Tag: sequels

Really Awful Movies: Ep 197 – Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II

~ reallyawfulmovies

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:51 — 43.8MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS | More

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II is a 1987 Canadian slasher film directed by Bruce Pittman, and starring Michael Ironside. If that isn’t enough enticement to make you wanna watch, we don’t know what is. Frankly, Michael Ironside is a genre icon. C’mon, look at this resume, people: Scanners, Visiting Hours, Total Recall, Starship Troopers…

He plays Billy, a 60s teen with an impossibly receding hairline, who’s gettin’ down to Little Richard at the prom. After being rebuffed by the queen, one Mary Lou (from whose name the movie title derives) he angrily lobs a stink bomb toward her as she’s accepting her crown in front of adoring masses. Unfortunately, things go haywire, the incendiary devices ignites a spark, the drapes catch fire, and so does Mary Lou.

Flash forward to the 80s, and Billy is now high school principal at ill-fated Hamilton High. And the spirit of Mary Lou, is haunting the halls, like bad Axe deodorant spray. Mary Lou’s trapped in a treasure chest, and emerges, to haunt those who did her wrong.

Prom Night II doesn’t have Jamie Lee Curtis or Leslie Nielsen (and hell, Robert A. Silverman too, he of Scanners, eXistenZ, The Brood), but what it does have is the same low-budget cheap-and-cheerful Canadiana (it’s filmed in Edmonton, Alberta, with some re-shoots in Toronto). There’s also some supernatural weirdness and sinister dreamscapes going on.

This is a much better film than we remember.

 

Really Awful Movies: Ep 186 – The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

~ reallyawfulmovies

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:59 — 43.9MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS | More

On today’s episode, a journey to the Valley of the Sun…”death” valley, as it were in this serviceable, yet flawed remake of the Wes Craven classic, The Hills Have Eyes.

In this 2006 flick, Alexandre Aja is behind the camera lens (he of, the new-wave French classic, Haute Tension and Piranha 3D). And we get a little preamble featuring some nuclear scientists in hazmat suits and Geiger counters, roaming around in a desert setting. Soon, they’re poleaxed / bludgeoned to death…and we know something is lurking in this highly radioactive locale.

Cut to a more conventional horror set-up: the road trip. There’s nothing more American than going away for a long weekend in an RV or a trailer with the family, and venturing out somewhere along one of the many interstates that dot the nation. In The Hills Have Eyes, the Carter Family (which includes pops, mom, their two daughters, son, grand-daughter and son-in-law) is out crossing the desert to try to get to California.

That staple of the horror film, the seedy gas station attendant, leads the Carters down the garden path when he suggests there’s a short-cut that’ll save the family “two hours!” Soon, a spiked belt stops the family’s pickup and Gulfstream trailer, sending them careening into a rock. And whoops, they’re stranded.

And we all know what’s lurkin’ in them hills.

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, we explore the millennium phenomenon of remakes, the various horror franchises that were given a re-imagining in the 2000s, how nuclear weapons/warfare is treated in the original Hills Have Eyes compared with its successors, where Wes Craven stands in the pantheon of horror directors, the sensibilities of Alexandre Aja, characterizations that focus on Red / Blue state cultural differences, female characters, pet demises, and much much more!!!

Tune in each and every week to the Really Awful Movies Podcast for genre films of all stripes, predominantly horror.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 125 – Psycho II

~ reallyawfulmovies

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:55 — 33.1MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS | More

Is that you Norman? You better believe it. Anthony Perkins reprises his iconic role as creepy innkeeper Noman Bates in the long-after sequel to the Hitch original.

On today’s episode, Psycho II. Does it live up to the lofty standard set in the 60s?

Surprisingly, yes.

Let’s peer behind the shower curtain to see what lurks…as Norman is released from prison to attempt to resume some semblance of a normal life.

The Bates Motel is back open for business!