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The Garden Movie Review
The Garden is about a young boy, who has bad dreams, cuts himself, and was just released from a mental hospital.
His dad, who has partial custody of him and is an alcoholic, comes to pick his son up to take him back to his mom’s house, only to get involved in a car accident, going over a hill. No he was not drunk driving.
A man (played by Lance Henriksen) gets them to safety and takes them back to his farm.
Spoiler alert: Everything that happens after this is very interesting. Lance turns out to be the Devil in disguise (Lance does a phenomenal job as always), and he is tempting the boy’s dad by giving him a job on the farm, giving him drinks, and wants him to pick from a tree, which by all intents and purposes, is a tree just like in The Bible in the Garden of Eden.
The boy figures this out and has to fight Lance and try to save his dad.
I really enjoyed this movie a lot.
Sean Young plays the boy’s teacher in it and is very good.
It’s an excellent modern day telling of the Garden of Eden story, basically, but with a Twilight Zone type feel and twist to it.
I love this movie and highly recommend it.
Five stars!!
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The History of Metal and Horror Documentary/Movie Review
I am a HUGE fan of Metal music.
I am also now a Horror movie fan.
So when I found out about this, I wanted to see it.
Unlike most documentaries, which it definitely is a documentary, it also has a little movie wrapped around and within it, which I found very interesting.
It starts off with a guy walking the streets and finding these old tapes and guitar and goes back to seemingly where he lives.
It turns out he is the last survivor on Earth.
He tries out these tapes, one of which is about the history of Heavy Metal and one is about Horror.
They don’t work unless he plays them together. So when he does, a man (played by Michael Berryman) comes on the screen and starts talking about Metal and Horror and throughout this, many music and Horror movie people (Rob Zombie, Alice Cooper, Scott Ian, Marky Ramone, Phil Anselmo, Kane Hodder, Corey Taylor, John Carpenter, Dave Mustaine, some of the band GWAR, Boris Karloff’s daughter Sara, Nick Castle, Tom Savini, Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein, and many more) talk about Metal and Horror.
Other than the movie parts, it’s essentially a documentary, but it’s well done, giving both subjects more or less equal time and the movie parts are pretty cool I think.
If you are a fan of either genre or both, then I highly recommend watching this.
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Trick or Treat (1986) Movie Review
This movie is about a high school kid named Eddie Weinbauer (Marc Price) that is bullied (sadly I can relate) but he’s also a hard rock/heavy metal music fan (I can happily relate).
His biggest musical hero is a fictional rock star named Sammi Curr (Tony Fields), who ends up dying in a hotel fire. However, he leaves behind one more recording that a DJ named Nuke (Gene Simmons of KISS) is going to play at midnight on Halloween.
Eddie just happens to be a friend of Nuke’s and so he gives Eddie a copy of this recording to listen to before the broadcast.
Well, spoiler alert: when the record is played backwards, Sammi Curr is actually speaking to Eddie telling him things like how to exact revenge on the people bullying him and how he is going to wreak havoc on the town.
Sammi ends up coming back alive with supernatural powers and causes trouble, to say the least.
One of my great friends let me borrow this movie many years ago because two of our mutual favorite singers/musicians, Gene Simmons of KISS and Ozzy Osbourne, were in it.
Judging by the DVD box, it looks like they are the leads in it.
Misleading because they are barely in it.
Still, I wanted to check it out.
It took me until recently to finally buy it because frankly, I just wasn’t wild about it when I initially watched it.
But since I’ve slowly become a horror movie fan, I wanted to give it another watch, and this time, I enjoyed it more.
It’s just a fun low budget horror movie, and being such a music fan, I love seeing all the cool posters the lead has in his room, and seeing Gene and Ozzy in a movie is always cool in my book.
And Ozzy is hilarious because he’s playing a Reverend on a TV screen saying that Heavy Metal is bad for the kids. Considering Ozzy is one of the creators of it with his band Black Sabbath and that he was attacked for subliminal messages (not true), I find this so ironic and hilarious.
And Gene is cool as the DJ Nuke.
Speaking of messages, this movie touches on what was going on in the 1980s when music like metal was considered bad for kids, which I disagree with wholeheartedly.
It’s music just like any other form. You either like it or you don’t. I happen to love it and always will.
Charles Martin Smith (Toad in the American Graffiti movies, one of The Untouchables in that movie, and many more projects) directed this movie and has a brief part in it during a high school dance scene.
OK in short, I enjoyed this movie, and if you are a hard rock/metal fan like I am, or just want to see a fun horror movie, then this is for you.
It’s nothing super special, but it’s fun.
