The Attic (1980)

I found this movie review from a few years ago, and had forgotten what an amazing film this was. A first general warning for this one though is that it moves incredibly slow, but once it gets to the end, the twist hits you like a ton of bricks. They just don’t make them like this anymore, no fancy special effects, no blood and guts… just pure psychological terror… well for the young lady in the movie at least. This movie truly has one of the most epic endings I have seen in a long time. Again, this is a short review from many years ago, and it DOES contain spoilers.

Review

***contains Spoilers***
The story starts off with a young woman in her mid 30s (Louise) attempting a suicide to a video of what seems to be a lost lover. After the failed suicide attempt, the story fleshes out that she is a lonely librarian with more than a few mental quirks, and is whispered about amongst the townspeople. Her home life doesn’t serve her much better as her life is controlled by her father (stuck in a wheel chair). As Louise spends more time with the fresh out of college replacement for her she begins to become more independent and defiant to the things that have been holding her back in life, even inspiring her young apprentice into taking steps to control her own life (which somewhat mirrors her own).

The two girls develop a close friendship as her friend buys her a monkey (her favorite animal) as a pet. The new monkey has furthered her independence from her father which does not go over well at all. As her father`s jealousy grows, his mask of being crippled is exposed as he murders her monkey in an attempt to keep his daughter Dependent on him and only him for companionship.

Soon after her monkey disappears, Louise and her father go on a walk in the park, where after a spill in his wheelchair, the father is exposed for being a fake. In a rage, Louise pushes him down a hill killing him. Upon returning home, she scours the house looking for stored away money since her father did not even trust banks to hold his cash. Her search leads her to the attic, where after discovering the body of her pet monkey, the door slams shut and is locked from the outside, locking her in the attic for good. As she desperately tries to find an exit, she discovers the body of her fiance who had supposedly left her at the alter many years ago, and was the source of so much of her mental illness and anguish. the movie closes with a chilling scene of Louise having a mental breakdown being stuck in a room with the only two things that had made her happy in life dead beside her.

Warlock (1989)

As I paged through my cable listings last night I was blown away when I saw ‘Warlock’ was playing on HDNet… Holy Crap, I hadn’t even thought about this movie in over 10 years easy. I was completely blown away at how cool this movie STILL IS, I mean there aren’t a ton of movies out that focusing on male witches, but if there were this one would still blow them away. When I look back at this movie it has to be Julian Sands’ greatest claim to fame… No disrespect to his other works, but after all this movie did spawn three sequels all with him in the lead. One of the coolest things about the whole witchcraft aspect of this film is that there was no wizard school BS, no Harry Potter like childhood innocence involved … no, this ‘Warlock’ was a “Lieutenant of Satan” out to do some evil shit in evil ways.

OK, so we start out in in 17th century Boston where a warlock is about to be burned alive atop of a basket of cats (have no idea why cats are sacrificed) when bamo, even while restrained he manages to cast some spell whisking him away to 1989 LA, taking the man who had hunted him down before (Redfern) with him. Within hours of being in LA this warlock manages to chew out a dude’s tongue in an awesome tongue on a frying pan to omelet sequence after cutting off his finger just to steal the dudes ring… OK, so hes kinda hardcore like that. Right after this he manages to find some bogus ‘spirit channel-er’, where he calls up Satan to possess her body so the dark lord can guide his way… Oh ya, and by guide his way I mean he cuts out her eyes and they literally point to where he is supposed to go. So now he knows his quest is to assemble the ‘Grand Grimoire’ or ‘The Satanic Bible’ so that all creation can be undone, and the warlock would have a high place reserved for him in Hell.

Now that our villain has his motivation set out for him, it is now our hero’s turn to take stage and embark on a witch hunt that will take him across the country. Once teamed up with a young lady who has been cursed by the warlock (a curse that ages her 20 years in a day, for every day until the curse is lifted), Redfern pulls out his ‘witch compass’ which with the aide of some of the warlock’s blood, points to his direction.  About this time, our villain is already in the Arizona area where he meets up with a trailer park full of rednecks. While passing through, he stumbles upon ‘the most coveted of all ingredients’ needed to conjure black magic… The fat of an unbaptized male child. This is apparently the key ingredient for a flying potion. Now this is one thing not too commonly seen even in horror movies, normally children are off limits, but not here … like I said before, this guys doin evil shit in evil ways. So now the warlock has some badass magic, and is well on his way to completing his goal, when Redfern catches him in a pretty sweet battle sequence ultimately resulting in the warlock getting away, but the young lady lifting her curse… which had nearly killed her with old age.

In the end, the main three cross paths in Boston for a pretty sweet black magic demonstration/battle royal to finish off a pretty freakin awesome movie. There are a bunch of sweet action scenes in this one, great comedic relief, and cool special effects (before CGI came in and ruined everything). I would definitely recommend this one.

8.5/10

The Monster Squad (1987)

If I have any sense of nostalgic sanity, then it just wouldn’t be right to post anything else until ‘The Monster Squad’ gets its due. Now this film is a prime example of what happens when a good movie gets marketed wrong. When released in theaters this monster classic flew under the radar by almost all, and was in danger of being dropped all together… until the VHS/cable release, and from there the cult following began. ‘The Monster Squad’ is a throwback to classic monster flicks in every way, you get Dracula, The Wolfman, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, and Frankenstein’s Monster teamed up to destroy humanity…. unless a rag-tag group of junior high/high school kids can stop them first.  When looking back on it, I used to love this film and watch it every time it was on… there was just something about a story where grown-ups couldn’t handle the job and it was up to the kids to save the day that was just epic. That, and it taught me about all the classic movie monsters, total bonus. Now that I am a tad bit older, and watched the movie again for the first time since I was a kid, I am pretty much amazed at the content… you got kids (12-15) constantly cursing, smoking, looking at nudie mags, and making hand made tools of death… no wonder I have such fond memories of this one, and on to the review.

Ok I will admit, with how awesome this movie is the beginning is probably the worst part of the entire film, the special effects were terrible, the plot seemed thrown together last minute style, and it really just felt out of place. That being said, the movie starts out in Count Dracula’s castle where apparently Van Helsing is attempting to vanquish Dracula and his concubines to hell/another dimension (this wasn’t really clear), but apparently they fudged up sending Dracula to present day 1987. For some reason Count D is on a cargo plane with with with crates filled with other monsters Wolfman and Frankenstein I believe, and frees himself and them falling into some sort of swamp where he meets up with the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Now it is here that Dracula apparently busts out the special medallion that was supposed to be used to send him to a netherworld and brings his buddies to life… and somewhere along this time line is powers reach the mummy, conveniently located at the Egyptian wing of the local museum. Anyways, the monsters are brought to life and our team of evil is assembled.

So now there are all of these classic monster running a muck in this small mid-western town, and none of the adults are willing to accept that perhaps there is something supernatural behind all the chaos going on around them. That is where the monster squad comes in, a group of youngins bound together by their love of old school monsters, and knowledge of these monsters… plus one older kid who is the tough guy outcast who takes it upon himself to look out for the little guys… oh ya, and spy on the leader’s older sister from their tree house/club hideout.

So as things start to escalate and the monster squad discovers the creepy German dude that resides in town, who just so happens to have a book written by Van Helsing, its time to start training and have an awesome montage sequence like no other 80s movie, complete with melting down silverware into silver bullets, learning archery, making business cards for the monster squad, and the youngest kid mailing the army in crayon… all in the span of an afternoon! Oh ya, almost forgot, during this time Frankenstein’s monster befriends one of the squad’s younger sister and becomes part of the group.

At this point, you know the drill, a battle of epic proportions goes down, complete with some of the most classic lines EVER… like when the fat kid kicks the Wolfman in the junk and busts out with the “Whoa… the Wolfman’s got nards” … so awesome. Also delved into is the age old question… “If the Wolfman can only be killed with silver bullets, what happens if you blow him up?” In short, he somehow pulls himself back together and gets ready to wreck shop. Oh ya, also included in this epic ending you get to see Dracula hold a 5 year old girl up by the neck and call her a Bitch… not something you see every day in a movie.

In summation, if you have never seen this movie before slap yourself in the face… then go rent the DVD/Blu Ray. If you have seen this movie, see it again, because it deserves it!

10/10