Much like the Headless Horsemen who headlines Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the venerable 19th Century classic of American literature is once again resurrected for a terrifyingly tepid and kid-friendly version that nevertheless manages to elicits some genuine scares. Chief among these nightmarish moments is the theme song “Sleepy Hollow” which plays during a montage of kids getting a haunted house ready. Its blatant attempt to channel Green Day is quite chilling. Continue reading “The Haunted Pumpkin of Sleepy Hollow (2003)”
Scarecrow Gone Wild (2004)
On a very special episode of Scarecrow Gone Wild our straw-filled serial killer teaches us about the pressing social issues of diabetes, college hazing and most importantly of all, the danger of letting MMA star turned professional wrestler Ken Shamrock anywhere near a movie set!
Watching Shamrock parlay the stilted interview skills he had on the mic in wrestling into even more stilted acting really makes you want to sit your kids down for some straight talk about the importance of not only acting lessons, but not trying things you have absolutely no aptitude for.
Scarecrow Slayer (2003)
Overcoming a positively putrid origin story in the rudimentary, frequently bordering on amateurish Scarecrow, our burlap and straw anti-hero roars back with a vengeance in his second outing solidifying himself as the premiere low budget somersault-loving farm monster. He’s so good at what he does, he manages to get one person killed, one person run over and yet another in the ICU – all before he even gets reanimated! Continue reading “Scarecrow Slayer (2003)”
Scarecrow (2002)
Lester Dwervick has everything in life a depressed, dimwitted loser could ever hope for. At school, almost everyone picks on him and despises him. Called names and tripped in the cafeteria, he doesn’t even get any relief when he’s in class because the teacher is ragging on him for having a promiscuous mother and living in a trailer. Then, when he approaches her outside of class to apologize for not paying attention, she insults him.
Home life isn’t much better as his mother is a drunken slut who brings different guys home all the time. Even when he’s at work, he is the butt of jokes. Continue reading “Scarecrow (2002)”
The Kirlian Witness (1979)
The plants are watching us! And thinking! And solving crimes! How awesome is all that?
After going through my whole life under the impression that our leafy neighbors were just waiting to shove a prickly root up my backside (I was no doubt influenced by anti-plant polemics like The Day of the Triffids and Contamination .7), I was relieved that with 1979’s The Kirlian Witness they could finally take their place along side their fellow classic 1970s detectives like Jim Rockford and Barnaby Jones! How could you not love a rhododendron in a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker cap yelling the plant equivalent of “Book’em Danno!”? Continue reading “The Kirlian Witness (1979)”
The Day the Earth Moved (1974)
The Big One hits the viewer early on in the small scale earthquake drama The Day the Earth Moved, followed by an hour of aftershocks that easily measure a 9.0 of stupid on the Richter Scale.
From the beginning of the movie when Jackie Cooper’s pilot Steve Barker finds himself a virtual prisoner of a small town’s bizarre system of dealing with speeders to the revelation that somehow he knows an earthquake is about to hit that small town to him having to hijack his own airplane to airlift the disbelieving townspeople to safety, the only thing constructed in more slipshod fashion than the dilapidated town of Bates is the script. Continue reading “The Day the Earth Moved (1974)”
Massacre at Central High (1976)
A cautionary tale about the dangers of standing up to bullies, Massacre at Central High will likely trigger gasps of disbelief for a generation of snowflakes raised to believe that youthful tormentors serve no purpose and that teachers and administrators at their school are ever present to assist students and keep them safe. Continue reading “Massacre at Central High (1976)”