The Curator of Schlock #259: The House on Sorority Row

01 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 3

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 #258: Manhattan Baby

25 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #258 by Jeff Shuster

Manhattan Baby

There’s no baby in this motion picture.

We haven’t covered a Lucio Fulci movie in awhile. This is a crying shame that will now be rectified. Italy’s Maestro of Madness deserves an entire wing in The Museum of Schlock. Today’s exhibit is 1982’s Manhattan Baby. It’s a bit different. Not the usual Fulci fare. For instance, this movie is about an ancient Egyptian curse and we’ve never had Lucio Fulci featuring ancient Egyptian curses. I’m reasonably confident about that fact.

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The movie begins in Egypt with an exhibition led by George Hacker (Christopher Connelly of Peyton Place fame). Along for the ride are his wife, Emily (Martha Taylor), who is a professional journalist, and their ten year-old daughter, Susie (Brigitta Boccoli), who is not a professional journalist. George decides to explore some tomb that the locals say is cursed. What else is new? Listen, George is an American living in Manhattan. This means he has a posh Manhattan apartment. The family also has an au pair named Jamie (Cinzia de Ponti) to look after the kids. What the heck is an au pair? Oh, it’s a nanny from another country. I think. Kind of like a student exchange program, but for nannies. Anyway, au pairs must be expensive, as are Manhattan apartments. Emily’s reporter salary won’t make a dent in that. George has no choice but to plunder the tomb. I’m assuming that’s his motivation and that archaeological discovery has nothing to do with it.

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One of the local Egyptians decides to follow George in. This Egyptian isn’t afraid of any curse. It’s not long before George and said Egyptian fall through a trap door. The Egyptian gets impaled on some spikes, but George escapes unscathed until some statue of Isis shoots laser beams out of her eyes, blinding poor George. I think it was a statue of Isis. I’d have to watch Manhattan Baby again to double check, though, and that ain’t gonna happen.

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Meanwhile, little Susie is given an antique pendant by a strange blind woman who declares that “Tombs are for the dead.” The family heads back to New York City where Susie is reunited with her younger brother Tommy (Giovanni Frezza of The House by the Cemetery infamy). George’s doctor says his eyesight should return in about a year, which ticks him off to no end. Emily returns to work, and we’re introduced to one of her reporter friends, a guy named Luke (Carlo De Mejo), who is a bit of a practical joker. He wears funny glasses like the kind with slinky eyes. Luke is also a big fan of the snakes in a can trick. Naturally, we hate Luke and want him to die.

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Strange things start happening in their Manhattan apartment building. The building security guard gets trapped in an elevator. The floor of the elevator falls underneath him. Luke gets killed when he investigates Emily’s apartment, so good riddance, but it’s kind of lame. He just disappears and rematerializes in a desert where he dies of thirst.

Where’s the gore? This is a Lucio Fulci movie. I want to see eyes getting gouged out and people throwing up their own intestines. We do see one guy get his face pecked to death by some stuffed birds. I don’t know. Not Fulci’s best. Fans of Fabio Frizzi’s score for The Beyond should be happy that he’s returned to score Manhattan Baby…by using the exact same score for The Beyond.

Fail.

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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 #257: Brightburn Trailer

18 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #257 by Jeff Shuster

Brightburn Trailer

Leave Superman alone. Just leave him alone.

I don’t typically review trailers. What’s in a trailer, honestly? False advertising? Sure. Remember how excited you got after watching the trailer for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace? Did that movie live up to the trailer? No. One of the worst trailers of all time is for a little film titled Dirty Harry, but nobody cares because that movie is a classic. So reviewing a trailer is kind of a waste of time because the finished product may not even resemble what is advertised. And I will now rant about Brightburn‘s trailer.

Hollywood has a Superman problem. They didn’t used to. Back in 1978, we had Christopher Reeve with his perfect smile and perfect curl throwing out cornball platitudes with abandon and it was inspired.

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Good was good. Evil was evil. Miss Tessmacher was hot.

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All was right in the world. And then we had that Batman Killing Superman movie where Batman hogties Superman, ready to slit Superman’s throat until he realizes both of their moms have the same name. Don’t worry. Superman dies anyway.

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And now we have Brightburn from Sony Pictures. In the beginning of the trailer, we see a quaint farm being attended to by a couple resembling the Kents (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman). A spaceship falls from the sky carrying an infant boy that looks human, but is not human. As the boy grows into a pre-teen, strange powers manifest such as super strength, the ability to fly, and even heat vision. The boy’s adoptive mother hopes he’ll be a force for good, but this foreboding trailer tells us otherwise.

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What if kid Superman was a serial killer? What if he wanted to use his powers for evil and go around killing people? That’s the impression I get. He corners some waitress in a diner and we here a crunch after he flies toward her. Dani Di Placido of Forbes wrote about the Brightburn trailer in a recent column. He states that someone so powerful and so flawless as Superman would have to be some sort of sociopath.

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I don’t know. I’d like to think that if I got super powers, I wouldn’t use those powers to become some sort of violent murderer. And is it that far of a stretch to imagine that someone with super powers might actually want to use those powers to help people? Maybe the people who can’t imagine that possibility are the real sociopaths. I’m just saying.

This looks to be another gem from Sony Pictures and I know I shouldn’t judge it until I watch the whole movie. Maybe they intend Brightburn to be a part of their Spider-manless cinematic universe. Perhaps Venom, the Green Goblin, and Doctor Octopus will all join forces to take down evil child Superman. That might be something to see. I wish Sony well in their quest to not only destroy the super hero genre, but the very art form of cinema itself.

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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 #256: Venom

11 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Film, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #256 by Jeff Shuster

Venom

The villain is the hero. In other news, 2 +2 = 3 because Sony says so!

I think I have a movie pitch I’d like to send over to the brass over at Sony Pictures: Snickers: The Movie. I think there’s a lot of potential in this franchise, maybe a Snickers Almond movie later down the road. After all, Snickers is the most popular candy bar in the world. You’ve got the peanuts, the nougat, the caramel. People pay up to two bucks for those king-size bars. Imagine what they’d pay to see the glory of Snickers in IMAX 3D. And think about the possibility of a Snickers Expanded Universe!

In the meantime, let’s talk about 2018’s Venom from director Ruben Fleischer. Some of you may remember Venom from 2007’s Spider-Man 3 from director Sam Raimi. He was the villain of that movie. And I read a read a Spider-Man comic or two back in the 1990s. You see the thing about Venom is that he hates Spider-Man. He wants to kill Spider-Man. That’s the character’s motivation, the reason for his existence. If you look at Venom, he looks like a disgusting version of Spider-Man, almost as if he’s mocking our hero.

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Spider-Man isn’t in the movie Venom. He isn’t even mentioned. This is because Sony gave Spider-Man back to Disney so he could be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and fight alongside heroes such as Iron Man and the Black Panther. But Sony must have retained the cinematic rights to some of Spider-Man’s super villains so waste not, want not. As a result, Venom is now an “anti-hero” instead of a super villain. This is like if they decided to make a General Zod movie without ever mentioning Superman. Sure he wants to take over planet Earth and have everyone kneel before him, but he isn’t all that bad.

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Venom starts out with a space shuttle crashing to Earth somewhere in the San Francisco Bay area. This space shuttle was carrying deadly cargo: alien parasites from outer space called symbiotes. This was all due to the machinations of Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), an evil Elon Musk-type in charge of Life Foundation, a bioengineering corporation. Drake wants humans to merge with symbiotes so the human race can move out into space since our species is destroying the planet or something to that effect. Homeless people volunteer to merge with the symbiotes for some cash, but these evil alien creatures kill them each time. Drake is confident that a successful match between human and symbiote will happen one day so he just continues letting the homeless get killed.

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Enter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), a San Francisco hipster reporter who knows Life Foundation is up to no good. A tip from an inside source eventually leads him to the symbiote lab, where he merges with one of the symbiotes to become Venom, a living parasite that likes to bite the heads off of police officers, but rest assured, he’s still the hero because the movie tells us so. What else?

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Michelle Willaims plays a token love interest. Stuff explodes. Venom fights an even more evil alien/symbiote hybrid named Malice or Hellface or something like that. Tom Hardy makes out with his parasite. There’s a post credit sequence with Woody Harrelson wearing a Bozo the Clown wig. This movie has it all. When film historians try to pinpoint the movie killed the super hero genre, I suspect Venom may be at the top of the list.

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 #255: Wilson

28 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #255 by Jeff Shuster

Wilson

It’s pretty good.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. I made some of that Hobo Chicken in the microwave made popular by Frank Whaley in the John Hughes’ classic Career Opportunities. I played Smurfs on my ColecoVision for the better part of the day. Still haven’t managed to get Smurfette naked. Maybe one of these days. Oh, and I watched Invasion U.S.A. again. Nothing says Christmas like Chuck Norris killing bad guys. You know, it really can be a wonderful life.

2018 is coming to a close. My grand experiment of covering movies from the 2010s has been trying. This is not going to be remembered as a great decade for cinema. We did get an amazing sequel to Blade Runner. I obsessed over Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. The Blackcoat’s Daughter was a pleasant discovery. Maybe one just has to dig a little deeper to find the true gems of this decade. 2017’s Wilson from director Craig Johnson is one of those gems.

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The movie is a character study about a man named Wilson (Woody Harrelson) who just happens to be the most obnoxious man alive. There were times while watching this movie when I wanted to reach through the screen so I could punch Wilson in the face. He seems to be an amalgamation of every obnoxious man I’ve ever known: a man who thinks he funny when he’s clearly, a man who thinks he’s smart when his intelligence is below average, a man who thinks he’s wise when he’s clearly a fool.

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Wilson goes up to random strangers and starts conversations with them when they clearly don’t want to be bothered. Don’t call the guy busily typing on his laptop an asshole when he tells you he’s too busy to talk. Don’t bug the guy on bus trying to sleep, ask him about his career, and then scream at him for “working for the oligarchs.” Do not purposely cause a fender-bender with a woman you met at a pet store as a means to ask her out on a date. And I know how you hate how everyone is glued to their smart phones and their computers, ignoring the world around them, but the truth is, you’re just an illiterate when it comes to modern technology.

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Loneliness gets the better of Wilson. He searches for his ex-wife, Pippi (Laura Dern), who was a prostitute and a junkie when he last knew her. When Wilson finds Pippi, she’s cleaned herself up and is working as a waitress at a fancy restaurant. They reconnect and Wilson finds out that Pippi gave birth to his child, but gave that baby girl up for adoption. Wilson then goes on a quest to locate his daughter.

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Through a private investigator, he tracks her down, reveals himself to her, and takes her on road trips. This wouldn’t be a problem if she wasn’t a minor and legally the daughter of other people!

Wilson gets charged with kidnapping, goes to jail, annoys some Neo Nazis while in prison, and gets smashed in the face with a lunch tray. This is a brilliant movie.

The graphic novel is also worth checking out. Happy New Year!

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 #254: The Sweetest Christmas

21 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Christmas, Film, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #254 by Jeff Shuster

The Sweetest Christmas

Run, run, run as fast as you can.

We’re on week 4 of our Hallmark Christmas extravaganza, a celebration of what one can do with G-rated made-for-TV movies financed by a company that makes its bread and butter off of Christmas Tree ornaments. We will not get an appearance by Santa Claus in this motion picture, in-person or disguised as elementary school janitor. There will be no princes ready to whisk away Lacey Chabert to far off countries that don’t exist in the real world. At least Lacey Chabert plays an aspiring confectionary chef rather than an aspiring fashion designer this time. The name of tonight’s movie is, naturally, The Sweetest Christmas.

fIt’s about a young woman named Kylie Watson (Lacey Chabert) who went to a fancy culinary school and loaded herself up with student loan debt. She moved back to her old hometown to live with her sister and two adorable nieces. Kylie dreams of owning a pastry shop someday. Poor Kylie can’t even get a job as a chef at one of the seven restaurants in her boutique little town. She has to work as a secretary at her boyfriend’s real estate company, Hockey Homes. It sounded like Hockey Holmes. Maybe they spell it Hockee. I could turn on the captions, but maybe you don’t really care. I think you don’t really care.

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Kylie ends up breaking up with her boyfriend, Alex (Lane Edwards), after he treats her to a romantic dinner that ends with him asking her to be his office manager rather than become his wife. Things begin looking up for Kylie when she receives a letter that she’s a semi-finalist in a National Gingerbread Baking Contest. Oh boy! Will Kylie be able to pull it off and win the $25,000 grand prize? Will she rekindle the love of an old high school boyfriend who runs the local pizzeria? I don’t want to spoil the movie for you, but it wouldn’t a hallmark movie if everything didn’t turn out just peachy. A Merry Christmas to you and yours from Orlando’s Museum of Schlock. See you next week.

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I’m under word count, which means I may not get my Christmas bonus from my editor, John King. How did this happen? Maybe because I’ve got nothing left to say. I mean it’s fine if you like Hallmark movies. Just because they recycle the same plot over and over again. Just because we have the same turgid romance with the Ken Doll of week. Hey, you do you.

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But if I may, I’d like to pitch my own Hallmark Christmas movie ideas to the bright bulbs over at the Hallmark Channel.

Rather than having Lacey Chabert playing an aspiring gingerbread chef, why not have her just be an office secretary who had a traumatic experience when she was a child. Maybe a psychopath dressed up as a gingerbread man brutally murdered her parents right in front of her when she was four years-old. Maybe she’s repressed the memory until her boss demands she wear the gingerbread man costume at their annual office Christmas party. Shenanigans ensue.

Think it over. Have your people call my people. We’ll do lunch.

Jeffrey Shuster 3

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 #253: A Royal Christmas

14 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Christmas, Film, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #253 by Jeff Shuster

Hallmark’s A Royal Christmas

One of these things is just like the other.

Earlier this year, I partook in the pop cultural sensation known as Crazy Rich Asians from director Jon M. Chu, a story about a commoner from the United States who falls in love with a supremely handsome and charming young man from another country who turns out to be a veritable prince and heir to a vast family fortune. I recently watched 2014’s A Royal Christmas from director Alex Zamm, a story about a commoner from the United States who falls in love with a supremely handsome and charming young man from another country who turns out to be a literal prince and heir to a vast family fortune. Yes, these two movies have the same plot, but one is about Christmas so that’s what we’re covering this week.

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This is the second Lacey Chabert Christmas movie I’ve seen where Folger’s coffee could be prominently seen. I don’t want accuse the greeting card company that produced this of shameless product placement, but the first time we see the romantic lead, he’s holding a rather large Wal~Mart bag. Lacey Chabert plays Emily Taylor, the daughter of the town tailor who has dreams of becoming a fashion designer one day. I’m just going to point out that this is the second Hallmark Christmas movie where Lacey Chabert plays a struggling fashion designer.

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Emily is seeing the dreamy Leo James (Stephen Hagan), a man who likes to eat pancakes and BLTs, but Mr. Leo James has a secret he’s been keeping from Emily. Mr. Leo James is actually Prince Leopold of Cordinia.

Now many of you may wonder why you’ve never heard of a country named Cordinia. I can answer that for you. Cordinia doesn’t exist. They made up a fake European country for the purposes of the plot. There’s nothing wrong with that. Granted, Crazy Rich Asians treated its audience to the wonders of opulent Singapore, a real country, but we shouldn’t fret over little details like whether or not a country actually exists or not. Leo reveals that he’s a prince to Emily and invites her to spend the holidays with him back home.

It’s in Cordinia that Emily meets Queen Isadora, played by none other than Jane Seymour.

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We remember Jane Seymour. She was in that one Battlestar Galactica movie, Battlestar Galactica: The Movie. She was a Bond girl in Live and Let Die. She was also on season four of Smallville, the one where Lana Lang was possessed by the ghost of a dead witch. Ugh. What were they thinking? Clark Kent fights space aliens not witch covens. That season would have been a complete waste if not for the introduction of Erica Durance as Lois Lane, the greatest of all Lois Lanes. I’m talking about Smallville again, aren’t I?

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Naturally, Queen Isadora doesn’t approve of her son’s choice in girlfriends. If only Prince Leopold could find another royal to marry instead of tailor’s daughter. She taunts Emily by serving a Cordinian favorite dish of jellied eels, but Emily eats them right up. The palace servants like Emily because she’s a commoner just like them and even Queen Isadora will change her ways and learn the true spirit of Christmas and allow her son to marry Emily. Blah. Blah. Blah. I think Torso is streaming on prime. Smell you later!

Jeffrey Shuster 3 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 #252: A Wish for Christmas!

07 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Christmas, Film, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #252

A Wish for Christmas

Be my most tasty little dish!

Thus begins week 2 of our Hallmark Christmas Movie Yuletide Extravaganza. I love these movies. They’re like the cozy sweater vest of American cinema. If only they would have a marathon of them in an IMAX theater. I want that full immersion experience in 3D, 4K, and Smell-O-Vision. I want it all! But for now, I have to settle for a 1K, no 3D, and no smells.

Tonight’s Hallmark movie is 2016’s A Wish For Christmasfrom director Christie Will Wolf. This is not to be confused with Hallmark’s A Christmas Wish from 2011. Totally different movie. That one starred Kristy Swanson and was directed by Craig Clyde. We will not be getting to that one this year because we’re only covering the Hallmark Christmas movies featuring Lacey Chabert. That’s right. We’ve got two more weeks of Lacey Chabert so brace yourself.

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In A Wish For Christmas, Lacey Chabert plays Sara Thomas, a web designer for an advertising firm out in Chicago, IL. Sara’s Achilles’ heel is that she is a bit on the wishy-washy side. By wishy-washy, I mean she lets everyone at the firm walk all over her. At the company Christmas party, her manager takes all the credit for her Christmas 365 ad campaign, a campaign centered on feeling the Christmas spirit everyday of the year. His name is Dirk, and he’s a bit of a jerk. The head of the company, Peter Williams (Paul Greene), is very impressed by Dirk’s idea which is too bad because Peter is very handsome and Sara has a bit of a crush on him. If only Peter knew it was Sara’s idea.

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Sara decides to leave the party, but runs into a man dressed like Santa Claus in the lobby. He asks her what her Christmas wish would be. Sara says she wishes she had the courage to stand up for herself. Santa says he and the elves might have some difficulty with that. Wouldn’t she rather have a million dollars? Nope. Sara insists on getting courage for Christmas. Personally, I would have picked the million dollars. Then I could just hire some guys to beat up Dirk. Anyway, the wish works because Sara tells off Dirk in front of everyone at the party, saying how he stole her ideas. For shame!

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Sara almost quits the firm altogether when dreamy Peter Williams gives her a promotion and wants her to travel with to Seattle to pitch her idea to some big wig named Wilson. Upon arriving in Seattle, they learn that Wilson cancelled their meeting because he decided to go with another firm’s ad campaign. Sara is having none of that, insisting that Wilson hear their pitch since they flew all that way. Wilson’s secretary manages to reschedule the pitch for the next morning, but Sara and Peter will have to journey to a small town in northern Washington to meet Wilson. In a bit of a twist, this small town just happens to be Peter’s hometown.

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Let’s see. What else? Peter hates Christmas because he had a falling out with his dad one Christmas years ago when he decided not to follow in his dad’s footsteps and become a lawyer. Sara manages to use her newfound courage super power to coax Peter to visit his family, decorate some Christmas cookies, and patch things up with his dad. But will Sara’s newfound courage power get her to sell the Christmas 365 pitch to Wilson and save Peter’s company? Or will Sara find that she had the courage deep inside her all along? Is anyone still reading this?

Pray for me.

Jeffrey Shuster 3

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 #251: A Christmas Melody

30 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Christmas, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #251 by Jeff Shuster

A Christmas Melody

All I want for Christmas is poo.

I’m still reeling from last week’s column on Raw, a French/Belgium production about the trials and tribulations of two sisters who happen to be cannibals. Sometimes you gaze into the abyss and it gazes right back. Other times you gaze into the abyss and the abyss jumps down your throat, claws its way out of your stomach, and then feasts on your organs right in front of you as you bleed out. No more. The Museum of Schlock will only be featuring Hallmark Christmas movies for the foreseeable future.

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Tonight’s movie is 2015’s A Christmas Melody, from director Mariah Carey. That’s right. This is singer Mariah Carey’s directorial debut, proving her not only the master of the stage, but of the screen as well. But she is not the star of this motion picture. Not that I’m saying Mariah Carey isn’t a star. Not that I’m saying anything negative about Mariah Carey in any way considering she’s worth 520 million and maybe she’ll read my humble blog and give me some money to pay the exterminator to deal with the cockroaches on the fifth floor.

A Christmas Melody begins with a saleswoman by the name of Kristen (Lacey Chabert) who recently got fired. A homeless man with a suspicious-looking long white beard asks her for money. She gives him the first five dollars she ever made which she framed for some inexplicable reason. You don’t frame money. You spend it. You can even spend it on pretty pictures to stick in that frame. Kristen is also a single mom. Her husband died when their daughter was only two years-old. Kristen had big dreams of becoming a fashion designer in Los Angeles, but now she and her daughter must move back to her hometown of Silver Falls to live with her Aunt Sarah (Kathy Najimy) who runs the town diner.

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Out of despair, Kristen makes a Christmas wish to Santa Claus that she and her daughter Emily (Fina Strazza) will find happiness or something to that effect.

What else happens? I think I nodded off at some point. Must have been due to all those turkey leftovers, not this zany romp of a holiday movie. Mariah Carey plays Melissa, the head of the PTA and Kristen’s old high school rival.

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She won’t let Kristen’s daughter audition for the Christmas pageant, and she won’t let Kristen design the costumes for the pageant despite Kristen’s fashion expertise. Melissa is a bit of a diva. I’m just saying.

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Romance is also in the air. A music teacher by the name of Danny (Brennan Elliott) likes Kristen and by like, I mean he really likes her as in he’s had a crush on her since high school. Danny is super nice. By super nice, I mean really bland and really inoffensive, the sort of guy women in Hallmark World really go for. There’s also a school janitor with a suspiciously long white beard that looks just like the homeless guy Kristen ran into earlier. I’d say more, but I’m past my 500-word minimum and Weird Science is streaming on Prime right now. Why are they wearing bras on their heads?

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 #250: Raw

23 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.