Unseen Terror 2024: King of the Castle Rock (Days 16 & 17)

 

Riding the Bullet is based on one of Stephen King’s lesser-known works, and it was released as the author’s first “online only” publication, available exclusively as an e-book for the low price of $2.50. Thankfully those who don’t wish to stare at a bright screen all day were able to read the novel in a full two years when it was included in his “Everything’s Eventual” collection. It’s one of two stories featured in that release that made its way to the big screen (the other being 2007’s 1408, which I think I’ve seen?). The story is set in the late 60s with a young man (Jonathan Jackson of soap opera mainstay General Hospital) hitchhiking his way to a hospital to see his dying mother, only to be picked up by an eccentric, almost otherworldly figure (David Arquette of Scream fame and former WCW world champion). For most of its running time, Riding the Bullet is edited in such a way that it legitimately started giving me a headache. The amount of cutaway and/or flashback sequences makes you wonder if you’ve accidentally been sucked into a Seth MacFarlane program. I’m also starting to realize that despite my respect for director Mick Garris and his appreciation for horror history and the art of the genre itself, he has a WILDLY inconsistent body of work (at least when he’s sitting in the big chair). I appreciate the little nod to Christine though with the appearances of the infamous Plymouth Fury car. I don’t believe that was present in the source material, but it’s still a cute wink to the audience. It takes about 50 minutes for the flick to get remotely interesting, but that’s only because we finally to get see Arquette pop up as our real antagonist. His wonderfully weird performance alone makes me want to put this into the “tossup” category, because prior to his introduction, it’s just a very mediocre flick.

 

At the end of the day, that’s what Riding the Bullet is: an average, if not slightly dull Stephen King adaptation of a book that nobody seems to talk about anymore. It’s miles ahead of efforts such as Dreamcatcher or The Langoliers, but it’s nowhere near as solid as previously reviewed entries like Gerald’s Game or The Dead Zone. If you’ve got ninety minutes to kill, you could find worse ways to spend your time.

 

Alright, let’s wrap up this round of Stephen King works with…..oh no.

 

 

I’m never going to escape this franchise, am I?

 

If you recall, for last year’s Unseen Terror marathon, I delved into the world of “He Who Walks Behind the Rows” (a.k.a. the Children of the Corn series). In layman’s terms, I truly believe it is the very worst horror movie franchise out there, and that’s because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single good film during its 40-year-long run (The Final Sacrifice is dumb fun, but that’s a faint compliment). I managed to avoid the 2009 “SyFy Channel premiere” remake from 2009 because it seemed almost impossible to find unless you had a region-free Blu-Ray player and an exorbitant amount of money to spend. Crisis (temporarily) averted. Unfortunately, I discovered that some poor soul made the mistake of uploading this to YouTube of all places less than a year ago, so I guess I MUST finally finish this franchise before it finishes me.

 

You should know the basis for Children of the Corn at this point, so I’m not going over the synopsis again. I will say that from a storyline standpoint, this is the most faithful to Stephen King’s original short story (save for Disciples of the Crow from 1983, but that’s considered a short film). That, however, is also its biggest weakness because oh dear lord these are THE most unlikeable protagonists I’ve seen in this entire franchise. When this young couple aren’t spending time bickering with one another, they’re constantly reminding the audience that the husband used to be in the marines or they’re even smacking the wife. While I’m not a screenwriter, I don’t think the series has ever set out to make you root more for the evil kids than anyone intended to be a hero. This is incompetence at its very finest. It doesn’t help that the lead performers (David Anders of iZombie fame and Kandyse McClure from Battlestar Galactica) just don’t seem to vibe well with each other. Did I mention the NAGGING and bickering by the way? Yeah? Well, that’s too bad because it drags this movie down into a hole that it can’t get out of. Also, making fun of someone for serving in Vietnam and likely having PTSD is just fucking gross, especially when the person doing the bullying is supposed to be someone you’re rooting for. There’s also a really mortifying scene involving the members of the congregation watching teenagers fornicate in front of everyone. How classy, how necessary. Ick.

 

2009’s Corn remake sports a sepia tone all throughout its running time that is intended to make this feel creepy, but just makes it look cheap and gaudy. Speaking of “creepy,” I almost miss the over-the-top performances of the original film’s Isaac and Malakai because the new cast of youngins’ just aren’t very good. I hate criticizing the acting of kids, but I feel like everyone looks either disinterested or is just so flat. It’s like the entire cast took their classes from the same guy from the “Shooter’s gonna choke” scene in Happy Gilmore. There’s a cheap bit of nostalgia bait by playing snippets of the original film’s theme, but all it’ll make the audience want to do is revisit that picture instead. I mean, that original film is awful too, but at least it’s memorable.

 

It's very rare for me to genuinely hate a movie when I watch it for this marathon, but I LOATHED nearly every second of 2009’s Children of the Corn. For all the annoyance and anger that came to the surface, there was a moment of respite seeing the annoying wife get blown up in a car (though her corpse is shown later to be in fairly decent-looking condition after she’s crucified on corn stalks). Other than that? It’s pure torture from beginning to end. Fuck this movie, fuck this franchise, fuck the people involved (seriously, how did Vamp screenwriter Donald P. Borchers find himself writing and directing this?), and fuck YouTube for not taking it down immediately. But on the plus side? I’m done with it all now. There are no more movies to watch. No more in development (that I know of). Stephen King has yet to revisit the fictional town of Gatlin, Nebraska. It’s over.

 

Finally.

 

I’m free.

Unseen Terror 2024: Online Heebie Jeebies (Days 8-10)

You’ll have to forgive me for getting this batch of films out so late. I suspect that after my trashing of the last “Treehouse of Horror” segment, someone from Fox may have placed a curse on me because I’ve been quite sick over the past few days. Anyways, let’s get this out of the way. The theme over these last 72 hours has been one fear that I’m sure will never fully dissipate: the fear of the internet. What good comes from the world wide web also brings about some heinous stuff. For every compilation of cute cat videos or “bad lip readings” you’ll find, you stumble upon people spewing forth evil and dangerous viewpoints and worshipping the most depraved people on the planet. Of course, there’s also the vile cesspool that is social media, but that’s almost too easy of a target these days.

 

Anyways, this trio of films are all centered around dangerous discoveries found throughout places such as chatrooms and websites that your browser should know better than to let you navigate.

 

 

1998’s Strangeland is a pet project of Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider (and inspired by a song from their breakthrough album “Stay Hungry”). It centers around a detective searching for a man nicknamed “Captain Howdy,” who lures people into a world of extreme body modification and torture through the power of chatrooms (remember those?). As you could no doubt guess, Snider himself plays Captain Howdy, and he is certainly doing what he can to make this as memorable of a performance as possible. I’m not sure it fully works in the way that he wants considering that a lot of the dialogue is super silly, with Howdy speaking like he’s been lifted out of the wing at Arkham Asylum for “Overly Dramatic Villains.”  Weirdly enough, there’s also a part in the middle of Strangeland where our villain gets rehabilitated, but quickly turns back to his old lifestyle. I’m sure that this was supposed to be a commentary on the idea that society just can’t forgive and forget what someone has done in the past so easily (or maybe so that they could cast Robert Englund as the leader of an angry mob who wishes to exact justice of their own. Ha!), but it felt like wasted film reel.

My criticisms aside, I didn’t really hate Strangeland at all. Yes, it is a “passion” project (which can be very hit or miss) and Snider’s character does look like he’d fit in more on an episode of “Ink Master” than a world that’s trying to ape the likes of Hellraiser or Se7en, but it’s never boring and I thought the look of the film overall wasn’t too shabby. It also breezes by at a relatively good pace. Ultimately a tossup for me, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was perfectly adequate. Plus, Howdy’s world seems to be less toxic than Twitter these days!

 

 

You’re going to have to bear with me here. This particular review may contain some very harsh language because this was the first movie for this year’s Unseen Terror to truly make me angry. Then again, considering that FeardotCom currently sits at a whopping 3% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and is one of only a handful of pictures (regardless of genre) to receive an overall score of ‘F’ on Cinemascore, I should have seen this coming and braced for a truly wretched piece of shit.

 

There are two good things about FeardotCom: the ten-or-so seconds of hearing Rammstein’s “Sonne” during a kidnapping scene, and that it will inspire you to re-watch one of the many films it’s attempting to ape to help you forget about what you’ve just watched here. As for the plot itself? Well, an NYPD detective and a Department of Health employee investigate a series of strange murders that may or may not be connected to a website called “feardotcom…. dotcom.” And no, that is NOT a typo. From what I understand, the producers initially wanted to call the website in the film “fear dot com,” but didn’t realize that there was already a website using that name. The original owners refused to sell the rights to the website, and so the flick’s spooky website’s url was changed to “feardotcomdotcom.” Idiots. Fucking idiots.

 

The mistake of not diving deeper into the trademarking of the website in the picture itself is the least of this excrement resembling a movie’s worries though. For starters, they have the AUDACITY to waste esteemed and beloved character actors such as Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator, From Beyond) and Udo Kier (Shadow of the Vampire, Suspiria) by giving them fuck-all to do. Hell, the latter is basically relegated to a glorified cameo by appearing in its opening three minutes and then dying. I’d also say that they waste Stephen Dorff (Blade, The Gate), but seeing as how he’d go on the star in all-time turd Alone in the Dark several years later, maybe this isn’t so bad for him after all. It’s also lacking in anything resembling originality or real tension. It acts as an ugly, dumbed down hybrid of Videodrome, Se7en, and assorted ‘J’ horror pictures. There’s also some awful ADR in its final act, which considering that it cost $40 million to make, is just baffling.

I know that there have been a lot of “revisionist” pieces for late 90s/early 00’s horror films over the past several years. Films that were unfairly maligned have been rediscovered or reappraised by younger generations or those who are not afraid to defend their favorites (even with noticeable flaws). Heck, sometimes I agree with those! I’ll wait with crossed arms and gritted teeth to see who comes out of the woodworks to defend such a goddamn awful film like FeardotCom though. You better have a compelling argument, because this immediately entered the conversation for worst films I’ve ever watched over the course of doing this marathon.

 

 

 

 

Before you say “hey, this is more psychological thriller than horror,” I want to say that it’s my marathon and I’ll do what I want to do. Plus, those two are best friends whether you realize it or not.

 

How it took me this long to watch 2005’s infamous Hard Candy I have no idea. This was one of THE movies to “make” both Elliot (billed here as “Ellen”) Page and Patrick Wilson. The story is a pretty simple one: Page plays a teenager who meets the significantly older Wilson via an online chat, and they set a time to finally meet in person. After some more small talk and exchanging of interests, they go back to his house, where Page’s character drugs, traps, and tortures him on the grounds that he is strongly/rightfully suspected of being a child predator. After sitting through two mixed bags of the exaggerated notion of “the internet is scary,” this one finally seemed to get something right and packed genuine tension. Page’s character of Hayley is the ultimate spirit of vengeance, and Wilson’s Jeff almost inspires sympathy as time goes by (until you remember that he’s, well, a pederast and potentially even worse). For ninety percent of Hard Candy’s running time, it’s just the two of them (save for a cameo from Sandra Oh of Grey’s Anatomy and Killing Eve fame) fucking with one another. You’re locked inside of their twisted world and it’s fascinating. It’s a treat. Sometimes I love watching movies with casts that are so small you could count the number of featured performers seen in them on one hand. Tragically, while I was writing this review, I discovered that Page was assaulted himself after the wrap party for Hard Candy, which makes watching his equally more uncomfortable, but God I can only hope that the member of the production crew who did it gets what’s coming to them sooner than later.

 

Not sure what else I can add to this review (that and I want to get some rest). It’s on Tubi and I believe Amazon Prime as well. It’s a well-respected film and a great “revenge” flick. Check it out!