150 Days of Halloween: Cat Eye, Children of the Corn, Pet Semetary, The Shining

Vanished again, sorry everyone. The way my brain works these days makes it feel like I live with some kind of sadistic roommate who has control over my mind. It used to be that movies were always something I could count on. Depression, anxiety, agitated bouts of hyper activity, none of these could stop me from just fading away and existing only in the movie. These mood swings have taken away my sleep, my motivation, and my capacity to be social when I choose, and now they are trying to take away my movies, my games, and my books. They seep in when I watch and drag me out of the moment, or just smother any drive I had to even watch them before I can get started. Its a strange feeling, to lack even the motivation to do the simplest things in life that you actively love to do.

Which is why I'm trying to get this all sorted out and fixed, like I mentioned in the last post. I finally found a psychiatrist who was recommended to me by a close friend, and have an appointment for late August to get that ball rolling. For now its cognitive therapy to try and manage some of the worst symptoms. I will keep the internet well informed of this riveting experience, but mainly I will keep you all well informed of horror movies. Since I will be droning on about four movies, I'm going to do my best to keep this short and sweet. So expect baseless mockery at times.

Like today's list of Stephen King adaptation! I enjoy King as a writer, often his work can be contrived and a bit pointless, but when he nails a story he really nails it. He also shares a trait with my favorite author of all time, H.P. Lovecraft. Like Lovecraft, his works rarely ever get adapted into a good movie. More often then not they appear in the world as misshapen grotesques, with malformed claws for hands waggling in our faces like cruel jokes.

I DARE you to make a shittier DVD cover.

Or in the case of Cat's Eye, three conjoined cruel jokes waggling all sorts of things in an honest persons face. This movie opens with the cinema equivalent of blue balling the viewing, but instead of being something a sex crazed douchebag would claim to suffer, this is a movie quality tease. A cat runs by, chased by a massive rabid dog which is clearly Cujo. The pair run through several locations and eventually cause a red and white Plymouth Fury to slam on its breaks, obviously Christine. Once the movie has its fun, "remember these classics?" moments, things get started.

The cat sees a ghost like apparition of Drew Barrymore appear over a mannequin and beg for help. The cat, being a well educated cat with a Harvard law degree, understands English and immediately uses its powers to know exactly where to go and sets off. Unfortunately the cat also has an uncanny knack for winding up in unrelated vignettes along the way. First it winds up at a facility to help smokers quit, where it gets electrocuted in a display of the companies methods. The cat soon escapes, but we are not so fortunate. We watch a poor smoker learn to quite via threats against his family, and soon he is a better person for it despite the physical and emotional abuse he and his wife endure.

If you find a child who thinks this is scary, punch them and call them a pussy.

Next the cat gets picked up by an extreme gambler, and also soon escapes the scene to leave us to suffer. The evil gambler makes a dude walk around the ledge of his skyscraper as a wager on his debt. The dude does it, otherwise we wouldn't have much a movie, and quickly turns the tables on the double dealing gambler. Soon the villain himself must walk the ledge, and quickly falls to his death.

The cat, meanwhile, makes it to the girls house where no mention of her magic abilities is ever made. A small goblin is trying to suck the girls soul out and the cat is her only protection because her parents are clinically retarded and/or hate cats. Cue adorably campy scenes of a guy in a ridiculous goblin suite. Goblin dies in a fan indirectly thanks to the cat, and we end with the cat getting fed an entire fish and then burping for comedic effect. This one has the distinction of being King's only PG13 movie, and of being slightly better then Dreamcatcher which ended with a crisis team trying to talk me down from the roof of the theater. This movie is three short films all trying to out camp and out cheese one another, and no one knows which one wins that battle.

It almost seems proud about starting over 9,000 shittier sequels.

Next up we have Children of the Corn. Not one of the nine thousand sequels, remakes, or the SyFy cinema abortion. The first one. This is a delightful parable of religion in small town America, where a small child preacher worships a corn Jesus who tells him to lead all the children in killing all adults. After those first fifteen minutes of the movie, a passive woman and a total dick arrive just in time to run over a kid who was busy dying of a cut throat. Being sensible people, they shove the body in their trunk and continue on in an effort to find a phone to call the police with. They didn't turn around an head back toward familiar locations to do this. No, they head off deeper into corn country for this one.

Pro-tip: Don't kill your family because a kid in a stupid hat tells you to.

They of course end up in the crazy corn kid town and begin the joys of running around while kids with knives also run around. You will thrill as asshole does stupid things! Gasp as useless passive lady gets captured by pre-teens with knives! Marvel as people hide in basements and other people get annoyed that they can't find the people in basements! Then some wacky things happen involving glowing evil lights, children dying from said lights, and the black smoke monster from Lost getting blown up by an asshole. I liked the short stories ending better, when everyone died. Anyway, I grew up with this movie and still love it despite how terrible it is, come for the high pitched child preacher and stay for the 16 year old who thinks acting means showing ALL of your teeth at once.

If you haven't guessed yet these reviews are in order from most terrible to least terrible, although if you were to graph it it would be a slight incline that end in a sheer wall. Before we hit that sheer wall of quality, we must first stand at it's base, where we find another cornerstone of my childhood. Good old Pet Semetary, the movie the insured I would never spell that word right for my entire life. I really do love this movie, but I'll take the nostalgia glasses off for a moment just to reassure you that it is indeed a war crime to screen this movie to a group of people.

They didn't take the tag lines advice when it came to the sequel! ZING!

Pet Semetary is essentially a guide for new parents on how to raise your children with a high mortality rate. Step one is to make sure that you move to a house with no fence that borders a road driven on exclusively by speeding semis. Next, when you learn about the massive death walls that speed by every five minutes that unfailingly kill every pet for miles around, proceed to not build a fence. Feel free to bicker constantly about raising your children, and ignore any ghosts who may suddenly appear to warn you about an Indian burial site at this point. Next, when your housekeeper decides to hang herself in your basement, allow your wife to tell you about the time she let her crippled sibling die alone and screaming because everyone in the family hated the burden. Don't be bothered by the fact that this women is raising your kids.

Following that bonding experience, you may find that the family cat somehow managed to get hit by one of those trucks. Somehow. Rather then inform your family and handle the grieving process with your children, follow your creepy old neighbor directly to the place your dead ghost friend told you not to go, and do exactly what he said not to do. You should now have a dead cat body possessed by the very essence of evil. Give the cat back to your children and pat yourself on the back. Try your best to ignore the scent of rotting flesh and the various injuries the cat inflicts on you.

"Seriously? Your going to try the evil cemetery again?"

If you are doing things right, you should be incapable of learning from past events, even ones days old, this will help in the crucial steps to follow. Against all logic, when you leave your toddler unattended in your fence-less yard he will somehow manage to wander into the road where he will be obliterated by a massive truck. The shock and injustice of it all will be overwhelming, but don't let that interfere with your dogged determination to be a moron who must have lost a brother in a miserable fence accident immediately following a strong blow to the head. Proceed to dig up that toddler and bring him to that place that everyone ever has told you is evil so you can have a demon wearing the flesh of your youngest son.

If you followed all of these steps, then you are well on your way to being awarded a cash prize for being the most blatantly stupid man to ever get a medical degree! The evil facsimile of your son will proceed to murder your best friend/father figure and your wife, which you will somehow find surprising. Pretend to have learned your lesson and battle your undead cat and son to the (re)death and burn all the evidence. This is the most important step, and the most easily botched as well, so pay close attention. Having learned nothing at all from this series of events, and apparently having the character arc of a rock briefly seen in the background, bury your dead wife in the same evil stretch of dirt for some reason. When she arrives as a half eaten corpse, lovingly embrace and kiss her while she stabs you to death. Congratulations! You left your one surviving family member an orphan with your in-laws who allowed their daughter to die and emotionally scarred their other daughter. FATHER OF THE YEAR AWARD!

"I'm killing you before you try to breed again Daddy!"

We now suddenly go from a series of campy and somewhat terrible 80's movie that I secretly love, to The Shining. If you ever met someone who said anything but good things about The Shining, then count yourself lucky, because that was no human. It was a monster. If you yourself don't like The Shining, then you can't fool me DEMON!

My review of The Shining is as follows. Its the single greatest adaptation of a King story, and its made by Kubrick. Watch the fucking thing. The end. I would write more, but I kind of want to be done writing now. Its an actually good movie with clever moments riddling the whole experience, the only downside is a child actor who could have been replaced by a trained monkey. It does suspense incredibly well, keeps you guessing until the end, and is beautifully shot. If you have never seen it, then you should, because its proven to prevent cancer.

"Kill anyone who says this isn't a good movie like I tried to kill my wife and son!"

Tune in whenever I manage to write again for more horror movies! Also here is that list I link to every damn time. The 150 Days of Halloween.