I’m assuming “Rocco” is open to interpretation for audiences everywhere as it’s a particularly twisted and demented short film about an imaginary friend and a man that may or may not be psychotic. Much of the film is incredibly muddled and not very explanatory, so I’m essentially left to figure out for myself what, if anything, the plot is alluding toward. After a series of deaths involving his old friends from his home town, a man is greeted with a box at his door. Of course logic tells us that he should open it to see what’s in it, and he does.
Tag Archives: Horror
Popcorn (1991)
There aren’t many movies that come along every so often like “Popcorn,” but it’s safe to say long before “Scream” stomped in to theaters to pay tribute to the classic horror tropes, movies like Mark Herrier’s “Popcorn” came and showed audiences how to do it first and better. Which is not to say “Popcorn” is as landmark as “Scream” was. In fact it’s about as unremarkable as any old shelf filler from the eighties. But for a film that came along during the death of the slasher genre in the early nineties, it’s a safe bet that “Popcorn” will whet the appetites of anyone looking for an eighties romp in the cinema with some classic devices of the slasher and mystery genre.
Basket Case 3: The Progeny (1992)
Thanks a lot to Frank Henenlotter for only making three “Basket Case” movies. I really couldn’t mentally handle eight or nine movies about Belial and his life with his moronic brother Duane. These two buffoons have to be the most non-threatening horror figures since Chucky. Duane went from a tortured soul to a goofy sidekick in three films, while Belial started life as a rabid monster incapable of speak to a daddy expecting children. After diddling fellow freak Eve in “Basket Case 2,” Belial unwittingly knocked her up, and now is expecting babies. Duane, after killing cardboard cut out Susan, and involuntarily stitching Belial back to him, has been locked up in a padded cell left to consider what he’s done.
Basket Case 2 (1990)
It’s pretty hilarious how though the sequel to “Basket Case” is said to have taken place the night after Duane failed to commit suicide with Belial, actor Kevin Van Hentenryck seems to have aged since the first film from eight years prior. “Basket Case 2” embraces the idiocy this time around, taking the route of the “It’s Alive!” sequels. Rather than Belial being a rare case of a deformed monster, we learn that there are in fact a tribe of deformed monsters of various dispositions living in the suburbs. And they’re all being cared for by the eccentric Granny Ruth who not only cares for them but acts as their therapist. The line “I understand your pain, Belial, but ripping the faces off people may not be in your best interest.” is actually delivered with a dead pan expression.
Basket Case (1982)
Sometimes with the good Grindhouse titles of the seventies and eighties, there are also the truly awful ones that make it through the ringer and come out looking pretty. Unfortunately Frank Henenlotter’s “Basket Case” is a piece of junk that has managed to garner a massive reputation as a horror classic. For what reasons? I have no idea. I guess because Henenlotter is such a creative and interesting director. I won’t lie, a movie about a guy walking around with his deformed brother in a basket is original, but that doesn’t mean it’s watchable. Duane Bradley is an average guy with a large secret who has just made it in to New York, and is living in a hotel with some of the most idiotic neighbors around. They’re all so eccentric and colorful it becomes obnoxious after their second introduction.
Truth or Die (2012) (DVD)
Director Robert Heath creates a horror film that starts out like “Slaughter High” and ends like “Saw.” Basically, “Truth or Die” is a revenge film of the twisted kind where no one is truly just. In the end, it’s about despicable people hurting despicable people. As is the trend with most modern revenge tales, “Truth or Die” is about the destruction of revenge and how nothing is ever as it seems.
Ten Horror Femmes We'd Spend the Night With
I remember watching a horror documentary about Dracula, and I forget who exactly said it, but during a screening of Frank Langella’s “Dracula,” two women in the audience admitted that they would completely allow Langella’s Dracula to take them with him and turn them, if they could just spend the night with him. In spite of the inherent attraction and allure of the vampires, men also have those female figures in horror that we wouldn’t mind spending the night with, even if it meant sacrificing our very lives, skin, blood, or brains. For the very reason those women would have given themselves to Dracula is the reason why many men would submit themselves to certain horror femmes. In spite of suffering a slow and possibly painful death, you’re almost guaranteed a night of head exploding, heart rupturing, love making that will leaving you a withered, soulless, but wide grinning corpse. To add to the endless hordes of horror geeks who’d offer themselves up to hot horror figures of the opposite sex, we list ten horror femmes we’d risk our very essence to spend one long night with.