Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Can I Get That Horror With Extra Cheese?

It’s Friday…

Ahem…

I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…

This Frightday’s theme is…

Can I Get That Horror With Extra Cheese?

In 2017…

We lost yet another giant in the horror industry…

And with the passing of Tobe Hooper…

The groundbreaking filmmaker left behind quite a horror legacy…

His debut changed horror films forever…

But when he screened The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974…

Tobe Hooper couldn’t understand why nobody was laughing…

After a handful of films…

And after over a decade had passed…

Hooper decided to revisit the Sawyer family one more time…

And this time…

He made damn sure that the audience would be laughing…

His masterful ability to blend the laughs and the gore were a delightfully magical combination…

And it made me an even bigger fan than I already was…

Of cheesy horror movies…

Those in-your-face, over-the-top performances…

The bright, colorful, almost cartoonish lighting…

The bizarre and bloody practical effects…

Mmmm…

That’s some steeenky cheese, man…

But it’s also…

Really freakin’ delicious.

 

So, let’s take a chronological look at some of my favorite, cheesiest, and possibly even unknown to you, Horror Movies with Extra Cheese…In the years following Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

 

The Mangler (1995) – Shocking that the first film I selected was yet another Tobe Hooper film…But his adaptation of Stephen King’s short story of the same name hits all of my milestones…Especially the in-your-face, over-the-top performances milestone…Robert Englund’s out-of-control performance as the owner of Gartley’s Blue Ribbon Laundry is so deranged and cartoonish that he is almost unrecognizable…Well…That is…Until he opens his mouth and you hear Freddy Krueger’s voice come out…Critics and even horror fans have been taking more shits on Tobe Hooper’s films, than Buddy Repperton’s gang took on Christine’s dashboard…And for the most part…Quite unfairly…Look…If cheesy horror films make you feel a little lactose intolerant…You probably shouldn’t watch, or review them…Because even though this film appears to be taking itself completely seriously…That is part of the reason why…You will be laughing your ass off…So break out the Kraft American Singles…Open ’em up…One by one…And scarf down every one of those flavorless bastards…Until all that you are left with is a couch covered in all of those little plastic wrappers…And shame…A shitload of shame.

 

Eight Legged Freaks (2002) – Everyone who knows me…Knows that I love monster movies…Giant apes…Giant lizards…Giant moths…Giant wasps…You name it…You make those little bastards giant…And I will be watching…But thanks to 1977’s Kingdom of the Spiders…Giant spiders just might be my all-time favorite…In this film they give me exactly what I wanted…Creatures, that in their natural form, are both creepy and deadly…And then make them really, really big…Tom Noonan, the only guy around that might be creepier than a spider…Plays an exotic spider farmer (Oh yeah…There’s a job that looks really good on a résumé)…Who has been feeding them crickets from a tainted resevoir…The spiders grow to a monstrous size and begin picking off the residents of this tiny mining town…David Arquette plays our twitchy, bumbling hero…And a young Scarlett Johansson also stars in this one…It’s a fun romp…Especially if you are like me…And cheesy giant spider movies make you really freakin’ happy…So heat up that steaming tub of Swiss fondue…Cube up that bread…And start dunkin’!

 

Undead (2003) – Before the Speirig brothers made their highly original vampire film, Daybreakers…Or their critically acclaimed time-travelling paradox-play, Predestination…They made this super-weird…Totally original…And mega-cheesy zombie film…Everything about this flick is over the top…The performances…The gore…The zombies…The aliens…That’s right, I said aliens…Hell the world they created even has a strange ethereal hue to it…It’s one of my favorite zombie films…But it is also one of my favorite cheesy films as well…So if you haven’t seen this one…Which has made it into quite a few of my lists of recommendations…Sit down with this pungent tub of herbed Boursin, fling it across the room, and let it splatter all over your cracker.

 

Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds (2008) – The second installment in this franchise is just as uber-cheesy as the first one…Hell…It just might be a little cheesier…Now the first film was pretty much a single location horror…With the gruesome monsters trying to get at those within the walls of the local dive bar…In this film…We expand our universe to the town itself where a handful of colorful survivors attempt to battle it out with the remaining monsters…Now when I say colorful…I mean it…My personal favorite were the tag-team midg…Um…Little peop…Um…Little wrestlers, named Thunder and Lightning…This film pops…It has the outrageous characters…The grisly gore…Let me tell you, folks…This film stays with you…Just like that crunchy cheese doodle you’ve been holding will stay with you…Hell…It will probably leave your thumb and forefinger stained orange…Forever.

 

Rubber (2010) – This off-the-rails meta-horror film about a tire, endowed with consciousness, that rather quickly discovers that it enjoys murdering anything and everything in its path is truly one of a kind…This is one of those films that pushes and pulls you in and out of the story with the deft hand of a meth-addled Uber driver pretending to be a surgeon…Have I told you that within the film there is an audience watching the film…As it is filmed? Did I mention yet, that this tire, named…Um, Robert…Is also a creepy stalker? It’s true…Robert becomes obsessed with a woman he sees driving by…And she becomes the MacGuffin that drives this driverless auto part to crazy carnage, and celluloid insanity…It is bizarrely funny…It is uncomfortably absurd…It is like no other film that I have ever seen…And it is most definitely cheesy…So plop down on the couch…Pull the red wax rind off your wheel of Gouda…And roll it on down the coffee table to a friend.

 

Hobo With A Shotgun (2011) – Here’s a film that pays homage to a type of film that in the late 70’s would be called a grindhouse film…But in the mid 80’s it would simply be called a cheesy action movie…Those films, on both counts, were splattered with enough gore to be considered a horror film…But apparently that gore…When it comes from a hobo’s shotgun instead of a hockey goalie’s machete…It’s grindhouse…It’s cheesy action…Either way…This film paints its walls with that gore, and brings along with it my old friend from some classic cheesy 80’s actioners…Rutger Hauer…Who plays the titular hobo…A man whose vendetta and subsequent killing spree turn him into an anti-hero that you’ll feel compelled to cheer for…So break off a hunk of that crusty, moldy Roquefort…Take a whiff…Throw up a little in your mouth…Yep…Now you’re ready to watch this one.

 

Father’s Day (2011) – In the 80’s there was a little back room, inside the corner store, down the street from my house. Inside that room, were slapped together plywood shelves, filled with a cornucopia of schlocksploitaion films from production companies like Paragon Video, Video Treasures, Cannon Films, and  Vestron Video…These were not the best films…But, they were the most bizarre, the most outrageous, the bloodiest, the dirtiest, and often times, the funniest movies that I had ever seen…They were the cheesiest…And that is what I loved about Father’s Day. Here’s a film that approaches the process the same way those great heaping buckets of cheese did in the 80’s. There are tons of tongue-in-cheek laughs, the gory practical effects are disgusting, and the nudity and sexual situations would make most soft-core Skinemax actors blush…In the same way Tarantino and Rodriguez paid homage to the 70’s exploitation films with their Grindhouse productions…Conor Sweeney, Steven Kostanski, Matthew Kennedy, Jeremy Gillespie, and Adam Brooks…Also known as Astron-6…Is paying homage to uber-cheesy 80’s home video…So join the fun…Shake up that industrial-sized can of Easy Cheese…And spray it directly into your own face…Without flinching or blinking…Like a fuckin’ champ.

 

Zombeavers (2014) – If you are sitting down to watch a film with this title…And you aren’t aware that it is going to be uber-cheesy…Well…To put it plainly…À la Red Foreman…You are a dumb-ass…This film is a ton of fun…You’ve got the classic horror film blueprint of a bunch of teens at the cabin in the woods by the lake…And all manner of hell breaks loose…After a bunch of beavers get exposed to toxic chemicals…They become zombified…At first…This creates a When Zombified Animals Attack vibe…All that changes when an apparently bi-curious Jenn climbs on top of her friend Mary…And Jenn winds up with a serious case of beaver-face, if you know what I mean…Wait…No, I didn’t mean that…What I meant was…Oh, forget it…What I was trying to say, was…That one of the effects of this beaver-originated zombie virus, is that the victims acquire some very beavery attributes…And that’s when the real cheesy wackiness ensues…I loved the bookended scenes with the careless truckdrivers…I loved the set-up for the sequel at the end…You know what? I just plain loved this film…Kinda like I loved chewing the bark off that wheel of  Jasper Hill Harbison cheese we had at Thanksgiving…That’s right…I chewed that shit off…Like a hungry beaver.

 

Peelers (2016) – Sure…This may not be the first film that puts zombies and strippers together…But it just might be the cheesiest…This film tells the tale of the last night that, Blue Jean (Don’t call her B.J.) Douglas is the owner of her strip club…But before the new owner takes over…She must survive a night filled with zombie-like creatures that are infected with what looks like the creepy extraterrestrial black oil from The X-Files…The club is overrun with these greasy bastards…That differ somewhat slightly from the greasy bastards that normally over-run the club…The practical gore effects splatter the walls, the stage, and the pole…Wren Walker’s performance as the tough as nails former cop, former baseball player, and now former strip-club owner Blue Jean, is perfection…And she finds her rightful place within The Horror Heroines Hall of Fame…So before you press play…Climb up on the stage…Grab the pole…And strip off all of the grey, zombified, crusty mold that surrounds your Brie cheese before you smear it all over your…Um…Crackers.

Dave Made a Maze (2017) – What can I say about this one…It is the most original…And by far the cheesiest film on this list…This one tells the story of Dave…Who, you guessed it…Made a maze…Out of cardboard boxes, construction paper…And other various found items…And then things got a bit out of hand…His girlfriend comes home to find a handful of boxes fastened together in the living room, and could faintly hear Dave’s voice coming from within…Her man-child boyfriend is trapped inside a maze that is apparently much larger than it appears…Well…Once you are inside it, that is…And that’s when the fun really starts…Dave’s friends begin to explore the maze in an attempt to rescue him…And…Horrors await them inside the maze…And I must say that this film, hands down, has the finest cray paper practical gore effects that I have ever seen…Huh? What’s that? Oh…Sorry…The only cray paper practical gore effects that I have ever seen…So go ahead…Take the foil-wrapped cheese-like product out of the box that it came in…Heat up a nice big bowl of Velveeta and salsa…And use that empty box to start building a maze of your very own.

Frightday Night Film Recommendations: A Funny Thing Happened At Work Today…

It’s Friday…

Ahem…

I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…

This Frightday’s theme is…

A Funny Thing Happened At Work Today…

Freddy and Frank were just two regular guys…

Working at Uneeda Medical Supply…

When all sorts of shit hit the fan…

And as messed up as their workplace was…

 It was also a lot like most workplaces…

Filled to the brim with…

Dickhead bosses…

Creepy co-workers…

Bizarre rules…

And…

Timed confinement…

A place like that…

Already sounds horrifying enough…

But that being said…

A place like that…

Also sounds like the perfect setting for a horror movie.

 

So, let’s take a chronological look at my favorite, scariest, and possibly even unknown to you, Workplace Horror Movies…In the years following Return of the Living Dead. 

 

 

Intruder (1989) – Okay…Let me start by saying that the DVD release of this film may have used a fair amount of false advertising…As you can see from the promotional artwork used…Bruce Campbell is given top billing, even though he has only a brief cameo, right before the end credits roll…And Sam Raimi, who plays Randy the butcher, a guy who despite sharing top billing with Bruce…Gets dispatched pretty quickly by the film’s slasher…But, for me, as the opening credits roll on the final slasher film of the decade best known for slasher films, it’s not about seeing A-List actors as part of the cast…It’s about seeing a name like, Greg Nicotero…Because, that can only mean one thing…That the kills are going to be legendary…And they were…This entire film takes place within the walls of a small local grocery store, similar to, and named after, the grocery store that director Scott Spiegel worked at in Michigan when he was younger. The confined space of a locked after hours grocery store works perfectly for this genre, as does the early setup of an outside threat…Thus creating a “don’t go outside” vibe, that makes the night crew, and the viewer, that much more claustrophobic…One by one, the staff of the Walnut Lake Market are being picked off…And in grand slasher movie tradition, the kills get ratcheted up a notch with each passing attack.

 

Session 9 (2001) – Directed by Brad Anderson, who despite creating some truly original and some genuinely haunting big-screen productions…Has become quite an active director on the small screen as of late…In this dark and undeniably eerie film…A team of workers enter the Danvers State Hospital…A now defunct asylum in Massachusetts that not only has a paranormally checkered past, but is also believed to have been the inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft’s Arkham Sanitorium…Which in turn became the inspiration for Arkham Asylum the institution which houses Batman’s rogues gallery…These workmen have one week to remove the asbestos from within the confines of a setting so fucking spooky that the director did absolutely nothing in the way of set design…Everything that you see there…Was there when they arrived on set…The film reveals the mystery within, in a purposefully measured pace…Which only serves to ratchet up the tension in an already tense film.

 

Pontypool (2008) – In this totally unique and totally messed up zombie movie…We meet shock jock Grant Mazzy, played by Stephen McHattie…Who works at a small town radio station in Ontario…He and two others are isolated within the walls of the station while a truly bizarre outbreak seems to be happening all around them…As the calls start coming in…The pieces of this puzzle start coming together…And as the details unfold…It becomes the first zombie film that I have ever seen that successfully messed with my head…Mindfuckery in a body horror film, is a pretty common thing, just ask Cronenberg…But rarely seen in a zombie film…I cannot say too much more without spoiling the crucial details that make this film the unicorn that it is…So that being said…Just climb aboard…Grab that rainbow mane with both hands, like a closet Brony…And take her for the ride of a lifetime.

 

Exam (2009) – In this film we see eight applicants who are applying for the same job…Locked in a room together…And forced to follow three simple rules…As they attempt to answer one simple question in eighty minutes…Sounds easy, right? Well, not so much…With racial and gender lines being drawn rather quickly…This film does a swift nose-dive into a nail-biting socio-political thriller…I mean it sort of feels like the CEO of this company just might be named Jigsaw…The setting is one of such confinement that the least claustrophobic among us would get a little twitchy watching this film…And the cast does an outstanding job, as well…I do have to give a shout out to this film for exposing me to two amazing, talented, and versatile actresses for the very first time…Pollyanna McIntosh, and Gemma Chan…A handful of other films try to tackle the “bunch of folks trapped in a room and forced to figure shit out” scenario…But in my humble opinion…Nobody did it as well as this one.

 

Compliance (2012) – Now I may get a bit of flack on this one…This film which was based on a true story…Most would not consider it a horror film, per se…But it is a frightening story…That grips you…And makes you squirm…Just as much as any gore-fest out there might…As I reshelve films in the horror section of my now imaginary video store…I think of the section as a home for films like this…Perhaps I should think about renaming that section…Instead of Horror….How about, Scary Movies…Has a nice ring to it…Anyway…This film’s director Craig Zobel tells the disturbing tale with the steady hand of a documentarian…Shying away from nothing…The performances from Dreama Walker, and Pat Healy were amazing, but keep your eyes on recent Emmy award winner, Ann Dowd (She won for The Handmaid’s Tale)…As the fast food manager, and the unwitting antagonist of this brilliant film.

 

Let Us Prey (2014) – In this dark and twisted little nugget that brings together characters from two of my favorite television shows…First…You’ve got my boy, Liam Cunningham, Also known as Davos Seaworth on Game of Thrones…As a mysterious stranger who wanders into a small village in Scotland…Carrying nothing but a list of names…He winds up in the local police station…As the prickly briar patch of a story begins to unravel…We start to discover not only the motivation of the stranger, but also the dark, secret corners of the lives of those he seems to be toying with…Thus bringing me to the second one…Queen of the Trash-People in The Walking Dead, Pollyanna McIntosh…Who is one character in particular that this mysterious stranger wants to bat around like a kitten with a ball of yarn…She feels like the moral compass navigating the viewer through a choppy sea that is sorely lacking in morality…This was a truly unique film…And the originality is one of the things that drew me in…The performances of the actors, and the rancid underbelly where they performed is what kept me enthralled for an hour and a half…This one was groovy…And I dug it…A lot.

 

Stung (2015) – I am a sucker for monster movies…Current ones with big budgets, and amazing effects…Older ones with no budgets, and super-cheesy effects…And everything in between…But one of my guilty pleasures are the small things that have turned big and come seeking revenge on the humans for inventing pest control…When I was seven years old…I saw ol’ Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner in the film, Kingdom of the Spiders…And I was hooked…And this film captures that magic for me…While Paul and Julia are catering a fancy party at a local mansion…Some experimental fertilizer mutates the local wasp population into giant killing machines…The thing I really dig, is that the film truly takes itself seriously…The characters are believable and so are the performances…Two of note are…Clifton Collins Jr. as the creepy little fucker who lives in the mansion…And of course…What would a horror movie be without Lance Henriksen in it? Folks…If you like monster movies…Or giant insect movies…This one’s for you.

 

K-Shop (2016) – This film tells the story of Salah, a young man who returns from university to help his ailing father run the family-owned kebab shop…After a deadly late night encounter with a customer…Salah takes a hard left at the fork in the road…And delivers a vicious variation of vigilante justice on the ever-incorrigible, shit-faced, late-night kebab-consuming crowds of weekenders, found aimlessly stumbling the streets of London…This film goes dark as fuck, as it follows Salah down his gore-plastered rabbit hole…But at the same time…Somehow…K-Shop manages to have a powerful message in it, as well…But…Don’t get me wrong…This film is by no means preachy, or dogmatic in the delivery of this message…But by the end…That message was received…Loud…And clear.

 

The Belko Experiment (2017) – This film sprang from the brain of James Gunn (Slither) …After writing the screenplay and getting a studio greenlight…Gunn took some time off due to his recent divorce…The studio eventually reached out and got the ball rolling again…The directing baton passed from Gunn to Greg McLean (Wolf Creek) and the production was off and running…John Gallagher Jr. who was in two of my favorite films from last year, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and Hush…Stars as Mike Milch…A regular joe who works in an American office building in Columbia…One day, after going through a new series of security checkpoints, he and the rest of the staff of Belko Industries enter the building to start their work day…Everything changes when a voice announces over the loudspeaker that these office workers must start killing each other in order to survive a threat of imminent death from whoever is behind this experiment…Gallagher is incredible in this, and once again shows his range…And it’s a fast-paced, gory, frightenening look at who we really are…When it really counts.

 

Mayhem (2017) – This is by far Joe Lynch’s most ambitious effort to date…At first the film seems almost over-stylized, but as the story plays out and the corporate horseshit starts piling up around you…You realize that the almost cartoonish style fits perfectly with the absurd world of corporate america…At first glance…The premise is similar to that of The Belko Experiment, but the two films couldn’t be more diametrically opposed…In this adrenaline-fueled, gore-fest of a film…A primal rage virus infects the inhabitants of the huge corporate conglomerate law firm…A law firm who was responsible for setting a precedent that says anyone who is infected with said virus, is not responsible for their actions…No matter how murdery they might be…Steven Yeun plays Derek Cho, an unwitting scapegoat in a vicious case of corporate ladder-climbing…Who sees this viral outbreak as an opportunity to get revenge on his corporate overlords…Talk about one helluva way of turnin’ your lemons into lemonade…Am I right, folks?