultimately killing them? Remember what caused Madison's trauma in the first place? It was her father killing himself in front of them all. The doctor wants to re-enact her trauma? Let him go for it. Just as he gets to the point where he flips in instead of her dad, Madison, in her gritty heroine of a horror movie voice, delivers a one-liner about the trauma being her dad died and the doc's brains end up blown out. Cut to the doc's body dropping in the woods, Madison helping Holt out of that inexplicably puzzling pile of firewood, and the two of them walking off into the sunset or whatever. Good fucking ending considering the movie it's attached to.

     As you might guess, this is not what happens. She does call him over and the doctor does fall for it with Holt yelling about it the whole time, but then... yeah... all that happens is she takes one of his lobotomy spikes and stabs him through the head with it. Also, it's not even “she wrestles one away from him and hits him with his own spike”, it's one that she had in her hand from... when she took it from him in the basement? That's the only other time she might have grabbed one, although fucked if it was ever in her hand between then and now. She does get a pretty good one-liner in since the doctor has always said “give me your suffering” before he “cures” his other victims. He says that to her and she comes back with “give me YOUR suffering, motherfucker!” Not exactly Die Hard level one-liner, granted, but considering this movie doesn't even take the best ending it wrote into it's own script and she's supposed to be 18 or so, I'm willing to bet that's as good a one-liner as anyone would come up with on the spot.

      Oh yeah, that's the end, by the way. She uses a lobotomy pick she didn't have until right then to stab him through the head and we watch all the spirits of the people he killed float away and his body collapse into the stereotypical black dust of horror movies. Then Holt and Madison wander through the forest to a road in the middle of a field holding hands without even a thought to the fact that none of the field, forest, or country road should be that close to their university dorm. The same bad music from the start rolls over the credits.

      But seriously, how much better was my ending than the one in the movie? The last scene is the doctor taking the place of her dad, with the gun still to his head, and telling her to give him her suffering, and she answers back with “you forgot one thing... if he doesn't die, there is no suffering” and then the doctor/dad shoots himself and the spirits are freed, etc, etc. Aside from that... good on them for subverting the horror movie idea that the obviously slutty blonde will be the one to get naked? I'm reaching for anything good about this so there's that and the whole sociological undertones that I totally made up for that one scene. Even if you include that, though, the crappy music (and there actually was more than one song despite it all sounding like the same generic crap) ruins it. No stars unless you feel the need to see what a girl who looks similar to the one on the show Fringe looks like naked underwater. It might be worth seeing if that's your fetish, otherwise not so much.

The Last Vampire On Earth

      Since what really gets “the kids” going these days is a teen vampire movie, both Midnight Horror Collection Volume 8 and me decided to get in on this act and bring you “The Last Vampire On Earth”. This 80 minute masterpiece is described on the back of the case as being about Aurelius (really?) and Chloe who “lead opposite lives but, when they are cast together in a class play, find that they have something in common- a deep, dark secret.” I'm no Batman, but it probably doesn't take the world's greatest detective to figure out what that secret is going to be. We're also back to a movie that has no recognizable names in it so looks like I'll actually have to pay attention to character names rather than calling one of them by the role they played for a quarter of one season on a TV show 25 years ago (yes, Next Generation was 25 years ago; my god I feel old). Anyway, on with the show.

      We start with a full moon (because... vampires?) and what sounds like a teenage girl (or at least an actress in her 20s trying to play a teenage girl) doing a voice-over about supernatural creatures and “who are we to say what's evil?” and stuff about how people only hate vampires because they're jealous or are afraid of them. Now I've never seen Twilight, but I've gathered enough about it to figure that this is pretty much it. Also, one of the shots during the credits (with terribly crappy emo music playing over top just to make sure you know it's one of the “new” vampire movies where the vampires don't suck blood, they just suck) has a girl sitting reading what looks like it might be one of the Twilight books. Is it still a rip-off if they're so blatant about it?

      Ugh. The quality of the film is already making me cringe almost as much as the poor writing. And now a guy with a dyed blonde emo haircut wearing hipster clothes is laughing and telling his friend that he “wouldn't go anywhere looking like that” about a girl dressed in all black with goth/emo style make-up. I want to believe that was being ironic on purpose, but judging from the look of this movie so far... I really doubt it was. Four minutes into the movie I'm starting to think this was just something someone slapped together for a high school project that ended up on this disk 'cause of the Twilight angle. Now blonde emo's buddy is making fun of some other dude walking up by saying he's”like the palest dude ever”. I guess he can't make fun of the other guy's clothes or hair since he looks exactly like him in that regard so he goes for the tanning jokes because... wait, he's ghostly white too. What the hell? I may be old, but even I remember school well enough to know that the “popular kids” (who, for no reason that I can see, are what these two are supposed to be) would at least choose things that were different about the other kids to make fun of them for.

      In class now, and coincidentally “today is the day we start delving into Bram Stoker's Dracula”. I don't really see the advantage in calling attention to a piece of fiction that's that far ahead of the one you're trying to make, but let's see where this is going. Nowhere good. Both acting wise and story wise. Hey, look at that though, turns out the “pale” (again, seems to be a relative term) kid is Aurelius and he gets to play Dracula in the class's performance. I'm betting subtlety was a subject not covered in whatever 10^th rate film school the people behind this movie went to.

      This is definitely someone's high school project that they just got their friends to act in. There's... there's no other excuse for the acting in this next scene. Or anything else so far in this movie. Also, the sound. It really echos around in some spots so that you can barely make out what the people are saying. Speaking from experience (although in my case it was the fucking wind that did me in), that's a pretty good sign this is a half-assed amateur production.

      This is getting painful already. Aurelius, doing his best Sad George Michael Bluth walk, walks up to a “bloodmobile” that is sitting on campus (because I guess minors at high schools are all about giving blood?) and, after no more than an introduction, tells the driver that he wants to “buy some of this blood from you”. I know they're probably working on a tight budget, but come on. At least take a couple minutes or so to build up to that. The driver doesn't go for it until he sees some cash and then the kid is “speaking his language” (yes, he actually said that). Also, I guess 5 gallons of blood is no problem for a driver to steal to sell to some random high school kid. Script problems: this movie has many. On the plus side, using bored, disinterested teenagers really helps when they're playing bored, disinterested teenagers reading Dracula out loud in class.

     Now some awkward teenage interactions between awkward teenagers written by (I can only assume) an awkward teenager... or just someone with that level of ability to write realistic dialogue (please note: here I mean they nail the awkward part of it, but some of the things they say... wow). Anyway, Chloe (one of the popular girls) is approaching Aurelius (the emo-looking loser who is somehow different from the emo-looking popular kids from the start) to get together to work on their Dracula scenes. Awkwardness all around.

      Next we see Chloe in getting a blood test or something. When she's finished the nurse tells her to “enjoy the rest of day and remember to drink a lot of water”. Chloe responds with “okay, you too” I assume about the enjoying the day part, but the way I heard it was reminding the nurse to drink a lot of water. I laughed. That's also the end of the scene. There doesn't seem to be a lot of context in some of these secondary scenes (the last two have just had characters standing in hallways). Then we get back to more awkwardness as the two leads are now out in a coffee shop trying to talk to each other again. Also turns out Chloe is the daughter of a preacher and wants to be a missionary and all sorts of other good-girl, religious type stuff. Then she asks if Aurelius wants to go to church with her sometime. Saving/converting the heathen or just awkward high school good-girl trying to think up a date for her and the “bad boy”? Either way he says yes and then leaves without them actually reading any Dracula because this movie has some story problems.

      Then we are treated to a sermon in the church. Yes, in an 80 minute movie about high school vampires, the first 20 minutes have included a reading of a few pages from Dracula and now a church service. And then an extended shot of everybody getting up and leaving the church. I know I'm not the greatest film maker in the world, but even I could edit a fair chunk of this down. It does end with Chloe introducing Aurelius to her dad and him inviting the guy over for dinner so that's probably stuff for later on in the movie. And Aurelius has one of the (so far) few really good, snappy lines. After a couple young girls talk to Chloe (she runs the church's youth group) and they leave, he says “aren't you miss popular” as they're walking away and the scene changes. I'm willing to bet the kid just improvised that when they were filming.

      Another transition scene that doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense, and we get to the dinner. Aurelius shows up with some flowers for Chloe and, even more surprising, is wearing a bright green shirt instead of the usual nothing but black and white that everyone (and I mean everyone) in this movie has been so far. He also brings another bunch of flowers for Chloe's mom. This kid is smooth. Also, after seeing Chloe's mom, you really have to hope she doesn't fall into the “in 25 years every girl turns into her mother” generality because that is one large and unattractive lady. They haven't actually said what religion Chloe's dad is a minister for, but he keeps specifically saying “Jehovah” so I'm going to go ahead and say it's Jehovah's Witness. Also, maybe this movie is supposed to be that church's response to the vampire craze? The more I think about it, it does kinda have the overtones of something that could've been sponsored by a church. Plus the minister's daughter and family being so open and accepting to the “loser” that the popular people in secular society rejected? We'll have to wait and see. Totally called the Jehovah's Witness thing, by the way. A couple minutes later they flat out say it. That's probably a bit important since, in their religion, they don't believe in things like blood transfusions and such because blood is sacred. When Aurelius says he wants to study haematology and find cures for blood diseases (as well as, you know, being a vampire), this causes a bit of an awkward pause. But then they just carry on as if it's no big deal so yay for them for being so accepting, I guess.

      Wow, they are really playing up this morally-upstanding good-girl thing with Chloe (although that's a mighty short skirt for such a good girl). The next time you see her she's “doing some recreational reading. It's fun to read something without being forced to for class”. I mean, I'm a fan of reading for fun too, but to actually say those exact words in a movie? Wow. Some pretty terrible dialogue (seriously, from what everyone says about what piss-poor writing Twilight is, this has to be worse... maybe), the two of them go for a walk and have some nice, clean, wholesome fun. Seriously, they don't even kiss, just hold hands while some music goes on about “waiting for wedding bells”. I'm leaning more and more towards this being a church sponsored film.

      After a full afternoon and evening (it was afternoon to start and now it's pitch black outside), Aurelius says he's got some notes for class back at his house and asks if Chloe wants to go back to get them. They get back there and, while looking for the bathroom, she finds the case the bloodmobile driver dropped off. Moral confliction ensues. Nothing else happens as Aurelius drives her back home, but then she starts to think about it and start to suspect he (duh duh duh!) might be a vampire! There's... there's really not a lot of reason for this other than it kinda needs to happen for the movie to go anywhere. Some even more ridiculous Twilight-inspired high school dialogue later, he fesses up to being a vampire and she swoons because he “chose to share his secret with her”. I don't know if there's enough booze left in the world for me to be able to sit through much more of this.

      Also, I'm now fully on board with this being a church sponsored movie. Aurelius claims to be over 2,000 years old and the first question Chloe asks is if he knew Jesus. The answer, of course, being that he “heard him speak a few times. He was a great man.” Chloe, jealous of Aurelius having seen Jesus, goes on to bubble about all the amazing things he must have seen. Aurelius agrees, but says he's seen a lot of terrible things too but that Chloe is one of the good things. You know, for a high school (or, as it turns out they're in college I guess) kid, bringing the extra flowers for the mom and this “I've seen a lot of terrible things in my life, but you, [random hot girl I want to hook up with], you're one of the good things” bit are pretty smooth. But that's a relative scale. You're supposed to be 2,000 years old. Come on, man, step up your game a bit.

      Oh hey, remember that random blood test Chloe was in for a while back? Turns out she's got AIDS. Well, at the moment only HIV, but as the doctor in the next scene is telling her, it's getting closer to being full blown AIDS and none of the drugs they've put her on seem to be working. That's a bit of a downer, actually. Not really any jokes to make here (although points to those that caught the reference).

      Chloe then lies to both Aurelius and her roommate (remember, they're in college I guess, so instead of staying at home with her family she's living in the dorms because money is no object... I guess) about what was wrong with her. It's probably 'cause I've got a dirty mind, but when Chloe's roommate talks about how weird it was not having Chloe in the room all week and that she “missed her”, I heard some lesbian undertones to it (note: there's been nothing so far in the movie to indicate this, and pretty much everything to indicate against it, but remember the random lesbians in Return To House On Haunted Hill so you never know). I also hate to keep harping on it, but these people really cannot act. The dialogue is bad enough as it is, but when it's delivered so flatly... more booze.

      Still only about halfway through the movie and I'm about ready to shut it off this writing is so bad. Some of the worst so far has lead up to the “big moment” where Aurelius and Chloe kiss. But only for like half a second, we don't want to be obscene or anything. It's also pretty bad when the best dialogue in the movie is people playing students forced to perform as actors reciting lines from Dracula. Seriously, the only time any of this seems the least bit genuine is when they're acting like they can't act. And I'm fairly sure it's not an act.

Later, Aurelius and Chloe are hanging out and, even though she's apparently been getting worse, she still lies to him and says there's nothing wrong with her. To recap: she doesn't tell her immortal vampire boyfriend who is trying to find cures for blood diseases that she's got AIDS. Boiled down even further: she doesn't tell her boyfriend that she's got AIDS. Take a few seconds and think about that. And there isn't an “oh, we just met, I'm not comfortable saying something so personal” excuse here, they started Dracula at the start of the semester and were told they'd be reading it and then performing it at the end. The last scene was them during rehearsals and, sad is it is to say, they were sounding a lot better than when they started reading it. This is months later. She still hasn't told anyone. That's not cool.

      Chloe's condition has gotten worse. That's a summary of 8 minutes of film. That and Aurelius is using his vampire powers to play ping pong with himself. That is all that happens. Oh, I forgot to mention, Chloe's brother overheard her say that Aurelius was a vampire. Days later he's just now telling their parents. They even manage to do this in the most boring way possible to the point where I forgot about it till just now. 20 minutes left.

      Chloe's dad goes to confront her about finding out Aurelius is a vampire. Even in the context of this being a vampire movie this is just dumb. And poorly written. And dumb. And poorly acted. And really, really, dumb. For some reason, this is “very important” to her dad and he's already 100% on board with the idea of there being vampires and that one of them is dating his daughter even though the only evidence he has is that his like 10 year old son says he overheard Chloe saying Aurelius was a vampire even though they're doing a play version of Dracula. He's picked a weird time and way to become super over-protective of his daughter. After getting half-assed confirmation that he's a vampire, her dad says he's going to “do what needs to be done”. Ugh. It's also worth noting after this that Chloe goes home and picks up a handgun before going to try and find Aurelius. Think about that. She's taking a gun to a fight between an immortal vampire and her father. That's pretty much premeditated murder of her dad right there. We're at least in the range of attempted murder since she actually hasn't done it yet, I guess.

      I'm now less sold on this being church sponsored. Chloe's dad has Aurelius tied to a stake and ready to burn with a bunch of others standing around with him as he preaches about how evil vampires are because of how holy blood is. It's tragically funny how halfhearted the “burn him!” from the crowd was. Monty Python had better acting. Also, Chloe shows up and threatens to shoot them if they don't stop (yes, she actually says “stop or I'll shoot”). It's also only at this point, with her family in a murderous rage, her boyfriend tied to a stake, and various other strangers gathered around while she holds them at gun point that she decides to tell people she has AIDS. In a ridiculously long speech. Where she compares being a vampire to having a disease like cancer. Then she shoots a guy in the arm for no apparent reason other than to prove she's “not playing around”.

      After they “escape” by just walking away, Chloe and Aurelius are back at his place. She says the reason she didn't tell him she had AIDS was because she “didn't want him to think less of her”. Really? Is this the 80s or something? Also, turns out she got AIDS because she was helping in Africa on one of her missionary trips. There's a bit more to the explanation than that (not very much), but the response from Aurelius is “you don't deserve this. You were just trying to help people in desperate need and this is what happens to you? This makes me so angry.” It's never a good sign if an actor has to actually say how they're supposed to be feeling rather than, you know, actually having the ability to change the tone of their voice and maybe convey a bit of emotion.

      Now, of course, she asks if she would “be healthy again” if he bit her and turned her into a vampire. He says yes, she'd be immortal like him... only to have the thunder from the storm outside crack at that exact moment. That's a bit over the top even for this movie. She still wants it, though. He tries to convince her not to because vampires are all tragic and pained and that bullshit now. She says she could handle all of that pain, so long as she was with him (awwwww *puke*). He still says no so I guess she's more involved in this relationship than he is. Burn on her.

      Last 8 minutes (including credits) of the movie and we're treated to a performance of their play. Gee, I wonder if Aurelius, playing Dracula, is going to actually bite Chloe, playing Mina, in their scene? Before that, though, just as a side note, despite how terrible all of these people are at acting, at least the guy they have playing Van Helsing is playing it up. Trying for an accent and speaking his lines theatrically and all. Good for him. So yeah, in case you forgot what Chloe wanted Aurelius to do two minutes ago, you get to see her remind him about it right before the scene where he bites her in the play. God this movie is terrible. So yeah, obviously he bites her. The end.

      Oh my god. One of the credits says “based on a novel”. Are you fucking kidding me? No redeeming features about this at all.

Mortuary

      So remember how I said this Midnight Horror Collection had some movies starring people I've actually heard of? Mortuary's got Tasha Yar herself, Denise Crosby in it. That's a pretty disappointing career arc if you think about it. Featured player in Star Trek: The Next Generation to a movie on Volume 8 of the Midnight Horror Collection. But good on her for still working this many years later since the only other thing I can remember her doing was showing her tits in an episode of Red Shoe Diaries like ten years after Star Trek (something that, if the internet had been as widespread back then as it is now, probably would have made the phrase “Tasha Yar's tits” the top search of all time... although I'm betting that's still searched quite a bit on the internet even today). So yeah, on with the show.

      The movie looks like it's fairly recent (either that or my new TV and home theatre system can work magic) but the box doesn't give me any hints as to when exactly and we start with a girl holding a teddy bear in a van that's driving. For a good two minutes. No credits over top of this or anything, just random shots of the little girl's face and then the van driving down the road. The only time the van stops driving for a while is when a train is going across the road. Then it's back to more driving. There's some other kid riding shotgun in the van (probably an older brother to the girl in the back) and it looks like Tasha is the one driving. Worth noting that the kids both have brown hair and Tasha is still as blonde as she was 25 years ago. Also, considering she's probably pushing 50, she seems to look not too bad. Ha ha, the boy just made a joke about it being a twenty-six hour car ride. Maybe that opening two minutes was intentionally a metaphor?

      The van pulls into a mortuary (go figure) so I'm guessing the “new start and a new career” that Tasha was talking about has something to do with working there. Doesn't look like she made the right idea as the place looks to be a complete shit-hole and the guy that meets them there is laughing like a maniac for no apparent reason. And he doesn't stop. Even when he's talking. I've seen enough horror movies to know that's never a good sign. He's even laughing when talking about there being mold in the house and the septic tank (which “probably hasn't been emptied in fifty years”) that even contains the stuff from the mortuary drains overflowing. The U.S. Economy must be in REALLY bad shape if this place is worth moving a 26 hour car ride to get to. The outside of the house looks terrible but the first room they come into doesn't look that bad. Wow, I really spoke too soon on that one. The kitchen... wow. The water is brown. They apparently wouldn't even let a prison work crew go in there to clean it up because they didn't want to expose them to the chemicals that are there.

     The little girl wanders off and goes to find the coffin she'd seen earlier. The dad of the family is dead, so she's quietly whispering “daddy” as she tries to open the lid. The coffin falls and scares her. I hope that's not the limit of the special effects budget and/or the limit of the “scares” this movie is capable of.

      Now the boy is wandering off and exploring the house. The light for the attic doesn't work so he decides to go up there anyway. That'd be a dumb thing to do even if he wasn't in a movie. Go get a flashlight if you're going to do that. Also, despite it being broad daylight when they pulled up to the house, when he looks out the window down at the cemetery, it's clearly night. Little stuff like that pisses me off inordinately for some reason. Whoever wrote this wrote the “snarky teenager” part of this kid pretty well, I'll give them that much credit. Anyway, he decides he wants the room in the attic with the bars on the windows, the name “Bobby F.” carved into the windowsill, and the view of the graveyard to be his. His hair's not bad enough to be an emo kid so I'm guessing something is going to happen story-wise involving that room.

      Tasha finds a key ring and some keys in a beaker full of rock salt. She also inexplicably cuts herself reaching in to get them out. Seriously, there's nothing about the situation that would indicate she might get cut. A couple drops of blood land on the floor by a drain and (after they've left the room, naturally) some weird, computer animated, black stuff that look like pieces of string creep out and swallow up the blood. Spooky... I suppose.

      The boy, who has taken the family van to go get a burger or something, walks into a restaurant where there conveniently happens to be another guy that looks about his age sitting with two girls (a bleached blonde and a dyed red head) who are dressed pretty damn skanky. Did I actually just say that? I must be getting old, I need another drink. Anyway, the girls laugh at him (though they haven't actually interacted with him at all yet) when he asks for an application to work at the restaurant. I personally would have saved my laughing for when the woman behind the counter answers with “you've got a good aura, stop by tomorrow and we'll try it out. If you like it and I like you, the job's yours.” Seriously, what kind of hiring process is that? She also says “groovy”. It's an ageing hippy hiring process, got it. He finally turns around and looks at the three other kids there and the girls put on their sluttiest looks and say “hi there” only to flip him off and start laughing again after he tries to introduce himself. Fuck the lot of them, the guy looks like a douche and the girls are being bitches for no reason. Whatever, at least he gets three free sandwiches because... actually, there really seems to be no reason for the sandwiches to be “on the house” but they are.

      Next scene is the middle of the night. The boy (Jonathon, by the way) is outside smoking when there's the sound of someone running through the graveyard. You can't see anything, but he goes to investigate anyway. Stopping to look, and then swear, at a statue of an angel, the sound of running happens again, but this time there's a shadow that goes with it. Spooky... I guess. More investigating, and then he sees the shadow too. That freaks him out (I'm not sure what he expected when he went out looking for the source of a running sound, but whatever) and he tries to run back to the house. “Tries” because he takes two steps and falls down for no reason. This whole family seems to not be very coordinated; the girl can't open a coffin lid without causing the whole thing to fall, the mom cuts herself on something that shouldn't have been able to cut her at all, the boy can't even run five feet without falling over. I wouldn't be surprised to find out the dad died from slipping on a banana peal or something equally ridiculous. Anyway, he finds a necklace with a pretty impressive stone (looks like a ruby) in it lying on the ground so I guess being clumsy has its rewards.

      Oh my god. Tasha is seriously going through a box of stuff and having to sort it between kitchen utensils and embalming tools. Who the hell packs like that? Seriously, there is no way that's even the least bit sanitary. She then tries to open a door with her hands full up to her face with embalming stuff including, but not limited to, sharp objects and chemicals. For a woman that cuts herself on the perfectly round and smooth sides of a beaker, this cannot be a good idea. All that ends up happening, though, is she knocks everything over and has to pick it all up. Frankly, I'm surprised she didn't lose a leg or something. As she's cleaning it up, she finds what I can only describe as a being John Malkovich style door in the bottom of a wall. Naturally, she opens it and starts to crawl in to investigate. That's when Johnny boy shows up behind her to talk to her about the events of the night before so her journey into the body of a movie star will have to wait. Also, turns out it wasn't a ruby at all, just a medallion with someone's picture on it. Wow, I didn't think I was so drunk already that I'd make that big a mistake. I can't even blame a small screen size since this is playing on my new big screen. Tasha blows it off as nothing that there was someone out in the graveyard chasing her son around in the middle of the night and gives the necklace to her daughter to be part of “one of her costumes”.

      At his new job, Johnny gets introduced to the old hippy's niece who is also working there with the words “that's me niece Liz, she's pretty, isn't she?” She actually is, though, and she's not being a stuck up bitch like the other two were so I'm guessing we're supposed to like her. He tries to flirt with her... I think. He's pretty bad at it but it doesn't matter 'cause her boyfriend shows up right then. Poor Johnny can't catch a break. The three assholes from the night before show up again and this time the guy gets into a fist fight with Johnny for what seems to be no reason while the two girls cheer him on. The old hippy kicks the three of them out but her and Liz side with Johnny and me by calling the other three assholes so he's allowed to keep his job.

      Back at the mortuary, the little girl is wandering through the graveyard putting pieces of red licorice on top of all the graves. Tasha, as well as everyone watching, thinks this is odd and goes out to talk to her about it. She also finds one of the crypts unlocked with the door open and, as is her style, goes inside to investigate. Going even further down, she finds a weird plaque with a weird keyhole that perfectly fits one of the keys on the ring she found. Unfortunately, the sheriff shows up to welcome her to town so she can't open the door to investigate further. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! The sheriff, who stutters, actually used the phrase “graveyard babies” because apparently the local kids would go out there to hook up. That entire scene is hilarious.

      It's night again, and Liz and her boyfriend are finally answering the question Johnny asked them hours ago at the restaurant (namely “who is Bobby Fowler?” which is kinda what started the fight when John implied one of the girls was dating Bobby). That's another thing that bothers me with movies. Wouldn't they have answered that back when he actually asked it instead of waiting all this time? How many times a day do you ask random questions and then have the person you asked only tell you the answer eight hours later? Doing stuff like that you're more likely to forget what the hell you were talking about way back then. So yeah, the short version is: there's something evil in the soil that the mortuary is built on a, the Fowler family has been undertakers for generations up until the 60s when the last of them were abusing their “horribly deformed” son Bobby up until he mysteriously disappeared at the age of eight. Ten years later, the parents are found dead and the rumour goes that bobby killed them after they locked him alive in one of the graves and since then he comes out at night to be a menace. That might put a damper on some of those “graveyard babies”.

      The three assholes show up in the graveyard drinking and being idiots. They also bring spray paint and start marking up the angel statue. The guy is off pissing (literally pissing on the grave of his former teacher) when this happens, so when he gets back he's kinda pissed off that they didn't actually spray much of anything. But it's okay 'cause now they're inside the Fowler family crypt that Tasha was poking around in before. Drunken threesome inside a tomb. I'd say I don't understand kids these days except, even given what bitches the girls are, they're hot enough that I'd probably go for it too. Ugh. They actually say “it looks like somebody's living here”. They are all going to die. Probably before they finish having sex, too. Curses and killers should really stop being such cock-blocks. Yup, they don't even manage to get naked before they're killed. Sucks to be them. Also, I guess they really did do some spray painting beforehand 'cause there's a couple graves tagged in the next shot.

      The hippy that runs the restaurant is my favourite. She' rambling on about Bobby Fowler being alive and living in one of the tombs and somehow gets on about the CIA administered LSD tests they put her through back in the day. She even included the random old cowboy sitting at the counter (“yeah, you know what I'm talking about”) before just walking away. She's the best. Liz is pretty fascinated by the whole mortuary business. If it wasn't for the boyfriend she'd be wanting to go make a graveyard baby right now. Also, the old cowboy contributes again! He got disgusted with their talk about the embalming room and pushed his plate away. Comedy gold.

      Looks like boyfriend is coming along. And that obstacle's taking itself out of the way right now 'cause it turns out he's gay. Johnny can barely (re: not at all) contain the look of joy on his face at hearing this, and I start to wonder if maybe I should have actually been watching the movie when he first showed up rather than writing this 'cause I guess they actually weren't making out like I thought. Also, Tasha shows up out of nowhere (they are outside the mortuary at this point, to be fair) to gleefully announce that two bodies have come in. Liz is all about wanting to see them. There are probably some psychological issues there considering how sexually excited she seems to be at the idea of seeing some dead bodies.

      That changes pretty quick when she finds out one of them is her piano teacher. Tasha looks pretty crushed too. Guess she thought she was doing her son a favour by getting the girl all revved up for him (that sounds a lot dirtier when I look at it than I meant it to) instead Liz and not-boyfriend end up leaving right away with her saying “but... I've got a lesson tomorrow..” Guess you don't anymore.

      The natural next step after seeing the dead teacher, is for all three of the kids to go up to Johnny's room and smoke some pot. Instead of watching them do that, though, we're treated to Tasha Yar performing her first embalming. She... she is not very good at it. In the middle of the three teenagers smoking pot and Tasha squirting embalming fluid all over the room, the cops show up. I don't think this is really a horror movie at all. This is a black comedy. The stoned solution Liz comes up with (since Johnny is the one that has to go answer the door), is for him to “take his clothes off”. I'm assuming to change into something that doesn't smell like weed, but it's just funny 'cause it means both her and the gay friend get a free strip show.

      Now the blood starts to flow out of the body like it was supposed to before, but one of the tubes breaks so it starts spilling on the floor and mixing with the embalming fluid as they go down the drain with those evil black string stuff out there lapping it up. This is starting to look like the bakery scene from I Love Lucy that gets shown in commercials and parodied in shows it's so comical. It ends up being Tasha that gets to the door first 'cause Johnny is still busy trying to not smell like pot. Too bad the sheriff is there specifically to talk to him. This should be hilarious. Holy hell is it ever not. The sheriff turned from stuttering, seemingly incompetent cop to “trying to be a hard ass and yelling at a teenager for no reason” cop pretty fucking quickly. The only funny thing about it is when Tasha steps between them and pauses to take a couple quick sniffs. Damn movie moms always suspecting when their kid has been getting high. Also, she is apparently not a fan of him standing up and defending himself when someone attacks him (the sheriff was there about the fight 'cause now the assholes are missing) so she puts him “on chores until tonight”. I... I don't even know what that's supposed to mean as far as a punishment goes. A few hours of chores around the house that he was probably supposed to do anyway? She's as good and disciplining her kids as she is at embalming people.

      The sheriff is back to mildly incompetent cop again. No stutter anymore, though. He's exploring the graveyard and goes into the Fowler tomb too. That's the end of him.

      “Chores” apparently means washing the black stuff off the wall (they're assuming it's mold I guess) when the girl runs in screaming about how Bobby Fowler is in her closet. They go up to investigate but, of course, find no one there. They do find a burial shroud (something the legend says Bobby wears) and he took the necklace so, you know, maybe a good parent would go out to find the sheriff (who is clearly still looking around the graveyard since his car is out front... it has to be, right? I mean, he was killed hours ago so no one would have moved it) and get him to take a look around. That, as you might guess, doesn't happen. And no one brings up that there's a police car still sitting out front all day and night with no one coming back to claim it.

      Johnny is terrible at flirting. Liz is all but throwing herself at him and he only barely manages to pick up on it. He does actually kiss her, though, which, I'll be honest, is something I've failed to do in blatantly obvious situations like that before. Don't judge me, I know how stupid I was/continue to be.

      Oh hey, turns out those first three assholes aren't actually dead they're just... drained of life, I guess. They show up to the restaurant looking all pale and dishevelled anyway. Plus they're convulsing and stuff. The blonde isn't there, though, and they're still being assholes. Plus now they're vomiting black shit and the guy keeps yelling “shut up, punk!” Also, he pukes the black shit all over the hippy. I don't care for these assholes even more now, no matter how full of embalming fluid or evil or whatever the fuck it was that happened to them. This also might explain why no one noticed the cop car still being there since he might have come out in that same zombie-like state and driven off. I'll give that plot hole a pass, I suppose. For now, at least.

      And we're back to comedy night at the embalming table. This time it doesn't seem to go too wrong... except for when the black stuff shows up and goes into one of the wounds. This will likely not end well. Some more dead bodies are brought in and, since the tables are full, they're stored inside the coffins. Also, laughing guy from the beginning is there to deliver the bodies to her and he tries to hit on Tasha while they're storing the bodies from a car crash. AND HE DOESN'T STOP LAUGHING! For no goddamn reason! He's even worse at flirting than Johnathon 'cause he goes in for a kiss when it's REALLY not warranted. And he's a grown ass man. I suddenly don't feel so bad about being so socially awkward.

      Oh my god! The arm she was trying to sew back on just fell off and landed on the floor. I just about spit my drink over the keyboard when that happened. Oh, and the dead bodies are now alive and getting up to attack her because the black stuff got into them. The old piano teacher with Einstein hair is wearing what looks like a diaper. Tasha catches some of the black vomit in her mouth (like the hippy did) so this is not likely to end well.

      Johnny and friends show up at his house to find his sister dancing around in a princess costume outside and his mom acting all Stepford Wife-ish. She invites them to stay for supper and leads them into the kitchen where we find the black shit has taken over and is all over the walls, fridge, and pretty much everything else. Still entirely Stepford Wife,but now she's serving them bowls of “soup” which is, you guessed it, the black shit. Everyone else is suitably creeped out. The phrase “you will drink milk” is said in as creepy a way as you can make that sound. Which means it sounds ridiculous and you laugh at hearing it.

      The “soup” doesn't seem to like salt since it starts to fizzle and bubble over like a baking soda volcano when Liz tries to add some to it. Now Tasha starts to vomit up black shit and everyone else runs when she picks up a cleaver and chases after them. Naturally the only place to run to is into the graveyard because fuck logic. Also, why not lock yourself in the Fowler tomb while you're at it because clearly too many fucks were being given in this movie before now.

      This tomb just keeps going deeper and deeper. They do find the asshole blonde, but she's all freaked out and crazy. Doesn't seem to be infected by the black stuff, though, just regular “what the fuck have I seen” kind of freaked out crazy. She leads them to a way out that she didn't use before because... that would have made sense? Bah ha ha, the sheriff is back and he's as ridiculous as ever.

      The ladder out of the tomb leads through the Malkovich door and they emerge back into the house in an entirely different order than what they went up the ladder in. They're also now trapped in the house because the rest of the infected are outside the house. Also, to prove that the blonde wasn't infected, they cut her to see her blood. Now it won't stop bleeding so she goes to wash her hand off under the sink. Thankfully, it now runs clean water not brown. Not so thankfully, the black stuff reaches up from the sink and grabs a hold of her arm and gets into her hand. And for good measure some more shoots out that she catches in her mouth and swallows. From the first time you saw her, you knew she was going to end up in porn somehow. Johnny brings his sister up to his room and tells her to lock herself in there after he leaves because it's safer. That's actually some pretty sound logic, she's not done much in this movie and them locking the “princess” (she's still in the costume, after all) in a tower to protect her while the hero goes off to fight the evil is a pretty classic idea. Although, in fairy tales, it's never the people that lock the princess away that end up rescuing her. Just saying.

      Johnny gets back with the others and the blonde joins them. She's a hell of a lot less freaked out and crazy right now so that should really tip them off that something is wrong. Before they have time to realize this, though, the dead bodies that were brought in from the car crash start to rise and attack them. The blonde tries to help them escape so I guess she doesn't know she's one of them yet. They keep running and keep sealing themselves off in different rooms. In the meantime, Bobby Fowler's found his way up to the room with the little girl and grabs her.

      Blonde is starting to act like she's infected (only slightly in that she's not helping them hold the door closed) when Tasha bursts through the door. That ends with blonde being knocked into a shelf with a bunch of the rock salt on it and it spills on her. Remember what happened when Liz put salt on the soup? Yeah, now the blonde has that happen to her. Inexplicably, she starts to lift up her shirt as it's happening. You get some nice under-boob but she gets dissolved too quickly to finish flashing everyone. It really says something that, as she was dying, her last act was to try and expose her breasts to the world. God bless her. The salt thing seems to be the key, and Tasha runs away after seeing that they know this. After they kill a couple of the other infected, the gay guy sums it up by comparing it to something really simple and obvious by saying “it's like throwing salt on a snail”.

      They rush up to Bobby's room to try and find the girl, but when she doesn't answer they break in. In like two seconds. Without a whole lot of effort at all. You really deserve to have her taken by the bad guys when you're idea of a barricade to protect her is broken down in two seconds by you. Not the supernaturally powerful bad guys you're fighting, but by you.

      The girl gets carried away into the tomb by Bobby where he... just puts her in a separate room with her teddy bear and tries to give her a rattle to play with. Granted the rattle is made out of a skull, but the point is he's trying to be nice. She gives him a piece of licorice. Aww, they're trying to make the point that you shouldn't judge someone based on their looks and that Bobby Fowler, despite all the rumours in town about him, is actually not the evil bad guy. She tries to run away from him when his back is turned anyway.

     Now Johnny and crew are climbing down into the tomb to try and rescue his sister. Holy shit! The gay guy just got a hand rammed through his chest from behind! You... could really see that coming since he was standing away from Johnny and Liz with just the corpse filled background behind him. Also, the other two were carrying flashlights and he had a knife. That, combined with being the obvious third wheel, pretty much sealed his fate.

      Okay, remember when I said they were trying to say Bobby wasn't such a bad guy? Maybe check that as he's holding the little girl over top of some green glowing well while the sheriff, Tasha, and the remaining two assholes circle around it telling him to feed the girl to it. Also, for no possible reason that I can see, the asshole guy has the asshole girl on a leash and collar and she's down on all fours walking around like a dog. Where the fuck did that come from? And now the sheriff just shotgunned guy asshole's head off because fuck you that's why. “No more graveyard babies” indeed. Everyone that wasn't holding a hostage just got the salt treatment and Bobby did the right thing by throwing the girl to her brother instead of into the pit. This made the pit mad, and you won't like the pit when it's mad. If you're Bobby especially since he got grabbed by one of the tentacles and pulled in instead. It's only after all this that Liz does what they should have done five minutes ago and throws the backpack full of salt into the pit itself. This starts to kill the thing in there and also shake the tomb. Everyone scrambles to get out but... turns out it was just a few shakes, not a total collapse. At least, not until they were already clear of everything. Then some giant, poorly animated boulders fall down to close off the pit.

      All the other black stuff on the walls of the house start to disintegrate and our heroes lie down, exhausted, outside the house. Only to have the black stuff reach straight out of the ground and grab Johnny in what is clearly a violation of the rules they've built up so far in the movie and have Tasha suddenly appear in the house and come storming out to grab the little girl in what is an even bigger fuck you to the internal logic of the movie. Then the black stuff turns into a small lake of black stuff and dissolves Johnny and that's it. Seriously. Liz is left to her own devices (I guess), a for no reason there again Tasha Yar is free to go back and feed her daughter to the pit, and Johnny is now part of the black sludge puddle. The fuck?

      I was ready to say this was actually a half decent movie so long as you took it as a comedy rather than a flat out horror movie, but now... the fuck did I just watch? Did the same people that fucked up the end of Scarecrow Gone Wild get their hands on the end of this one too? I'm pissed off more than anything at this movie. The only other things to take away from this are: 1. with all the build up to how deformed Bobby Fowler was, given the way he looked, they would have been better suited to just hire Clint Howard and save the make-up budget. And 2. I kinda wonder about the black “mold” that used to show up and come back no matter how many times me and my old roomate tried to clean it in the toilets at one of the old places I used to live in. It looked pretty similar to the black shit in the movie and kept coming back like this stuff did... But yeah, what a fucking travesty that ending was. I am not impressed.