Zombos' Closet

The Ultimate Boy's Gift Back In the Day

Every boy when I was growing up wanted a Daisy BB Gun, and every mother I knew worried about us boys shooting our eyes out with it, as so well depicted in the classic film, A Christmas Story.

The ad appeared in the back of comic books. Don't you just love those wonderfully unsafe but fun toys they used to sell! Now everything is so damn prim and proper. You'd think we were a bunch of idiots the way we need to be protected from ourselves. I miss the good old fun days of non-litigation and living dangerously.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

No Bones About It The Boneyard (1991)

ZC Rating 2 of 7: Fair

It was a late winter night for us in the cinematorium. Zimba stretched out on the Empire scroll sofa, already snoring away, while I prepared drinks for myself and Zombos.

"Make mine a double-espresso with lots of foam," said Zombos. He stretched out his long legs and slumped in the Chesterfield club chair. "And don't forget the popcorn."

I loaded up the big ceramic skull o'popcorn and brought the drinks over.

I prefer to sit in the traditional theater seats that take up the first half of the cinematorium, Zombos’ home theater that’s almost as large as a real one. He rescued them from the Manhattan 44th Street theater just before its demolition in 1945 to make room for the New York Times newspaper headquarters expansion. I dimmed the lights, took a sip from my frothy mocha cappuccino, and started the film.

Our film this evening, The Boneyard, is a macabre but uneven mix from director and writer James Cummins. While there are watchable elements, the drawn-out scenes, comical monster puppets, and lackluster acting by the main character get in the way of any good scares. The idea is good: a burned-out and overweight psychic investigator, Alley (Deborah Rose), takes on child-ghouls that also eat too much. But by the time we get to the demonized, gigantic Miss Poopenplatz (Phyllis Diller) and demon-poofle puppets, it all becomes ludicrous.

It starts with a drawn-out scene when detectives, played by veteran Ed Nelson and James Eusterman (Spaced Invaders), enter the world-weary--and messy--psychic's house. They need her help to solve a baffling case involving a mortician and what appear to be three dead children he’s been hiding. They draw their guns dramatically when she doesn't answer, but why do that? She finally turns up after an endless search of the house we’re forced to follow.

When they fail to get her help they leave. Later that night she has a disturbing vision involving a putrescent little girl with lots of long, stringy blond hair, who wants very much to hug and thank her for her help in a previous case. This promising scene has nothing to do with the story, but it does cause Alley to change her mind about helping the detectives. Deborah Rose's lifeless acting is flatline throughout.

At the police station, Alley and the detectives listen to the interrogation of the mortician. He explains how his family has, for three centuries, kept the three child-sized ghouls--he calls them Kyonshi--from devouring living people by feeding them body parts garnered from the funeral home's cadavers. Kyonshi, or hopping vampires, are not flesh-eating ghouls, however, so the use of the term here may be a stretch.

Next, it's off to the soon-to-be-closed coroner's building where the story kicks into low gear, but not before we are subjected to a confusing flashback experienced by Alley, along with an interminable dialog between the two detectives standing in a hallway. We also meet Miss Poopinplatz. She manages the front desk along with her annoying poodle.

Alley has a vision of the three little ghouls awakening downstairs in the morgue with tasty attendants (including Norman Fell) in the next room. Little tension is generated as boy-this-weight-does-slow-me-down Alley clumsily makes her way downstairs to warn the lab attendants of their impending Happy Meal status.

When she finally does reach the morgue, dead bodies are strewn everywhere. Gobs of blood splatter the floor and the little hellions are still chewing away--especially one who gustily attacks an exposed rib-cage. This is the one good gore scene in the movie.

Bodies hang limply from shelves, carried there by the three child-ghouls. Sitting atop a battery operated forklift, the medium-sized ghoul feasts on a pathologist while another rips apart another body.   The smallest ghoul has dragged the bloody corpse of a Pathologist to the fifth level of shelves. It eats an ear off and then snacks on a finger. The creature makes a happy purring sound as it chews. Its gaping mouth continues to rip a chunk from a pathologist's side.

All this explicit gruesomeness is a sudden and unexpected jolt in an otherwise static movie. Mayhem ensues as survivors try to escape. They trap and kill one ghoul, but he manages to stuff part of his skin--I know, it’s disgusting to watch-- down Poopinplatz's throat, turning her into a very tall and pop-eyed puppet monster that desperately needed more money and a better designer to be convincing. The comical nature of the puppet derails the momentum established by the morgue scene.

Poopinplatz's dog, Floosoms, licks up bubbling yellow ichor oozing from one expired ghoul and quickly turns into a man-in-a-suit demon-Floosoms. A horrified girl rescued from the morgue laughs when she sees the comical poodle monster. The action is stopped cold, again, for another long and bewildering dialog as Cummins gives us the ENTIRE background story on the girl who survives the morgue attack. The action picks up again with an Alley and demon-Floosoms confrontation.

If Cummins used a lot less dialog, and Deborah Rose weighed a lot less, and the three child-ghouls were given more screen time, The Boneyard could have been a scarier treat even with Phyllis Diller. Take a look, fast forward a lot, and you’ll be fine: the morgue smorgasbord scene is worth a look.

 

Zombie: Eat Flesh T-Shirt

In our never-ending quest to bring you the most fun apparel any zombie-lover -- that's you! -- can wear, Chindi spotted this chic t-shirt that reminds us of how much we love to eat fresh at Subway, and how much we love to watch zombies eat fresh, too.

I bet Jarred wears one. Though, after losing all that weight, he probably wouldn't make much of a meal for a hungry bunch of zombies.

Go to Glarkware to get yours now!

Horror Fan Gift Guide for 2006

So there you are. Yes, you; you waited and waited and — put down that tie set ! — unless of course you want it knotted around your neck. No self-respecting horror fan would be caught walking-dead in that thing. Nix the cuff-links, tie tac, scarf, funny hat, pen set, and sweater, too, and pay attention. This is your last chance to make that special horrorhead in your life devilishly happy for Christmas with one or more of these you-really-care DVDs and books.

Christmas Evil (1980)

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good (but weird)

Okay, sing along with me now to the tune of Jingle Bells: "Run like hell, Run like hell, Screaming all the way. Oh what terror it is to hide, as whack'o-crazy killing Santa comes your way. Hey!"

Christmas Evil, or as originally titled by the director, You Better Watch Out, is a weirdly magical holiday film filled with enchantment; once you get past the whack o' crazy amateur Santa dealing death from his bag of deadly toys, and the torch-wielding neighborhood villagers chasing him, and the depressing Jolly Dream toy factory, which may remind you of your own place of employment.

When did you find out that Santa Claus was not real? Hopefully it was at a later age than poor Harry Stadling (Brandon Maggart). He finds out the hard way during Christmas Eve while young and still impressionable; and that impression left him yearning for the real Santa and the real Christmas Spirit. His cramped apartment is filled with Christmas memorabilia and he sleeps in Christmas pajamas and a red cap (nicely trimmed with white fur).

His obsession colors his life the wrong way. He's lonely, creepy, and spies on the neighborhood kids with binoculars, writing down all the nasty or nice things the kids do in his Good Boys and Girls and Bad Boys and Girls notebooks. But this Christmas season is different. His fetish for red gets the better of him, and soon he's trying on white beards, and sewing a holly-jolly Santa suit; he even paints his van with a sleigh. He desperately wishes he had "super magic", and since this is a holiday horror movie you know what usually happens to people who wish for things.

No Frost on This Pumpkin Jack Frost (1996)

ZC Rating 2 of 7: Fair

As another year begins its slide into posterityI suppose I should at least write up some resolutions I can judiciously ignore throughout next year. I’ll make my first resolution to do that — perhaps next week.

I recently watched Jack Frost on DVD — hey, there's an important resolution right there: make sure to watch more GOOD horror movies. Now that was easy. I made the mistake of listening to Yahoo Group members' recommendations on this one and — wait a minute, there’s my second resolution: do not listen to movie recommendations garnered from trolls in chat groups. My word, coming up with New Year resolutions is easier than I thought.

 

While the idea of a serial-killing snowman may be novel-looking on paper, its execution, which could have been on a par with Shaun of the Dead in wit and visual humor, falls far short; and you can't blame it on budget limitations, either. In the hands of a Roger Corman or Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman, low budgets ignite creativity with cheap but imaginative set pieces and self-indulgent—wink, wink-- scripting. That didn't happen here.

Whenever you combine the elements of comedy and horror you have to decide how far to go in each direction. Should it be a parody, a satire, tongue-in-cheek, or a mix of these approaches? What visual framing will tone your choices and how will the characterizations and actions move the story to highlight them, and keep funny-bone chuckling and shinbone trembling with fright?

Uncle Henry’s inappropriately risqué bedtime story voiceover to his young niece sets the mood. As he horrifies her, we, very slowly, look at ornaments on a Christmas tree, pausing to see the movie’s credits written on each one. At first a novelty, it becomes tiresome as it drags on. Uncle Henry's story introduces Jack Frost (Scott MacDonald) the criminal as he’s conveyed to his execution in a van aptly titled with Troma-like subtlety, "State Executional Transfer Vehicle." 

A collision with the also aptly titled "Genetic Research" truck reveals the miniscule budget: quick cuts cover up the absence of showy car-explosion pyrotechnics. Jack gets doused genetic research liquid, turning him into a wise-cracking, not very jolly, serial-killing snow cone with a button nose. A pseudo-scientific explanation is later given by one of the Genetic Company’s agents to explain this transformation, but it’s all intentional nonsense unintentionally witless.

Now to Snowmonton, a small town where an annual snowman contest-- hey, wait a minute, there’s that budget drain again: no snow! There are scant piles of flaky fake snow here and there, but the few snowmen in the contest look pitiful. How the townsfolk made them is bewildering: there’s no snow in Snowmonton. This might have been funny if directed with that thought in mind, but director Michael Cooney’s thoughts are on rote murder instead. We don’t see the first murder, just the victim’s discovery, with us looking from behind the old man’s spiked-hair-frozen head at three dismayed police officers. They are looking down at his icy body seated in a rocking chair. One of the officers absent-mindedly rocks the chair with his foot. That’s funny.

No reason for why this poor local yokel was murdered is given, but being a horror movie, who needs reasons, right? Only escalatingly gruesome and growing body counts matter. Jack Frost the snowman makes his appearance in a flaky-fake foam rubber suit. His oddly designed facial features don’t do much for either the comic or horror mood he’s trying to project.

I admit to the guilty pleasure of finding humor in the second murder, where Jack cuts off a bullying boy's head with a sleigh, but his grieving parents’ acting is so bad the humor is quickly lost. Luckily that acting doesn’t go on for long; mom is viciously dispatched by Jack using a Christmas tree’s string-lights and broken glass ornaments to shut her up. The attack starts funny, but heavy-handed direction turns it into a nervous laughter situation--something that looks funny but isn’t. Watching her face repeatedly mashed into the shards of glass while Jack makes merry quips IS NOT FUNNY. When her body is discovered, we see the three, still-bewildered, police officers through the blinking string-lights wrapped around her. The humor falls flat because we suffered through her sadistic murder. The movie’s tongue-in-cheekiness, its balancing of humor and horror, tips out of sensible control after this, becoming a slasher-formulaic catastrophe without focus.

A convenient plot device to make Jack more mobile has him change from snow to water as needed. How he moves along in the snow without legs is still a puzzler. Using his solid to liquid trick, he commits a rape and murder. I assume the scene looked awfully clever in the script, but to watch it made me scratch my head wondering what they were thinking. When Jack starts shooting icicle daggers from his body to gleefully kill, I found it difficult to keep watching. Cooney loses his street-cred completely at this point, making Jack Frost a movie for people interested in novelty killings more than coherent story-telling or characterizations. Sadly, the horror genre is full of such fans. Jack slaughters an entire family while cracking sarcastic one-liners all the way, then goes after Sheriff Tiler (Christopher Allport), the man who sent him to prison. More mayhem follows. The Sheriff’s habit of losing keys at critical, key-needed-urgently moments becomes tiresome, aerosol cans and hair dryers magically appearing in quantity to fend off Jack is humorless, and the preposterous, but imaginative, climax involving an anti-freeze filled truck bed and amazingly good timing to save the day doesn’t make up for the time wasted leading up to it. The townsfolk bury the anti-freeze bottles that now contain Jack Frost; of course, Jack will return in an even more cheaply conceived sequel.

While this is not a good horror movie by any worthwhile stretch of critical assessment, it does provide an excellent primer for budding scriptwriters on what you should avoid when attempting a horror comedy. This movie doesn’t deserve its cult status because it simply doesn’t earn it. 

Naughty Toys for Good Girls and Boys

Archie McPhee has some of the most bizarre toys for horrorhead girls and boys. Whether naughty or nice, just head on over and give that significant horror fan in your life a gift they'll never expect. Or pick up some swag for yourself. You deserve it, too.

Make bath time more fun with this Frogmen vs. the Radioactive Octopus playset. Each set includes twelve 2-1/2" hard vinyl frogmen and one 9" soft vinyl octopus that glows in the dark!

Budding directors can storyboard their next aquatic horror opus while getting clean. Struggling directors can even combine this set with the Tub of Mini Executives for that cathartic effect after dealing with those talent-less studio suits all day. Make them beg for mercy as they are eaten alive by your squiddy friend.

My favorite is the Avenging Unicorn Playset, complete with posable, 3-3/4" tall, hard vinyl unicorn, and soft vinyl figures of a businessman, new age lady, and  mime (mimes creep me out big time). You can have hours of fun impaling your hapless victims on any one of four stylish horns (classic spiral, chrome, glow and pearlescent). Make Mr. Mime pantomime for mercy again and again.

But don't stop there; by adding a Tub of Mini Executives and drilling holes in their plastic backs, you can impale them, too. Come to think of it, those mini executives probably already have ready-made holes from all the backstabbing they do to each other anyway, so adding them to your unicorn fetish fantasies will be even easier.

Any script writer worth his weight in words would love a Houdini Action Figure. Directors, too, will find the cathartic effect of freeing themselves from the tyranny of by-the-numbers studio nincompoops, that insist on endless predictable rewrites, franchisable stories, and squeaking budgets, quite empowering.

Through this 5-1/2" tall, hard vinyl Houdini, directors and writers can symbolically cast off the yoke of Hollywood opression using the cloth straight jacket, two sets of plastic shackles, and bit of rope included.

But why stop there? Toss in A Tub of Mini Executives, and you can tie them up and shake them down. Make them plead for mercy as you bind them tightly in effigy. Clamp those shackles around their little plastic ankles with glee, or tie rope around their feet and hang them upside down for hours on end. Another mindless scene rewrite to attract the teen audience? — no problem, you've got your Houdini Action Figure playset!

Horrified B-movie Victims will provide fans with endless possibilities because YOU provide the terror! Each dramatic play set includes nine 2-1/2" to 3" tall, hard vinyl victims captured in utterly terrified poses! Are they reacting to the advance of a (insert your favorite monster figure here), or leaving the theater in droves because of the escalating ticket prices — you decide!

Make-up effects oriented horror fans can modify their B-movie victims for zombie, atomic, or classic monster effects. Add the Tub of Mini Executives for more realistic action, and turn your horrified B-movie victims into horrified corporate employee victims screaming Enron as they fruitlessly struggle frantically to escape their sweatshop-office hell. As an added bonus, modify the mini executives into their true blood-sucking and life-destroying natures to provide endless hours of sadistic fun!

Last, but not least, the Tub of Mini Executives is the epitome of fun. What more can you ask for? Seventy-two, 1-5/8" tall, hard vinyl figures are blandly dressed for success and ready to make their way up the corporate ladder, no matter who they have to push off to make it to the top.

Horrorheads everywhere can create numerous scenes of mayhem and torture with these single-minded, over-caffeinated, predictable-as-hell action figures, by combining them with other playsets. Imagine they're the Hollywood suits that gave us The Grudge 2 and The Return, and make them pay!

Invite Jigsaw to the party, or relive the romantic torture scenes in Turistas. You're only limited by their lack of creativity and imagination, as they struggle for that bigger cubicle or corner office, or franchise-making box office winner.

Now that's scary.

 

Head Trauma (2006)

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Suppose you left your town and home many years ago, and drifted along here and there, never putting down roots. Suppose you are homeless, friendless, and suffer from a fragmented memory, whose shards of clarity are confusing and terrifying. What is it you can't remember, but can't seem to fully forget? Portrait of a man in crisis: George Walker.

In indie director and co-writer (along with Brian Majeska) Lance Weiler's Head Trauma, George Walker returns to his deceased grandmother's house and soon goes head to head with those shards of memory; and a mysterious and ominous Snorkel Parka dressed individual who just may be a maniacal killer.

But why does he go after George? Is it because George's return to his grandmother's abandoned and condemned house, filled with dark corners, squatter debris, and a really creepy attic—

"This review won't fly, you know," said Zombos, peering over my shoulder.

"What?" I said.

Best Book Gift Ideas for the Horror Film Fan

So there you stand, scratching your severed head in dismay; what gifts to get that ho-ho-ho-so difficult horrorhead in your family? Why suffer the hordes of zombiefied holiday shoppers, overwhelmed store employees, and bargain bins of the damned when you can sail down the Amazon in shopping comfort while sipping your favorite frothy beverage? To help you with your gift buying, Zombos Closet presents the first annual list of bloody best books any fan of horror cinema would die and come back for, again and again.