Shark! AKA Samuel Fuller’s Shark AKA 4 Bastardi Per Un Posto All’Inferno (1969) [REVIEW] | #thesharksix

You can hardly get any more basic with a title like “Shark!” (shouted, of course), so it’s no wonder it got mostly forgotten in time, its status as a pre-Jaws shark film not helping, hence leave it to the italian home video market to release under the title of “4 Bastards For A Place In Hell” (4 Bastardi Per Un Posto All’Inferno), far more eye-catching and way fuckin better than just “Shark (exclamation mark)” though making one expect to see a spaghetti western, because deception and bullshit was always the name of the game when localizing titles of movies here in Italy.

Though it also can be summed up as “the shark movie with Burt Reynolds in it”, as we have basically a shark-laden style “Treasure Of The Sierra Madre” plot as well, with the protagonist being a gunrunner that loses its cargo near a Sudanese harbor town, making him stuck there, until he’s hired by a woman to help a scientist raid a sunken ship in shark-infested waters for some.. “valuables”.

Pity is, he faces competition from other people hired to do the very same thing..

Not to be confused with 1975’s Shark Treasure by Cornel Wilde, also about a sunken treasure and criminals, and one that also publicized itself on the realism of the sharks in it, because… minds think alike, especially when you’re gonna cash into Jaws’ success.

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[EXPRESSO] Halloween Ends (2022) | (Wake Me) Up Inside (When)

If nothing else, Halloween Ends lives up to the name, because it’s indeed the conclusion of this new Halloween trilogy and ideally the series.. for now. We did this dance before.

Burdened withh the unenviable task of basically salvaging the trilogy after Kills destroyed any goodwill Halloween 2018 built up.. Halloween Ends almost manages it.

4 years have passed since the events of Halloween Kills, with Michael Myers vanished and Haddonfield residents reacting in different ways, from blaming it all on Laurie Strode (now writing a book about her experiences) to exploiting the events, but all still trying to move on.

Though the focus isn’t on Laurie Strode so much, but on a new character, Corey, a babysitter that was involved in a fatal accident during on a Halloween night that branded him for life as a psycho.

This brings the narrative into an intriguing direction i won’t spoil, ultimately ties into the Laurie-Michael struggle, and continues to grow the theme of Haddonfield’s being a character in itself, so i can’t deny Halloween Ends does a lot of things that work.

…. for what it WANTS you to remember from the previous movies, hoping that you forgot a lot of the stuff that actually happened in Halloween Kills, and the whole communal aspect it’s undermined by how the script can’t resist making a lot of these people self righteous assholes or bullies in order to make their deaths satisfying. At least Kills didn’t try to have it both ways.

That and the layers of throwbacks to the original movie become kinda tiresome.

Overall, it’s not bad, it’s decent, the series has been a lot better and a lot worse, Halloween Ends it’s just another flawed but enjoyable entry with some good stuff in it as much as squandered ideas.

What is Christmas without an Ice Cream Bunny?

Think watching The Star Wars Holiday Special each year it’s not the hipster “christmas tradition” it was before? If so, i will propose something that’s also not new, as it has a cult following, but very very smaller in comparison, since it doesn’t have the Star Wars branding.

Santa and The Ice Cream Bunny.

If this didn’t trigger a PTSD-like reaction, i’m here to share my cursed knowledge upon you, because in a way this fits the Christmas period, and its deranged insanity.

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Mother Krampus AKA 12 Deaths Of Christmas (2017) [REVIEW] | Christmas Hexe

Since we’re still having a “dinosaur christmas” this year too (though on a smaller and more canonical scale, as previously stated) and now it’s technically december, let’s look at a couple of Christmas horror flicks, just for kicks.

After the Krampus quick “discovery” and exploitation as another spin for chrismas horror movies (often by extremely low budget productions), something else had to be done, ransacking christmas folklore around the world as a way to some kind of legitimacy, which also leads to terribly confusing – even if somehow apt- titles like “Mother Krampus”.

While that itself isn’t confusing, keep in mind we’re talking about the 2017 movie by James Klass, there also Mother Krampus 2: Slay Ride, that came out in 2018, but released on DVD in the UK as just “Mother Krampus”. Not that the movies are connected in any way, but come on, this is some supreme titulatory bullshit, vintage bullshit that should have died out in the 80s.

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[EXPRESSO] Candyman (2021) | The Writing On The Wall

Almost went into this one completely “blind”, as while i was aware of the Candyman series, i never experienced it. I thought it was gonna be a reboot since it was discussed as such, but i caught wind of it now being a direct sequel to the original 1992 Candyman.

So i watched that one (didn’t have time for the sequels) for the sake of a better review just before going to see this new film, as i wanna know what i’m talking about, you know.

Still, the premise feels like this could be a reboot, as it’s about a visual artist, Anthony, that learns of the urban legend of Candyman (a 19^th centhury slave brutally tortured and then murdered with bees) from the brother of his fiancee Brianna, an art gallery director, and together with her decides to do an exhibit on the subject. But things go awry as people that attend the exhibit start dying. Not ideal.

Make no mistake, though, this is NOT a reboot or a “spiritual sequel”, this is indeed a direct sequel to the first Candyman, and many plot points from that also come back into this one, so one wonders why also just call it “Candyman”, but i guess it’s for marketing’s sake, and the Halloween series already did this stunt before, so…

While it can be seen on its own and they explain most of the important stuff, you’d do yourself a bit of a disservice going to watch this without having seen the 1992 Candyman, as this sequel does play around with the mythos of the Candyman and elaborates on the themes in a modern and ambitious way that honestly feels quite a fitting, natural progression for the concept.

And i’d say the result it’s quite good and pays off indeed.