October Horror Challenge 2012 - Day 2

After spending the entire morning and early afternoon battling traffic in the rain I came home and put on TOWER OF LONDON. It seems for every Roger Corman film starring Vincent Price I've seen there is another that I haven't, this being one of those that I hadn't seen. Price stars in this film based on the Shakespeare play "Richard III" and is the evil nobleman hellbent on gaining the crown of England even if it means killing his family, including his youthful nephews. What he doesn't expect is for his guilt and paranoia to manifest itself into the ghosts of his victims who drive him to his demise. It is no surprise that Price is great in his role and that the film is another winner from Corman.

 To follow that up I popped in the Full Moon movie DEATH BED which is presented by Stuart Gordon. Gordon's attachment to the film was really the only thing giving me any hope that it may be worth a damn and I should have know that his Executive Producer role would lend anything to the actual production of the film. The film is about a bed that a young couple discovers in the attic of their new converted warehouse apartment that was the scene of a murder involving a prostitute decades earlier. The bed now haunts the young woman who took it out of storage for her own use. The plot sounds stupid and it is. This movie is the definition of straight to DVD garbage in every single way.

There have been way too many shitty movies for just the first 2 days of the challenge. I mean, first there was The Drive-In Massacre and then Nightmares Come At Night which was no bad dream, but now Death Bed? Fuck. I hope the rest of the month isn't this rough.

Luckily we got back to the good stuff with 1988's THE BRAIN. I've known about this title for a while but never got around to seeing it as it has no disc release and I never stumbled over the VHS. This flick concerns a giant brain monster gaining power and controlling minds through the aid of it's main caretaker played by Re-Animator's David Gale (who is seemingly always a nasty doctor) and his TV show called "Independent Thinking". A local high school kid finds out about the plot to take over the minds of everybody with a television set and he is thrown head first into the adventure to stop it. This is full of 80s cheese and a great practical FX monster. I hope this thing gets a DVD or BD release soon.

The last film of day 2 is SLUGS. A film about mutant killer slugs can only be handled with such class by acclaimed director J.P. Simon. Okay, there is very little class to speak of and Simon is more infamous than acclaimed for his work on the classic splatterfest Pieces. SLUGS has ridiculous gore, a plot straight out of 50s sci-fi horror (mutant bugs from a damaged Ecosystem) and did I mention ridiculous gore? You cannot go in this movie with any intention of taking it seriously. Sit back, grab a beer and just enjoy. It's a fucking blast. 

Today's Rundown
Tower Of London - 7.5/10
Death Bed - 2/10
The Brain - 7/10
Slugs - 8/10