JACK-O

  

Fun Fact: Jack-O is one of the worst horror movies and best first ladies of all time. I am, of course, more inclined to write about the horror movie than the first lady, because I have seen the horror movie three times under various levels of intoxication. (And I have seen the first lady zero times under zero levels of intoxication. Man, this blog is getting weird.)

  

Anyway, Jack-O is an ultra-low-budget Pumpkinhead story from the early 90s. (There are no pill-box hats in sight.) I was planning to write up a blog post about this movie after I watched it last year, but I honestly could not think of anything clever or interesting to say about it, so I just let the memories fade into the back of my pumpkin head.

  

Today, when I was cleaning out my computer and looking at all my random saved photos (Hello, Eartha Kitt from Ernest Scared Stupid!), I came across the above picture. Now I honestly could not remember if this was a screen cap from Jack-O or an episode of Goosebumps. I believe it is actually from Goosebumps. But the fact that there was ever any doubt really says a lot about Jack-O. And basically, what it says is please do not watch Jack-O.

TITANIC II

STATS

Titanic II

2010

Directed by: Shane Van Dyke

Written by: Shane Van Dyke
Starring: Shane Van Dyke (notice a pattern?)

WHA’ HAPPENED?

It’s the hundredth anniversary of the Titanic’s fateful voyage, and some genius decided to give it another go. Some people are afraid it’s going to sink. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it does not.

Okay. Yes it does. It sinks real good.

…And they officially blew their budget.

Unlike the legitimate Titanic movie, this one doesn’t focus on a large cast of characters. Instead, the only characters we get to know are the ship’s one competent doctor and the boat’s owner. We also follow the rescue efforts of the girl’s father, who plays a Coast Guard captain/iceberg expert. (Uh oh.) It’s this guy:

You build ONE army of murderous rats and then

you’re stuck in straight-to-DVD sh!t like this. Life isn’t fair.

This film greatly improves on the 1997 film, because now, instead of an iceberg, we have an iceberg, a tsunami, and a MEGA-tsunami. You gotta love this film.

Quick, everybody. Lean slightly to the left. It’s a mega-tsunami.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

Asylum Films has perfected the art of the “mockbuster,” releasing such exploitative classics as Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers: Fall of Man, and The Terminators.

They even improved on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by releasing a Sherlock Holmes that replaces Jude Law with dinosaurs and a giant squid.

This made my eyeballs hurt.

WHAT YOU SAY?

“An ice-glacier collapsed off the coast of Greenland.”

“The lifeboats are death traps!”

“Not again!”

“Looks like history’s repeated itself!”

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

None. Our lead actor Shane Van Dyke (who pulled an Orson Welles and wrote/directed this masterpiece) makes sure that the camera lingers on him lovingly, especially when he has his arms draped around the ladies… or when he’s slow-motion surfing.

Whose idea was it to start Titanic 2 with five minutes

of slow-motion surfing? Oh yeah, probably Shane Van Dyke.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Thousands of people drown off-screen. One guy suffocates from smoke. And the lead character’s best friend gets crushed by the world’s worst emergency exit.

This happened to her to. Via a cabinet. She was pretty killable.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

I absolutely love the group shots. Notice the crowd of dozens who gather to watch Titanic 2 disappear into the horizon.

By some fluke of physics, most of these people are shown on the ship in later scenes.

Try to play Spot the Extra as this movie continues. One lady in particular is like Jason Voorhees: she’s everywhere at all times.

Watch her. Watch her good.

Speaking of extras, I swear I saw Debbie Gibson in the background of most of the group scenes.

Seriously, right? That's gotte be her.

Most of the film involves our two main characters trying to reach the ill-defined safety tanks at the bottom of the ship. This section of the movie seems more like Poseidon Adventure than Titanic (without the stars or awesomeness, of course).

Oh crap. The happy face is going to reach them in T minus 15 seconds.

Our hero (notice how I never learned her name) gets surprisingly good cell phone reception in an elevator… on a boat… in the middle of the ocean… a hundred feet below the surface.

OK. IS IT GAY?

This film is an interesting disaster, mostly because it shows how one man (writer/director/actor/caterer Shane Van Dyke) builds a whole movie around himself. It’s a huge ego project, all the way down to the movie’s climax, in which our main characters gather around his lifeless body and try to bring him back. He spends so much time on himself, that we have no idea how many innocent people died because of him. (Remember, his character built the boat.) In fact, at one point he looks out at the horizon and another character asks him, “Admiring your masterpiece?” That moment almost seemed like a comment on his own hubris.

Perhaps because of this, the film doesn’t bother to develop any of the other characters. There is no romance, no drama, no real emotions at all except for a father/daughter relationship that doesn’t go anywhere. Perhaps worst of all, Titanic 2 isn’t even that campy.  I have no reason to recommend this to a gay audience. It’s a Tara Reid.

I DISMEMBER MAMA

Welcome to VHS Tuesday, where I dig up one of my old, awful horror videos and share its delightfully stupid packaging. When horror videos first started flooding the market, the marketing geniuses really went to town thinking up the best taglines and the most hilariously literal summaries. Today we have I Dismember Mama, an awful, awful video nasty that I never want to see again. But its packaging: pure genius.
   

This is the cover. Look! It’s Roy Scheider playing a washed-up magician.

   

   
Note the tagline: May she rest… in pieces. Damn. Gets me every time.
     
And the summary:
        

POOR ALBERT IS JUST CRAZY ABOUT WOMEN.

     

Albert (Zooey Hall) is a mentally disturbed young man incarcerated in a rest home run by Dr. Burton (Frank Whiteman).

    
A nurse’s reprimand (Elaine Partnow) causes him to lock her in his room, strip off her clothes and attempt to murder her. Then an attendant (James Tartan) is brutally murdered and Albert escapes. And so starts a killing spree more brutal than any ever seen in the annals of filmmaking. First his mothers servant goes, then a call girl in a series of chilling murders culminating in a terrifying Hitchcockian climax that will leave you breathless time and time again!
      

Not only do we know exactly who dies (and in what order!) but we also know that this is the most brutal, Hitchcockian story ever put to film. God bless whatever minimum wage copy-writer wrote this description. You almost make me want to see this movie again. Almost.

VALENTINE

Valentine's Day just happened, and you know what that means, ladies and gentlemen. I'm still in a Reese's-induced sugar coma. It also means that I get the chance to talk about one of my least favorite guilty pleasures, the Denise-Richards-getting-harpooned-to-death slashfest Valentine.

Now, full disclosure: I have a soft spot in my heart for this movie, and there are two reasons why: First, it is the only Katherine Heigl movie that I can bother sitting through all the way (besides Bride of Chucky or Wish upon a Star). I enjoy the fact that she gets murdered at the very beginning. Such is my hatred for Katherine Heigl.

And secondly, it was a date movie for me. One of my first. I was in junior high; I was really nervous. It didn’t go well. But… I look back on that memory fondly. And ironically.

Aside from that, Valentine doesn’t have a lot to recommend. It came at the tail end of the late-90s slasher resurgence, and it comes across as stale and perfunctory. The final revelation is really dumb. And the acting (except for dead-eyed superbitch Denise Richards) is subpar. It’s not campy enough to be enjoyable, nor legit enough to be watchable. It’s just sort of there, limping along through wildly implausible death scenes at multi-media art installations and dimly lit mansions. Even David Boreanaz is weirdly charisma-free (and I don’t mean Carpenter).

But considering all that, I still would recommend it. It’s like a time capsule. It’s a quaint little window into the horror trends at the turn of the millennium. It’s basically the perfect distillation of everything that was wrong with horror movies at that time. The bad plotting, the hyper-verbal yet completely unnatural dialog, the long scenes of exposition, the dozens of unnecessary red herrings. Watch this and you’ll remember what it was like in the late-90s, early-2000s. For some people, that’s reason enough to sit through this dreck.

If you don’t, this lady will cut you.

DEADLY BLESSING

    

STATS:

Deadly Blessing
Directed by Wes Craven
      
WHA’ HAPPENED?
You thought Amish people were bad. (Wait. Did you?) Just wait till you meet the Hittites, these crazy farmers that get caught up in a slow-moving horror mystery involving tractors, snakes, and someone dropping a live tarantula into Sharon Stone's mouth.
     
FAVORITE QUOTE:
A poor manchild has been killed.
     

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

Why did I watch this movie? Well, it was directly by Wes Craven. And I’m a completist. I was sure it couldn’t be worse than My Soul to Take. But the fact that this is mostly known as the movie where Sharon Stone got a live tarantula in her mouth tells me that it wasn’t exactly one of Craven's top tier movies.
          

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

Some PG female nudity. Including a bathtub scene with an overly curious snake. Similar to Nancy’s bathtub scene in the first Nightmare on Elm Street. If Mr. Craven has to rip off other movies, they might as well be his own.
    

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Nothing particularly memorably. Most deaths occur in shadowy barns and whatnot, so there isn’t a lot to see. Apparently, Amish country isn’t very well-lit. Who knew! But that guy from The Hills Have Eyes gets probably the longest death scene. So there’s that.
    

PLOT HOLES AND CRAZINESS:

The reveal of the killer is sudden and kind of dumb, but holy crap does the film have an awesome ending. Think Drag Me to Hell, but completely unearned. Like, if Freddy Krueger showed up at the end of Scream. It makes no damn sense, but it is probably the only thing I will remember about this movie in a month. That and the scene where Sharon Stone gets a tarantula in her mouth. Now that’s the stuff that dreams are made of.
           

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Ernest Borgnine was born to play a crazy Hittite farmer. Forget his Oscar-winning role in Marty. THIS is his legacy. Aside from him, though, everyone else is pretty much sleeping through this film, especially Martha, the main girl, who goes from constipated to dizzy without ever registering terror. All-in-all, a forgetting slog of a film, even for its short run-time, but be sure to stay for that cuckoo-bananas ending. You will not regret it.

AMITYVILLE DOLLHOUSE

     
Amityville Dollhouse
1996
  

Tagline: The biggest name in horror comes home. (What?)

    

Starring Kalabar from Disney’s Halloweentown. That’s about it. And it took me literally the entire movie to figure out where I knew him from.

    

     

WHA’ HAPPENED?

Basically the same nonsense from all the Amityville sequels: supporting characters die but the family is more-or-less safe. Everyone thinks the dad is going crazy. The house blows up at the end.
      
The difference here is that the magic dollhouse of the title is to blame, and it can summon demons, giant rats, and previously dead relatives. Also, the family’s younger son is a creepy little whiner whose only friend is a pet rat. Remember when I said that no one in the core family gets murdered? Well, sometimes that’s not a good thing.
   

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

The mid-90s was a wonderland of random direct-to-video sequels to semi-popular horror films. Some were fun (Leprechaun 2, 3, and 4), some were painful (Children of the Corn 5), and some involved an evil dollhouse that summoned dead people.
    

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

The older son has a shirtless make-out session with his girlfriend. It’s fairly steamy, until the girlfriend basically gets eaten by the fireplace. It’s kind of a mood-killer.
     

BLOOD AND GUTS:

The zombie dad was pretty great, in a Pet Semetary 2 kind of way, and the burn victim girlfriend was effective. (Seriously, do NOT date someone who lives in a haunted house.) But the coolest scene is when the teen son gets an earful of mosquito. It was like that scene in Wrath of Khan, but with a more realistic fake ear. Gloopy goodness.
        

FINAL THOUGHTS:

After watching Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (which is a slightly lamer title than Dollhouse), I’ve decided that this sequel is just as bad, if slightly less inconsequential. As always, there are plenty of dry patches, and the climax is a little rushed (Look! A demon! Okay, let’s leave.) But it’s charming in a bone-headed way, and the scene with the giant rat was adorable.

PIECES

      
No words can describe how awesome and derivative this movie is. Oh wait. Words totally can do that! And here they are:
       

PIECES… It’s exactly what you think it is!

   

The year is 1941! A young boy is assembling a jigsaw puzzle of a nude woman, when his mother enters in a rage and tells him to throw the puzzle out. Instead he returns with an ax and hacks his mother to death, tricking the police into believing a maniac had killed her.

   

Forty years later at a Boston college, the terror really begins. A chainsaw-weilding madman is roaming the campus collecting pieces of beautiful co-eds for a ghastly human puzzle he is assembling—and the police haven’t a clue to the crazed killer's identity.

    

CHRISTOPHER GEORGE (MORTUARY) stars in this horrifying adventure into madness, hysteria and bone-chilling brutality.

CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER

                                               

STATS:

CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER
1974
Written and Directed by Brian Clemens
Starring Horst Janson (seriously)
                   

WHA’ HAPPENED?

A rich family goes around sucking the life out of pretty, young girls in order to stay youthful forever. Our titular captain (What is he the captain of? No idea.) comes to the rescue, defeating these age-sucking jerkwads with his fencing skills, luck with the ladies, and obscure vampire knowledge. (Fun fact: vampires can bring dead toads back to life just by walking by.)
                 

                       

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

I’ve always been a Hammer fan, and I knew this entry in their mid-70s output is particularly strange. Not oppressively strange in a kung-fu-vampires kind of way, but strange enough to catch my interest on a lazy Saturday morning.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

Kronos is shirtless a good 40% of the movie. He has one dimly lit sex scene, and a bunch of innocent bromantic scenes with another male character that turn slightly more homoerotic because hes shirtless. (In one memorable exchange, his buddy touches the captain's torso scar and says that he knows he has guts, because he’s already seen his insides.) The actor playing Kronos isn’t exactly someone to write home about, but hey.
                 

                           

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Mostly slight trickles of mouth blood and glumpy old-age make-up. Hammer has done a lot better in the past.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

I enjoyed the wonky mythos that this film built around its vampire characters. Specifically, each vampire can only be killed in specific ways. Some have to be staked, some have to be burnt, and some have to get a crucifix to sink into their embarrassingly vulnerable chest. It must suck to be the vampire that dies via garlic pizza.
                    

                           

OK. IS IT GAY?

Yeah. The film builds a strange rhythm where it has a bromance scene with Kronos and the doctor who summoned him (the scar-caressing one), followed very quickly by Kronos making sexy-time with his female companion. Either hes bi, or he needs to sort through some issues fast. That, coupled with a particularly androgynous son-of-a-vampire, makes for some pleasant 70s escapism with a slight queer bent. Fun times all around.
                          

HAPPY ARBOR DAY EVERYONE!

Trees! Trees! Carly’s Arboy Day Foundation,

spread the word across the nation about TREES!

Trees are terrific! Ah ha!

BUCKY LARSON: BORN TO BE A STAR

   
So we have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Nick Swardson did not make a movie starring any of his gay stereotype characters. The bad news is Nick Swardson made a movie.
   

This film, produced by the American auteur Adam Sandler, helped Mr. Sandler set a record for the most Razzie nominations in a single year. It also set a record for one of the lowest-grossing wide-release movies in the history of film. Let us see how the title character, porn star Bucky Larson, responds to the bad news...
       

     
Oh I see. Bucky is a freakish man-child, and everyone else in the movie are actual, normal characters who have to help him grow up.
    

   
...No. I guess not. I guess everyone in this movie is an off-putting weirdo. Good thing they decided not to cast any big-name stars who might otherwise derail their careers...

   
Oh look. I see Don Johnson. Well, he got a paycheck out of it.
   

   
And of course, this would not be an Adam Sandler movie without an addled old lady who gets abused by people. I will be you three dollars that she gets run over by a car.
   
Well, this is clearly turning out to be a train wreck, but at least there were no A-list celebrities slumming it in the film. We can rest assured that none of our favorite actors had to endure the awfulness of this film.
     

   

Wednesday!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!

THE HORROR SHOW (HOUSE 3)

I didn’t want to write a full review of House 3 the same way I wrote one for House 1, 2, and 4. Why? Because this isn’t really a House movie. It’s a title-grabbing cash-in, and I’ve always felt a little angry at this movie, because it throws off the numbering system of the entire House franchise. (Much like the Italian Zombi movies, which either skipped number one or number two, depending on how you look at them.)

     

 So yes, as you can tell, I am very boring at parties.

       

 But the point is, I finally sat through House 3 yesterday (or at least the first two thirds, before Netflix decided to lay a big old fart on my Internet connection). And my verdict: pleasantly surprised. I was expected a straight-up horror movie, which would go against the horror-comedy spirit of the other two installments. But this was actually kind of funny. Or at least it tried to be. The ghost (because this movie has a single ghost) terrorizes our poor main character, but he actually has a sense of humor about it. There were a few scenes in this film that actually reminded me of the similarly overlooked Shocker.

      

No, I don’t recommend this. But I’m glad I saw it. Not bad, Mr. Cash Grab. Not bad.

PROPHECY

STATS:

THE PROPHECY

1995

Written and Directed by Gregory Widen

WHA’ HAPPENED?

Angels try to kill humans. It’s a lot like Legion, except Paul Bettany is now Eric Stoltz and the story actually makes sense. But it basically comes down to the merry fact that angels are messed up. Also, Christopher Walken is Gabriel and he wants to destroy Heaven. I believe the entire story is based on the Book of Revelations by Michael Bay.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

This is a fairly well regarded horror-action movie. It spawned four sequels (according to the bargain bin DVD set I got at K-mart for 99 cents and a ball of twine). I actually have never seen this movie, though I have seen the little-loved Prophecy from the guy who wrote The Omen. That was about a killer bear mutant, and it somehow didn’t include a scene where Christopher Walken lights Eric Stoltz's head on fire. So… Basically what I’m saying is that I really needed to see this movie.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

Lots of accidental homoeroticism, thank you very much, courtesy of the amazeballs sexual tension between TMNT's Casey Jones and LOTR's Aragorn. (What fan fiction!)

There are so many back rubs in Hell.

…AAAAANNNNNNDDDD…. Let’s look at that from another angle, shall we? This is hilarious.

Front rubs, too.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
It’s interesting to watch a movie with a very, very evil Satan as a key supporting character, and yet he is NOT the bad guy. I guess even Satan isn’t as wicked-awesome as Christopher Walken, Gigli-notwithstanding.

There are clever touches amidst all the dumb-headed voiceover that adds absolutely nothing to the story. (Seriously. Where’s Angela Chase when you need her!) But the story moves along quickly and Virginia Madsen is beautiful as ever. I can see why this has a cult following, and while I’m not quite ready to drink this particular brand of Cool-Aid, I did have a good time.

Here is Satan, walking into the sunset.

DRACULA 2: ASCENSION

STATS:

Dracula II: Ascension

2003

Directed by Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry! My Bloody Valentine 3D!)

        

WHA’ HAPPENED?

People find Dracula’s corpse and try to bring it back to life via blood, because what’s the worst that can happen? Spoiler alert (because this movie is stupid): the entire thing was orchestrated by a rich guy who’s slowly dying of [insert random disease here] because he wants to harness the power of Dracula blood. He’s basically the mad scientist of the movie.

                                        

It’s my strong hand.

   

WHA’ HAPPENED?

People find Dracula’s corpse and try to bring it back to life via blood, because what’s the worst that can happen? Spoiler alert (because this movie is stupid): the entire thing was orchestrated by a rich guy who’s slowly dying of [insert random disease here] because he wants to harness the power of Dracula blood. He’s basically the mad scientist of the movie.

   

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

I’m a fan of the cheesy original, starring Gerard Butler as a too-screamy Dracula and Vitamin C as a look-this-was-filmed-in-the-late-90s vampire bride. This one, however, has none of that. But the leads are uniformly hot and the story looks basic and diverting.

   

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

We have the always welcome Jason Scott Lee (Lilo and Stitch, Ghoulies III, that Jungle Book live-action movie from the 90s) as a bad-ass action priest, which is the best kind of priest. We also have one of the London twins (I didn’t care enough to Google which one, because they are, in fact, twins), and this was filmed pre-bloat, apparently.

      

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Where, there is blood. Lots of blood. So drink up!

    

Heeeeyyyy you guuuyyyyssss!

         

FINAL THOUGHTS?

Not bad. It’s not the time capsule awesomeness of the original (Did I mention Vitamin C?), but it’s a fun, actiony movie taking place mostly in an old abandoned castle. The first movie was in New Orleans, I believe, but the characters in this one apparently drove from there to Romania. Or at least they traveled by map, Muppet-style!

Filmed at Grey Gardens.

    

Anyway, a solid, entertaining film, though not solid enough to bring me back for Dracula 3: Chipwrecked.

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

Ray Bradbury is a genius. I’ve read several of his books, and while I appreciate his stories more than I actively enjoy them, he does know his way around some killer concepts: the idea of a dark carnival is quite bad-ass, indeed.

I have not read the story this movie was based on, but I used to catch it on the Disney Channel every year around Halloween time. They don’t play it so much, mostly to give extra time to wacky sitcoms. But also because HOLY CRAP this movie is terrifying. The spider lady, the aging backwards, the showdown in the library, the amputee footballer, the horrible parades… Watching this movie is like watching a perfect old-timey town slowly being taken over by something dark and horrible. The story doesn’t always fit together, and plot points crash into each other without the slightest bit of connective tissue (…uh, something, something lightning rods…). But coherence is overrated, and this film succeeds in being creepy as hell. Check it out the next time it’s on TV. You’d be surprised what they could get away with in a kid’s movie. There isn’t anything overtly gory or gross, but the tone is creepy and curdled and so, so good.

PRINCESS OF MARS

Yowza.

Is it weird that I was rooting for the bad guys throughout this movie? I mean, they were represented by the hot, semi-nude, and bitchy Traci Lords, while we were supposed to feel sympathy for the tusked green natives who talk in fakey accents and gesture a lot. That doesn’t sound like much of a competition to me. Give me Traci Lords any day.

Yeah, I said it.

And give me this low-budget train wreck over the high-budget train wreck of John Carter any day. While that movie is chock-full of loudness and wall-to-wall CGI, this one is the kind of simple, dunderheaded mess that is much more fun to watch. Admittedly, I haven’t seen the big-screen version, because I don’t want to contribute to our blockbuster lets-watch-anything culture. But when I inevitably catch it riddled with commercials one late night on FX, I know what to expect: the same story as this film, just without any sense of real joy or adventure.

Does that make this movie good? God no. It’s a mess. But I think, deep down, it knows it’s a mess. After all, it stars Antonio Sabato Jr. alongside green guys with tusks.

CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL

I am fascinated with low-budget independent musicals. There is just something grand and epic about the musical genre, so watching something grand and epic rendered on a tiny, do-it-yourself scale is unlike any other type of indie. Indie musicals are special. Case-in-point: I just saw Colma the Musical, which has some gay interest but very little in regards to horror, so it probably would not be a good fit for this website. But watching it inspired me to check out a few more cheapie musicals, specifically this one. Cannibal!

I caught it back in the late-90s when my brother and I were obsessed with all things South Park. We worshipped Trey Parker and Matt Stone. And, unbeknownst to my brother, I had the biggest effing crush on Trey Parker. I mean, look at him. He looks so wholesome and so...

Well, maybe wholesome is little off. But rewatching this film was a lot of fun mainly because it was an opportunity to remember my schoolboy crush on this guy. The songs were good, and a lot of the humor worked. Some of the jokes... not so much. Maybe I have since grown out of the rhythm of this kind of humor, because there were specific moments in the film that I found hysterical the first time around that now left me... well, not laughing.

Here is an example:

Still, Cannibal! is a solid movie and an admirable effort for a low-budget student film. It definitely shows off the glimmers of talent that Parker and Stone will eventually display. But, like I said, my favorite part was spending some time with a long-forgotten crush.

GATE 2: TRESPASSERS

I’m a huge fan of The Gate. I always have been. Any movie with hordes of stop-motion mini-creatures invading late-80s suburbia is right up my alley. I like Gremlins, and I love Ghoulies, and I tolerate Munchies. Plus, it had a young Stephen Dorff, the pocket hunk from Blade, back when he was a little kid with the exact same head as his adult version. Oh yeah, The Gate was a fun ride.

So I was always curious about The Gate 2. I enjoy tracking down little-seen, little-loved sequels to horror classics (Fright Night 2: The Squeakquel), and there are fewer movies less seen and less loved than this one. It was one of the few films, along with Saturday the 14th and The Bermuda Depths, that I regularly looked for on Netflix Instant. But when Netflix failed me, Youtube delivered. Check out all ten parts of this movie as soon as possible; otherwise you just might miss it.

Gate 2 is totally Dorff-less, and instead focuses on his creepy William Finley-looking best friend who tries to open the same gate and unleash a bunch of demons because his dad is alcoholic or something. There’s also an unearned romance with Pamela Segall, because there has to be a romance, right? I’m not going to focus too much on the story, because it feels like a lame version of the original, and comes across as centerless and weirdly short, even though its runtime is roughly the same as the original. (Such is the power of Dorff, I guess.) I will say that the goofy mini-creatures are back, and the effects are still a lot of fun, and there is the added twist of our main characters crossing over into the other side. (In this movie, WE are the Trespassers. Apparently.) But all that adds up to a competent, enjoyable ride that you’ll probably forget in the near future.

I would like to mention, though, that I experienced a very specific thrill watching this movie that I didn’t understand at first. As the credits began, I was genuinely excited about what would happen next. And even when the reality of this movie slowly deflated my excitement, there was still something there, thudding away in my little fanboy heart. Long after the movie was over, I finally figured out what that feeling was: the excitement of tracking down a rare movie. In the post-Netflix age, there really isn’t such a thing as rarity anymore. Everything is at your fingertips, and everything is equal. That’s definitely a good thing. But at the same time, it’s not. Without the need to track something down, to stumble across the rare VHS or DVD in some bargain bin, nothing feels special anymore. Not in the way it used to. Tracking down this movie somehow made it more special to me, even though the movie itself was underwhelming and passable. I have a feeling this will be one of the last movies that gives me that kind of thrill. And for that, I definitely treasure my Gate 2 experience.