What was the last movie you've seen?

[Sano]

Deadpool

GREAT F'ING MOVIE!

[noiseredux]

Deadpool

GREAT F'ING MOVIE!

This is true.

[Ack]

The Night Brings Charlie

The Night Brings Charlie is a 1990 slasher film that I'm pretty sure was direct-to-video. It tries to cover all the beats of your typical slasher fare but throws in a couple of changes which attempt to make things interesting. Ultimately it's a movie about incompetence: the incompetence of the new local sheriff who cannot even say the name of the small town right, the incompetence of the mayor who is a terrible public official and an even worse actor, the incompetence of the local police force in fighting crime, the incompetence of the local teenagers(who apparently compromise 3/4 of the town's population) in getting intoxicated and hitting on each other, and the incompetence of one naked lady to drink a Pepsi in the shower.

It's also got incompetent directing, incompetent acting, an incompetent script, yadda yadda yadda. But I guess it tries, even though it's painfully bad at times. So here's the kicker: there's a masked killer on the loose who likes to behead his victims, and the killings start at the same time that a local gardener who had a terrible accident involving a chainsaw and now wears a mask to hide his deformity returns to town. The local coroner is particularly disturbed by these murders and repeatedly warns his teenage daughter and new wife to be careful. Then someone begins leaving threatening phone calls to the local sheriff and the coroner.

So once the sheriff figures out that the big quiet masked dude who happens to be good with hedge trimmers is actually the big quiet masked dude who happens to be good at trimming heads, he brings in Charlie and tries to get him to talk. Charlie doesn't talk, so the coroner, who happens to be Charlie's old friend, goes in and gets a two page confession. A few hours later, the sheriff suddenly realizes Charlie is a mute due to the chainsaw accident and arrests the coroner after discovering he once butchered a girl in Vietnam during the war. That's when the coroner reveals Charlie was his partner in the murder, and the coroner committed some murders to try and frame Charlie who has been committing his own murders, a plan that is pretty much absurdly incompetent. That's ok though, because once the coroner finds out his daughter is in trouble, he knocks out the incompetent deputy and goes to take on Charlie.

In the end the sheriff is horribly wounded, the coroner's daughter ends up shooting and killing her own dad, the mayor gives some poorly acted bullshit speech about the coroner being the real killer and having impersonated Charlie for some dumb reason, and Charlie is just fine and driving around despite having been set on fire and shot with the horse pistols that the film production crew apparently procured from some Western at some point. Also some bikers are dead because the movie needed something to do for a while.

In short, The Night Brings Charlie is awful. And now, nearly thirty years later, there's apparently a sequel trying to go into production. God bless America.

[Exhuminator]

Do you take notes while you watch these c-movies, or do you remember all this stuff in detail afterwards?

[Ack]

I remember it afterwards. I rarely have ever actually taken notes.

[MrPopo]

Can you track down a copy of Bad Ronald and review it? I've only heard of it through a recollection Adam Carolla had on Loveline.

[Ack]

Can you track down a copy of Bad Ronald and review it? I've only heard of it through a recollection Adam Carolla had on Loveline.

I've tried off and on for a few years to track that one down. Currently it's on Amazon for about $15, but I don't think it's streamed anywhere. Maybe I'll swing by the obscure rental place I know and see if they have a copy.

Funny enough, there's a 1992 French remake called Mechant Garcon that's on YouTube right now, but as I don't speak French, that really won't help much.

[MrPopo]

Yeah, it probably won't help, but it could be trippy in its own right.

[Exhuminator]

Currently it's on Amazon for about $15, but I don't think it's streamed anywhere.

This seems to work (in English):

http://putlocker.today/watch/zGWDaldP-bad-ronald.html

[Ack]

Open House

It's a slow Friday.

Open House is a 1987 horror film of the slasher variety in which a string of real estate agents, mostly attractive women, end up getting murdered in a variety of horrible ways, and it's up to a psychologist radio host and a jaded detective to figure out who the killer is before the radio host's girlfriend, who runs a real estate agency, ends up on the chopping block. While Open House isn't exactly what I'd consider a great movie, it's got some chops to it that make it at least worth looking into if you find yourself in the awkward position of having to pick between the likes of this movie and, say, The Night Brings Charlie. PROTIP: Don't pick The Night Brings Charlie. Don't ever pick it.

There's a touch of the old Italian giallo schlock fest with some of the killings in Open House, and one scene involving a long shot held on a woman who has been freshly hung with what appears to be a garden hose reminded me of the likes of Dario Argento's 1970s output. Thankfully we're not in full slasher mode here, so while some level of sexual deviancy does end up punished within the film, characters have sex without general repercussion, and the "final girl" trope doesn't really hold sway. The final showdown is in fact between the hero radio therapist versus the murderer, a homeless man driven to kill first out of fear over losing the place he is squatting and then developing a taste for it. Yes, there is definitely a fixation on primarily targeting women and showing them in fear and peril, and while there is some amount of male nudity, the amount of female nudity or women in sexually suggestive clothing far outpaces the converse. But ultimately the central conflict is that of the have-not being reduced to violence and terror as a way of lashing out against a system that has not only left him behind but seems to flaunt that fact in his face. Did I mention this film is set in 1980s Beverly Hills?

Unfortunately the film's final moments keep it from really going anywhere truly thought-provoking, as the homeless villain is reduced to just another slasher-style unkillable boogeyman, who somehow survives a bullet through the forehead (seriously, his brains are splattered on the ground beneath him) only to be thrown over a balcony (well...an obvious stuntman with way more hair is thrown over the balcony) to his demise while the upper class "heroes" return to their hedonistic lifestyles as if nothing had ever happened. Meanwhile, crime continues in the city. The boogeyman's message has been lost and forgotten, and life continues on just the same as before. There's a sense of inevitability to it as well as depressing familiarity; nothing changes, and all this murder and mayhem has merely disrupted a few lives but not impacted society in any meaningful way.

Not surprisingly, Open House was largely hated on release. Why? Well, it fails to completely fit the archetype of a slasher film, and it is pretty corny, not only with that ending but with some of the characters who are little more than stereotypes and do almost nothing to further the plot. In particular is a minor villain who runs a rival real estate agency and likes to engage in sexual harassment and general scummery. His grand contribution to the movie is to serve as a red herring to the main characters and little else; ultimately his deviancy is punished, and he becomes just another afterthought. There's also a sheen to the film that just reeks of '80s LA with money, something that rings both false and trashy. Nowadays the movie seems largely forgotten.

Did I mention Adrienne Barbeau is in this? I feel like maybe I should have said that first. That alone might get some folks to watch it.