Tagged: vampires
A RETURN TO SALEM’S LOT: Is Bill Burr Secretly Michael Moriarty’s SON?!
I have a new favorite vampire flick: Return to Salem’s Lot! It’s surely no secret that Larry Cohen has made some amazing movies, ‘The Stuff’, ‘Q The Winged Serpent’, ‘God Told Me Too’ & ‘It’s Alive’ are considered among his best. However, recently I viewed his 1990 totally underrated & under-seen gem ‘The Ambulance’. It luckily inspired me to go back to check out some of his movies I might have missed out on and the sequel to ‘Salem’s Lot’ from 1987 is in my opinion is one of the best vampire movies of that decade! What took me so long to finally see it?! The only thing I can think of is that is that I’d watched the Tobe Hooper ‘Salem’s Lot’ Mini series from ’79 and found it good but also a bit slow moving. I simply figured for so long long that the sequel was yet just another mediocre TV mini series, well that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
So yet again Larry Cohen is at the top of his game in an incredibly colorful tale of ravenous small town bloodsuckers, jam packed with witty dialog, sweet 1980s special effects and of course some totally memorable heroes to cheer for as well as vampirous villains to hate! Michael Moriarty like in The Stuff, leads the cast, and after watching both of these movies basically back-to-back I came to a startling conclusion. Is it possible Michael Moriarty Is actually Bill Burr’s dad?!
The similarities are stunning! Am I the only person who’s ever thought of this? They look like father and son to me & even speak and sound like the blood relatives! Throughout the movie I couldn’t help but picture Burr in the role speaking all of the lines, in fact, even though I’m normally against remakes, if they ever do one I would love to see Burr in the role.
Hey next time YOU watch either The Stuff or Return to Salem’s Lot, make sure to Keep this in mind and you tell me if I’m crazy. I think the similarities are at the very least quite hilarious.
OK so now that I got that off my chest, I wanna at least mention how awesome the foul mouthed teen son played by Ricky Addison was, only to be rivaled by the potty mouthed pre-teen kid in the 1989 wildly unseen gem ‘The Laughing Dead’! He’s also got some great Corey Haim/Don Johnson-esque “Miami Vice” style as well, this kid is quite the spectacle I’d say.
But that’s not all, the movie’s secret weapon is the old but surprisingly spry, Jewish, Nazi hunter played by Samuel Fuller. He joins the gang, setting his sights on the wicked undead inhabitants of Salem’s Lot! He’s a cool classic horror hero that quite frankly needs a lot more love and that’s one thing Cohen really excels at is bringing memorable characters to the big screen.
Yes there is plenty to love here for eighties horror fanatics, A wildly unpredictable albeit ridiculous plot, a sweet spooky setting and some awesome vamps! Don’t believe me check this dude out!
The kind of vampires who don’t just sport the fake teeth, nope we get some bonafide monster vamps with animatronic faces to amp up the mayhem. I’m not sure what took me so long to finally check this out but I’m glad I did as it’s now become one of my favorites standing above most vampire movies of the 1980s. But most impressively featuring Bill Burr’s father?! Hey you never know right? I got it on a sweet blu ray via Shout Factory that looks beautifully bloody!
VHS Verdict: 1991’s ‘Children of the Night’ is a Forgotten Horror Gem!
Been on a VHS binge lately watching tons of old forgotten movies, some are of course are steamin’ turds but every now and again you come across something that’s a total delight! I ran across a copy of 1991’s ‘Children of the Night’ and was fairly certain it was again going to be another crapper, however this one proved to be a totally sweet romp of a horror comedy. I’m a giganto fan of 80’s horror and this one while being from 91′ has still got that great old school vibe and charm coming off the tail end of 1980’s. In my opinion a lot of flicks up through 1994 more or less continue to keep that feel in tact. That being said, I had a good feeling about this one when I’d seen that Peter Deluise of ’21 Jump Street” fame was billed as the star, I watched the shit out of that show as a kid in the 80’s and he was one of my favorite characters from the series for sure. Then I noticed Karen Black also starred and then that the director was Tony Randel of ‘Hellraiser 2’ & ‘Ticks’ fame.
Well I’m pleased to say from the start of this one (which I found out later was actually a Fangoria production) it fully delivered the goods and then some in all the ways I’d hoped for. Playing much more like a horror comedy we get a sweet little story of of teenage girl played by Ami Dolenz (also in ‘Ticks’ from 1993) who lives in a small town and accidentally awakens a wicked vampire lord while swimming in an underground pond below a church. Yeah that’s what she and her buddy do for fun…..well schoolteacher played by Peter Deluise later comes to town to see what’s up and ends up in the thick of a vampire attack where he teams up with the teen girl and a local town drunken preacher played by vinatge SNL alumni Garrett Morris. I gotta say when he arrived it was the icing on the damn cake, he’s known also as “Chocolate Chip Charlie” from the horror classic ‘The Stuff’ from 1985 and in this movie he drives around town at night drinkin’ mad amounts of whiskey in a crazy van that’s got a giant glowing cross spear mounted on the front it it to impale vampires with. By that point in the movie I was already in, but this solidified the deal for sure.
At the end of the ‘Children of the Night’ day plays a bit like ‘Evil Dead 2’ none of it can be taken too seriously but it’s not a full on spoof either. There’s a lot of cool FX work going on here as well as cool spooky inventive sets and locations. It’s a neat little horror adventure that’s not afraid to add some heart to it either. A lot like gory teen horror comedy that’d fit quite nicely along with 80’s cult classics like ‘Vamp’, ‘Critters’ or the highly underrated ‘Night Life’ from 1989. There’s also some cool ass action sequences and you also get some Karen Black super weird vampire lung moments to ponder upon! If you’re looking for some super fun lost nostalgia to watch with a gang of movie maniacs ‘Children of the Night’ is a prime choice in my opinion!
The Night Watchmen vs The Ghostbusters!
I just saw this cool little trailer for the a new horror comedy called The Night Watchmen which seems like a helluva great gruesome time. Despite the fact that there’s a new trailer for The Ghostbusters reboot that just dropped recently to me a smaller flick like The Night Watchmen thus far captures the vibe of a Ghostbusters movie than this latest reboot.
I know that there’s a lot of negative press out there already about The Ghostbusters and though I really want to be excited something about it feels incredibly forced.
It’s not the fact that the cast are all women either as many seem to like to claim is causing all the negative hype . Perhaps it’d made more sense to have at least a couple of the original Ghostbusters pass the torch. It would have been cool to have Dan Akroyd & Ernie Hudson be a part of the movie as the last two Ghostbusters standing who need to hire some new recruits once the supernatural start to stir in the city again.
Instead we get another bland reboot that thus far doesn’t look like it’s got much of a personality of it’s own. It also feels more like a sequel to the recent Goosebumps movie in it’s way of bad CGI effects that in 2016 somehow still don’t improve on the original movies. Anyway check out this new Night Watchmen trailer as a horde of vampires led by an undead clown attack the after hours employees of a boring ol’ office building..
Superman to Kick Monster Ass!
I have never read the comic books so I’ve not much to go by here-But call me crazy-I’m pumped for this movie!! Too bad Brandon couldn’t play Supes again but at least we get this new comic adaptation-Now all I need to do is find the comics and see what this is really all about!!
So can anyone out there tell me if this looks good next to the comic book?
Daybreakers! Vampire Farmers!
I am not sure if anyone has seen the movie “Undead” from about five years ago but it was a pretty amazing comedic zombie movie with a neat twist. It was the first movie by the Spierig brothers and it was a good one. I have been curious what they have been up to since then and was pretty pumped to find out that they do have their second movie on the way and it looks pretty epic. “Daybreakers” stars Ethan Hawke, Sam Neil and Willem Dafoe and is a Vampire flick with a pretty cool premise.
Universal Dork 