Fright Night: You’re not cool at all, Brewster

Sometimes, actually oftentimes, things don’t have to be good to be good. We know this. Hell, a few weeks back you had to read 2000 words on why I like Demolition Man more than most modern cinema. I feel like you’re all with me on this, whether you keep your guilty pleasures on an external hard drive, or write about them for the amusement of internet strangers. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how shonky it is, what colour the fake blood is, the jarring dialogue, the crap soundtrack, or how many times you’ve watched it. Sometimes it’s a time and a place that makes a fucking terrible film your cinematic comfort blanket.

With that in mind, and with Halloween just around the corner – WELCOME TO FRIGHT NIGHT.

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Street Fighter: Too Many Man, and Mike.

In 1994, I had no time for you. My whole life revolved solely around Point Horror novels and our Sega Megadrive. Had they only found some way to combine the two, there’s no guarantee I’d even be talking to you now, more likely living in a cave plastered with the pages of Call Waiting and The Lifeguard whilst engrossed in some 12 bit pixelated teenage murder mystery. To be clear; that is still something I’d be interested in if anyone has the capabilities. Teenage me has A LOT of ideas. Anyway, the Megadrive.

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Anaconda: I don’t want none unless…actually I just don’t want none.

1997 was the year of sequels. Speed 2, Jurassic Park The Lost World, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (don’t worry, I will eventually get to that one for you), Alien Resurrection, Batman and Robin. As we know, all these films were shite. Sure, we got Con Air, we got Face/Off, The Fifth Element, Spawn (shuuuut up), and Starship Troopers. But there were no creepy crawlies worth mentioning whatsoever. Somehow, at the end of my 13th year, I had gotten a touch bored of watching people shoot each other, and I needed something else. I needed monsters. I needed blood and guts and inhuman terror. I also needed Ice Cube (I always need Ice Cube), and when we made our regular Friday night trip to the video shop, both of those things were staring back at me from the top row of the horror section.

Now, we told you this is an action movie blog, about action movies. We’re only two weeks in, and I’m going off on a tangent. But you know what? I’m not ignoring monsters, because when you ignore the monsters, you also ignore the opportunity to revisit 90s CGI and tear it to fucking shreds, and I don’t think you want me to do that, do you? I think you need to know precisely every awful thing about this film that a revisit in 2017 makes painfully obvious, don’t you? Of course you do – it’s JLo and Ice Cube and Jon Voight and a massive rubber snake. And you do now anyway because I watched it and I refuse to suffer alone. Continue reading

Demolition Man: Simon Phoenix, A Love Story

I was never legally old enough to watch pretty much any of the films that I’ll end up talking about at the time I first watched them, but I’m certain I’m not alone in that. Watching from behind newspapers and through banisters after we were supposed to be in bed was the business in the Francois household. “No I’m not looking, Mum. No I haven’t ripped holes in this magazine, Mum.” Exposure to horror, action, and any combination of the two was drunk hungrily down into our emotional lexicon pretty early on, which is probably why my brother and I spent the first 18 years of our lives trying to murder each other with household appliances and wondering why it hurt our own hand and didn’t make a cool noise when we punched each other in the mouth.
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Doing The Resurrection Shuffle……

Hello darling, it’s been a while hasn’t it? You look nice though. New hair and…have you been working out? Thought so. Look, I know what you’re thinking, here he is cap in hand, crawling back to us from his latest failure. A man who thought himself bigger, better, brighter than the humble blog that spawned him. I know how you people think. You can smell the guilt oscillating off me in great stinking waves. So here’s my confession. Continue reading