R.I.P., Future A-Listers!

With tomorrow's arrival of Halloween 2015, we'll all soon be ending our horror movie marathons. In one last final homage to the spooky season, let's remember all the now uber-famous celebrities we've lost over time to such "slasher" films, a wide-ranging list that includes everybody from leading men (Johnny Depp, Kevin Bacon, George Clooney, etc.) to Hollywood's top starlets (Charlize Theron, Julianne Moore, Eva Mendes, etc.)...

'80s Edition   '90s Edition   May their pre-fame selves forever rest in peace!

"Friday the 13th" AMC Marathon

After previously having watched all the Halloween, Scream and Nightmare movies, as well as the entire first season of the Fear the Walking Dead television series, throughout the month of October, only one more franchise stands in the way of me and total Halloween movie bliss, and it comes in the form of twelve movies and one masked madman who prefers to butcher people with a machete. In case you haven't caught on by now, yes, I am referring to Jason and his entire Friday the 13th franchise!

The only problem I have here is that, unlike the other franchises in which I own pretty much all the movies, I don't actually own any of the Fridays, so I couldn't call it anything but pure luck when my need to watch this entire franchise lined-up perfectly with AMC's need to schedule them all back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-you get the point.

That's right, y'all, we've done DVD, VHS and TiVo marathons, but now it's time for us to tackle the boob tube. Thank you, AMC, for saving my spooky season!

Friday the 13th (1980) - Run Time: 95 mins. - Released: 05/09/80 - My Rating: 8/10 - This movie was produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, who had previously worked with filmmaker Wes Craven on the film The Last House on the Left. Inspired by John Carpenter's Halloween, he wanted this newer movie to be shocking, visually stunning and to make people jump out of their seat, so he called on Victor Miller to write up the script, and together, they came up with a revolutionary way to contribute to the horror movie genre – by creating its first ever human female serial killer. "But isn't Friday the 13th where Jason goes around killing all those kids," you ask? It is, starting with part two, but in part one, the story was a little bit different. It was actually Jason's schizophrenic mother, Pamela Voorhees, who was doing the killings. Her motive? While she was working as a cook at Camp Crystal Lake in the summer of 1958, her son Jason drowned when two camp counselors were thought to be watching him. Instead of watching him, they were off having sex with each other, leaving the little boy, whom they knew was not a very good swimmer, to fend for himself. So on what-would've-been Jason's birthday, his mom is back at camp seeking revenge in the form of the camp being closed forever and everyone associated with it being killed. Since this one was essentially the only Friday the 13th to not feature Jason Voorhees as the main antagonist, it was much more slow moving than the rest... probably because their intent was simply to scare camp-goers, not start up a franchise that has now gone on to span 12 films in total, including one crossover film and one remake. Who could have ever predicted such success for a film whose biggest scares were its shaky POV camera view, its creepy chant for background music ("Chh! Chh! Chh! (Kill! Kill! Kill!)"), some suspenseful timing and a mysterious killer who's kept from us until the final reveal? Not even Kevin Bacon, who was 22-years-young when he starred in this movie, would have predicted that!

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) - Run Time: 87 mins. - Released: 05/01/81 - My Rating: 7.5/10 - Turns out, Jason wasn't dead, as his mom and the rest of us thought. However, even in this film, Jason still isn't the recognizable entity we've come to know, as he had yet to don his signature hockey mask. Instead, he's made to be the same type of enigma that his mom was in the franchise's initial outing, since we only see his arms as he sticks an ice pick through the head of Alice, the girl that decapitated his mother in the first film, and we again only see his arms as he chokes Crazy Ralph, the prophetic town drunk, using barbed-wire wrapped around a tree. In this film, Jason basically resembles the killer from the film The Town That Dreaded Sundown, as he is shown wearing a burlap sack to conceal his face the few times he does appear on screen, wears a long-sleeved flannel shirt and uses everyday camp tools (e.g. pitchfork, machete, hammer claw, etc.) as weapons. Applying some of the same elements that made the original a sleeper hit, such as a first-person camera perspective, gory stalk-and-slash scenes and campground settings, this film also added a few more bits by showing us the abandoned shack in the woods where Jason had been hiding and the rough altar he built around his mother's decomposing head. It would appear that his only motive throughout this entire film was to get revenge for the death of his mother, but the apple really doesn't fall that far from the tree, as Jason is just as maniacally delusional as his mother used to be, which leads to some funny scenes such as when an out-on-the-town Ginny talks about what kind of feral child Jason would be "were he still alive" (just as they cut back to Jason killing some of her friends back at camp), and when, after she finds out that he is still alive, she dons a sweater and recites the speech his mother once gave him to try and fool the big dummy into thinking she was his mother, a plan which seems to be working until he spots his real mother's head on the altar behind her. However, what I like most about this film is that Jason still appears to be human, as A, a cop spots him running through the woods at one point (nobody would ever catch him stalking about in these newer Jason films), and B, one strong machete hit to the shoulder is what essentially puts Jason down for the count (no way would one hit be enough in these newer films!). Also, and I'm not sure if that's what was intended, but wheelchair-bound Mark in this film reminded me a bit of wheelchair-bound Franklin in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, another grainy "real"-ish horror movie. If that was meant as a homage to a great horror movie of the same style, then kudos to director Steve Miner. But either way, I appreciated the could-be realness of this film, and I feel like that's something the newer films in this franchise lack, as Jason's now at times unbelievably superhuman.

Friday the 13th Part III (1982) - Run Time: 95 mins. - Released: 08/13/82 - My Rating: 7/10 - A van loaded with stupid twenty-somethings heads up to Crystal Lake for the weekend for no other purpose than to smoke pot and screw each other silly. Among them are pudgy guy Shelly who enjoys immature practical jokes, a newly-pregnant girl, a hippie couple who are constantly ensconced in a cloud of pot smoke and the emotionally-damaged Chris, who loves Crystal Lake but has terrible memories of it. See, some time ago, Chris was attacked in the woods by a man with a terribly deformed face. During the attack, she passed out, waking up the next morning safe in her own bed at home. She is not entirely convinced that it was all a dream, and so she decides that a weekend at her former haven may just be what she needs to deal with the past. But of course, it was not a dream, as all of us already know. The man who attacked her was Jason Voorhees, and no sooner do the kids settle in and start partying and screwing than he shows up again, ready for some post-coital killings. First to get beat up are an obnoxious trio of motorcycle thugs who harassed our heroes. Then, Jason gets right down to what he does best – stabbing, skewering, bisecting and impaling anyone who is stupid enough to wander off alone waiting for him to approach. Still, I liked this movie because alas Jason gets to don the signature hockey mask we've all come to know and fear, and I also liked the ending, in which the rotted remains of Mother Voorhees rise from the lake in a nod to the first films' shocking ending. (I'm still not sure how Mother Voorhees got her head back on, but who cares? This isn't a movie you're supposed to think about too much. And plus, it's explained away as having possibly been the sole survivor's delusion, anyway.) Another thing I noticed was how closely unmasked Jason resembled a grown-up version of the banjo player from Deliverance. Yeah, this movie is stupid, but it's harmless fun, and it actually does have some great parts to it. For instance, I really enjoyed the start of it, as the film picks up from the day after the events of the previous film, with Jason going to a lakefront store to replace his clothing and his mask, but where he instead ends up killing both of the store owners with – what else? – a meat cleaver and a knitting needle. After that, he sneaks into the barn at a local farmhouse called Higgin's Haven to recover from his injuries, only to find the aforementioned biker gang unwittingly disturbing his beauty sleep. Big mistake, y'all! Also, big mistake here by director Steve Miner, as anybody who knows anything about biker gangs knows that every member of the same gang has the same roller on the back of their vest, not three different designs for three different members (e.g. Fox's motorcycle demon, Loco's skull & Ali's spider). However, that's neither here nor there, that's just me being OCD. Not to knock Steve Miner too much, though, I will give him props for a couple of things. One, for making a very atmospheric and tense film with the foreground being used for false scares, doors opening when no one's there, strange noises constantly being heard, missing props that the characters know were just there and other such techniques. Two, for giving Jason his signature hockey mask, forever securing his place in Friday the 13th folklore. Three, for featuring some of the most creative and gruesome deaths of the series (Vera with an arrow through her eye, Andy while walking on his hands, Debbie's knife-through-the-hammock stabbing, Shelly's "nice make-up!" neck slashing, hippie Chuck's electrocution with the fuse box, Rick whose head gets squeezed until his eye pops out, etc.). Four, for giving us our first-ever 3-D horror movie, as that was a movie-going option for the film's theatrical release. And five, for making a Friday the 13th with which you just can't go wrong!

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) - Run Time: 91 mins. - Released: 04/13/84 - My Rating: 6.5/10 - Hockey-masked Jason goes after another batch of teens at Crystal Lake, and this time the group he's targeting includes "dead f**k" Crispin Glover, “Mouth” from The Goonies (the always-lovable Corey Feldman) and other youngins that are definitely in over their heads without even knowing it. Much like its predecessor, and just as its title suggests, this film was initially supposed to end the series, but Hollywood has a funny way of rescinding their promises when the word “money” is involved, so that's of course what happened at this point in the franchise, and Jason lived to see many, many, many more mostly bad days after these ones. However, these ones really weren't bad, as this film succeeded in many regards in addition to its financial success. Creating an unusually dark atmosphere, this fourth installment in the franchise was especially good at mixing Ted White's praise-worthy portrayal of Jason with Tom Savini's brutally gory effects, as Jason escapes cold storage at the county morgue before working his way back to camp. Continuing from the night after the events of the previous film, this film quickly works its way through to its conclusion, but not before adding a few memorable things to the franchise. Among those things: Crispin Glover's weird white boy dance moves, Sara's pick-up line ("Do you mind sleeping on the bottom bunk tonight?" "Why? Do you want to sleep on the top?" "No," with a sly smile and an "I'll be right back, let me go freshen up first!"), the very first all-shadow death in the series (how very Hitchcockian of them!), silent-film stripshows that eventually lead to Ted's interesting 8-mm. film projection screen death, and lastly, Crispin's gruesome death at the hands of a corkscrew/machete combo, and his later crucifixion to the front door of the house. All these fun activities eventually lead us to the final showdown where Tommy and Trish Jarvis take on Jason Voorhees. In the end, Jason's skull get impaled by his own machete at the hands of the brother-and-sister duo, after Tommy had shaved his head to confuse the serial killer. However, we all know Jason has more lives than a cat, so that doesn't kill him. What does kill him is when “Mouth” – err, I mean, Tommy Jarvis (sorry, but The Goonies will always be the first movie I think of whenever I look back on Corey Feldman's career!) – notices Jason's fingers twitching, and proceeds to hack at his body while screaming “Die! Die!” in a very un-Corey Feldman-like moment. I don't know if Corey was trying to shed the reputation left on him by this horror film or what, but after he broke through with this role, he went on to star in such '80s classics as Gremlins, the aforementioned Goonies and Stand by Me. Nonetheless, watching this in the year 2015, it was good to again see him in that old light. And furthermore, the fun with his character was only just beginning. (Enter Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.)

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) - Run Time: 92 mins. - Released: 03/22/85 - My Rating: 4.5/10 - Now, before we go any further, let me tell you straight-up the reason for my giving this film a much worse rating. Tommy Jarvis, Corey Feldman's character from The Final Chapter, did in fact return, but he was no longer portrayed by our favorite “Lost Boy,” in a stunt that I've never liked horror franchises pulling. He was instead portrayed by an actor named John Shepherd, not to be confused with the character Jack Shepherd from LOST. However, they didn't totally kick “Mouth” to the curb, as he did still appear in the movie, albeit in a way smaller cameo role during the film's prologue. Having gotten that dislike out of the way, I can still honestly say that Tommy Jarvis is still a pretty interesting character study in this film, despite the actor switch. Another thing the makers of this movie did that I didn't like was that A New Beginning also departed from the Camp Crystal Lake setting and Voorhees-themed mystery of the previous four installments, instead acting as a psychological horror film set at a fictional halfway house in Pennsylvania, and was going to set up a new trilogy of films with a different villain for the series. However, all these changes really ticked more people than just me off, and with the steep decline in box-office receipts (it was the second poorest-performing film in the entire series) came the inevitable return of Jason Voorhees in Part VI. However, this film is all the evidence you need to prove that by expediting graphic violence and gore, frequenting drug use and making the nudity and sex scenes more explicit, your movie will always find its way to new viewers and won't ever fully go away, as this film has developed something of a cult following in recent years, so it really is the most polarizing movie in the franchise. To briefly summarize it so that you can decide whether or not it'd interest you, Tommy Jarvis has ended up institutionalized at Pinehurst Halfway House, six years after Jason killed his mother and came after him and his sister. Unable to shake his Jason nightmares while there, Tommy struggles with his own sanity, something that's made worse when residents of the area start being killed off at an alarming rate in very brutal and seemingly random ways. Of course, everybody suspects Jason, but everybody's suspicions are wrong. It's not Jason doing these killings, but rather a paramedic by the name of Roy Burns, who decides to copycat kill after his son Joey dies at Pinehurst. Of course, Roy and Tommy eventually end up crossing paths, forcing Tommy to kill him in self-defense. Able to stave off Roy, the already-unhinged Tommy has less luck against insanity, and starts giving into his visual and auditory hallucinations during a psychotic fit where he dons a hockey mask, brandishes a knife and prepares to murder his friend Pam, when the screen suddenly cuts to black.

Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986) - Run Time: 86 mins. - Released: 08/01/86 - My Rating: 6.5/10 - Originally, this film was going to be Tommy Jarvis' coming-out party as the new villain in the series, but because of the previous film's initial piss-poor reception, Jason was instantly thrust back into that role. And not only was he placed in that role, but for the first time in the series, he was brought back to us as an undead more powerful superhuman who was raised from his grave at Eternal Peace Cemetery via two lightning bolts of electricity, and he instantly goes to work as a super killing machine proving what I was talking about in my write-up on part two of this franchise, that nowadays, it takes a whole heck of a lot more to kill Jason than it used to. Here, what eventually does it is a showdown in the middle of the lake at what's now been reopened and renamed Camp Forest Green, where Tommy, sitting in a boat, sets Jason on fire and chains him to a boulder that ends up at the bottom of the lake, after which the movie's lead female Megan cuts into the still-fighting Jason's neck using the detached motor from Tommy's boat. (And in case you're wondering, Tommy's “attack” on Pam at the end of the last film got explained away by saying that he was stopped before he could attempt it and placed back into the institutional system.) Though a lot of things make this particular movie a fun-to-watch fan favorite, such as its self-referential humor and its breaking of the fourth wall, what I really enjoyed most in it was the ways in which director Tom McLoughlin incorporated children to build suspense throughout the film, from the one girl Jason hovers over who closes her eyes and wishes her nightmare to end, to the one boy who looks at another boy and, as if their death is already inevitable, says, “so, what would you have liked to have been when you got older?” Jason lives, indeed, as does the fear of him!

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) - Run Time: 88 mins. - Released: 05/13/88 - My Rating: 6/10 - They should've subtitled this movie "Carrie vs. Jason," as that's essentially the concept here. Tina, a stringy-haired blond woman with telekinetic powers, attempts to resurrect her dead father from Crystal Lake, but succeeds only in raising somebody else from the dead – the psycho killer Jason! Without so much as a thank you – I mean, seriously, Jason, where are your manners? – the machete-wielding madman goes on to kill a group of teenagers vacationing next door to Tina, as well as Tina's mother and doctor. Of course, all these events lead to a final showdown, where Jason's supernatural strength (breaking through walls, surviving electrocution, etc.) is pitted against Tina's telekinesis (dropping a house onto him, electrifying a puddle he's standing in, hanging him until his mask breaks off to reveal an alien-like creature, engulfing him in flames, etc.). But even after all that, plus Tina's love interest Nick putting three bullets into Jason's chest, Jason's still standing... until Tina finally causes the spirit of her father to rise up out of the water and drag Jason back into the lake! Though the deaths in this movie are nothing new or special, Lar Park-Lincoln's acting makes up for them. She is truly part of a rare specie: the good slasher movie actress. There's only one other thing that I'd like to point out about this movie before we proceed: the missing (read: killed by Jason) birthday boy in it is named “Michael,” something that one can only assume was done as a tribute to Halloween. I just love it when these horror franchises reference one another, don't you?

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) - Run Time: 100 mins. - Released: 07/28/89 - My Rating: 1/10 - A non-explanation for the resurgence of Jason (his corpse just seemingly reanimates due to a passing ship suffering an electrical mishap)? Hair metal characters? Horrible '80s fashions? A graduation cruise departing from isolated Crystal Lake (and bound for Manhattan, of all places)?! Side stories that go nowhere (for example, what happens with the girl that tries to blackmail McCulloch, and why is that one kid so pissed at his dad for his dad wanting him to become the captain of a ship someday)? The worst representation of New York ever (you get mugged the minute you dock, there's barrels of toxic waste just sitting out in the streets, nobody lifts a finger to help you when you're blatantly being chased by a serial killer in the subway system, etc.)? The return of the “this voyage is doomed!” character being spoiled by his redundancy throughout the movie (you only need him to do that once, not every time our cast turns the corner)? A scrawny black kid trying to box with a 230-240 lb. serial killer wielding a machete on a New York rooftop (what is this, The Karate Kid)? The captain absolutely refusing to believe that Jason's on the ship despite the mounting body count and all the eyewitnesses that have already seen him and are attesting to that fact? Funny moments that just seem forced (like when Jason climbs onto the dock in New York and curiously wonders why the Eastern Hockey team's goalie looks like him)? Deaths that are very uncreative and uninteresting? Possibly the cheesiest ending ever (after giving chase through the subway system and Times Square, Jason gets injured within the sewers of New York with a splash of acidic waste and then the sewers flood, as our heroes walk off into the city)? The comic book-like silliness that is Jason's face near the end of the movie? Easily the worst acting ever? Basically, writer/director Rob Hedden got everything wrong, as this movie is sooo far removed from what a Jason movie is supposed to be. It's even worse than Halloween: Resurrection, and who knew any movie could even be that?! Hell, this is arguably the worst movie of all-time!! First mistake: taking a killer that lives out in the woods and placing him on a cruise heading toward a concrete jungle like Manhattan. Because really, though it's nice to see Jason taking a vacation on a cruise ship, it's not nice to see Mr. Hedden taking this franchise for a ride. I've got absolutely nothing nice to say about this movie, and frankly, if I could rate this movie lower than a one out of ten, I would. Too bad that's not possible, so let's just do what everyone else did, which is to move on and try real hard to forget it later.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) - Run Time: 87 mins. - Released: 08/13/93 - My Rating: 3/10 - How do you overcome a stupid movie like the one we got in part eight? By starting off stupid in part nine to work your way back? At least, that appears to be the thinking here. At the start of this movie, psychopathic killer Jason Voorhees is lured into the woods and literally blown to pieces during an FBI sting operation, yet his remains are taken to the federal morgue in Youngstown, Ohio, where the coroner discovers Jason's supernatural power. Jason, who's a demonic spirit at this point, can now exist without his own skin, as we first witness when the coroner swallows his still-beating heart to be taken possession of. Now in a new body, Jason begins to kill again. Having 83 confirmed kills (with five more pending confirmation) by the time he leaves the federal morgue, Jason of course beelines it to Camp Forest Green, where people go to "smoke a little dope, have a little premarital sex and get slaughtered," as one character so astutely, albeit jokingly, points out at the beginning of this film. Meanwhile, bounty hunter Creighton Duke, having found out that only the three living members of Jason's bloodline (his half-sister Diana Kimble, her daughter Jessica and/or Jessica's infant daughter Stephanie) can truly kill him and that Jason will return to life if he possesses a member of his family, asks for $500,000 in order to finally rid the world of Jason, machete, mask and all. Shortly after this revelation is made, and with Jason already having shifted bodies from the black coroner to the white sheriff, Jason kills his sister Diana, and Steven, Jessica's baby daddy, is framed for the murder. Jason's niece Jessica is now the only one left through which Jason can be reborn, but she's dating an unethical journalist named Robert, who is the host of a show called American Case Files, and Robert is currently trying to do anything possible to spice up his ratings by putting emphasis on Jason's return from death, even offering to pay the $500,000 for the supposed good of the world and kidnapping Diana's dead body from the morgue to host a secrets revelation special at the Voorhees home. Before he can host that special, though, Jason takes possession of him. In a showdown between Robert and Jessica, Jessica temporarily bests him, before reading a note from Duke that says that he has her baby and that he'd meet her at the Voorhees house, "alone." There, he informs her that he needs her help, as Jason can only die at the hands of a Voorhees, and he hands her the mystical dagger with which only she can send Jason to Hell. What happens then is that Jason, having now transferred his possession into a police officer named Randy, shows up at the Voorhees house. Possessed Randy attempts to be reborn through Stephanie, but Steven arrives and slices his neck open with a machete. Jason's heart, which has now grown into a demonic infant, crawls out of Randy's neck and makes its way to the basement, where it crawls into Diana's dead body. Steven and Jessica pull Duke out of the basement, as Jason is reborn. While Steven and Jessica attempt to retrieve the dagger, Duke distracts Jason and is killed. Jason turns his attention to Jessica, and Steven tackles Jason, who both fight outside while Jessica retrieves the dagger. Jessica stabs Jason in the chest, releasing the souls Jason accumulated over time. Demonic hands burst out of the ground and pull Jason into the depths of Hell. Steven and Jessica reconcile and walk off into the sunrise with their baby. However, after a dog unearths Jason's mask, the clawed hand of Freddy Krueger appears and drags the mask down to Hell, setting up the events of Freddy vs. Jason. Yes, the plotline of this movie is straight-up dumb, but how else can you take us from Manhattan in the last movie to what would've been Hell for the next one (but turned out not to be; more on that in the next blurb)? Something stupid had to be done, and frankly, I think this was a pretty valiant attempt at that. Watched alone, it'd be a horrible movie, but considering the tie-ins, it really ain't all that bad. And, if nothing else, at least it's an original idea, something you don't see too much of anymore in Hollywood, so I appreciated the effort.

Jason X (2002) - Run Time: 91 mins. - Released: 04/26/02 - My Rating: 2/10 - This is a marvel of modern filmmaking, the acting was on par with some of the finest films of all-time and this is clearly the single greatest masterpiece of the new generation. Haha, just kidding! This is diabolical murderer Jason Voorhees emerging from his cryogenic sleep to terrorize a group of teens on a futuristic starship orbiting the ruins of Earth in 2455, for God's sake! What were you expecting here – Oscars all around? No, the only reason this film even exists is because it was conceived by writer Todd Farmer as a means to advance the film series, while Freddy vs. Jason was stuck in developmental Hell. This is just a silly movie meant to be taken that way and watched on a humdrum day. After the crap we'd gotten during the last few films of this franchise, wherein the series' creators weren't just beating a dead horse, but were actually driving it around the track behind a tractor, this movie at least tried to give that horse a jolt with the defibrillator. In spite of the second-rate effects and general silliness, this tenth film in the series brought some visual energy and freshness back to it. Sure, the characters are all stereotypes, but they're stereotypes in new, colorful futuristic costumes, who get to use snazzy new assault rifles, hologram projectors and stuff like that to fight back. It doesn't work, of course, as Jason still kicks everybody's butt, but the change in atmosphere and sets does at least rescue the film from the boring tediousness of its more recent installments. Going that far into the future, you'd probably expect humans to be way smarter, but the funny thing about this film is that NOTHING has really changed in that regard: there are still tons of model-like teens showing their belly buttons and having casual sex, and they still get slaughtered by the antiquated monster in the hockey mask, who FYI, gets an upgrade near the end of the movie to become a "mansterchine," some kind of hybrid man/monster/machine killing apparatus. That really doesn't add anything at all to his character, but it does at least allow you to see him in a new light, too. So yeah, the special effects of the future may be just good enough to catch your eye, but basically, that's all I can say in defense of this God-awful movie. If you take Jason in space as nothing more than what it's supposed to be, which is a stupid movie, then maybe you might slightly enjoy this crock. Otherwise, it'll probably be nothing more than a waste of your time. This really was the textbook definition of a filler movie, and nothing more. It was something to (barely) whet your appetite as you waited for the main event, which of course was...

Freddy vs. Jason (2003) - Run Time: 97 mins. - Released: 08/15/03 - My Rating: 7/10 - Previously known as A Nightmare on Friday the 13th, which frankly I think is a much cooler title, this film went on to become the highest grossing one in Nightmare's entire series history. How'd that happen? By having great crossover storytelling and by giving fans of both franchises a chance to miss their preferred serial killers. What happened here is that Freddy Krueger is trapped in Hell, it's 2003 and four years after the events and time of the sixth Freddy film – remember, the seventh Nightmare movie was "real life," so there was no "Freddy" in that one – but due to the fact that the teenage residents of his town of Springwood have forgotten about him, he's been rendered powerless and can no longer return to Springwood because there's no fear of him left in the entire town. He "can't come back if nobody's afraid," so, under the guise of Jason Voorhees' mother, Freddy manipulates Jason, who he found while searching through the bowels of Hell, into killing the teenage residents of Springwood, hoping the mass fear will restore his powers. After all, residents of Springwood were terrorized by Freddy, not Jason, so obviously, every ounce of fear would be directed toward him, giving him more power than he'd ever hoped for. His plan works, but only to the extent of allowing his return. Once Freddy regains enough energy from the town's fear to once again give him life, he finds that Jason's like a big dumb dog that doesn't want to stop killing the "bad kids" of Elm Street, which Freddy, of course, sees as his job – and it's one that he really enjoys doing! Therefore, Freddy must stop Jason from killing somehow, and so the two start trading attacks, with the town's children (a group that includes Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child in her introductory film role) eventually sending Lori Campbell, current resident of 1428 Elm Street, into the dream world to pull Freddy out, as they drive Jason, who they've hopped up on Hypnocil, to Camp Crystal Lake, in order to give him home-field advantage. The plan works, and the stage is set: Freddy vs. Jason at Crystal Lake! However, if you're expecting to find a victor here, don't, because Freddy gets beheaded, but as Jason walks away carrying Fred's head, Freddy winks at the camera, so this battle may not yet be over. It either may have continued once we stopped following, or it will continue in a future sequel... who knows, and really, who cares? As long as both of our preferred serial killers are still around to taunt and terrorize teenagers in the future, it's all good with us! *Wink.*

Friday the 13th (2009) - Run Time: 97 mins. - Released: 02/13/09 - My Rating: 5.5/10 - Okay, let me start by saying that Jason really did need to go back home already, as the chronological events in his life had stopped making sense a long time ago. I mean, c'mon, dude went on a cruise, then to Manhattan, then into other people's bodies, then to Hell, then into the future, then to Elm Street (another serial killer's domain), so really, where else was there left for Jason to go BESIDES back home in this much-needed franchise reboot? I almost feel bad for Kane Hodder, the actor who played Jason through the grand majority of those horrendous sequels, as he's the one who was truly most affected by them. But notice, I said “almost,” because the guy did get some of those big Hollywood paychecks for portraying Jason in those worst of times. In contrast, for watching them, we got nothing, so who're Jason's real victims here? LOL – I keed, I keed, Jason's movies are always fun, even when they're bad (well, with the exception of that unwatchable Manhattan movie, anyway)! With that said, however, this rebooted version wasn't great either. At best, it was just mediocre. It didn't really stick to the original story all that much, as it put the entire first movie with Pamela Voorhees into a minute-long flashback, and took off on a whole new – and often times, very predictable – adventure from there. Hell, even Jason's origins story changed, as he now got his mask from the attic of some stoner redneck guy who looked nothing like the pudgy, perm-sporting Shelley Finkelstein. The one thing that really ticked me off about this movie is that half of it is spent following a dude who is looking for his sister all throughout Sussex County, New Jersey, and we get zero action until he FINALLY gets to Camp Crystal Lake, which frankly, can't come soon enough. None of the characters in this film are all that likeable either, as the blond guy's a cheating douchebag, his girlfriend and the guy she runs off with seem forcibly nice, and the rest of the characters are just stereotypes – the rap-loving black kid, the nerdy Asian friend and the promiscuous blond girl. The characters are so phony (and so “ethnically diverse,” which I'm sure was no coincidence in this politically-correct world we're living in), that it almost makes you want to root for Jason in this one. But then again, character development has never been this franchise's strong suit, so you really can't hold that against this film too much, can you? Still, if I had my choice between this one and the original, I'd pick the original ten times out of ten. It was just way cooler and much more innovative than this mediocre cash-grab of a film could ever hope to be. Yes, Jason needed to go back home, but he really deserved a better homecoming!

So that just about wraps it up for my marathons, as we've now seen Jason go everywhere BUT to the kitchen sink! Maybe I shouldn't give them ideas, though, because who knows? As silly as some of these movies were, what's really stopping some uncreative cash whore of a Hollywood producer from commissioning another dumb sequel where Jason takes on a regular 9-to-5 and becomes an unnerving pissed-off masked plumber? Sadly, that wouldn't even be a bad enough idea to be the third worst one in this franchise! I mean, seriously, other people's bodies?! The year 2455?!?! F**kin' Manhattan?!?!?! ($#!+, I'd probably want to kill people, too, if I lived in Manhattan!) Just kidding, New Yorkers, you know I love y'all! Now, who wants to play some hockey?!

*Slides hockey mask on and grabs his machete.*

Truth.

Horror Movie Franchises By The Numbers

It's the final week in October, which means Halloween is fast approaching, which means horror movies will soon start flooding your television sets, if they haven't already. In that spirit, I come bearing a gift, but not without first giving its creators the proper credit.

Paste Magazine freelance writer Hank Sforzini and his creative partner Joseph Bass worked hard to create this incredible Horror Movie Franchises By The Numbers infographic, so to them, I say, "thank you" and "great job!"

(Disclaimer: If image appears too small on your screen, simply click on it to be redirected to a larger version.)

Snake Island

As much as I have loved and owned snakes in my time, even I would stay away from this place. This is just craziness!

And to think, I came across this video while researching possible honeymoon destinations. Needless to say, this one is NOT getting the nod. LMFAO!

Italy, Paris, San Francisco... no worries, one of you is still leading the flock. ;-)

Funny Money

18 U.S.C. § 333: "Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both."

(In layman's terms, all that fancy language simply means that... altering money is illegal.)

Knowing this, I can't tell you if all these artists and comedians are going to face federal charges or not, but I can tell you one thing for sure, their work is funny as all heck...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"A Nightmare on Elm Street" Movie Marathon

In the spirit of the spooky season, the fiancée and I have recently hosted DVD marathons for John Carpenter's Halloween and Wes Craven's Scream, a recordable television marathon for Robert Kirkman's Fear the Walking Dead, and now, we've spread seven VHS movies (and one DVD movie) across the past two weekends, as we decided to kick it old school and host a VCR-based marathon for Wes Craven's other very successful franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street.

For you youngins, VHS, which stands for the "Video Home System," was a standard for consumer-level use of analog recording on videotape cassettes. VHS tapes had previews that took a lot longer to skip through, didn't usually contain special features, supposedly had worse image and sound qualities than DVDs (although that's mostly a myth) and required rewinding if you were ever going to watch that film again. A typical 90-minute film would take about 5-10 minutes to rewind, too, so that was never fun, hence why Blockbuster had to remind its customers with this little disclaimer: "Just to remind, please rewind." Nevertheless, they were basically the movie format that us '80s children grew up watching, and they were awesome! They even made for cooler box sets, too, see?

I kind of miss VHS cassettes, but not really, as they were a lot harder to store and their viewing quality would go majorly south after a decade or so when the film would become grainy due to environmental elements and cause our screens to pop and hiss at us. But this weekend, the old VHS collection I had from the mid-'90s seems to have held up okay, as I got to experience the first seven of nine Freddy Krueger movies on that format, and then the eighth one, 2003's Freddy vs. Jason, on DVD, since I don't own that one on VHS. The only film the fiancée and I skipped was 2010's A Nightmare on Elm Street, a remake that neither one of us owns, and that we both figure didn't warrant watching anyway, since it didn't "continue" any story, but rather "restarted" it. As far as we're concerned, the first eight pretty much encompass the entire story arc of Freddy, so they're the only ones I need to cover here today.

However, I'm going to do this rundown a little differently than the previous ones. Instead of describing every detail of every movie and therefore ruining said movies for anyone happening upon my write-ups, I'm just going to cover the overlying themes of the movie, the stuff I liked and didn't, and some neat facts that you may or may not want to know, while simultaneously trying to tie everything in together. When it comes to Freddy Krueger's pop culture references and special effects killings, there is just sooo many little details to remember, that it'd take me a lifetime to write a thorough review of everything, and honestly, I just don't want to sit here that long writing this up, because there's still one more marathon I want to get to and a few Halloween events I want to attend in real life, so without further adieu, let's get started.

"ONE, TWO, FREDDY'S COMING FOR YOU!"

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - Run Time: 91 mins. - Released: 11/16/84 - My Rating: 7.5/10 - The first one is the one where we meet Fred and learn of his story, so people naturally assume that it's the best one. Hell, they even state this outright in Wes Craven's New Nightmare, during a scene where a talk show host is interviewing series actress Heather Langenkamp! (However, Wes also directed that film, while other filmmakers directed the in-between films, so that opinion may have been just a wee-bit biased.) I'm in the minority that disagrees with what was opined there, as I think Dream Warriors is a better overall film, albeit only slightly. More on that in my Nightmare 3 blurb, but as far as the first film goes, it was an awesome experiment, too. A couple of fun facts about part one: It was Johnny Depp's introductory film role (and he dies in it!), more than 500 gallons of fake blood were spilled throughout its 1½-hour run time (I'm guessing New Line Cinemas went more CGI for the remake?) and it featured a serial killer who was actually named after Wes Craven's real-life school bully. Forever stigmatizing the guy who used to pick on you as a "monster" in the eyes of millions of movie-goers has got to be the ultimate revenge, no?! So anyway, let's get into the film and its backstory now. Years ago, a child murderer named Fred Krueger killed at least 20 children who lived in the Elm Street neighborhood of Springwood, Ohio. Arrested and brought to trial, he got off on a legal technicality, after which a vigilante group of ticked-off parents tracked Krueger to the abandoned boiler room where he committed his horrific crimes, doused the place with gasoline and burned it to the ground, killing Freddy in the process. Now, back in the present day, Freddy's found a way to get back to doing what he loves, as he's become a dream stalker who taunts and murders children in their nightmares. He's essentially become a boogeyman, one who can only exist behind the wall of sleep. However, if these kids don't wake up screaming, they won't wake up at all, as a death in the R.E.M. state equals a real-life fatality for them. More specifically, this movie follows Nancy Thompson (played by the aforementioned Langenkamp), a neighborhood teenager living in Freddy's former home, located at 1428 Elm Street, and her friends, as they run from Mr. Krueger, a guy with a trademark outfit (dark brown Fedora hat, red- and green-striped sweatshirt, a gloved hand with knife-like claws welded onto it, black pants and construction boots) and burnt skin. Freddy exists only in dreams, so the makers of the movie get a lot of mileage from their special effects department, as Freddy can do everything from dragging people up a wall and murdering them in cold blood without anybody ever seeing him to pulling teenagers into their chairs and turning them into nothing more than geysers of blood. It ain't until Nancy pulls Freddy into the real world and turns her back on him in the final scene, that she's finally able to stop feeding his merciless energy and weakens him enough to "defeat" him, and I use that word very loosely here, as Freddy always seems to be able to find new children to use as power sources and re-emerge pretty much whenever he wants. Though it seems a bit dated now, this movie scared people away from sleeping back in the '80s, much like Jaws had scared them out of the water in the '70s. It's more the thought of some monster grabbing hold of you at a time when you've got no control of the situation and causing you great harm, rather than people actually fearing the almost cartoonish creation that is Freddy himself.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) - Run Time: 87 mins. - Released: 11/01/85 - My Rating: 5/10 - It's been five years since Freddy's last adventure, and the family of a new child named Jesse Walsh has moved into the house at 1428 Elm Street, the house once owned by Nancy Thompson's family. Nobody had wanted to move into that house because of the known atrocities that occurred there, so Jesse's father bought the home for cheap, but soon thereafter, Jesse begins having those horrible Freddy nightmares. Unlike the last time, Fred's not only trying to kill this teenager in his sleep, but he's also trying to take possession of him, in order to be able to serial kill out in the real world again while using his own brain along with Jesse's body. However, Jesse has a girlfriend named Lisa Webber (who's played by Kim Myers, an actress who uncannily resembles Meryl Streep), a fellow jock named Ron Grady (played by Robert Rusler) and Nancy Thompson's found journal (which allows Jesse to identify the monster in his own persistent nightmares), to help steer him clear of Freddy as best as possible. Krueger's not an easy foe to best, though, and often times makes Jesse fear what he's becoming, as was the case when Jesse was just barely able to stop himself from attacking his baby sister or after Jesse kills both Coach Schneider and Ron Grady with Freddy's gloved hand. At this point in the movie, Jesse's mom was beginning to realize her son was crazy, Jesse's dad was looking into placing his son in a methadone clinic for drug rehabilitation, and Jesse was no longer sure that they weren't right about him. Long story short, this movie ends with love overcoming all, as Lisa's the one who saves the day when she confesses her love for Jesse and kisses Freddy, forcing Jesse to fight his way out of Freddy's control, thus (temporarily) thwarting another one of Freddy's evil schemes. There were more things I didn't like about this movie than things I did like, so here's a quick rundown. First, the story seemed forced (new kid in town knows nothing about the house he moved into's history despite everyone else knowing it? Hard to believe. Love defeats Freddy, really? Talk about corniness to the tenth degree!). Second, the storyline was a bit hard to follow, as the new director, Jack Sholder, made it deliberately hard to tell when our protagonist was awake or asleep. Third, the acting is ridiculously bad in this film, moreso than in other Nightmare films, which is hard to believe considering how this franchise has been plagued by bad actors, and kind of ironic considering the main female lead looks like a bajillion-time Oscar winner! And lastly, but certainly not least, Freddy's comical self was mostly taken away from us, as he essentially became a crass-talking, cowboy-posturing version of himself, with straight-to-the-point lines like "come here, f**ker!," for this mostly-bad sequel.

"THREE, FOUR, BETTER LOCK THE DOOR!"

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) - Run Time: 96 mins. - Released: 02/27/87 - My Rating: 8/10 - This third installment features the best cast, best plotline, best special effects and best backstory of any of the other movies in the series, and it also introduces a drug that continues on through almost every other installment thereafter. First, the cast. Heather Langenkamp returns as Nancy Thompson, in order to try and make folks forget that horrible second movie. This time around, she's aided by Patricia Arquette, who went on to win acting's "Big 3" (an Oscar & Golden Globe for the movie Boyhood and an Emmy for the television show Medium), but who was only then being introduced to movie-goers, as well as Laurence "Larry" Fishburne, also a future Academy Award nominee, who had already co-starred in Apocalypse Now and would later go on to play his most notable role as The Oracle in The Matrix. There's also an actor named Craig Wasson in this film, that if you didn't know any better, you'd swear is Bill Maher, but trust me, he's not. He is, however, the doctor who suggests using an experimental drug called Hypnocil for his Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital patients to avoid dreaming, but of course the hospital takes issue with using a non-approved medication, and so the crap hits the fan again, giving our esteemed special effects team a ridiculous amount of extra work to do. The reason this film was so good is because it took a different approach from its two predecessors, in that it focused on an entire group of people joining forces, in dream, to take on Freddy. Led by their newly-minted Dr. Nancy Thompson (Langenkamp) and supposed "suicide attempter" Kristen Parker (Arquette), the group is composed of teenage hospital patients suffering from the same Freddy-type nightmares, who choose to enter into a shared dream using Kristen's ability to pull people into her dream world. They all possess individual dream powers, which they discover as the film progresses, but still most of them die at the hands of Freddy in very memorable ways. Freddy kills a sleepwalker by turning him into a marionette puppet using the guy's limbs as strings, a T.V. junkie by way of a television coming to life and smashing the girl's head into it, an ex-heroin addict by turning his claws into various syringes and sticking them in her creating an overdose, a handicapped boy by using his own wheelchair against him, Nancy's dad by possessing his own dead skeletal bones and coming back to life temporarily to whoop some @$$, but eventually, the few remaining dream warriors "defeat" Freddy by burying his bones in hollow ground, since the living Freddy never had a proper burial. How did they know this is what they had to do? Sister Mary Helena told them so. Who is that? Well, that was her name in Christ, but before she became a nun, she was known as Amanda Krueger. That's right, they introduced Freddy's mother into the series with this movie, and even filled us in on the horrible day Freddy was conceived. He was the bastard son of a hundred maniacs, whose mother was raped by lunatics when she was locked in the asylum for the holidays by accident. No wonder the guy turned into a monster!

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) - Run Time: 93 mins. - Released: 08/19/88 - My Rating: 6/10 - The second most financially successful film of the series (after only 2003's Freddy vs. Jason), this one brings Freddy back to get revenge on the three remaining dream warriors: Kristen, Kincaid and Joey. Freddy makes quick work of the latter two, as he kills Kincaid in a junkyard while in the form of a car, and then drowns Joey in a waterbed after luring him into it by posing as a naked female model. Then, it's on to Kristen, who is no longer played by Patricia Arquette, but rather some girl named Tuesday Knight, who looks nothing like her. Anyway, since it's NOT Patricia, the makers of this film didn't need some no-talent actress taking up space on their set, so they also had her die rather quickly, by having Freddy toss her into his boiler. Once she died, however, her ability of being able to pull others into her dream transferred to her best friend Alice, who also happens to be the sister of Kristen's boyfriend Rick, as she was the only other person involved in this particular dream sequence. To fast forward a bit, after martial arts enthusiast Rick dies during hand-to-hand combat with a cheating Freddy, asthmatic genius Sheila dies by having Freddy suck the air out of her lungs and entomophobic tough girl Debbie dies by being turned into a cockroach and crushed in a roach motel, it's up to Alice and her crush Dan to save the day. They both head into a final dream showdown with Freddy at a church, where Alice, recalling an old nursery rhyme called "The Dream Master," forces Freddy to face his own reflection, causing the souls within him to revolt suddenly. As they tear their way out of Freddy's burnt skin, he becomes a hollow husk, never to be seen again... until the next movie, of course! (The characters did tell him to "rest in Hell," but we all know that's not going to happen because pure evil never really dies.) Anyway, I had two major problems with this film. First, if you're bringing back a character like Kristen, who was clearly the important tie-in character between the third and fourth films, you have to bring back the same actress who previously portrayed her. If you can't get that actress back for whatever reason, then at least bring on somebody who really, really looks and acts like her, not some Saturday Night Live version of your stereotypical blond girl because, contrary to what "Fred Heads" -- and yes, I may have just coined that term! -- may think, they aren't all the same! It was hard for me to suspend reality and see this Tuesday Knight person as being anywhere near the same as Patricia Arquette, so a part of me kept having to remind myself that this was in fact the same character, to keep up with this storyline. The second major problem I had with this film is that they essentially killed Freddy by holding a mirror up. Really?! If this is all it takes to kill "The Springwood Slasher," then how'd he survive that entire room full of mirrors in the previous film? This ending just doesn't add up. There was poor execution all around with this film, but I feel that the comical lines (for instance, my favorite one -- Freddy saying, "You shouldn't have buried me. I'm not dead!") and good special effects (the time warp scene was hilarious, and the roach motel scene was epic!) somewhat made up for that, so it was still an okay overall movie.

"FIVE, SIX, GRAB YOUR CRUCIFIX!"

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) - Run Time: 89 mins. - Released: 08/11/89 - My Rating: 4/10 - The title of "Worst Freddy Movie" is a toss-up between parts five and six of this franchise, but I give the edge to part five because of all the mistakes and inconsistencies made throughout this fifth installment, and the fact that part six was just a more enjoyable film on my imaginary fun-to-scary ratio. What made this fifth film so unenjoyable? Probably the same thing its creators were using to try to make it more "artsy:" the general tone is much darker than your usual tongue-in-cheek Freddy movie, the dream sequences are a lot more gothic in nature than what we'd grown accustomed to throughout the '80s and an annoying blue filter lighting technique is used in most of the scenes. Also, the movie itself had a stupid premise, and there were a couple of noticeable goofs made in it. So, first off, Alice and Dan are now officially together, and she's pregnant. Unbeknownst to her, the way Freddy's feeding his power source this time is through her unborn baby, who in the movie is the one guiding her actions in the guise of a fully grown kid named Jacob. Still with me? I know, this is way more complex than your usual Freddy movie, but anyway, let's keep going. Dan quickly dies in this film in a horrible accident (*cough* Freddy caused it! *cough*), and Alice keeps having dark dreams of Amanda Krueger's rape and Freddy's birth. There are two somewhat interesting death scenes that follow between here and the movie's ending -- one featuring a starving model friend of Alice's being forced to eat herself in a dream since Freddy was her deceptive waiter, and then choking on that meat when she finally woke up ("You are what you eat!"); the other featuring that girl's comic book-loving secret admirer becoming an imaginary comic book hero, only for Freddy to turn him into a paper doll version of himself and shred him apart ("Faster than a bastard maniac! More powerful than a loco-madman! It's... Super Freddy!") -- then, it's back to the rest of this lame-o movie and things that just don't make sense. First off, Alice has a friend named Yvonne who never believes a word she says about Freddy's existence, but later, she's the one forced to be the helping hand in her war against him. (More on this in a moment.) Secondly, in the last film, Alice had a severe drunk for a father whom she could never rely upon, but in this movie, he's recovered from all that drama without any problems whatsoever and all is forgiven. Not only that, but he's also the ONLY person she can rely upon when Dan's parents come threatening to take increasingly-crazy talking Alice's unborn child away from her in court, something the movie never even follows up on because it really had no place in this film, so why even bring it up in the first place? Third thing, when Freddy's being born, they show him as being all disfigured, but how can he have been disfigured when in other Nightmare films, you see him as a normal-looking adult before the townsfolk come a-callin'? And before I can reveal the fourth and final unbelievability, I must finish telling you about the film, by going back to the first thing I listed here: Yvonne. What causes her to change from total doubter to 110% believer is that Freddy attacked her at a pool. After that, she was gung-ho about bringing about his end, so she agrees to help Alice, and goes off to find Freddy's mother's remains, in order to free Amanda Krueger from her Earthly prison (the asylum wherein she was raped). Once she finds Amanda locked in a tower at the asylum, Amanda informs Jacob to use Freddy's own power against him to save Alice, which he does, causing "in utero" Freddy to die. Jacob is then returned to his infant form within Alice, while Freddy is returned to his infant form within Amanda, only to be considered "defeated" once more. However, in his supposed defeat, I was left at home wondering two things: 1) What the heck did I just watch, and 2) How was Amanda locked in that tower if they showed her grave in the third Nightmare film? Like I said at the start of this blurb, inconsistencies and mistakes marred this movie from the get-go. Even after it was all said and done, another mistake haunted its end credits, as Lisa Wilcox's (a.k.a. Alice's) name was left off of them, tarnishing the one good thing this movie did do (selecting Kool Moe Dee's "Let's Go" as the song to walk us out of this crappy flick). If I had to sum this movie up to you in just two words, those two words would be "don't watch." 'Nuff said!

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) - Run Time: 89 mins. - Released: 09/13/91 - My Rating: 4.5/10 - I thought Freddy was dead after that horrible fifth movie made most people never want to watch another Freddy flick, but I guess I was wrong because this one here, this was the official "death" of Freddy! (Guess we never mind the fact that he returns for two more movies -- and one more remake of the original movie -- after this one?) Okay, you know what? Fine, I won't be as negative with this blurb as I was with that last one, as this first '90s installment was a slightly better film experience than that last crock of crap, albeit very slightly, since the plot still seemed very forced. Basically, we're made to believe that, in 1966, Freddy had a child, who was taken away from him and put into an orphanage. Before you ask, nope, the main star of this movie is not that child, even though they try hard to convince you that he is throughout the entire first half of the movie, but rather, it's that child's therapist (Maggie Burroughs, a.k.a. Katherine Krueger) who is Freddy's estranged daughter. The town took away his little girl, so Freddy made them pay by taking away ALL of THEIR children. Yeah, okay, whatever, Freddy, I guess that makes you a righteous man, never mind the fact that you killed your wife through your abusive ways and that your child had ZERO knowledge that she was even your child (you two must've been really close, huh?)! I also didn't like the ending, since it was so similar -- and therefore, an un-thought-out rip-off of -- the ending of part one, since both had their respective casts pulling Freddy out of the dream world, only to defeat him in real life, this time by blowing him to smithereens with dynamite. *Yawn.* What this franchise needed after these two films was some creativity, not just more re-hashed garbage, and thankfully, that's what it got with the next two films. However, since I said I wasn't going to be as negative with this one, I won't be. Instead, let me focus on the good stuff in the film. It actually starts off REALLY well before taking a nose dive, as a deep-thinking Friedrich Nietzsche quote about dreams segues into a very silly and crass Freddy quote ("Welcome to prime time, b!+{#!"), which then segues into Freddy's wild bus ride in a possible tribute to part two of the franchise ("No screaming while the bus is in motion!"), which then becomes a plane scene with an older lady telling the male teenage lead to not be a p*$$y, which is then followed by a very obvious and hilarious Wizard of Oz reference (Freddy, dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West, flies by on a broomstick, and says, "I'll get you, my pretty! And your little soul, too!"). How can you NOT love that intro?! On land (bus), air (plane) and sea (okay, no sea!), Freddy comes into this movie in full attack mode with his testosterone on overdrive, and one can only assume that that's because this male lead is supposedly the last survivor in all of Springwood, as all the children there have been killed in a series of dream killings and all the adults are now suffering from mass psychosis. The only other thing I really liked about this film was how it made fun of everything from Super Nintendo ("Now I'm playing with power!") to those cheesy '80s "this is your brain on drugs" egg commercials ("Yeah! What are you on? Looks like a frying pan and some eggs to me"). In another possible tribute to its predecessors, the anti-drug commercial featured here starred original Nightmare cast member Johnny Depp, who for some bizarre reason -- inside joke, maybe? -- was actually credited as "Oprah Noodlemantra" in the film. That was it for "good" things in this film, although there was also a really annoying cameo by then-married Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold, which I assume some people must have appreciated, but I wasn't one of those. So, let's move on to some better, less all-over-the-place movies now, with Nightmares seven and eight.

"SEVEN, EIGHT, BETTER STAY AWAKE!"

Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) - Run Time: 112 mins. - Released: 10/14/94 - My Rating: 7/10 - After the last two Freddy films bombed at the hands of directors Stephen Hopkins and Rachel Talalay, the franchise was looking for some rejuvenation. What better way to get that than to go back to its original director Wes Craven, the most creative person ever associated with this film franchise? He's the man who came up with the concept of Freddy, who named him, who first wrote up a story for him, and now, he'd be the phoenix rising up from the ashes to save him. "Freddy's Dead," you say? Well, I beg to differ! In a very unique and utterly different storyline, we come to learn that Freddy's NOT dead, only the CHARACTER of Freddy is. The movies had gone stale, and no one really cared to see him anymore. What, then, do you do? Don't make a movie about Freddy the character, that's what. Nope, this movie wasn't about Freddy the character, it was about Freddy the entity, who has now taken on a life of its own. We're taken back to the beginning of the series with the return of both Heather Langenkamp, who previously and famously played Nancy Thompson, and John Saxon, who previously and way-less-famously played her father Don Thompson, only this time they're playing themselves. The movie is about New Line Cinemas ordering a new Freddy movie with Craven once again at the helm. The reason, the studio suits explain to Heather, is that they were going to kill Freddy, but the fans kept clamoring for more. Plus, Wes' nightmares had inspired the horror movies of his past, but he hadn't had any in ten years, but now, all of a sudden, he's having them again, so they've asked him to write the new movie's script. As he writes it, though, the events he's writing actually start happening in real life: Nancy is plagued by harassing phone calls from an unknown source and dreams that Freddy's claw is alive, her son Dylan wakes up singing Freddy's nursery rhyme and quoting lines from his mommy's Nightmare movies (parts one and three), her husband Chase Porter falls asleep driving to their house and dies, but not before Heather dreams that Freddy had killed him... and when she sees him at the morgue, he's got claw marks on his chest. At the funeral, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake rocks the ceremony, and Heather watches as Freddy comes out of the coffin and drags her son away, only to wake up and find out that that last thing was only a dream. She confronts Robert Englund, the actor who'd always played Freddy up through then, but he says he knows nothing about Freddy coming to life, and that if she needs him to help out with anything, that she knows where to find him. Freddy's taken on a life of his own, no longer controlled by movie direction, but rather by fan interest and his own need to exist, and the only way to get rid of him this time is for Wes to finish typing the script as quickly as possible. As the Smiths once sang, "How soon is now?" That's what Nancy wants to know, as she again faces off with Freddy in this completely original seventh movie installment. Leave it to Wes to save the day for Freddy fans and for Nancy alike!

Freddy vs. Jason (2003) - Run Time: 97 mins. - Released: 08/15/03 - My Rating: 7/10 - Previously known as A Nightmare on Friday the 13th, which frankly I think is a much cooler title, this film went on to become the highest grossing one in the series' entire history. How'd that happen? By having great crossover storytelling and by giving fans of both franchises a chance to miss their preferred serial killers. What happened here is that Freddy Krueger is trapped in Hell, it's 2003 and four years after the events and time of the sixth film -- remember, the seventh film was "real life," so there was no "Freddy" in that one -- but due to the fact that the teenage residents of his town of Springwood have forgotten about him, he's been rendered powerless and can no longer return to Springwood because there's no fear of him left in the entire town. He "can't come back if nobody's afraid," so, under the guise of Jason Voorhees' mother, Freddy manipulates Jason, who he found while searching through the bowels of Hell, into killing the teenage residents of Springwood, hoping the mass fear will restore his powers. After all, residents of Springwood were terrorized by Freddy, not Jason, so obviously, every ounce of fear would be directed toward him, giving him more power than he'd ever hoped for. His plan works, but only to the extent of allowing his return. Once Freddy regains enough energy from the town's fear to once again give him life, he finds that Jason's like a big dumb dog that doesn't want to stop killing the "bad kids" of Elm Street, which Freddy, of course, sees as his job -- and it's one that he really enjoys doing! Therefore, Freddy must stop Jason from killing somehow, and so the two start trading attacks, with the town's children (a group that includes Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child in her introductory film role) eventually sending Lori Campbell, current resident of 1428 Elm Street, into the dream world to pull Freddy out, as they drive Jason, who they've hopped up on Hypnocil, to Camp Crystal Lake, in order to give him home-field advantage. The plan works, and the stage is set: Freddy vs. Jason at Crystal Lake! However, if you're expecting to find a victor here, don't, because Freddy gets beheaded, but as Jason walks away carrying Fred's head, Freddy winks at the camera, so this battle may not yet be over. It either may have continued once we stopped following, or it will continue in a future sequel... who knows, and really, who cares? As long as both of our preferred serial killers are still around to taunt and terrorize teenagers in the future, it's all good with us! *Wink.*

"NINE, TEN, NEVER SLEEP AGAIN!"

Don't worry, kiddies, since finishing this mostly-VHS marathon, I have moved back into the new millennium, along with this franchise that has since started back at one (with a remake of the original film) and which stars Robert Englund as Freddy no longer (who the hell is Jackie Earle Haley, and why does the new "Freddy" have a girl's name?!)...

PS: Although there are now nine films in total (counting the 2010 remake), I know of at least one more remake that's set to hit theaters either in 2016 or 2017, so who knows how many there'll be by the time that you come across this write-up? May the rest be as enjoyable as Parts 1, 3, 7 & 8, and nowhere near as mediocre as Part 4 or as downright bad as Parts 2, 5 & 6!

¡¡ 'NIGHTY-NIGHT (AND SWEET DREAMS) !!

Gangsta's Paradise

This awesome warehouse that doubles as a private film studio has the coolest graffiti art ever, and features some of the finest "gangsters" ever captured on film:

• Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in The Shining.
• Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather.
• Al Pacino as Tony Montana in Scarface.
• Robert De Niro as Max Cady in Cape Fear.
• Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill "The Butcher" Cutting in Gangs of New York.
• John Travolta as Vincent Vega & Samuel L. Jackson as Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger as Terminator in The Terminator.
• Malcolm McDowell as Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange.
• Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.
• Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight.
• Uma Thurman as The Bride in Kill Bill.

Carrey Mocks McConaughey... and Hilarity Ensues!

I've always liked Jim Carrey. As far as comedic actors go, he was the funniest person out there between Robin Williams' prime and before Will Ferrell hit the ground running. So basically, throughout the entire '90s. When he hosted SNL last year, he apparently proved that his shtick never grows old, as he poked fun at Matthew McConaughey's Lincoln ads. When Jim Carrey decides to have fun mocking something, you just know your face is going to hurt from laughing so hard. That said, enjoy your sore face on this otherwise-mundane Monday morning!

 

Rattlesnakes vs. GoPro

Professional wrestler Jake "The Snake" Roberts used to say, "The snake will always bite back." I guess he was right!

Being Broke

Sadly, this is the way my life's been since birth. But someday, it will change! (I hope.) And oh well, even if it doesn't, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, right? Yeah, I didn't think so... LOL!

Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy this video from one of my all-time favorite comedians, Louis C.K.

Boy, Interrupted

"Fear the Walking Dead" Television Marathon

After having tackled two horror movies franchises -- John Carpenter's Halloween and Wes Craven's Scream -- the past two weekends on DVD, I decided to use some modern technology and a television franchise for this week's horror marathon, as the fiancée and I watched the entire first season of Fear the Walking Dead on recordable television. What we did was record all six episodes, as well as the lone Talking Dead that aired during its run, off of AMC the night before, and then we cuddled up on the couch together to watch them all in a row, not having really paid attention to the series before then. (My recordable television screen only displays five at a time, though.) ...

Here's my take on every episode:

"The Pilot" (Season 1, Episode 1) -- Original Air Date: 08/23/15 -- My Rating: 6/10 -- We're introduced to all the characters in this 90-minute premiere. Led by Travis Manawa, an English Literature teacher, and his new wife Madison Clark, a Guidance Counselor, the family at the center of this disparate tale has many regular people problems. Travis was previously married to Liza, and has a son, Chris, with her, who doesn't seem to like the fact that Travis left him and his mom behind for another family. Travis, whose now moved in with this other family, is having a hard time winning over his new wife's children, both of whom lost their real father to death and have acted out in different ways, Madison's son Nick by becoming a heroin user and her daughter Alicia by becoming overly co-dependent on her boyfriend. Clearly, they're both seeking some type of "out" from their realities in Los Angeles. In this first episode of the show, Nick wakes up from a drug-induced stupor to find that Gloria, the girl he shoots up with at a church-turned-drug den in "the bad part of town," has become a zombie and is eating people. This frightens him so much that he runs out into traffic to get away from her, but ends up getting hit by a car and rushed to a hospital. Once there, the doctors order him a psychiatric evaluation thinking that he tried committing suicide, but Nick, who seems fairly rational, says otherwise. Travis, his stepfather, follows up on his claims, and goes to check out the drug den, where he comes across lots of blood and instantly knows something bad went down there. He tries to tell his new wife, Madison, but she shuts him down saying, "It's a drug den. Bad stuff always happens there!" Meanwhile, a viral video goes public, showing an event that shut down the freeway the night before, where a guy got shot four times and still came back at the cops, violently. People are wondering how that's possible. While they do so, Nick escapes from the hospital and seeks answers from his drug dealer, Calvin, as to whether or not his drugs were laced with something. Unfortunately for Nick, after escaping the hospital, his parents went crazy looking for him and paid Calvin a visit first, before Nick could call him. So now, this drug dealer thinks Nick is ratting on him, so in the guise of a friend, Calvin leads Nick to some abandoned dry bridge area in the industrial side of town to kill him. Nick catches on to what's happening, and turns the tide on Calvin, shooting him dead. He then calls his mom, Madison, and tells her his whereabouts. By the time Madison and Travis come to pick him up, Calvin's body is nowhere to be found. Nick swears he murdered him, but now wonders if he isn't going seriously crazy... until Walker Calvin shows up behind Travis Manawa's pick-up truck. Not knowing about the incoming apocalypse, Travis and Madison get out of the car to talk to Calvin, only for Calvin to attempt to bite Madison, at which point Travis pushes him away and Nick puts the truck in reverse, slamming into Walker Calvin. After getting ran over by a pick-up truck, Calvin gets up, making Nick have to run him over again, this time in the opposite direction, and then have to slam on his brakes to toss him off the hood of the car onto the concrete pavement below. If people are coming back from the dead, clearly the world we know is changing right in front of us, that's what this episode aimed to show us. What I really liked about this series premiere is that we know more than the characters about what to do and about what's going on, a total rarity in television these days. However, the episode did crawl its way into the zombie apocalypse, meaning that it moved way too slowly and left us viewers wanting a bit more action from our protagonists, so it could have started off better. But oh well, it is what it is, and we can now proceed into the rest of this series.

"So Close, Yet So Far" (Season 1, Episode 2) -- Original Air Date: 08/30/15 -- My Rating: 4.5/10 -- The worst episode of the first season, this episode only exists to show us how slowly people come to realize the gravity of their situations. After showing us the viral video of the first episode and the confrontation with Walker Calvin at the climax of it, only now are Travis and Madison starting to think that maybe something is happening, to the point where they won't even allow Madison's daughter Alicia to hang out with her boyfriend because he's displaying a severe fever and where Travis is trying to contact his ex-wife and their son to warn them both. When Travis can't get through to either one, though, he heads out in his truck to find them and warn them in person. Meanwhile, Nick prepares to hunker down and kick drugs once and for all, but knows the battle won't be an easy one, so he begs his mom to get him a methadone presciption. When she can't reach his doctor, she decides to check out a supply closet at her school that contains various items confiscated from her high schoolers, and lo and behold, she finds some OxyContin in there. Meanwhile, Alicia stays with Nick, but considers abandoning him to go check on her boyfriend, until Nick suffers a seizure and starts choking on his own vomit, forcing her back to his side. Cutting back to Travis, he's since found his ex-wife and, via cell phone, been able to reach their son, who tells him that he's at a protest downtown because cops have shot a homeless man without reason (most likely because the dude was a walker, but our characters don't know this yet). Travis and Liza head downtown to pick up Chris, while Madison, back at the school, has a showdown with her zombie principal, Artie, which ends in Madison bashing his skull in with a fire extinguisher. As Madison heads home, Travis and Liza find Chris, just as an infected woman wanders onto the scene and police open fire on her, sending the mob into mass chaos. Luckily for Travis, Liza and Chris, they are able to escape the full-blown riot by seeking shelter in the barber shop of reluctant Daniel Salazar and his more trusting wife Griselda. As mayhem descends on the street, Daniel lowers the shop's metal shutters. Travis thanks him, meets his daughter Ofelia and explains that victims of the virus don't die. "They come back," he says. Outside, fires ignite amidst the sound of smashing glass, the yelling of the rioters and police sirens, while inside, Griselda lights prayer candles as her family and Travis's gather together. Again, this one was a very slow-moving episode, so after two airings totalling 2½ hours, we've now seen a grand total of three walkers (Gloria, Calvin and Artie, unless you want to count the guy in the viral video as four and the woman the cops shot during the riot as five). Either way, averaging about two walkers per episode in a show that's supposed to be about a zombie apocalypse is not going to cut it, so I could totally understand why people were starting to tune out after this second outing. But luckily for me, I didn't, because the show got way better quite quickly.

"The Dog" (Season 1, Episode 3) -- Original Air Date: 09/13/15 -- My Rating: 9/10 -- The show starts with Travis, Liza, Chris, Daniel, Griselda and Ofelia escaping their barber shop lock-in just in time, as the building next door is on fire and the looters and rioters are getting more and more violent about being locked out. The group of six make a run for Travis' truck, but during the process, a collapsing scaffold falls onto Griselda's leg, injuring her. Nonetheless, the group carries on, and gets her onto the truck. As they leave the mob scene behind, they talk about taking Griselda to the hospital, only to find the facility has been cordoned off by armed police, who've surrounded the building and are shooting the infected patients wandering out. They hear on the radio that a state of emergency has been declared in 11 states, that the National Guard has been called upon to manage the riots and that all flights are being grounded in an effort to contain the spread of the virus. Liza suggests that they go to another hospital, but Daniel says that the others would most likely have the same issue and asks to come with Travis to his residence, where he will call his cousin to pick his family up, evening their "score." As they drive to Madison's house, they witness a city-wide power cut, with fires burning amidst the darkened streets. Meanwhile, Madison and her two kids pass the time waiting for Travis to return by playing games, until something starts scratching at their back door. They open the door to find a wounded dog escaping the reanimated corpse of a neighbor named Peter Dawson, who had bitten into the canine. The trio sets off toward the house of their other neighbors, Patrick and Susan Tran, to borrow their shotgun, leaving the dog behind and their door wide open. While they grab the shotgun, they see the group of six finally return from their downtown rioting adventure, but they also see that Peter Dawson has wandered into their house, so they rush off to warn Travis and company. Alicia is told to grab more shells for the shotgun, and just as she does, a reanimated Susan appears and chases her back into the Clark's yard, while Daniel saves the day for Travis -- by using the shotgun they brought back to kill Peter Dawson, once and for all, with a necessary two shots (because the first one by itself didn't do the trick). At this point, Chris runs outside to throw up, Travis in disbelief asks what just happened, and Alicia panics as she realizes that the same thing that happened to Susan happened to her boyfriend Matt. Things are talked about after these incidents, including how to dispose of Peter's body, how Griselda's infection will soon spread throughout her body eventually causing her death, and how if something were to ever happen to Madison, she'd rather have Liza take care of it than have to put the burden of that on Travis because "it would break him." The next morning, Travis buries Peter, Daniel teaches Chris how the shotgun works and Madison tries to kill Susan but is talked out of doing so, in case there's a chance that a cure might someday exist. Daniel observes this and thinks that Travis and company are weak, and that they'd be the first to die in such an outbreak because of that, so he decides when his cousin shows up, he and his family'll be going their separate way. Team Travis packs up their cars and prepare to leave the city, but are forced back when Madison sees Patrick Tran returning from his trip and has to warn him about his reanimated wife posing a threat to him back at their house. She almost gets there too late, as Susan is about to bite into Patrick, when suddenly a shot goes through Susan's head... and we cut away just far enough to see that it was a National Guard who fired it, saving Patrick's life. The National Guard has now arrived, and things look to be changing for the better as this episode comes to an end.

"Not Fade Away" (Season 1, Episode 4) -- Original Air Date: 09/20/15 -- My Rating: 8/10 -- First off, the opening to this episode is by far the best one yet: recovering heroin addict Nick is on a floating device in the middle of a pool with sunglasses on, as Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" plays overhead. How awesome is that? LOL! Anyway, it is after we see this scene of a world returning to normalcy, that we're shown Chris, sitting on the roof of the Clark residence, videotaping and narrating events that have transpired in the nine days since the National Guard took over: a perimeter fence has been erected around the neighborhood, creating a "Safe Zone" with a strict curfew in effect. Since everyone outside the fence is reportedly dead or gone, Chris is alarmed to discover a light flashing from a house in the "Dead Zone." He shows Travis his footage of the light and insists someone out there is still alive, but Travis dismisses this idea and orders Chris to help Madison around the house, since Travis has a lot of work to do being the "man of the people" with the soldiers. Chris' step-brother Nick is now refusing to take his drug-weaning pills because he's feeling so much better and doesn't need them anymore, or so he claims. Officer Moyers, Commanding Officer of the National Guard, announces to the entire neighborhood that the Safe Zone is officially infection-free for a six-mile radius around the perimeter and that they are the "lucky ones," people getting to live in one of 12 safe zones south of the San Gabriel Mountains. Alicia and Ofelia collect weekly rations for their families, and Ofelia is even flirting with one of the soldiers to try and get access to the medication needed by Griselda, while Liza, who is pretending to be a nurse practitioner but really only took a few courses in school, is tending to the neighbors' sicknesses. It appears everyone has a job to do and that things are looking up, when suddenly that veil is pulled back, and we're shown Nick trying to steal one of Liza's patients' morphine drips to get high again. Apparently, things aren't as good as we thought there for a second! It is here that we learn Madison has doubts about the military's intentions, since they've been less than forthcoming with medication, information and communication. Her and pro-military Travis have an argument about that, which quickly becomes about other stuff and leads to Madison telling Travis that he needs to pay more attention to Chris and not just dismiss his son's ideas. At this moment, we also learn that another neighbor, Doug, whom we already knew had previously had a run-in with the National Guard, has gone missing. Travis goes seeking answers and finds Officer Moyers playing golf. Moyers tells Travis that Doug was taken into custody after soldiers found him crying in his car because they can't have "head cases" like that around camp. Agreeing with him, Travis mentions the light signals Chris had seen and gives Moyers the location of the house. Moyers shrugs it off, insisting they've already searched that area. After this meeting, Liza gets introduced to Dr. Bethany Exner, who is working for the government. Dr. Exner informs Liza that her patient Hector was transferred to a medical facility and that she knows Liza is not a real nurse, but praises Liza's skills caring for the community and asks for her continued assistance. Dr. Exner examines Griselda and recommends surgery at a nearby hospital. She also takes a look at Nick because of something Liza told her about his addiction. Meanwhile, Madison sneaks outside of the Safe Zone by cutting a hole in the fence, and finds that the streets out there are littered with corpses, some of which were clearly not even infected. She runs back home and tells Daniel about this, who immediately conveys his deep mistrust of the government. Madison then discovers something else: Nick rifling through a neighbor's house in search of drugs. She proceeds to beating the living snot out of him for this, but then feels bad about it when soldiers arrive to take Griselda to the hospital, and end up taking Nick as well, while forcing Daniel and the others to stay back and convincing Liza to join them. Of course, Madison blames Liza for them taking Nick, and tells Travis that exact thing. Distraught over all of this, Travis retreats to the roof, where he spots that same someone signaling from the Dead Zone house, only to be followed a moment later by gunfire and then darkness.

"Cobalt" (Season 1, Episode 5) -- Original Air Date: 09/27/15 -- My Rating: 7.5/10 -- We start off by meeting a stranger named Strand, who has a con man's charm, wears a suit and taunts his fellow cellmates, who include Doug and Nick, at a local military command post. It seems he's taunting them just to see which one will not break, and the only one who doesn't is Nick. Strand's found the man who will help him execute his escape plan! Back in the Safe Zone, Ofelia's ticked off at the taking of Griselda and so she's hurling objects at the soldiers until her "boyfriend," a soldier named Adams, intervenes to comfort her, basically just so that the other soldiers won't kill her. Next thing we know, Daniel Salazar has Adams tied up in the basement of the Tran home and is getting ready to do whatever he needs to do for information. "This is how we bring them home," he tells Madison, referring to his wife Griselda and Madison's son Nick, once Madison discovers the tied-up soldier. Ofelia thought they'd just use him as trade bait, but Daniel had much worse plans in store for Adams, who keeps insisting that Griselda and Nick will return as soon as they've been treated and claims not to know anything else. Daniel doesn't believe him, though, so he begins unpacking his razorblades and describing his past in El Salvador carrying out torture-based interrogations for the military-led government. Desperate, Adams reveals that Griselda and Nick are at a command center two miles away, but Daniel still thinks there is more information to extract from the soldier. Meanwhile, back at the command center, Dr. Exner is teaching Liza about how they euthanize people with bite marks because they can't risk letting potentially-infected patients live, lest they all start "finding out how the neighbors taste," and Rick goes to warn Moyers about the town's rising uneasiness with the National Guard, only to get dragged into a field mission with them, in which Officer Moyers tells him that he and his men are not a bunch of murderers because the people they're shooting are infected and no longer human. The scene cuts back to Daniel wiping blood from his blade after flaying Adams' arm, while the soldier begs him to stop. Daniel demands to know what "Cobalt" means after hearing the code word said several times on Adams' radio transmissions. While that is going on, a guard back at the holding cell takes Nick's temperature and detects a low fever. When they start to haul him away, presumably to kill him, Strand saves his life by offering the guard a set of flashy cuff links, then tells Nick that as a heroin addict, Nick is an adept survivor and that he could use his help during an escape attempt, showing him that he has the key to their cell in his possession. Then, for no apparent reason other than to symbolically reject the apocalypse, we're shown a scene of Alicia and Chris going to the rich neighbor's house, trying on all their fancy things, then breaking everything in sight. As they do that, Liza learns more and more about the nearby hospital, including the fact that Griselda has gone into septic shock there. Liza tries communicating with her, but Griselda is rambling something about the war and Daniel, but not making much sense, so Liza starts accepting the fact that Griselda may be a lost cause. Griselda then dies in the hospital ward, and having been instructed as to how traumatic brain injury is the only way to ensure dead people won't reanimate, no matter how they died, Liza takes the captive bolt pistol from Dr. Exner and shoots Griselda in the head. Back at the Tran basement, Adams tells Daniel that the military locked 2,000 civilians in the local arena after people began turning and trampling each other. He also reveals that "Cobalt" is a command code to initiate military evacuation from the Los Angeles basin and humanely terminate the surviving civilians, beginning at 9 a.m. the next morning. Chris and Alicia start seeing military vehicles loaded with soldiers driving through their neighborhood at night. The two notice that the soldiers are not paying attention to the goings-on around them, so Alicia notes "something's not right." In the final scene, Daniel heads to the arena to confirm Adams' story. As he approaches the doors, he hears the herd of infected people inside growling and pounding the doors.

"The Good Man" (Season 1, Episode 6) -- Original Air Date: 10/04/15 -- My Rating: 7/10 -- The three families prepare to leave their home after hearing of Operation Cobalt from Andrew Adams. Daniel wants to kill him, but Travis argues that without him, they'll have no way of locating Griselda, Nick and Liza in the command post. Travis persuades Daniel to let him take Andrew with them, but once they're alone, Adams begs Travis to let him go since he knows Daniel will kill him eventually, and Travis, who's sometimes too nice for his own good, relents, freeing the soldier. The families' three cars proceed to the abandoned checkpoint, where Daniel manually opens the gate for them. In the next scene, Daniel casually walks to the military command post with the entire arena of zombies trailing closely behind him, telling the soldiers there who're threatening him, to "save their ammunition" and then pointing at the zombies. With the soldiers now distracted by the horde, Daniel, Ofelia, Madison, Travis, Alicia and Chris easily get inside the command post. Alicia and Chris stay with the cars, while the rest go inside the compound. As the walkers start jamming up the area outside the medical station, the medical evacuation assesses the situation as being too dangerous and leaves without Dr. Bethany Exner, Liza and the other medical workers. As a result, Bethany says that she'll stay back with the patients, and that the rest of the people should head downstairs to join the military evacuation. Liza reluctantly agrees. In the parking lot, three soldiers spot Chris and Alicia and take off in the car that they found them hiding in, while in the holding cells, Strand and Nick hear gunshots and soldiers leaving, and decide the time is now to leave. On their way out, Strand tells Nick that their escape plan includes getting to "Abigail," as the two come across Melvin, the same guard Strand had traded with earlier, who is now being eaten by walkers. Strand walks up to Melvin and takes back his cuff links, before telling Nick that Melvin was their ride out and that they must now come up with a new exit strategy. Outside, Liza goes to board an evacuation helicopter, but pauses, only to watch one of the many soldiers trying to contain the breach out there get bitten by a walker and then proceed to kill himself by running into a propeller blade to avoid reanimation. Realizing that containment has failed, the surviving soldiers retreat and Liza runs back into the facility. Inside, Travis, Madison, Daniel and Ofelia look through the holding cells for their loved ones to no avail, but when Nick and Strand run from the infected back to the door they originally went through, the two groups finally see each other through a locked door. However, nobody has access to it (except for Liza, who's not with that group), and the dead corpses are getting ever-closer to devouring Nick and Strand. Just in the nick of time, Liza shows up with her access card to save the day, getting the doors unlocked mere seconds before the zombies could get to Nick and Strand. The entire group is now reunited... and running. As they do so, Liza catches everyone up on Griselda's passing, and Strand tells them that he has a house on the water with supplies. They run back to where Alicia and Chris are waiting with the cars, only to learn that the one car's now gone. As if this wasn't a bad enough scenario, suddenly Andrew Adams appears and points a gun at Daniel. When Ofelia tries to talk some sense into Adams, he shoots her in the arm instead, leading to the first sign of Travis actually having some leadership skills in this entire first season, when Travis suddenly pounces on Andrew and beats the daylights out of him. The group then takes off in their other two vehicles toward Strand's place. After arriving, Liza gives Daniel some medical supplies with which he can treat Ofelia's wound, before leaving. Madison chases after Liza, while Travis, who noticed Madison leaving, goes after Madison. Nick then learns from Strand that "Abigail" is the mega-yacht parked off the shore, and that Strand intends to board her for survival, as "the only way to survive in a mad world is to embrace the madness." When Madison catches up to Liza, she asks her where she is going, only to learn that Liza has a wound of her own and will soon become a walker unless she could manage to kill herself, but Liza can't bring herself to do this. So in a turn of events from earlier, it's actually Liza who asks Madison to kill her, because "it would break Travis" to have to do the killing. Travis catches up to the two women, is updated on the situation, and also on the fact that the antibiotics don't work against it. Completely distraught and heartbroken, Travis asks Madison for the gun and shoots Liza. Everyone hears the gunshot and looks for the source. Upon seeing his mother dead, Chris begins crying, while Travis drops to his knees and is comforted by Madison. The scene then pans out into the ocean and season one is officially over.

Despite the slow start, I actually enjoyed where this season went. I just wish the actors were better because, honestly, the only one I enjoyed watching was Rubén Blades, the real-life Grammy award-winning Panamanian salsa musician turned former El Salvadorian military torturer Daniel Salazar. The rest of the characters seemed to lack any real depth to them and were just kind of bland, although there's obviously still plenty of time to change that moving forward. And yes, I do expect to be watching next season, as I'm enthralled by the idea of tackling the zombie apocalypse at sea. However, are we even going out to sea? That's the real question, because I, for one, don't trust this Strand guy as far as I can throw him. Only time will tell, though. Here's to my enjoyable Monday viewing of season one leading to an even better second season!!