Movie Monday

This was quite the weekend for movies; I made up for lost time. I almost wish I hadn’t though because a couple of the movies were really bad—one was intentional and the other wasn’t.

To cool off from yelling at an 11-year-old boy, I went to the discount theater and saw “Midnight Meat Train.” I saw it in the newspaper and it caught my attention because I hadn’t heard of it before and it sounded kinda dirty. Turns out it’s based on a short story by Clive Barker. I used to read Barker’s stuff when I was in high school and I will not even think the word “Candyman” three times in a row, much less say it in the middle of the day with the lights on while my image reflects on glossy paper. Anyway, most of the movies based on Barker’s books or stories have been pretty bad. “Hellraiser” was great, until they started with all the sequels—but I digress. “Midnight Meat Train” turned out to be pretty good, but that’s probably because I think Bradley Cooper is such a cutie. Heck, I even watched “Kitchen Confidential” because he was in it.

MMT is a horror movie, but it’s not gory. Yes, there’s a decapitation and lots and lots of blood, but I thought the scariest parts were when I was wondering, “Is he/she going to get caught?” Then there was a little “Rosemary’s Baby” thing going on with BC when he started eating his friend’s steak (and licking the juice) even though BC’s a vegetarian. That was very creepy. OK, so BC is a photographer and takes his stuff to Brooke Shields who thinks his work is good, but not edgy enough. He starts shooting at a subway and takes pictures of a woman. She disappears and he goes to the police. The police think he’s a stalker so he decides he’s going to find out what happened and get the police some evidence. He finds out that a butcher’s been killing people in the subway and becomes obsessed with the butcher. Hilarity ensues. No, I’m kidding.

Would I recommend this movie? Yes, if you like Clive Barker’s work and Asian horror flicks.

The other movies were movies I recorded on my DVR way back and finally had a chance to watch.

The first featured Markie Post and Candace Cameron--"Visitors of the Night." I should have changed the channel then, but the summary said that a mom becomes concerned when her daughter starts acting strange and the mom has weird dreams. What looked like a scary movie ended up being a crap fest of crap. Aliens kidnapped Markie and tagged her when she was a child. Years later, aliens kidnap and tag DJ and make her really smart, if being smart meant caring about the earth and its natural resources. Not only that, I think the aliens took their eggs because they had all these alien babies on their spaceship. Only you don’t know for sure that they’re aliens until much later in the movie, even though the crop circles should have been a big hint.

Would I recommend this movie? Only if you like crap on crap toast.

The other awful movie starred one of my favorite actors, Bruce Campbell, so naturally, I was going to watch it, no matter how bad it got. In “Alien Apocalypse” Bruce is a doctor/astronaut who was cryogenically frozen for 40 years along with three other people, one of whom is Gabrielle from "Xena." The other two astronauts die and Bruce leads a rebellion to free the humans from the giant termites that invaded the earth 20 years after the astronauts left on their mission. The acting is bad, but not as bad as the fake beards and hair they have to wear. Still, if you see a movie starring BC as the lead character, you have to expect low quality. And it lived up to my expectations.

Would I recommend this movie? Try getting me to admit I actually watched it or wrote this entry.