Category Archives: horror & scifi

Movie viewing mistakes you don’t make twice

Intending to watch the hilarious Happy, Texas but instead watching the not-hilarious Paris, Texas is a mistake I doubt one makes twice.

I certainly haven’t.

Ditto: thinking you’re in for an evening filled with the adorableness of Sandra Bullock (and adorable alcoholics, judging from the description) in 28 Days and accidentally finding yourself immersed in the horrors of zombies in 28 Days Later.

Haven’t made that mistake again, either.

Mistaking Under Satan’s Sun (aka Under the Sun of Satan) for Under the Tuscan Sun would probably be the most disturbing of all, but I haven’t seen either one so I’m just speculating.

Unless Under the Tuscan Sun also stars Gérard Depardieu as a self-flagellating priest. I hadn’t considered that possibility.

I’m pretty sure that’s not the case but I’m very sure I don’t wish to investigate further. Slate’s David Edelstein concluded his review of Under the Tuscan Sun with this description: “The movie is sweet but deeply suspect: It’s like Lost Horizon re-imagined by a realtor.

What the hell does that even mean?

After about 30 seconds of research I’ve realized it’s a bit less ominous than I thought, in that it turns out Lost Horizon bears no resemblance to the movie that I originally thought he was referring to, Lost Highway.

I am not to be trusted with the Netflix queue when I have a high fever.

Land of the Lost

On Memorial Day, SciFi ran a Land of the Lost marathon. I thought it would be amusing to Tivo them and watch them all. I thought there were probably only 6 or 7 episodes. 12 tops. Weren’t we surprised to discover that there were 43 episodes of the original show. 43. That just shouldn’t have been legal. This show had three actors and one of them doesn’t even appear in the last season, the producers just hired his brother and only shot him from the back or something. (That may not be factually accurate. After watching a dozen episodes of this show you wouldn’t be credible either. I could look it up, but I’m not going to. I believe it, so it must be true).

Since there’s a major motion picture remake about to land on us all, you surely know which show I’m talking about. Just in case you don’t, let me recap:

A ranger named Rick Marshall gets a Mike Brady perm, dresses his son Will and his daughter Holly in Garanimals and takes them on the most poorly conceived rafting adventure ever. They go over a giant waterfall that drops them into another dimension. From 1974 – 1976 they have many wacky adventures involving reptilian Sleestaks, an apelike creature named Chaka, and a bunch of rubber dinosaurs. This being a Sid and Marty Kroft show, every penny of the budget shows on screen. And how.

Sidenote: Will Ferrell played a character named Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenholly in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

There was an awesome episode where Dad threw a rock into a pit and then said something like, “I don’t know where that goes.” Then he threw another rock in and stood there, waiting for an answer and then said, “I still don’t know where it goes.”

I’ve repressed the rest of the episode, but I think there was something hilariously ridiculous involving a rope and giant carrots. Or maybe a weed called “dinosaur nip.”

Nothing says SciFi-fantasy time travel futurism like banjo music.

I’m sorry. I forgot what I was saying. The future alien Sleestak, Enik, just explained something or another and…what? What the hell is happening in this episode?

All I know is, there’s a lot of Acting going on and it’s slightly distracting. Marshall, Will and Holly are all inexplicably acting like William Shatner. Upon closer inspection, I see that the ep was written by Walter Koenig. Coincidence? You can watch the full episode here at imdb.

Go ahead, I dare you.

I have more to say about all of this but it’ll have to wait. I just clicked on a Land of the Lost fan fiction website and I think I need to go bleach my eyeballs now. And my brain.

Alone in the Dark

The Netflix Fairy brought us Alone in the Dark. I read the sleeve and couldn’t figure out what could possibly have compelled me to put this in our queue. Christian Slater, Tara Reid and Stephen Dorff do make an appealing trifecta of uber-badness, but that couldn’t have been the reason. OK, there’s pop culture archaeology, too. That’s impressive, but not enough. Then, Husband remembered why we wanted to see it: it’s directed by Uwe Boll. And it’s widely regarded to be his worst movie of all time.

Uwe Boll’s worst movie of all time.

Uwe Boll. The man who brought us BloodRayne. Holy crap, is BloodRayne a bad movie. That’s the the movie that one critic regarded as “not as bad as getting your eyelid caught on a nail.” The movie that did this to me.

I can’t wait.