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| So are you like, Rambo or somethin'? |
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| Who you trying to get crazy with ese? |
As a matter of fact… Camouflaging himself in what clearly is the urban equivalent to mud and leaves; a clown suit, Travis hijacks a shipment of cocaine from the Hammers, leading to the reciprocal and banal hostage/chase/shootout-in-the-abandoned-warehouse climax all too common in low budget drug-crime action films. Still, re-waging the entire war (racial demarcations included) in the ghetto not only reinvigorates Travis and America’s masculinity, it does the tough and morally burdensome job of drawing a clear line between who has the right (and might) to dictate the rules. Set to that wiggy-wiggy wild rap beat all the kids love these days, Ghetto Blaster mixes roughly equal parts of The Exterminator (1980) and Colors (1988) in an almost flawless agglomeration of the ‘Nam Vet revenge/vigilante trope that re-invigorated 80’s exceptionalism and the ghetto-drug-crime genre that would scare the piss out of white people in the 90’s. And as if spoken by former president George H. W. Bush himself, Ghetto Blaster proves without a doubt that we’ve finally defeated the Vietnam Syndrome.
Because I enjoy horror films people often assume that I don’t mind violence and gore in real life, but that’s pretty off the mark. I like splatter and dismemberment performed by zombies and even sometimes people as long as they’re fictional, but the real thing is pretty repulsive to me. Even working in a meatcutting union I have a hard time watching the butchers break the sides of cow. That’s why I’ll never get the “popularity” of serial killers. I can sit through a Giallo or slasher movie fine, but I prefer silly monsters, and Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer did not appeal to me.
In Murderlust Steve Belmont is pretty much the same , but his overarching problems are stupidity and religion. He manages to stain a borrowed necktie before even putting it on but easily forges a masters degree in psychology to land a job as the director of his churches teen crisis center. Steve is fundamentally unsettling but the character is portrayed with a sort of pitiful slovenly loserishness that comes across mildly comedic. The guy is literally beer swilling trailer trash and can’t hold down a job or pay his rent but functions as the church's highly respected Sunday school teacher. This dichotomy captures the irony of horror films for me; Steve does unpleasant things, but otherwise the guy is a bumbling laughable idiot. Even the direction and script treat the subject as a sinister joke, and while I’m not compelled to sympathize, I can’t help but chuckle, and I can appreciate it because of it's hyperbole.
The Willies
(The Goonies, Lord of the Rings) who are diligently reciting their well practiced and clearly written by an adult spooky stories and trying to give each other “The Willies”. For apetizers, it’s mostly urban legend fare, including the “fried chicken” rat gag, and an amusing poodle in the microwave bit which is painfully suspenseful thanks to some exceedingly long static shots of granny bubbling with excitement as Pookums whimpers. Unfortunately as I was soon to discover, this part was the most fun.
Ahhh, but all that was all before the credits, now it’s really time to start skimming the scum off the long since curdled Creepshow. The first of the longer stories is a classic. 8 year-old nerdy kid gets picked on by mulleted Iron Maiden shirt wearing bully. When he goes to the bathroom during the math test, Nerd discovers what appears to be a giant fanged turd-monster coming out of the toilet. Returning to class to raise the alarm, he pees his pants. No one believes him of course, especially not the teacher, cruel Mrs. Titmarsh , whom the monster promptly snacks on. Strangely enough, the poop monster also likes to roam around the halls of the school disguised as James Karen who along with his fellow Return of the Living Dead star Clu Gulager are only two of the staple no-name cameos in this film. In any case, after eating all the bullies we get to see the monster put his rubber human outfit on and glare menacingly at someone knowing full well that the gleam in his eye is really just undigested corn.
It’s beginning to look a lot like a shit-themed movie when in the second story a fat kid named Gordy Belcher repeatedly breaks into a farm to steal manure. The farmer Mr. Spivey, who looks at first like Bruce Dern, but disappointingly isn’t, has a meth-lab set up in his barn where he pumps the shit full of amazing growth hormones which yield freakishly large vegetables. Gordy though uses the poop to lure flies which he de-wings and uses to populate tiny dioramas including a diner, a castle and a church replete with fly-Jesus on the cross, and fly-preacher.
mother destroys his fly laboratory and he has no choice but to return for a fresh batch of shit. Instead of chasing him off, Spivey hooks Gordy up with some super chronic shit, which is promptly fed to more flies. Predictably some giant flies make an appearance and not so predictably eat Gordy’s arms off, leaving the rest of him to wallow like a big turd in the swirling poorly planned low class bowl of this movie.
Seizure
A very early film from Oliver Stone, in fact his second coming, according to IMDB only after the student film he made after he returned from Vietnam. Seizure is second to very few in my mind as far as pointless boredom go, and I found the deteriorated quality of this VHS tape and requisite tracking button struggle to be a welcome distraction from the affront to my aesthetic senses.
Having a horrible dream, Edmund Blackstone induces a pall of intolerably monotonous yammering and criminally cheap minimalist soundtrack over the remaining film. During a discussion at the dinner table, he suddenly sees a dwarf (Hervé Villechaize, a.k.a. Tattoo) at the window and leaves the table to tuck his son into bed and terrify him by telling him about his inner demons.
The Forest 
Two buddies are driving home from somewhere to LA while bitching about the traffic and their damn feminist wives, with whom they later exchange taunts and insults around the dinner table. 
The end result is a dangerous plan to go camping. Foiled by car trouble and what appears to be a primitive attempt at hillbillyism, the men are delayed and arrive at the trailhead late. The ladies, far ahead, are prepared to set up camp just in time for one of them to get slashed by the old Bowie knife hand, now attached to a dirty trucker guy bent on eating some girl-meat.
The guys meanwhile, get lost in the dark and happen upon a well provisioned cave and some friendly children who turn out to be ghosts. What? Moments later the kids dad, trucker cannibal guy arrives and, after sharing some of his fresh “doe” meat with the guys, unleashes, much to my chagrin a stupid long origin story and exceedingly bland dialogue all of which elicits much groaning.
