Child's Play

Child's Play
(1988) [Trailer]
Director: Tom Holland (IMDB)

While growing up everyone had that doll in the house that you thought to yourself "when it's dark in the room, this little bastard is scary as shit." Whether it was a Cabbage Patch Kid or a clown, you knew deep down, you hated that fucker. The beauty of Child's Play is that it tapped into those fears and exploited them.

Synopsis: A little boy's stuffed doll comes to life after it's possessed by a murderer.

This was one of my favorites as a youth and I was excited to finally pick it up on the baby blu. It still manages to hold up nicely in my opinion and is pretty effective as a horror film. Chucky is creepy and is perfect as the antagonist. I forgot the guy from Fright Night was in this... he's pretty cool. The little kid started to annoy me after awhile, but isn't that what all kids do? There's not much to knock, some little issues here and there, but honestly... this is a fun movie.

Carpenter Fest: Dark Star, Vampires, and Ghosts of Mars.

John Carpenter... the man, the myth, the legend. He's one of my favorite directors, so I thought I'd sit down with three films of his that I haven't seen and knock them out.

Dark Star
(1974) [Full Movie]
Director: John Carpenter (IMDB)

Synopsis: Grizzled astronauts are traveling through space blowing up stars and also having to deal with an asshole beach ball mascot.

As you can tell by the synopsis, this movie is a weird one. It's Carpenter's first full length film and stands out as a rarity from anything I've seen of his. For being released 3 years before I was born, the movie holds up for me in a strange way. The effects, set pieces, and models they used were a little dated... but still fun to watch.

The beach ball critter is just way out there and a very odd addition to the movie. It's a bit silly, but I think that's the point of it.

The pitfalls for me were the dialog and plot, which aren't the best. I did love the ending of the movie, I won't spoil it for you, but it's "totally gnarly!"

Vampires
(1998) [Full Movie]
Director: John Carpenter (IMDB)

Synopsis: James Woods and Daniel Baldwin (the unpopular one) head a group of vampire hunters hired by the Catholic Church to track down blood suckers and you guessed it... kill them.

Vampires is a decent enough movie and has a definite Carpenter feel to it. The cinematography is pretty cool. I noticed a strange reddish tint on a lot of the shots and I don't know if that was intentional or not, but I kind of liked it. There were a lot of great kill scenes and a decent amount of gore throughout. It was also fun to see Laura Palmer back in action, Twin Peaks fans rejoice!

I wasn't a fan of a lot of the dialog in this and some of the acting was shit. Example: there's a scene where James Woods is telling a Priest that he can forget everything he learned about killing Vampires in the movies, like garlic and crosses... then immediately follows it with... the only way to kill these vampires are by sunlight or a stake to the heart?

If you're into JC, John Carpenter not Jesus Christ, then I would check this out. If you're not, you could pass on it and still lead a good life.

Ghosts of Mars
(2001) [Full Movie]
Director: John Carpenter (IMDB)

Synopsis: In the future, we run shit on Mars, but one colony soon finds out that they're not alone on the planet. When the police show up to capture Ice Cube, they get into a lot more then they bargained for.

Sadly, this movie didn't really do a lot for me. Like Vampires, the dialog and acting aren't impressive. The score is the worst of any Carpenter film (which always have killer scores) or any other film for that matter. Also the fight scenes seem extremely slow and overly choreographed.

I did enjoy the set pieces and the overall futuristic look of Mars. The bad guys looked freaky and the buzz saw thingys they threw resulted in some amazing kill shots.