FAERECHEEK FRIDAY! OCTOBER 24: UNDER-BITE NITE!!!

VARIOUS HEALTH AND LIFE ISSUES HAVE PREVENTED FAERECHEEK FILM FRIDAYS SO FAR THIS MONTH BUT TODAY MOVIE DAY WAS BACK!  Faeremoon, Sweet Cheeks and I got together for our periodic movie day of horror!  And yes, we only watch horror movies on Faerecheek Fridays no matter WHAT time of year it is but it's particularly appropriate in October.  And why "Under-Bite Nite"???  Well because both of the films we watched this evening featured actors with epic under-bites!

Today's Faerecheek Friday Double Feature began with the epic that is JACK BROOKS:  MONSTER SLAYER [2007].  For the first time ever, Fright Crate included a blu ray in this month's box and this is the one Cheeky Boy got so of course we watched it.  Jack Brooks is in therapy because, when he was a kid, he witnessed his parents killing by a kinda-werewolfy-monster.  For some reason, Brooks decides to take night classes given by Professor Crowley (a tour-de-force comedic performance by Robert Englund).  While working on Crowley's plumbing, Brooks digs up pipes in the yard and unearths a crate full of human bones and an odd heart that still seems to be beating.  Some sort of vapour takes over Prof. Crowley which causes him to eat the heart and gradually turn into some sort of wacky, vomiting demon creature.  Jack Brooks is not much of a monster slayer until near the end of the movie; he spends most of his time as a monster-run-away-from-er.  The saving graces of this film are the wonderfully hilarious performance of Robert Englund, David Fox (PACIFIC RIM, MAMA) in an equally hilarious role as Old Howard and the nicely-done practical effects monster costumes including a terrific cyclops creature as well as Prof. Crowley's ultimate Jabba-the-Hut-like demon.  

Our second horror feature of the day was CUJO [1983] -- well . . . . because I'd actually never seen it, believe it or don't!  As probably EVERYBODY already knows, CUJO stars the magnificent Dee Wallace, a 7 year old Danny Pintauro and about six St. Bernard's as Cujo in this 80's Stephen King adaptation.  The movie is quite good, one of the better Stephen King horror adaptations, but still suffers from King's uninspired subject matter.  I hesitate to call this a horror movie, in fact, because it's more like a movie-of-the-week about a rabid dog attack.  I just don't find a movie (or a book) about a dog with rabies the stuff of horror.  And it's certainly not the most original of premises; more like something you'd see around 15 minutes into the nightly newscast.
I also found a little distasteful the fact the Dee Wallace's character apparently must suffer through a rabid dog attack as some sort of retribution for having an affair on her douche of a husband. 

I mean, this is the guy who let's his wife and son try to drive around in a broken-down Ford Pinto while he tools around in a sports-car.  I still remain bewildered how Stephen King's lackluster, tired plots have made him the "king" of horror novels.  It baffles me.  Lewis Teague's direction is also pretty lacking in any sort of suspense or even much threat; other than the couple times he leaps at the car, Cujo mainly sits around looking glum.  Teague, who brought us such cinematic classics as AVALANCHE with Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow, CAT'S EYE (another bad Stephen King horror movie) and JEWEL OF THE NILE could not really be expected to do much more with CUJO and he doesn't. 

The film's saving grace is Dee Wallace who is always SO watchable and gives a superb performance; plus Danny Pintauro who still manages to pull off a pretty harrowing performance even with such an annoying character that he's saddled with.  A competently-made film with a great central performance based on a lackluster plot.  Zero scares.  Worth a watch if you've got nothing better to do, I guess.  Hell, it's MUCH better than AVATAR, anyway!