I was looking for something "light" to watch that I haven't seen yet. I can tell you there's a lot. My want to watch and read list is gigantic and I just keep adding to it. I really enjoyed The Babysitter so I thought I'd take a stab at the sequel The Babysitter: Killer Queen. (See what I did there?) Although not as good as the first, it was laughably bloody and entertaining. 

*SPOILER ALERT*

Two years later and following the events of the first movie, Cole is now ostracized because his family and friends think he made it all up since there was no evidence left behind. His family has him on all kinds of medication and want to enroll him in a psychiatric high school.

There's a new mysterious girl at school named Phoebe with the same cat tattoo (hint) as his old babysitter Bee, she seems like an outsider, and there's a rumor she killed her parents. Melanie, Cole's neighbor and best friend that he has a crush on and looks surprisingly like Bee, invites him to escape his parents new high school recruit meeting and go to a lake party. Little does he know that Phoebe will also be attending for different reasons.

Melanie looking like Bee.

Cole, Melanie, and their friends end up on a houseboat, where we find out that Melanie joined Bee's cult and they only invited him because they need his "innocent" blood to be mixed with the blood of a sacrificed friend. All his so-called friends are in on it, took the devil's oath, and resurrected the original cult minus Bee. I really like that all the same actors and characters were back. 

Old blood cult members.

Luckily Phoebe is riding a jet ski and Cole escapes with her to a rocky canyon. Along the way they kill some of the members but before doing so you get to see in flashbacks how Bee recruited them for her cult. This is what I wanted in the first movie because I feel like there's extensive back story, so that was very satisfying. 

Phoebe's familiar with the rocky canyon because it's where her parents have their cabin. She is on a hunt of her own and was left a key, her old stuffed animal, and a note in her locker and wants to know where they came back from and why it's leading her here. Her and Cole hide out in an underground room of the cabin while what's left of the old cult members and his ex friends search for him. Cole and Phoebe get a little closer, using an old reference, Once Bitten style. I'm making this old reference because there's too many dated and pop culture references throughout the movie that I'm sure the young ins won't catch. MC Hammer, The Warriors, Teen Wolf, and The Outsiders to name a few. The references just seem like filler for the dialog.

Cole & Phoebe.

In the end we find out Cole isn't an innocent anymore, Bee was also Phoebe's babysitter (hence her cat tattoo too), rigged the whole new ritual to end the blood cult, and she originally gave up her soul to save Phoebe. The blood cult book gets left on the beach for another day or another installment. I give it three out of five vials of blood.

Trailer...

I kept hearing rumblings about the movie Psycho Goreman, the local theater showed it as one of their Thursday Night Terror movies, and people kept telling me I would like it because it's a horror comedy. I watched it and I have to say it was just ok. Here's my review...

***WARNING SPOILERS***

A brother and a sister, Luke and Mimi respectively, accidentally resurrect an intergalactic evil demon and control it by using a gem that it's bonded with after playing a game they made up called Crazy Ball. That's the story. Honestly it really needed more of a plot. Reminded me of a budget version of The Gate with a retro wave soundtrack and heavy weird religious undertones. It wanted to be a funny spoof of 80s horror, but it's just not that funny. 

The kids name the demon Psycho Goreman or PG for short, and Mimi controls him to do her childish whims. She is an asshole and her father is lazy. (I should mention there's no "f-word" in this movie. Is it meant to be wholesome with all that gore?) I can understand why her mother and brother are so frustrated. Psycho Goreman kept threatening them saying "you will suffer an eternity for this" and I was really hoping he would kill them in the end. Unfortunately he just turns their innocent friend into a throbbing brain-looking blob and opens his mouth wide enough to eat his enemies bodies whole. There is a cool part at the end where he makes a sword out of the bones of his enemy...at least I think that's what happened? All the while, the intergalactic council and his long lost followers try and figure out how to rebury him.

Very cool sword.

At one point in the middle of the movie there's a Psycho Goreman montage where he and the kids start a band together, go shopping with mom, stroll down the street, and hang out at a diner. It seemed odd and forced. There's random lessons scattered throughout that make no sense too. I was trying to figure out where all this was going, and it didn't go anywhere.

This is where we learn PG can open his mouth really wide.

It's very predictable, the characters are unlikeable, and the plot is lacking. The only thing it has going for it is the practical gory special effects and PG's makeup. I give it one demon out of five. (I know harsh, but I can't like everything! Go watch The Gate instead.)

Trailer....all the "funny" parts are in it.

I have a soft spot for the Muppets and watched all The Muppet Show episodes when they originally aired. (Yes, can you believe it? I'm THAT old!) It sparked my love of Vincent Price and Alice Cooper, and Kermit will always be an inspiration to me as a business owner. Keeping the show going amidst daily chaos is my life! So of course I had to watch Muppets Haunted Mansion. It was cute, but not my favorite. Let me explain...

***WARNING SPOILERS***

We get a peek at all the Muppets at their yearly Halloween party, but this story focuses on The Great Gonzo and Pepe the King Prawn. Both are invited to a haunted mansion on the 100th anniversary of the disappearance of The Great MacGuffin, one of Gonzo's heroes. It's the most haunted mansion in the world and Gonzo is up for the challenge! Pepe on the other hand, is there to party and meet celebrities. No one ever comes back from the party but Gonzo is confident that they will. After all, he's been shot of of so many cannons, this will be easy since he's fearless and "great".

It's based on Disney's Haunted Mansion ride and it references the ghosts from the ride and even how the ride always malfunctions, but you don't need to be familiar with it to understand what's going on. There's lots of ghost puns, a screaming goat, celebrities scattered throughout, and even two Muppet pigs referencing the Grady twins from The Shining that say "Come play with us forever..."

Everyone that comes to the mansion gets trapped by their fears. Gonzo gets trapped in a room where he sees himself grow old, he misses his friends, and worries that no one will care about him if he's not doing dangerous stunts. Pepe gets bewitched by a woman that wants to marry him to kill and eat him. While Gonzo faces his fear and is allowed to leave, Pepe gets drugged and stuck, but Gonzo goes back for him and they survive the night in the haunted mansion.

Clocking in at a little under and hour it definitely felt like a Muppets made for TV movie and not a movie movie. It was light, had a couple laughs, and meant for little kids. I give it 3 out of 5 Madame Pigeota crystal balls.

Here's the trailer...

An ad kept popping up that it's free to watch the documentary Vampira and Me on Tubi, so with my open afternoon yesterday, I decided to settle in and learn more about Vampira. 

I found the movie to be interlaced with sadness, but made with love. Her friend R.H. Greene, the "me" part of the documentary, interviewed Maila Nurmi aka Vampira for this film. Her mystery is unveiled and you hear her speak in her own words from the start of her career to the depressing finish. Most of the film is her interview, very little archival footage of Vampira, and clips from the 1950s.

Maila was ironic and often referred to as a "beatnik" in the movie. She was an independent thinker and went against the norms of the 1950s. She loved the Addams Family cartoons since they satirized the "normal" family, and wanted to be a part of an Addams Family show if it was ever made for TV. She was discovered several times in the early part of her career, but the role that would define her came from an unexpected place...a costume ball. She dressed up as her favorite character, the mom from the Addams Family, now known as Morticia and won best costume. A local Los Angeles TV station liked her look and made a spot for her as the first horror host. Her timing was perfect. 

Inspired by Bizarre Magazine she changed the styling from the party and her husband gave her the name Vampira. But don't think she was Bettie Page, she was the antithesis. While Bettie was the girl next door with a little S and M thrown in behind closed doors, Vampira encompassed feminine strength as a glamour ghoul. There was no cheesecake, she played it straight while being erotic. Her tiny waist and dark sex appeal was the opposite of being a mother and housewife of the 1950s. Which garnered her immediate fans and she even has a rockabilly song named after her!

Sadly there's almost no records of her playing Vampira since everything was done live on TV back then. There's a two minute commercial included in the film and a couple scenes where she was a cult celebrity on other TV shows. Luckily there's hundreds of photos and stills, and she still has the power to excite a fan base even today!

One of the odd parts of the film was the emphasis on how she was good friends with James Dean, but made it very clear that they were never lovers. It was this relationship that ended her common law marriage. She mentioned that they were "psychically drawn to each other" and knew each other in another life. Then he tragically died in 1955 and she was teary eyed talking about it in the film.

Her show was canceled abruptly ending her 15 minutes of fame, and she sank into poverty taking odd jobs here and there. She would make odd appearances as Vampira in the later 1950s but basically lived as a recluse. In 1966 she recorded her thoughts for an eventual memoir that never happened. Those tapes are lost or damaged as well. Even without a book, Vampira is still being discovered and adored by all the punks, goths, and social outcasts because she embodied freedom of expression! 

There is a mention of her working to revamp (pun intended) Vampira but she didn't like the direction the new version was going in and quit working on it. That character eventually became Elvira. Maila sued, stating Elvira ripped off Vampira, but she didn't have enough money to purse it further and lost. Honestly without any recordings of Vampira it's hard to know, plus didn't Vampira steal her look from Morticia? I digress...

Was this a good movie? No, but it was interesting to hear directly from her. I give it 3 1/2 rooms of billowing clouds of smoke out of 5. Here's the trailer...