When you're planning to go on a haunted house road trip, make sure you're with people who are on the same page as you or you're going to have a bad time. Thank the crazies I have friends who are as insane as I am. Joined by blogger "C' of The Raven and Black Cat and fellow Blackout Survivor "D" we trekked the 3 or so hours to just outside Baltimore, Maryland to hit up not 1 but 2 haunted houses on the same night.
First stop was Bennett's Curse in Jessup, MD. Just by looking at their website you can see the accolades galore of "Best Haunt" this and "Top Halloween Attractions" that. Its for those reasons it was first on our list. As this was my first road trip haunt (my out of state haunts included Goretorium in Vegas and Universal Horror Nights in LA) I expected to be in the middle of nowhere and boy is Bennett's Curse in the middle of nowhere, USA. The approach to the haunt is ominously X-Files-ish as a white gigantic hanger bellows in the distance.
Inside it's filled with a online quick pic and an ominous animatronic dragon. It's dark and our fast pass tickets scurry us into the fast lane. A creepy old guy gives instructions and off we go.
You want Vampires? We got us some Vampires
Bennett's Curse is basically every incarnation of haunted houses rolled into one though they are kind of try to mislead you early on with actors spewing speeches about a medieval war between vampires and demons. That's so you'll be mesmerized by the insane amounts of high tech monsters they have set up triggered by motion detectors (?) to scare you. The amount of props crammed into the haunt can be overwhelming and stratgically placed actors looking to jump scare you is adequate but few and far between.
You'll get some air cannons ready to give you a quick jolt and some Travel Channel approved 30 feet tall dragons, gargoyles and monsters all ready to swing into action. I'll admit these special effects were quize mesmerizing but easily got tiring at the same time. As "C" pointed out, these were bought at the haunted house warehouse on the dollar. A moving eye prop was very top notch as was a giant dragon mouth that knocked me a bit sideways. They seemed to spend top dollar on their Halloween monsters hence the continued commercial of being featured on The Travel Channel as you entered.
But as you progress, you will get different versions of haunted houses at Bennett's Curse. All are labeled with fancy gloom and doom nicknames like "House of the Vampyres" which were the prop laden animatronics maze I discussed earlier. "Zombie Kingdom 3D" which was a 3-D colorful zombie maze complete with 3-D entrails emanating from the actors. "Sanctuary of Insanity" was an insane asylum complete with maniacs who will move the "jail bars" to keep you confused and lost.The haunt has no unifying theme but to get you spooked and hang out with every kind of boogeyman you can think of.
Flashlights: Scary Shit
However, one of the parts of Bennett's Curse was something that didn't have elaborate effects, crazy monsters set to Metal. It was a simple twist and turn maze that was in complete darkness. As you went through, various actors armed with flash lights would light up their gruesome faces at just the right moment to scare the bejesus out of you. There would be a flicker of light that would scare and indirectly help to guide your way out. Never have I walked slowly, arm outstretched hoping for that quick flashlight to get me through a maze. This was the best part of Bennett's Curse in it's utter simplicity and scare-o-meter.
The actors were mostly mute bystanders making sure to get in your face when appropriate. Some actors mocked my clumsiness as I bumped into my friends in the utter darkness. It's these brief exchanges of WTF did they just say that? that make the haunt a little more personal.
Final Thoughts
I've been to my fair share of high level haunted houses. Bennett's Curse is a smorgasboard of all your favorite monster haunts jampacked into one huge Halloween extravaganza. I'll say that all 3 haunted houses had some moments that had me jumping but not one of their 3 haunts had me going "Holy shit! That was fuckin awesome". You'll get your laughs, your screams and your share of WTFs if you go in not looking for anything more than your pre-packed monster goodies loot bag.
I think the road trip to Bennett's Curse was well worth the drive but I'm probably not going to be back in the future. Unless they have a giant hanger masked in darkness and nothing but actors with flashlights. But who would pay for that?
Night of the Punks is a 19 minute short that is in the vain of Return of the Living Dead and Night of the Demons. Here be the plot:
Small town punk rockers THE BRAIN DEADS have their first out of town gig. But there are a few problems: The venue is deserted, the promoter is a creep, their bass player has gone missing, and the only kids in the audience appear to be bloodthirsty monsters from hell. It's gonna take a lot more than a few power chords and teenage angst to survive this night.
NIGHT OF THE PUNKS is a horror-comedy short film in the vein of fun 80's classics like "The Return of the Living Dead" and "Night of the Demons." The trailer is styled after classic Grindhouse style trailers of the 70's and 80's.
So did this short rock out?
the jaded viewer says: I'll admit the punk rock in this rock and roll short is actually catchy and I was rockin out. The band is a little stereotypically "band-ish" concerned about gigs and merchandise. But that's all forgiven in the B-movie horror show as the film plays out. Seems like the band is playing to a nonexistent crowd and the motivation to play their first out of town gig was misleading.
Now our band is on the run battling some rock and roll demons. Aside from ROTLD and NOTD, it kinda of reminded me of a Misfits music video. You get your standard music jokes and your standard horror jokes. Like everybody makes fun of the bassist and the hot "merch girl". As we turn to the horror, the band unleashes ultra violence with tons of straight forward, non CGI gore with lots of oozing and gushing which is always a plus in my book.
A lot of stuff is crammed into Night of the Punks and the jokes, gore and romance come a mile a minute. Overall, it's an entertaining romp filled with 80s style rock and roll horror nostalgia. The performances are silly and over the top and the ending keeps that same tone.
If you get a chance to catch this short, its well worth your time. Now let me put on some Misfits and let punk rock keyboard cat play me out.
If you're like me, that title goes with one film and one film only and that's Peter Jackson's zombie classic. But let's not judge the film based on title alone. Because if you know horror, you know who Kevin Tenney is. The man has quite a directorial horror resume which includes Witchboard and the classic Night of the Demons.
So I kinda knew what I'd be in for when I watched Brain Dead. But could Tenney bring back all that was fun about mutant zombie 80s gorefests?
Great cerebral cortexes! Yes he can.
Brain Dead is an assembly line produced throwback 80s splatter flick that hits all on all the cliches that make the genre so great to watch. Gratuitous nudity, gratuitous gore, gratuitous over the top makeup and gratuitous snarky characters spewing curse words a mile a minute. It took a director from the 80s to actually make a good, solid 80s throwback splatterfest.
Sure it's a low budget, been there, done that premise, but sometimes you just gotta go with the ridiculousness and try to shut off your brain like the zombies in this film.
Boring Plot-O-Matic
What do a pair of escaped convicts, a preacher and his assistant, and a pair of pretty hikers have in common? They’re all delicious.
After an extraterrestrial parasite crash-lands in a backwoods American town – landing squarely on the head of a local fisherman – it sparks a fast spreading zombie infestation. As the brain hungry monsters multiply, three pairs of unlucky misfits convene on a fishing lodge for shelter. With zombies pounding at the door, the stranded, mismatched travelers must band together to stop the invasion – or serve themselves up as a main course. The problem is, they may lose their minds to each other before losing their brains to the zombies.
Full of ingenious gore effects, nudity and witty banter, “Brain Dead” is just as much a parody of classic zombie films as it is a clever update to the beloved genre.
Awesome Review-O-Matic
Let's review a movie by breaking it out by cliches. It's got em all and I felt like I time traveled and was watching a movie through my VCR. the only thing that was different was I didn't have to fix the tracking....and I have an awesome TV. So let's start off with the most important shit first.
Gratuitous NUDITY!!!!!!
In the first 30 minutes, we get to see not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4...YES! Count em 4 sets of boobs in this movie. And I'm not talking about icky fat-ish actresses. Nope we got some hotties showing off their assets.
Names are not important but grades are. Without a doubt, Cristina Tiberia gets an A, Sarah Grant Brendecke gets a B+, Michelle Tomlinson gets a B- and some other chick gets a C.
Yes you will see boobs and they're real and they're spectacular.
Gratuitous Cliched Plot!!!!!!
Some space creature that looks like black ooze crash lands and it's actually a parasitic organism that when it takes over a human body, craves for brains so it can reproduce. Enter zombie mutant puppets.
You've seen this in Night of the Demons and the movie takes elements of Evil Dead, Slither, Evil Aliens and countless others.
Gratuitous Stereotypical Characters!!!!!!
So who do we get to watch for an hour and a half?
A smart ass Sawyer like guy named Clarence
A convicted felon dumb hick named Bob
A lesbian, man hating hottuie named Claudia
A vegan, commune with nature med student named Sherry
A hypocritial lusty preacher named Farnsworth
A God fearing, Tea Party belle named Amy
A few other locals that make for good death fodder
Gratuitous Gore and Splatter!!!!!!
All these people come together and meet in a cabin in the woods (I did mention were in clicheworld right?) where our zombie aliens are looking for fresh BRAAAAAAAAAAINNNNNS!!
The best part of Brain Dead is the non CGI gore. It's old school here with shotgun head blasts, quick edit watermelon blasts (its suppose to be a human head) and decapitations and arm rippage. It's like they DeLoreaned into the past and made this movie in the 80s.
Tons of blood, tons of gore and tons of black ooze vomiting from our zombies to infect other people. Shit was coming out of every orifice dude. And it was fuckin awesome.
Gratuitous Gripes and Negatives!!!!!!
Brain Dead won't be for everyone. Noobs won't understand why us "old timers" think is a big deal about some boobs and gore. But here's a message to you noobs. Boobs and gore were not as easily accessible back in the day. If you saw boobs in a movie, you couldn't believe your eyes. If you saw somebody's heart gets ripped out, you applauded. So we have a special place in our hearts for these movies. You noobs are lucky with your free porn and YouTube.
Brain Dead kinda gets ZZZZZZZZs with some badly written dialogue and goofy makeup effects. But Clarence's snarky one liners had me laughing a few times. His zingers zinged and I have to admit, I chuckled a few times.
But being low budget, you can smell the cheese and it's extra velveetay. What can ya do right?
Brain Dead ain't the best throwback but it's done with fun and care and Kevin Tenney knows what us gorehounds and breasthounds want. All of this is packaged into Brain Dead and I had fun nostalgia-ing to my VHS days. What more can you ask?
Well more boobs would have been nice.
WTF moment
One of the characters get an untimely demise I didn't see coming. Holey moley.
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
Brain Dead was just released on DVD via Breaking Glass Pictures. You can buy it via Amazon.com.
[Remember the video tape era? Before DVDs and the Internet you had to actually go the video store and rent videos to watch obscure movies. Well Insano Steve remembers and he's got an awesome list to prove it. Check out his list of 11 underrated horror movies of the video tape era!]
As you know, recently, Hollywood's been re-making every horror movie that I grew up on. This is pretty annoying because on the one hand, they have almost no chance of being as good as the original, but on the other hand, I feel compelled to see them to confirm that they are as bastardized as I think they are.
The thing is, they remake all of the obvious popular ones. Friday the 13th? Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Who hasn't seen this? What was wrong with the original? Why remake them?
There were so many underrated horror flicks from my youth that not a lot of people saw, that might actually benefit from a remake. Here's a list of some of my favorites, though not really in any order.....
Ozone depletion has caused all animals above 5000 feet altitude to go fucking nuts and start killing people. Oh yeah, totally possible! Sorry Denver, Colorado, you guys are fucked!
A bunch of hikers are trapped in a forest when the animals go crazy. Of course, the government quarantines the area, so they are left on their own.
This was one of the first movies I ever rented. I really had a thing for animal attacks on humans back then. The animal attacks are kinda silly, as you might expect from a 1977 horror movie. It's mostly just dogs and birds and squirrels and shit, and they're pretty fake looking.
Imagine the shit they could do these days with CGI animal attacks. Or just fuck it, just use real animals. Would PETA be upset about animals fucking up some actors? I figure they'd be all for it.
Back in the 80s, there were these vending machines that sold metallic glossy stickers that people would put on their school binders. I collected the 'Horror' series of stickers.
They featured all of the usual suspects, Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, Mike. But then there was the 'Slaughter High' sticker. It just didn't seem to fit in with all those heavyweights, but as I'd like to tell all my other anti-social horror buddies back then, "Dude, Slaughter High kicks some ass".
The story involves Marty, a high school nerd, who kills a buncha 'cool kids' at a high school reunion, years after they accidentally disfigured him with acid.
The quality of these kills are pretty amazing for such a generic looking flick. Youtube this shit some time. Extra credit for the douchebag guy whose stomach explodes after drinking Drain-O
I would always watch these horror movies with my brother. Pieces was the first movie where my brother said "hey, I don't know if you should be watching this", which made some sense since I was only 9 years old at the time. Of course, the irony was, he was 13. But I convinced him that if the guy at the video store rented it to us, that must mean it's okay. Righteous logic.
Back in the 1980s, people didn't care that much about the welfare of kids watching fucked up shit. I'm not sure how we even got a video account in the first place.
Anyhow, Pieces is about some psycho who kills girls on a college campus so that he can make a big jigsaw puzzle from the girls' body parts. This is not really a Feminist movie. Lots of naked girls getting cut up here.
This movie has become a pretty big cult hit recently and does seems pretty tame now. But at the time, this was underground and a pretty big deal. If you had seen 'Pieces', then you were alright by me. I actually once rented a movie called ‘Parts’ because I thought it was a sequel. I was sadly mistaken.
Here’s a horror comedy, from the great Larry Cohen.
A buncha miners discover a white slimy ooze. Turns out that ooze actually tastes really good and they end up selling it in supermarkets as “The Stuff”.
Of course back in the 1980s, nobody gave a shit about health as long as the it tasted good. “The Stuff” is real addictive and becomes such a hit, that the ice cream conglomerate decides it has to find out what it is and stop it. Well, “The Stuff” ends up being an alien life form and when people eat it, they turn into wacked-out zombies.
The movie is one big commentary on the consumerism of those times. That all went over my head back in the day. I just thought it was an awesome movie about killer yogurt.
Lots of splatter, lots of laughs, the best of which is when the black dude’s face blows up and yogurt spews out. Or the huge tidal wave of Stuff at the end. I could actually see Hollywood trying to remake this one.
I remember picking up this box at the video store and thinking "This looks like shit, how comes there's 2 sequels?". But I was pretty jaded, and I could tell from the box for Part 2, that the killer was a hot looking girl, so I had to give it a chance.
So the movie is 88 minutes, and for 87 minutes it is just generic crap. But wow, that last minute! There are just some things that you see and you never forget.
A twist ending that comes so far out of left field, that it punches you in the face and kicks you in the nuts at the same time.
Speechless.
I remember rewinding the tape just to make sure that really just happened, and wondering how the hell does that make any sense at all? Somebody please remake this. I think the youth of America needs to feel what I felt on that uncomfortable day.
To this day, this remains the 2nd best ending in all horror history (behind the perfect ending to the legendary 'Nekromantik')
Yup, another animal movie. A scientist and his assistant (played by the lovely Elizabeth Shue) have taught his orangutan, Link, how to be helpful monkey butler like the ones you see on TV.
However, scientist gonna have the monkey put to sleep, as he no longer need his services. Somehow, Link finds out about it, and the ape shit hits the fan. Link fucks up some people stupid enough to visit the scientist’s house and chases Miss Shue around the house.
Best scene is when Link is checking out Shue while she’s in the shower. Not sure what they were going for there, but it sure as hell works! And Link is a real monkey, no fake shit. No dude in a suit.
Although that does make some of the kills kinda awkward. This movie was British, so you can’t really ever tell if we’re laughing at the movie, or with the movie. Those wacky Brits!
Anyhow, this is what ‘Monkey Shines’ should have been.
Now this was a great find in the tape trading market. This Italian movie is about Patrick who is in perpetual coma after getting hit in the head by a liquor bottle.
Anyhow, even though he’s technically a vegetable, Patrick has telekinetic power and he uses it to psychicly kill a buncha people at the health center he’s staying at. Why? I don’t fucking remember.
But I do remember there were 3 real hot girls in it. One gets naked and is then eaten alive by a pack of dogs summoned by Patrick. Patrick forces another girl to masturbate, which is just as awesome as it sounds! And the last girl, is severely impaled with a fireplace poker through her vagina, in what has become quite an infamous scenes amongst the gorehounds.
Yeah, this movie is some premium sleaze. The Italians really mastered that kinda shit. Besides all the sleaze, I liked the many extreme close-ups of Patrick’s unmoving eyes followed by super cheezy music (because cinematically, how else to show telekinesis from a paralyzed guy!?!).
Sadly there are no online trailers for this classic. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
Lucker breaks out from a mental institution in Belgium and starts his murder spree. But he takes his time.
This movie is 70 minutes long, but he spends 15 minutes just walking around. Literally, not stalking anybody, just mindlessly walking around, filling time.
Anyhow, Lucker like most psychos, prefers killing women. He kills a nurse at the institution and then proceeds to have sex on her (yup, he’s a necrophiliac).
Later, Lucker, who is mute, somehow, goes to a bar, orders a drink (w/o speaking), solicits a prostitute (w/o speaking), and negotiates a price (w/o speaking). He later kills the prostitute, and A WEEK LATER, overcome with his necrophilia, makes love to the slimy rotting corpse. And I mean that, Lucker really takes his time with that corpse (whose skin is pretty much decomposed off).
In Nekromantik, the necrophilia was pretty tastefully done. Uh, not here, this shit is really disturbing. Lucker got some real issues. The ending is abrupt and anti-climatic, but at the same time, kinda fits this movie.
What I like most about Lucker is, he’s not killing machine like other slashers. He’s some fat balding guy in his 50s. He wears a Member’s Only jacket!
In between kills, he tastes a break to rest or just loiter around town. It’s almost like slashing is just a hobby for him, and he wouldn’t even be doing it …. if y’know, he wasn’t a crazy necrophiliac.
Thank you Belgium, first Jean Claude Van Damme, now Lucker. America is in your debt.
Sigh, the early 90's were one of the worst periods for horror movies. Times were changing. Nirvana had made it cool for people to be depressed. Ethan Hawke was considered a good actor. NWA was no longer just an airline. A lot of people were down with OPP. Black people hated white people. White people hated themselves. America no longer had a place in it's heart, for horribly disfigured psychopaths killing teenagers.
My interest in horror pretty much went away too, cause nothing good was coming out. One of the rare exceptions was Popcorn. My expectations were so low for horror at the time, it might've skewed my opinion, but I liked this shit.
A buncha film students have a horror festival with gimmicky 3D and seat buzzers and shit. A maniac ends up killing the movie-goers who think it's all part of the show. Great idea, decent execution. A lot of the 1990s kinda sucked.
Excellent trailer shamelessly name-drops all the other horror icons it's supposedly better than. And, it has the wonderful tagline "Buy a box, go home in a bag!"
Oh, the wonderful Street Trash. 2 parts horror, 1 part comedy, totally awesome.
A liquor store owner finds a box of really fucked up shit liquor called Viper and sells it to hobos for next to nothing. Problem is, Viper is toxic and ends up melting the flesh of all the bums that drink it.
There's some tremendous dark comedy here that was groundbreaking at the time. The best scene is when the hobos are playing catch with a severed penis of one of their fellow bums. Another is when a bum's entire body literally melts down into a toilet. Also, a necrophilia scene, which was the first I had ever seen and really blew my mind.
This was pretty messed up. Just about every female character in this movie gets raped at some point. Totally fun, off the wall type shit.
I remember asking the video clerk 'hey you got anything else like Street Trash?' I've been looking ever since, and still haven't found anything quite like this.
This movie combines 2 of my great passions (horror and cryptozoology).
A college anthropology class goes into the woods to find the legendary Bigfoot. And surprisingly enough, it's pretty easy to find him .... just follow the trail of dead bodies.
This is not the shy recluse Bigfoot posing for blurry pictures. Fuck that, this Bigfoot don't like humans and if you come anywhere near his shit, he will fuck you up.
Bigfoot literally rips the dick off of some biker that he catches pissing on his land. He cuts up a couple of Girl Scouts. He rapes a local woman. He choke slams a couple of rednecks. Throws some poor bastard out a window. Eviscerates some dude and then plays with the intestines. All this with his bare hands.
Bigfoot don’t need no weapons!
Super low budget stuff. The Bigfoot suit looks like the rug in my bathroom. Oh, and you get treated to BFPOV (Big Foot Point Of View), which is just like human POV except it's red which is bad news for whatever Bigfoot's looking at.
And the very best part, in the end, everybody in the movie dies!
Zero chance this ever gets remade!
[Do you have any movies to add to the list? Agree with the picks or want to poop on the list? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.]
Inside it's filled with a online quick pic and an ominous animatronic dragon. It's dark and our fast pass tickets scurry us into the fast lane. A creepy old guy gives instructions and off we go.
Flashlights: Scary Shit
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