Category: movies

The Drop of Water

Man, when it comes to horror movies, the Italians really know how to do it. Sure they can bake a good Marsala and some say that their culture and wine are worth looking into but for me, I tip my hat to their wacky way of scaring the pants off me. Seriously, one time it took me an hour to find my pants after a three hour “My Ghost Story” feature on the Bio Channel. Anyway, Italian horror is well known for graphic gore and suggestive scenes but in a certain three-part movie, starring the late, great Boris Karloff, they go for a more psychological sting that leaves the viewer wanting to crawl behind the couch in the 1969 classic, Black Sabbath. Although this feature has three different stories, there is always the one that stands out and this cream of the crop is “Drop of Water.” Let me explain.

After the title screen we are met by the great face of horror, Boris Karloff, doing his Alfred Hitchcock style of hosting. The one thng I never knew about this guy until watching him speak close up is his “Ralphy from The Christmas Story” lisp. Interesting. So, Boris gives an absolute dynamite intro as if he is addressing you as an individual by saying such fantastically cheesy lines and warnings like “Vampires…Is that one of them sitting behind you now?” I love that. Wait…is there one behind me? Nope.

So after a fun few minutes we jump to the first of the series and the only one that I am reviewing today because it is the best and so are you. Ha! See what I did there? Let me introduce to you an amazing tale and an Italian Bada-Bing of scary, Drop Of Water.

The story begins with a single woman sitting in a small apartment which is strangely illuminated by different colored and ever-changing sign from a really cool oval window. This is pretty important because the whole movie is different shades of blues, reds and yellows that does give an uneasy feel much like other Italian horrors (Suspiria). She mills around from what appears to be an exhaustive day of work doing the usual: smoking and drinking. This “zen time of a blond Italian chick” is interrupted by a phone call and we see a slightly over-acting part and oddly dubbed-over voice but get the message that she is being put out by some sort of an emergency. Time to swig a shot and put out the ol’ sigerrta; duty calls.

We then jump scene to an old woman cleaning up broken pieces of something on the floor from what appears to be signs of a struggle. She is obviously very edgy with a constant look of worry. Looking around the room I can see why. Again, the colors in this film are amazing and every area is a different shade of red, purple, blue…anything that is unnatural. Soon there is a knock at the door and her look goes from one of worry to that of “well it’s about fucking time.” I thought it was Time Warner cable from that look.

Nope, not the cable company. It is the put-out woman from the apartment and here is when we find out that she is a nurse and one of her duties is to dress recently diseased, er, deceased people and get them ready for a funeral. But listening to the old caretaker, this is a special case and she is in a hurry to get the hell out of there. The nurse seems to be a little brash and not at all concerned with the old woman’s story about her former employer’s death. She warned the nurse not to touch anything or she would suffer a terrible curse and have the same face…fate as her. Did I mention the dead woman we are about to meet was a medium? Yeah, she was chatting with spirits before she was abruptly killed and made into a hideous thing. I think that holds some sort of merit. So, the nurse is in no mood for ghost stories or warnings from beyond. She wants to dress the corpse and go back to boozing and smoking. Then she looks at the task at hand.

Yup! That’s normal. Nothing wrong with that at all. I have to say if I pulled the curtain back and saw that thing staring back at me I would have just sat Indian-style and cried. (Is that okay to say? I feel like Indian-style is no longer a P.C. saying) Matter of fact, I believed the great Final Girl said the same thing. But no, the nurse just sort of gazed at this…thing with a look of, “Well, that is gross,” and didn’t even bat an eye.

I, myself, would have made a look similair to this:

The nurse looks away from the grotesque and huge evil-faced dead medium and spies something a bit more attractive. Her eyes go right to a huge sapphire ring that oddly has a fly that likes it too and is buzzing around, mostly on the ring itself. The warnings of the old caretaker go out the window and we all know that this dead chick isn’t going underground with that ring on. She leaves the room to get the burial dress and a few shots with the old woman and that’s when she learns more about the curse and the how dead took her. Having just seen that awful face of the dead medium, the nurse is still reluctant to think it is anything more than just a heart attack and scoffs at the caretaker’s warning of ghosts and evil and curses and Beiber and imminent death. The nurse just wants to get the task of changing the dead woman’s clothes over with, snag the ring and go home quickly. And truth be told, I would be the same way. Except I wouldn’t take the ring after witnessing all that. I am a better-safe-than-sorry sort of guy. I also believe in things that go bump in the night. And Sasquatch.

deleted lesbian kiss scene

While working to strip the dead medium’s clothes and dress her for the funeral the nurse is tormented by the ring and plots to take it but has to distract the caretaker to she asks for stockings and shoes while she works the ring off the rigor-mortised finger. That is when I noticed something even more unsettling. There are a fuck-load of creepy dolls all over the house. Take a look!

UGH! See?
Really? In the drawers too?

So, with the caretaker distracted, the nurse manages to pry the ring off the finger of the dead woman but when it comes loose she loses it on the floor and searches frantically to find it. This is when we, the audience, can tell that this nurse has just sealed her fate. And also a good jump scare. I can’t imagine being in the theater in 1969 watching this when the options for a Friday night feature was this or Beach Blanket Bingo. Anyway, while on the floor this happens:

Hmmm...where did that ring go to?
Shit! Pants! Shit in my pants!

Yeah, the supposed dead woman’s arm falls on the nurses head causing everyone to shriek. The nurse jumps, spilling a glass of water that causes an echoing drip onto a metal pan. This is an ominous sign of things to come. The nurse finds the ring, stuffs it down her shirt and composes herself right before the old woman comes in with the last required items. She sees the noticeable change in the nurse’s demeanor and asks what she saw. Of course the nurse denies anything unusual but her stride definitely quickens and the two are now in a hurry to leave. She puts the shoes on the corpse and does the terrible task of touching that face to close the medium’s eyes. But when the nurse turns around one more time before they both leave she is greeted with this:

Hello. I am terribly terrifying. How are you?
Could be doing better thanks

Seeing how the dead woman’s eyes refuse to shut is a sign to leave and they both hurry out the door. What could possibly happen now? The medium died in a weird way while communicating with the dead, there are maniacal dolls everywhere, the caretaker warned of a curse, THE FUCKING FACE OF THE DEAD WOMAN, the fly that refuses to leave the ring, and the eyes will not shut so I am not a betting man but I will go with the nurse having a rough night. That’s just me.

The next scene we are back at the nurse’s ever-color-changing apartment (Shocker.). She is sitting at the table smoking and drinking and gazing at her recently acquired ring after, what most would say, an odd night. But soon things start to happen and it becomes apparent that perhaps taking this ring wasn’t the greatest idea this nurse has ever had. It starts with that darn fly landing on her finger and she freaks out as if an African blue hornet was in the house. After her flailing around eveything goes quiet except a constant drip of water. In a heighten sense of paranoia the nurse cautiously and slowly searches out the drip and stops it only to hear another from an adjacent room. Strange? Absolutely.

Happy thoughts. Wish I had a TV.

But soon the drips turn more menacing and slowly sounds of shallow wailing and scary noises begin. Is she going insane? Has the curse come to claim her too? Does she know that she left the teapot on the stove? All these questions are racing through not only her mind but ours too. The tension builds to a roaring climax and just when you think it couldn’t get anymore more intense she wakes up and it’s all a dream.

Just kidding. No, she opens up the door to her room and finds this:

7 Minute Abs

Horrified at the sight that her old friend dropped into visit her, she freaks out, runs, trips over the carpet and lands hard. I would have done the same. Well, no, I would have done what Final Girl said and “squat in a corner and cried.” This scene is the worst part for me because it has everything that could make for a perfect nightmare. Not only is the dead woman back but she is really not quite dead. She slowly sits up defining what my definition of scary is. Maybe it isn’t to some but it is to me.

So, the nurse composes herself, so to speak, and goes back to the kitchen now that the dead woman is in her room, cries from beyond fill the apartment, the lights mysteriously turned off. But it turns out that her friend also has the ability to appear in her rocking chair holding a cat. A cat that doesn’t mind being pet by a dead woman apparently.

For my next trick, I will magically put Indian food in your underwear!

The old woman disappears in front of the nurses eyes leaving a rocking chair rocking solo. At this point I think I would give the ring back but the nurse is too frantic to think of such simplicities and meets the pestering spirit…ghost…demon…thing one last time and she begs for mercy. The dead woman floats towards her and raises her arms slowly causing the nurse to involuntarily bring her own hands to her throat. In a move right out of the playbook to Full Metal Jacket, she chokes herself. To death.

Well, the next day the police and forensic investigators are there piecing together a plausible explanation for why the nurse is dead and choking herself. The landlord is there explaining that this isn’t the first time she has found a dead tenant and she went by the book on reporting it right away. As the investigator tries to pry her hands away from her thoat he states that the look on her face is that of one being scared to death. He also notices the ring missing and her finger is bruised in such a way it looks as if had been torn off. The landlord’s eyes open wide as we soon see that she was tempted the same way the nurse was and took the ring. Uh Oh…

Ring? What's a ring?

And that is how we end the story. Now that I have described one of the more fun and disturbing stories I have seen I can’t help but noticing some similarities between this movie and the later-made Japanese film Rigu. I know that is a jump but look, it has the same basic plot of a cursed item that is passed from person to person and there isn’t really a way to repent. And not to mention the fact that they both have RINGS! Well, who knows? I have never heard the link between the two and as far as I know the director and writer for The Ring made no reference to getting inspiration from this film so perhaps I just make the link myself. Regardless, this is a fun story and the visuals will make a 12 year old go to therapy. I love the cinematography more than I love watching someone breaking their hip in a Jazzersize class (because I really love that). Above all, Boris Karloff and an Italian trio of terror will go down as next to Godliness and for that I say thank you for reading this and if you want to watch this masterpiece of horror, check it out on Youtube. It’s there.

OH! Expect a full article on the Myer’s House at the end on September. I talked with the owner and he is a super cool guy and invited me back around mid September. Just a follow up.

15

The Video Rental That Made Me Weird

I remember a time when a trip to the video rental store was a Friday night must that determined what I would be up to for that night and possibly Saturday night too. The whole process took almost an hour to decide what two hours I would sacrifice my youth on because in a store with nearly ten thousand movies, there was a high probability that you could end up with a doozie. That probably explains why Iron Eagle was rented close to two hundred times.  And Muppets Take Manhattan. And National Geographic documentary on Sharks. Anyway, I had a very particular genre of movies that didn’t leave much room for anything new and looking back, my parents must have really dreaded Friday nights in the living room. Who can possibly take that many volumes of Gallagher stand-up without going a little mad? But all that changed one fateful night in 1991 when I slipped the surly bonds of Blockbuster’s normal selection to touch the face of horror and forever alter my Friday nights…and sleeping habits. This video was True Hollywood Ghost Stories and it terrified me. And perhaps it took hold psychologically because even today in my Youtube search, when I found this on a whim, because everything is on Youtube, I had this overwhelming need to look behind me.

I am not sure why I rented this particular video. My idea of a scary movie back then was Harry and the Henderson’s so it’s a wonder how this ended up in the family VCR. Looking at the cheesy late-eighties graphics, there isn’t much to be too disturbed about but that is where this film takes a turn for the unsettling and really takes on the same creepiness as the popular show, Unsolved Mysteries, with that amazing Robert Stack voice. The cool part about this film is it has a documentary feel to it and it is composed mostly of clips of old to recent horror movies. The kicker, and reason it made my blood run cold, was how it explained the supposed real ghost cases that the movies were based on and behind the scene disturbances while making them. Now imagine, if you will, a young boy who had never seen a horror movie, getting all the scariest scenes grouped together and then learning about how they may be true. Yeah. There was a spike in the utility bill that month from the hall light being left on at night.

Meet the host, John Carradine. He wastes little time in the introduction to shift from zero to one hundred when he begins with how the film, and the scariest thing I have ever seen, The Exorcist  not only had evil happenings on the set but was based on a real event. I had never even heard of this movie until I rented Real Hollywood Ghost Stories so when I first laid eyes on that grotesque appearance and raspy voice of the possessed Regan, I think I just sat on the floor and cried. I’m not kidding, I was a little pussy as a youth. During little league baseball I once dove for cover from a pitch that ended up being a strike. So, seeing the most terrifying movie ever made and learning how it was true all in the time span of ten minutes, I shorted out. And this video rental only got worse from there.

The beginning of The Exorcist part was the author, William Peter Blatty and he described what his inspiration for writing the book that later became a movie many believed actually had the devil imprinted in the film itself. He said he witnessed a phone picking up off the receiver itself and come down onto the table. I am the believer that chairs, dishes, phones, shoes, anything that doesn’t live and moves on their own is so much scarier than a creature jumping out at you. So as a very impressionable kid hearing this account had me captivated. Especially when it was followed by this face:

Even as I type this I hate looking at that picture. It had such a profound effect on my as a child and it was many years later that I finally summoned the courage to rent it during a high school sleep over. But this introduction to The Exorcist  was enough for me at the time. Especially learning it was all based on true events, people died working on the film, it caused audiences to go crazy and not to mention the fact that I was looking at something beyond my comprehension to what I deemed scary. It’s like growing up training ponies and then someone puts you on a bull at a rodeo. I could have used a gradual transition to horror.

The next story was of a real haunting of a house in Hollywood owned by an affluent couple, the Sommer’s and it was so bad they ended up selling and becoming a world-wide media spectacle after their story was published in Life magazine. Even the photographer was a skeptic couldn’t explain why or how his film kept having shadowy figured in motion from frame to frame. I loved the story but of course, as a kid I took it all very seriously and every bump was a ghost and every settling noise was a poltergeist. This didn’t help much, especially when they tied in the story of Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hopper’s, Poltergeist, and how much like The Exorcist, people died from this film and the set even burned down. Great. I don’t think this would have been quite as impacting if it didn’t have detailed accounts from Life magazine and NBC reporters that witness all these events. Even though I was an impressionable kid, I knew the difference between loons and credible people. Especially the next “true” Hollywood account about a woman who was assaulted by what was to be believed to be an entity. Hence the title The Entity.

This didn’t go over well either because learning how the local university recorded and documented this story and it became a constant in the world of parapsychology, even studied at the prestigious Duke University, I did not like learning about rape-ghosts. Nope. It’s as if this video kept trying to out-do itself! Each movie and real case scenario was a segway to the next bone-chilling tale. Like how The Entity was a great shift to the world renown Amittyville Horror. And of course, I got a taste of it by only seeing the most frightening scenes.

Much like the Poltergeist scene, a rocking chair doing what it does best by itself is about as scary to me as it gets. Especially when a kid is interacting with it and when an adult comes interrupts everything goes quiet. That is until the adult goes tot the window only to be met with glowing eyes and pig grunts. From then on I did my best not to look outside at night which proved to be tough because I had an atrium in the center of my bedroom.

Well, this fateful video rental kept up the creeps and went into the legends of Hollywood and their ghostly encounters like Houdini and the original Superman who committed suicide. It’s odd that both the original and the motion picture Superman was named Reeves. Is that a well-known fact? Maybe it is. Anyway, the scares peter down a bit but it is still a pretty good watch, even for today’s standard.  They leave the viewer with a really cheesy music montage of a pretty corny song and truth be told, it’s absolutely perfect. It even manages to leave you with the warning not to take for granted you are ever alone in the dark. I took that warning to heart and kept the lights on almost through middle school.

You can watch the whole series on YouTube and I’ll start you off with the first part. Enjoy this as much as I still do. Sometimes it’s nice to look back and still get the same impression from when you were so very impressionable. Sleep tight!

7

Just Call Me Sally

So get this. My Dad was playing golf over the weekend in Southern New Jersey when he hit a poor tee shot out into the wood-line where the grass was knee-high. While searching for his Nike ball he felt a sharp pain on his ankle which he immediately brushed off as a bee sting. Jump 24 hours ahead and his ankle is swollen to the size of a baseball and with much convincing from Mom, he decides to go to the doctor. What did the doctor tell him? He told Dad that in fact he was not stung by a bee but rather a poisonous copperhead snake.  What?

So, the doctor gave him meds, pain management drugs and hopefully a tetanus shot for good measure. But this begs the question, who gets bit by a snake and brushes it off as an insect bite/sting and has to be coerced into going to see a doctor? Well, the toughest dude I know, my Dad.  Sadly I am not near the man as my, well, old man is. Case in point.

I walked home from a goodbye party for a dear friend of one of my best friends. Was that confusing? Well, they are great friends of mine too but it is a far bigger impact on her since she has known them from the first time they started grad school. Living in a college town, it is inevitable that people do graduate and leave the nest. So where was I….oh yeah! I walked home very late and the mood was perfectly set: lightning storm, no one around on what normally is a very busy street, blowing wind and a slightly tipsy dude whistling “Love Will Keep Us Together”. And then I stumbled upon this.

 

Now keep in mind it was 2am, I had a few drinks and the over all ambiance was a tad unsettling so when I saw this I did stop and stare for a solid minute. It wasn’t a parking meter because it was on the side-walk and it was standing under the bus stop. But I am rational. Of course it couldn’t be this…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right? Because at that moment my 33 years on this Earth full of rational thought, this is where my mind went. So I walked closer, still not seeing exactly what this 3 and a half-foot figure was, standing on the side-walk at 2am in a thunder and lightning storm across from a convenience store appropriately name the “Murder Mart”. I am not making that up at all.

Still not entirely convincing even after my loud coughs and throat clearing that this was just a thing and not a thing. Looking at the photos now that it is sunny and I am sober, one can see that this isn’t paranormal but rather just some statue or object wrapped in plastic. But last night I wasn’t completely sure and cautiously approached, gingerly stepped much like a cat staring down a laser pointer.

I remember when I was in a combat unit over seas and carried a belt-fed machine gun and live hand grenades. Good to know that guy is still around. *eye roll*

So…a chuckle ensued as I finally was close enough to see that this wasn’t a 3 foot devil or menacing midget from a black mass party. No. It was just a credit card pay-meter that are being installed all over Chapel Hill. I know I lost cool points for this but ask yourself this, looking at the first picture, can you perhaps see where I was coming from? Ok. I know.

I need to lay off the scary movies for a minute. Sheesh.

20

Ebay Be Damned!

Before I begin on this post tonight, I wanted to let a few of you that still read VM in on the new stuff that has been happening to the WordPress page. It’s changing and soon it will be a “dot com” rather than a “dot wordpress”. Part of the reason is that I have visualized this site into something more grandeur and fun. You know, with videos, interviews, links, articles and pages for….whatever? Anyway, it is finally coming to fruition and as soon as some cascading word and the cool intro is done I, I will launch it. Also will be the collaboration of one of my favorite sites and internet peeps, Brian of Review the World. I think you will notice similarities, especially in the review section. So, keep a heads up and look for your personal invite in the interwebs mail. The contrast will look something like this…

BEFORE
AFTER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now on to the content of tonight’s post; “What I have blown good money on thanks to eBay”. There is no question that I am always tardy to the party when it comes to fads or even really cool life changing items that most everyone has. It’s true! When everyone in high school loved Nirvana I purchased and was enamored with Motely Crue’s Dr. Feelgood album…on cassette. When kids in elementary school had He-Man, I had Star Wars. Call me old school, call me out of touch but to this day I look at the “now” and I stick with “when”. So it should come as no surprise that on Sunday, eBay and I became buddies. Look at the crap I bought!

I have a knack for destroying watches. Whether it is my $32 dollar Ironman running watch or my $3k Swiss watch, all have been put in a box because I guess I sway my arms around like Gilbert’s little brother. I have anthropomorphic images of my watches huddling together and clinging to the one I take out of the box for fear that this will be the last time they see one another. Did you know that I am older than five?

Oh yeah, so I bought the watch you see above for $10. I bought The Last Starfighter watch for $10! I bought a watch, with a picture of Alex Rogin holding a Star League uniform for $10! Granted it is shipped from Hong Kong for almost the same price but…I will have a watch with a mini movie poster of the movie, The Last Starfighter. If it tells time, that will be a bonus.

This is a t-shirt that I really couldn’t say no to owning. Apparently this was a 70’s B-rated action film that is pressed into glorious fashion. I really do pray that I don’t wear this around anyone with…you know…no legs. But still, how could you say no to the movie tag-line, “He’ll cut you down to size”?

Now, this is taken on faith but I bought, er, won the auction for the autographed picture of Bossk, the bounty hunter from Empire Strikes Back. For $15 I figured ignorance is bliss if it’s a fake and it is going to a friend anyway. I like to imagine he signed this in costume because those claws look pretty tricky to write in.

So, that is what this guy wasted $67.oo on this weekend. The t-shirt is shipped from the UK and it came at a price of 17£ which I guess at the current standard equates to around $29 bucks or so. I don’t care, that shirt puts me into a new elite status among my peers.

Goodnight and be well!

 

4

Fall Beer Review 2.5 and Pneumonia

Oh boy did I get it this year! I fucked around and caught a case of walking pneumonia. Burning a fever to the point of complete delirium can be fun but when you have responsibilities and bills to pay, drinking a cup of “coma-doze” doesn’t inspire me to pick up my socks, go grocery shopping, pop in the office or any of the one million things I have to do in a week. So, I sucked it up and went to the doctor, got some anti-bios and here I sit a week later with only an annoying cough and some sniffles. And for that, I am glad I am not a pilgrim.

Poor Mikey had to depart with a tooth. I’ll take a touch of pneumonia over that. I have a horror story about my wisdom teeth that will always make my six month check-ups a lot like my cat’s vet visit; shaking and guttural noises. Anyway, I am rambling and you want another beer review so here it is. This time it’s another cider and one of my new favorites (in moderation), the Skull Splitter. What a name!

This week we are doing a finale with the one and only, Sierra Nevada Tumbler. Really, the only reason I was asked to do this in a vlog form to begin with.

Get ready for the drear because it’s here! Love, peace and beer!

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