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alancomp

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About alancomp

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  1. I had a dim memory of this one until a recent viewing, and I think Paul, June and Jason could use a Tony Curtis-starring horror film featuring interdimensional Native-American laser and ice battles, stairs-destroying old lady falls, fetus tumors and a one-scene appearance by Burgess Meredith that suggests he didn't so much have a script as he was around the set that day and Tony asked for a favor. But I'll let Roger Ebert's review explain why this would be perfect for HDTGM: The plot can easily be summarized, but first this announcement: If you happen to be drinking hot coffee at the present moment, please set your cup aside, because elements of the scenario might cause you to begin shaking with helpless laughter and you could spill the coffee on your rug, dog, cat, mate or newspaper. All set? “The Manitou” stars Tony Curtis as a phony psychic whose former girlfriend (Susan Strasberg) is hospitalized with a tumor on her neck. The tumor is unusual, doctors determine, in that it seems to contain a human fetus. They try to treat it with radiation - assuring, of course, that it will develop into a monster - and then Curtis decides to take his own measures. He starts out by consulting nonphony psychics, and goes on to discover that Strasberg is, in all likelihood, the unwitting host for a 400-year-old Indian medicine man. Indian folklore has it, you see, that everything in the universe has its own spirit, or Manitou, and that medicine men have such strong Manitous that they can just sort of grow on people. Curtis enlists the help of John Singing Rock (Michael Ansara), a contemporary medicine man, who agrees to help fight Strasberg's tumor. A moment's thought, and he'd refuse to: What happens 400 years from now when he wants to be reincarnated? Anyway, Curtis and Ansara and the whole hospital staff counterattack, while the Manitou, born as a monster, turns one entire floor of the hospital into a sub-zero environment with icicles hanging from the ceiling. The battle between the good guys and the Manitou involves earthquakes, attacks by imaginary lizards and the illusion that Susan Strasberg's hospital room has disappeared and that she is floating in interstellar space. Meanwhile, Ansara gets a mean cut on the face (not so bad, considering that he could have been dumped into interstellar space, frozen to death or eaten by a lizard). And attempts are made to counterattack: Since everything, even man-made objects, has a Manitou, Curtis and his friends decide to turn on all the hospital's high-powered electronic equipment at once, enlisting the combined Manitou-force of all the gadgets in a fight against the evil Manitou Anyway, it's very bad, but in a very good way. Absolutely bonkers. Highlander II The Quickening reminded me of it!
  2. alancomp

    October horror themed suggestions

    Another memorably bad horror sequel is also now available on Netflix Instant: 1981's Omen III: The Final Conflict. I have great memories of this one, as my friends and I saw it in the theater. Believe it or not, we had all read the novelization of this movie (yes, back then this was the burgeoning film geek's primary source of spoiler information...), and we were excited to see the "skeleton dogs" that Damian used to kill a few enemies in the book. So we go to the movie, and we see Sam Neill as the now grown-up, soon to be POTUS Damian, and we keep waiting for the dogs. And waiting. Finally, my goofy friend Dan starts chanting "BONEDOGS, BONEDOGS, BONEDOGS" during every boring scene of political maneuvering ('cause that's what the Omen audience wants). The bonedogs never make an appearance. Also, this movie has a group of 7 Deadly Priests (the Vatican has antichrist assassins, as you know) led by Rossano Brazzi (the guy from South Pacific). His accent is so thick, when he says "the Antichrist," which is a lot, it sounds like he's saying "Dandy Christ." The movie is not far removed from one of those Pink Panther sequences where assassins repeatedly fail to kill the clueless Inspector Clouseau -- only this time, I guess the fate of the world is in the balance. Oh, and I think Jesus shows up at the end.
  3. alancomp

    October horror themed suggestions

    One of the greatest terrible horror movies of all time just showed up on Netflix Instant, and it follows the HDTGM trend of a rotten sequel to a beloved original (just like Jaws: The Revenge!). Watch Linda Blair grow up (a little) and tempt Father Richard Burton in 1977's Exorcist II: The Heretic... William Friedkin, the director of the original classic, The Exorcist, said about this sequel, "I was at Technicolor and a guy said ‘We just finished a print of Exorcist II, do you wanna have a look at it?’ And I looked at half an hour of it and I thought it was as bad as seeing a traffic accident in the street. It was horrible. It’s just a stupid mess made by a dumb guy – John Boorman by name, somebody who should be nameless but in this case should be named. Scurrilous. A horrible picture." Chosen by a poll of the readers of the Golden Turkey Awards as the second-worst film of all time, it also failed big-time financially, and caused great laughter in theaters upon its release (leading to an unsuccessful recut by Boorman that did little to effect the laughs/scares ratio).
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