Blue Ridge Ben

  I’m always torn, if it isn’t part of one of my specific watch projects, as to whether or not I should review films that are considered all time classics if all I’m gonna say is “Yep, I love it as much as you do” but I also think that my very limited audience for these blog posts might appreciate if I’m not just always writing about B and C grade slashers or TV movies. So since I recently picked up a beat up, but still very playable, DVD copy of the entire Poltergeist trilogy, yesterday I decided to sit down and revisit the original for the first time in a few years. As the first paragraph heavily implies, I still really, really love this movie. I often start my reviews with what I didn’t like first so that I can end on a more positive note even when the film doesn’t deserve it, but the list is very, very short here. Some of special effects have aged pretty poorly, such as the “face” scene, and it is a little uncomfortable how much effort they put in for gratuitous underwear sh...

  I was a fan of the first 2 or 3 Saw films when they came out, as a nearly lifelong horror fan who was excited about whatever slasher-related content I could get after the post-Scream boom started to dry up in the 2000s. A 13 year old who spent much of his time consuming an endless stream of music videos is exactly the target audience for this first film. However, it has been many years since I last watched it in full, so I was genuinely curious as to how I’d look at it in my 30s. Right off the bat, let’s get to the “music video” thing. Every flashback kill and some just normal procedural action is done in this hyper, quickcut editing style that just screams late 90s and early 00s hard and alternative rock music videos, and it is truly appalling. It has aged like raw milk, and it honestly makes the chief appeal of this franchise in their creative kills downright hard to watch let alone enjoy, a total cringefest but far from in the torture porn way they intended. However, removi...

  It kind of worked out that I had recently purchased the Psycho collection on BluRay and thus owned the first film in HD, which might be the last thing I watch in HD in this series, in my Mick Garris project and was naturally at that point in my rewatch of the series (in short, Psycho is great, Psycho II is very good, Psycho III is surprisingly solid). Psycho IV: The Beginning was a made-for-TV movie produced by Showtime in 1990, towards the beginning of them spending a large chunk of the 90s producing low budget original genre films and projects tying to popular film IPs. At this point Mick had directed a few episodes of anthology shows like Amazing Stories and Freddy’s Nightmares (one of the better episodes I’ve seen of that series, but I’ll get to that after I watch through the films/tv films/miniseries down the line) and was known to have some friends in the broad Amblin world from his time shooting behind the scenes documentaries for their films and writing a number of episo...

  In the world of auto racing, there is always an inherent populist bias against the concept of a “pay driver”, somebody who gets a good car more by the virtue of the budget they bring through family money, sponsorship, or a mixture of both than by sheer talent alone. Everybody is guilty of it, including myself, despite the reality that almost all drivers in the modern era get their first opportunities because they are bringing a budget unless they land in a particularly good driver development program, and there are plenty of good drivers who just happened to have landed good partnerships who buy their rides nearly just as much. Anyway, today’s entry is one of the most well known pay drivers in the history of NASCAR: Paul Menard. John Menard founded Menards hardware stores in 1964, which grew into one of the biggest chains of stores in the midwest over the following decades, even rivaling Home Depot and Lowe’s in the area. An auto racing enthusiast, he also became a team owner i...

When my older sister wanted to play Barbies growing up, I sometimes ruined the experience by playing with the Michael Myers doll I got probably from Spencer’s around the time of H20. Anyway, for some reasons farms often featured into situations with Michael I played out, purely because of hazy memories of watching Halloween 5. Despite being filmed so close to Halloween 4, this is a very different movie, much for the worse. While 4 with its flaws still very much maintained a lot of the mood and pacing of a Halloween film, this one feels a lot more influenced by the later Friday the 13 th sequels and other low rent 80s horror with its heavy reliance on the physic links with Michael and its broad cartoonish characters and incompetent comic relief cop duo. These aren’t really characters, they exist just as slasher fodder to be mowed down, which as a slasher fan I guess I can’t really complain about cause like I own almost all the Friday films, but the Halloween series always held itself ...

  After the relative failure of the amazingly underrated Halloween III (which maybe I’ll review around Halloween), there was a big gap in Halloween movies but they came back swinging with The Return of Michael Myers. This one was a favorite of mine as a kid, which I watched many times either via rented VHS or it always playing on cable during the Halloween season, content edited. As an adult, it probably isn’t in my top 3 if I’m being honest, but it is a genuinely fine Halloween film for the most part. The kills aren’t super explicit, they were shying away from that by the late 80s in horror and here a lot of them just take place off screen entirely, but shoving a shotgun through the stomach is always memorable. The mask is absolute garbage, the worst version of the mask they used in any of the films. They also don’t really let the ostensible female lead of the film have much life out of having a shitty boyfriend and chaperoning Jamie around. The psychic link silliness between M...

  It is a tremendously big ask to follow such a cultural and cinematic landmark as Halloween, especially as the imitators (Prom Night and Friday the 13 th had upped the ante the year before) were generating hits and making their own contributions to the tropes of the genre. However, written by Debra Hill and John Carpenter, I think the film stands up pretty well on its own. The influence of the early slashers the original begat is most clear in that they put a lot more emphasis on creativity of the kills and getting them clearly on camera and making sure they come early and often, away from the more stark to-the-point unstoppable violence of the original. You can argue this takes away from the true horror of the original, and I probably would, but there is also the argument to be made that few people who watch slashers are watching it because they genuinely want to be scared but because they wanna see the kills. There’s a reason the Final Destination movies got away with using t...

  One of the most iconic interviews of the entire 1990s in NASCAR was when Rich Bickle finished 4 th at a Cup race at Martinsville in 1998, and he openly bawled during his interview, being so happy and proud. Everybody’s heart melted. But, who was Rich Bickle? Growing up on two wheels with great success, Rich spent his late 70s and 80s as probably the most accomplished driver not to race full time in even ARTGO, let alone ASA, during one of the all-time greatest periods of concentrated talent in the Upper Midwest with names like Wallace, Martin, Kulwicki, Miller, Trickle, Sauter, Musgrave, Shear not just competing in the bigger money tours but also regularly at a lot of these short tracks in Wisconsin that was the lifeblood of the midwest stock car scene. Rich ran a year of ASA, finishing runner up in rookie points and finishing a really solid 9 th in the points, but his regular racing stats are spotty after that for a few years except his greatest claim to fame as a driver. F...

Like, nobody really needs me to tell them that Halloween is good. We all know it is probably the greatest slasher and one of the best horror films of at least the 70s if not all time. If you are expecting I’m gonna rip this movie to shreds, that’s not the case, I’m not gonna be contrary for the sake of it. It is totally awesome from start to finish even if AMC+ did something unnatural to this version I watched to desaturate it so much it looks like Zack Snyder directed it. But why is it so great? I can think of a few reasons. Well, of course, the iconic POV opening. Far from the first film to use killer POV, Halloween’s direct inspiration in the fun Black Christmas used it extensively as did many films in the giallo genre over in Italy that were more of an influence on early slashers than anything. But it is perfectly executed, it is just long enough for you to get the point and sneak in a little nudity in the opening minutes and establish most of what you need to establish. It is one...

While watching Halloween but thinking about The Shining miniseries from 1997 I had tried to find on YouTube earlier in the day but couldn't, and admittedly being influenced by a handful of bottles of Yuengling on this Monday night, I decided that I was going to add a much bigger master challenge to the three I earlier discussed: I wanted to watch the entire film and TV miniseries filmography of Mick Garris, plus the episodes of Masters of Horror and Fear Itself (both of which he created) that he himself directed. Mick became known as one of Stephen King's preferred directors, doing The Sleepwalkers on the big screen for him and The Stand which I just recently purchased on VHS and The Shining from 1997 which just tonight I purchased on VHS when I decided I was going to embark on this project and later doing Bag of Bones in the early 10s too. However, it was through his creation of Masters of Horror and Fear Itself, and then as one of the top horror-focused podcast hosts in the b...

 I don't work, so I have a lot of dead time to fill and I like to set up little watch projects to work through over the course of the year to feel a little accomplished when I waste time with a film or show. The first couple months of this year were absolutely crazy, I was out of my apartment nearly as much as I was in it, so I didn't get much movie watching done let alone plan out projects. But I think I have some that are finalizing and that I will utilize this simple little blog to document.  Last year my two biggest projects were rewatching the entirety of the two classic slasher franchises, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. This year, I'm gonna do another classic slasher franchise with Halloween, watching all the Michael Myers films (sorry Halloween 3, though I do love you) through Resurrection in the early 00s. If I get through this quick, I might then add the Rob Zombie Duo and DGG trilogy. I will write my feelings on each of these films here as I watch th...