Ghoulies (1985)  Now what can I say about this little 80’s gem?  This is the first of four films in the Ghoulies franchise, and it was a slumber party hit when I was 13.  The main character Johnathan (Peter Liapis) was almost a satanic sacrifice when he was baby.  Now all grown up he inherits a huge creepy property that gives him the desire to start using dark magic.  He summons the repulsive little ghoulies to do his bidding.  The ghoulies are pretty disgusting.  Bad skin, fuzzy hair (on some), all of them posess wicked teeth, and since they don’t have lips ghoulies tend to drool quite a bit.  Jonathan has his hands full between trying to hide his dark magic from his neurotic girlfriend, summoning dark stuff to do his bidding, and trying to get his friends together for a sacrifice.  Alas, Johnathan thinks he is in control of everything only to have someone from his past prove he isn’t as powerful as he believes.

Despite the corny dialogue and storyline full of holes, this film still entertains me.  The only really disappointing part is the poster with the ghoulie poking it’s head out of a toilet bowl with the tag line “They’ll get you in the end”.  Nobody gets attacked by a ghoulie coming out of the toilet…. until the sequel.

Black Sheep (written and directed by Jonathan King) is set on a huge sheep farm in New Zealand where two brothers Angus and Henry live and work with their father.  The older brother Angus has a leg brace and is quite jealous of his younger brother receiving more attention from their father.  Angus kills Henry’s pet sheep and traumatizes him by wearing the sheep’s carcass.  The cruel prank is interupted by the housekeeper who tells the boys their father has died in an accident.  Years later, Angus (Peter Feeney) is running the farm, and Henry (Nathan Meister) has a crippling fear of sheep.  At his therapist’s suggestion  Henry travels to the farm to face his fears.  Meanwhile two environmentalists have snuck onto the farm to take photographs and collect evidence against the genetic research laboratory that resides there.  One of them goes a bit crazy and steals a biohazardous container with a deformed sheep fetus inside.  While running from the laboratory staff he trips and the container with the sheep fetus breaks open.  The contaminated fetus bites him and a nearby sheep, and that is how the contamination began.    

I knew I had to watch this film after seeing the trailer.  The tag line is actually  “Get ready for the Violence of the Lambs”.  How could I or anyone resist?  I’ve enjoyed watching Black Sheep (2007) several times now, and each time I watch it I pick up on a new aspect of the film that either makes it funnier or grosser.  Well acted and produced, Black  Sheep is the perfect mixture of farm, gore, and humor.  I think a farm is the perfect setting for a horror film.  It’s isolated and supposed to be peaceful, and to me sheep are a hilarious villain.  I’ve only seen sheep at a petting zoo, and they just seem so harmless and dimwitted that it adds an extra element of amusement to see them eat someone alive.  As if it weren’t bad enough to have body parts eaten by genetically altered sheep, the sheep infect and alter the genetics of those they bite.  Thats right, if you are bitten you mutate into a part human part pissed off sheep creature called a were-sheep.  Really, I cannot say enough good things about this film.    

“There’s something wrong with the sheep.”   

Love is in the air!

For those of you not familiar with the Whedonverse, James Marsters is most known for playing the lovable blonde vampire Spike aka William the Bloody on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series.  I know a lot of you out there love Spike!  I met James Marsters at Dragon Con in 2008 and at The FX Convention in Orlando in Spring 2009.  This guy draws big crowds and the lines are long to meet him.  If you are a fan you may know James Marsters is a musician, he first played with the band Ghost and the Robot and has two solo albums that I am aware of.  He is also an American, he just played a British baddie on TV.  I took these photographs of James at a concert he gave on the same weekend as the FX Convention in Orlando.  The lighting was really bizarre and constantly changing and I was surrounded by really tall people so be gentle critiquing my photography skills.  The concert was just him and his guitar and I would describe the music as a folksy blues mixture.  I usually like a little more edge to my tunes but I enjoyed listening and looking at him all the same.  Enjoy!

Okay, I just finished watching Spider Baby for the first time and I need to watch it again right now.   I’m going to wait a little while and write this while my mind is reeling.  I really cannot believe this film was released in 1964!  I would love to know how audiuences in the 1960’s reacted to this wonderfully dark comedic film.  Spider Baby was written and directed by Jack Hill and originally was titled Cannibal Orgy, and was also known by the title The Maddest Story Ever Told.  Any of these titles are appropriate, even though the film is very difficult to categorize.  

Plot:  The last generation of the Merrye family is afflicted with Merrye disease.  A disease that causes the victim to mentally regress in the middle of childhood.  Not just regress in a childlike way, but in a primeval cannibalistic way.  Lon Chaney Jr. plays Bruno the incredibly kind and patient caretaker of the three remaining Merrye children; Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), Virginia (Jill Banner), and Ralph (Sid Haig).  I was sucked in after the first scene where Virginia, with a butcher knife in each hand, plays “spider” with a messenger that stops by the house.  The family has to prepare for visitors, and needless to say this family is not used to geting a lot of company.  A couple of cousins who want to take the home and put the Merrye children in an institution are coming for a visit.  They are bringing along their lawyer and his assistant.  The children are all hilarious and even though they play nice in the beginning you know it won’t last.  The dinner scene is one of the funniest scenes in a horror film that I have ever watched.  Sid Haig wearing a childs sailer suit had me laughing in hysterics.   By far the best performance came from Lon Chaney Jr., in fact it is difficult to imagine anyone doing a finer job.  He shows nothing but heartfelt unconditional love for the murderous children and sincere devotion to the wishes of their deceased father.  Enjoy friends! 

Sid Haig as Ralph

Spiders bite!

The Merrye Children

Hurry Up!

He said he wanted to play.