The Curator of Schlock #259 by Jeff Shuster

The House on Sorority Row

Don’t throw your KFC in the swimming pool!

Back in October, I partook in a special screening of The House on Sorority Row at my local Regal Cinemas. I wanted to know what it would be like to see an 80s slasher movie for the first time on the big screen. What drew those original audiences to see these movies? Is there something about the big screen that changes the way one views them? Are they more suspenseful? Are they more terrifying?

Nope.

I don’t get the allure. Maybe one had to be alive at the time when these taboos were being broken. This is not to say 1982’s The House on Sorority Row from director Mark Rosman is a waste of time. Any movie that features a fight between a final girl and a maniac dressed like a jack-in-the-box can’t be that bad. Said final girl is Katey Rose (Katherine McNeil), a pretty, but boring college grad, ready to say goodbye to her sorority house and sorority sisters of the past four years.

The sorority plans to throw a graduation party to celebrate, a rollicking romp featuring a live band in the form of 4 Out of 5 Doctors! Any of you go to their reunion concert at the Jammin Java Club in in Vienna, VA? I did. Jealous much?

Standing in the sorority’s way is Mrs. Slater (Lois Hunt), their house mother and a real battle axe who’s no rock n’ roll fun. She screams at the girls for drinking champagne in the house and won’t allow them to throw their going away bash. When Mrs. Slater catches one sorority sister named Vicki (Eileen Davidson) getting intimate with her boyfriend in a waterbed, Mrs. Slater takes her cane with the metal tip in the shape of a bird and punctures a hole in the plastic mattress. Mrs. Slater calls Vicki trash and Vicki vows to get even with her.

Vicki convinces the other sorority sisters to help her with a prank. She’ll fill her boyfriend’s gun with blanks and pretend to shoot Mrs. Slater, giving her the scare of her life. This plan would have worked out well if one of those blanks hadn’t turned out to be a bullet.

The girls panic, wrap Mrs. Slater up in a blanket, and dump her in the murky waters of sorority house pool, which hasn’t been cleaned for ages. Oh, well. Time to forget about the murder and enjoy the party, right?

Nope.

The sorority sisters are all nervous and distracted during the party, worrying about getting caught. What they should be worried about is the psychopath about to stalk and murder each one of them.

Do you know what this psychopath does to one of the girls? Cuts her head off and sticks it in a toilet bowl. Really? That’s just in bad taste.

Talking anymore about this will spoil the picture for those inclined to solve the mystery of who the killer is. If you get Showtime, you should be able to catch this flick on there. Oddly enough, the small screen works to this film’s advantage. Maybe a decapitated head in a toilet loses its impact when it’s too large.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #250 by Jeff Shuster

Raw

I’m not moving to France. 

Each year, I try to cover a cannibalism movie the day after Thanksgiving as a means to gross out my readership after they’ve gorged themselves on candied yams and other assorted delicacies. But I may have bit off more than I can chew this time. I watched Raw, a 2017 French film from director Julia Ducournau. This isn’t a fun cannibalism movie like Cannibal Apocalypse. This movie is disturbing. And it smells. And I know movies don’t smell, but trust me, this one does. And it smells bad!

Why do I do it? Today is Black Friday, the greatest of all American holidays, and I’m here talking about French cannibals. Where do I begin? I really don’t want to remember this movie. So there’s this girl named Justine (Garance Marillier) who’s starting her first semester at a veterinary school in France, or is it Belgium? This movie is a French/Belgium production so it could be either country. It’s not like I can tell. I never went backpacking in Europe or anything like that. And I know if Justine is attending veterinary school, she must be a woman and not a girl, but nothing about her looks or demeanor screams adult. She comes off as very innocent. I guess her parents sheltered her most of her life. Justine was also raised to be a strict vegetarian.

Also attending this school are Alexia (Ella Rumpf), Justine’s older sister who’s a bit of a wild child, and Adrien (Rabba Oufella), Justine’s gay dorm roommate. On the first day of school, Justine, Adrien, and the rest of the first year students get doused in animal blood and are force fed rabbit kidneys as part of a hazing ritual. Justine pleads with Alexia to get her out of it, but Alexia tells to not be a flatliner or something to that effect. Justine swallows the rabbit kidney and this is where her troubles begin.

Not long after ingesting the rabbit kidney, Justine develops a horrible rash all over her body. When she visits the campus doctor, she’s advised to fast for a day. Then the doctor proceeds to peel the infected skin off of her body while smoking some Lucky Strikes. That’s just nasty. We don’t need to see that. The rash goes away, but Justine develops a hankering for meat. She sneaks a salisbury steak into her pocket while waiting on the cafeteria lunch line. Justine then insists that Adrien take them out for some shawarma at a nearby gas station. You can get shawarma at gas stations in France? Cool. I’m still not moving there.

Later on, Justine hangs out with Alexia. Her big sister shows her how to pee while standing up. Then Alexia gets her middle finger cut off while giving Justine a Brazilian wax. Alexia passes out. Justine frantically calls the French equivalent of 911. The paramedics won’t arrive for fifteen minutes. They tell her to put Alexia’s severed finger on ice, but there’s no ice in Alexia’s apartment. Justine gazes longingly at Alexia’s severed finger. She licks it, takes a little nibble, savors the tastes, starts to rip off more chunks, devouring her sister’s flesh. Then Alexia wakes up, a look of horror spreading across her face. You can’t reattach a half-eaten finger. It only gets worse from here. I could go on, but I need to retain what’s left of my sanity. I think I’ll go out for some shawarma.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #247 by Jeff Shuster

Day of the Dead: Bloodline

Three times is not the charm.

Okay, Halloweenies. Your Curator of Shock is here with wrap up October with the George Romero classic, Day of the Dead. Get ready for zombies that say hello to their Aunt Alicia and prepare to eat a mouthful of Greek salad. Oh, wait. I forgot. I’m under a self-imposed mandate to only review movies from this decade. Fortunately, they released a Day of the Dead remake earlier this year titled Day of the Dead: Bloodline. Does lightning strike twice? Actually, this is the second remake of Day of the Dead, so maybe I should be asking if lightning strikes three times. Or maybe I should just get on to the review because I’m getting confused.

Day of the Dead: Bloodline is directed by Hèctor Hernández Vicens and is described as an action/horror film. The movie begins with a full on zombie outbreak on a city block. Zombies are tearing open the guts of their victims and chowing down. One has a coil of intestines wrapped around his neck like a necklace (maybe he’s saving them for later.). A young woman named Zoe Parker (Sophie Skelton) hurriedly walks down the street, trying to call her mother while pausing to observe the carnage. I think I’d be running at this point.

We’re then treated to a flashback from six hours earlier. Zoe is a medical student who’s given the task of collecting blood samples from Max, a creepy dude who has the hots for her. The administrators at the hospital say he has the best antibodies they’ve ever seen. But he’s a kind of a stalker. The fact that he carved Zoe’s name into his forearm makes her uncomfortable.

Later on, when Zoe is in the morgue late at night, trying to retrieve some kegs for a kegger party the other med students are hosting, Max shows up and tries to force himself upon her. Then a zombie attacks him. The zombie bites some partygoers, they turn into zombies, they bite other people, and soon there’s a full on zombie outbreak.

Fast-forward a few months later and Zoe is situated in an Army base/refugee camp, helping sick children and soldiers. She even managed to get herself a hunky boyfriend named Baca (Marcus Vanco). Baca’s brother, Lieutenant Miguel Salazar (Jeff Gum), doesn’t care about Zoe’s insistence on finding a cure or her insistence on going outside the compound to find antibiotics for the sick children. He relaxes on the latter, allowing Zoe to bring a small company of soldiers with her to the hospital she used to work at. They travel the urban wilderness in two bright yellow Hummers under cover of night. Zoe retrieves the medicine, but runs into an old friend in the process.

That’s right! It’s zombie Max, and he is still crushing on Zoe. I have to tell you Max, if you didn’t have a chance with her while you were alive, those odds don’t improve when you turn into a zombie. Maybe if you were a sparkly vampire.

He sneaks back with them into the compound by clinging underneath to one of the Hummers. Max eats some people in the compound, gets captured, but Zoe wants to keep him alive for study because he doesn’t try to eat her. Why? Because he’s still in love with her. Zoe thinks he might be the answer to a zombie virus vaccine. But is it worth keeping Max around just for a zombie virus vaccine? At one point, Max, the zombie, growls at Zoe, “You’re mine!” Let me tell you something, Max. Zoe is not you’re property. You have to be the most sexist zombie I’ve ever seen in a movie. You’re one step above a Nazi zombie and as we all know, Nazi zombies are the Talibans of the zombie world.

Think on that, Max.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #246 by Jeff Shuster

Rings

Ring-a-Ding-Ding!

I’ve been putting this off. 2017’s Rings from director F. Javier Gutiérrez is the movie responsible for Paramount cancelling the next installment of the Friday the 13th series of films. Apparently, Rings was supposed to be their new cash cow annual horror film series with new installments each year. Rings was a box office disappointment, so they cancelled the Friday the 13th reboot. Makes sense as they’re completely different types of movies. Kind of like when Disney cancelled TRON 3 over the disappointing box office of Tomorrowland.

Instead, we’re getting another Nutcracker movie titled The Nutcracker: We Made This Instead of TRON 3. Yay.

Rings is a sequel to 2002’s The Ring and 2005’s The Ring Two. I don’t remember much about those movies. I think Brian Cox electrocuted himself to death by dropping a plugged-in VCR into a bathtub full of water while standing in it. Ring Two featured Naomi Watts being terrorized by deer created from some really bad CG. They didn’t leave a huge impression. The basic gist of the series is that there’s this cursed video tape. You watch this video and you see all sorts of strange imagery like a woman brushing her hair in a mirror, a wooden chair, a nail going though a finger, etc. Then a phone rings, you pick up the receiver, and the voice of little girl says, “ Seven days.” In seven days, your television set will turn on and a ghost girl comes out of your TV to psychokinetically kill you. The only way to avoid the curse is to make a copy of the tape, have someone else watch it, and stick them with the curse. The only way they can avoid the ghost girl is to copy the tape and have someone else watch it. And so on.

Rings begins with an airline passenger who watched the video, but was too stupid to pass the curse on to someone else. Samara, the ghost girl, comes out of the panels up in the cockpit trying to kill the guy and the whole plane goes down as a result. Fast-forward a couple years later and said passenger’s belongings end up being sold at some sidewalk sale. A biology professor by the name of Gabriel Brown (Johnny Galecki of The Big Bang Theory fame) purchases the VCR because he’s interested in vintage technology.

I really don’t understand VCR aficionados. They were junk then, and they’re junk now. And yes, this is coming from a guy who knew how to program his VCR. I never missed an episode of Felicity. That’s something I can be proud of.

Professor Brown hooks the VCR up to an HDTV and watches the cursed video. Then Samara calls him up, gives him the “Seven Days” pitch, and Professor Brown witnesses some strange phenomena like rain rising up instead of falling down. One has to wonder, does the curse hold the same power if your watching an old VHS tape through and HDTV or even a 4K TV? That’s going to be a downgraded image. I’m thinking this time around Samara would only have the ability to give you a really bad headache at the end of the seven days.

Professor Brown starts running experiments with the videotape by having his students watch it, copy it, and pass it along. He wants to scientifically prove the existence of life after death. That’s rather intriguing. I applaud Professor Brown and his pedagogic practices. I start to get high hopes for this motion picture, and then we’re introduced to Julia and Holt, a good-looking, but boring young couple who get involved with Professor Brown’s experiments. When Julia watches the video to save Holt from the curse, she gets new images along with the old ones.

And this is where the movie takes a left turn. Julia and Holt travel to some podunk country town to discover the origins of the curse. They run into a blind Vincent D’Onofrio who used to be a priest who murdered his daughter or his granddaughter.

I don’t know. They gave up on the only thing the movie had going for it, the science angle. I don’t care about them solving some stupid American Gothic mystery. Paramount, do us all a favor. Don’t just cancel Friday the 13th. Cancel all of your horror movies. You don’t know what you’re doing.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.