Rocky- retrospective

The film Rocky may be the greatest underdog story put on film.  These movies show a guy who simply wants to go the distance and his story is inspiring to this day.  The characters have become icons and the moments from the films have become cemented in film history.   All of the Rocky movies spanned a six film series that encompassed not just the story of a fighter but the story of his family and love.

Rocky- Rocky tells the story of how boxer Rocky Balboa, played by Sylvester Stallone is a bruiser with a heart of gold.  He helps out a kid in his Philadelphia neighborhood and he finds beauty in a shy pet shop worker, Adrian, played by Talia Shire.  When the cocky heavy weight champion Apollo Creed wants to hold an exhibition match he chooses Rocky based solely on his nickname, “the Italian Stallion.” Rocky trains with the aid of Mickey, played by Burgess Meredith.  The day of the fight Rocky goes the distance with Creed in an epic match.

The acting in this movie is great. Everyone does a great job making this world believable and in the 1970s when everyone was an antihero it is amazing to see a character that is so kind-hearted.  The music is like something that we’d expect to hear while summoning a Greek hero.  Rocky touches the underdog in all of us and reminds us that every once in a while the little guy can knock a giant to the ground.

Rocky II- Rocky II follows where the last film left off.  Rocky considers himself retired and starts spending his money and doing commercial work.  He marries Adrian and they get pregnant.  Apollo Creed has wanted a rematch and financial pressures force Rocky to fight Creed once again. This times he goes beyond the distance and actually defeats Creed to become the champion.

Rocky II is almost as good as the first.  The acting is still top-notch and the characters bring a great deal of seriousness to their roles again.  Watching Rocky and Adrian’s relationship bloom is adorable and makes for a really sweet love story.  The only dislike I have is that Rocky is portrayed as especially dumb, which he is not.  He mistakes condos for condoms and so on.  Where it wins me back is that he retains his heart of gold even when people treat him badly. 

Rocky III- After winning his match with Apollo we get a montage of Rocky winning match after match.  Rocky and Adrian are now very rich.  Rocky has an exhibition match with the wrestler Thunderlips.  Clubber Lang, played by Mr. T, challenges him. They fight in the ring and Rocky loses.  Mickey dies during the fight. Left without a trainer Apollo agrees to train Rocky.  Rocky eventually beats Clubber and wins back his title.

This is where the series starts to get weird.  The addition of Thunderlips, played by Hulk Hogan, is a scene that is funny but inevitably doesn’t really add much to the movie.  Otherwise it’s a good movie.  The growing friendship between Apollo Creed and Rocky shows that both men are good at heart but have a warrior-like respect for each other. It is sad to see Mickey go but it is done well and with dramatic dignity.

Rocky IV- A huge Russian boxer named Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren, comes to America.  Apollo challenges him to a boxing match and is killed in the ring.  Rocky decides he will go to Russia to avenge his friend.  He trains in the mountains and eventually is able to defeat Drago.  He gives a rousing speech to the Russian audience, which gives him a standing ovation.

For some reason they added a sentient robot to this movie.  It makes it very goofy.  This movie takes it even more down that road by making the villains over-the-top.  It’s such a product of its time and it is an obvious Cold War statement.   It is a fun movie but it seems to take the serious tone of the series and make it more humorous.

Rocky V- Rocky comes back from Russia and they discover that due to shady accountants they are broke.  So the Balboa family moves back to the streets where they started in Philadelphia.  He goes to work at Mickey’s old gym and takes up training a new boxer named Tommy “The Machine” Gunn. Rocky finds that focusing all his time on his new protégé takes away time from his son.   Tommy is upset because his career isn’t moving fast enough so he calls Rocky out a bar and they get into a brawl.  Rocky wins the street fight and goes home with his family.

Rocky V is the weakest of the movies but it’s certainly not a bad film.  It seems to teach the lesson that violence solves problems.  It also is a downer in a lot of ways.  In the end of the street fight Rocky is still broke and Tommy is still the champion.  So it is really not for anything except pride.

Rocky Balboa- Rocky has retired and owns a restaurant.  His wife Adrian has passed away and he visits her grave regularly.  A sports show takes a computer match-up between the current heavyweight champion Mason “The line” Dixon and Rocky and decides Rocky would be the victor.  Mason then decides to challenge Rocky to an exhibition match.  Rocky is still a sweet guy and helpful to others. His son Robert has lost his way and Rocky helps him find his path as he trains for the fight in Las Vegas.  When he gets there he shows that he still has what it takes to fight hard despite his age.  Like his match with Creed it comes down to a decision and the fight goes to the champion but Rocky still feels like a winner for going the distance.

This was the perfect way to end the series.  I hate seeing Adrian go but adding touches of his life like little Marie and even Spider Rico from the first film were welcome.  What he said “going forward when life hits you hard” is a great message.  The filming during the fight is the most realistic in the whole series and looks like it could have been seen in a pay-per-view.  It really brings the perfection back up to the level it was with the first film.

The Rocky movies are wonderful films and should be enjoyed by anyone.  If you do not desire to see periods where things got silly you can probably watch just Rocky, Rocky II and Rocky Balboa and get the idea of the whole series and love it for what it’s worth.  They are the story of an underdog who beat the odds.  The characters are endearing and the stories are classic.

A Halloween retrospective- 200th review

Much of modern horror owes a lot to the Halloween franchise. The idea of a faceless, unstoppable killer has been so over done that it is cliché.  The series itself owe much of its fame to the movie “Psycho” for which there is a direct inspiration.  In fact the Dr. Sam Loomis character that was played by Donald Pleasence was named after the boyfriend in “Psycho”.  Still, the movie has made its mark in movie history and through good times and bad the series continues to flourish.

Yeesh! I think I need a bigger knife.

Halloween

The first movie is genius.  John Carpenter directs and we have a young Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode.  Michael Myers escapes from a mental institution and Dr. Loomis, played by Donald Pleasence, is after him like a modern day Van Helsing.  Michael kills some babysitter before attacking Laurie in a chilling chase scene.  We even get to see him briefly unmasked before Dr. Loomis fires six bullets into the killer’s body.  He falls off a balcony and his body vanishes.  This sort of keeps with the theme of the movie; that the boogey man is real.  It works and it’s creepy and really done well.

Wedgie!!

Halloween 2

“Halloween 2” takes off immediately after the events of the last movie.  Laurie is taken to the hospital. Dr. Loomis goes looking for Michael with the authorities.  Eventually we discover that Michael is Laurie’s brother.  He killed his sister many Halloween’s ago and now he aims to kill Laurie as well. He hunts her down to the hospital and there is a great final chase scene.  Dr. Loomis kills Michael by blowing up the room with himself inside.  The last we see of Michael his is a flaming corpse.  It was a fitting end to the horrors of Laurie Strode.

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch

No more Silver Shamrock commercials please!

This movie has no real place in the same world as Michael Myers.  It’s still a damn good movie.  It involves an evil corporation and a mass conspiracy to kill children on Halloween using masks.  The reason it’s so different is that the producers were going to make Halloween into an anthology style of movie where each film would feature a new story.  The audience was confused by the lack of Michael Myers though.  So they decided to bring him back and scrap that anthology idea despite how cool it might have become.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Where have we seen this before?

It is suggested that Michael went into a coma after the explosion at the hospital and was being kept alive.  He escapes of course and now goes after his niece Jamie Lloyd, played by a talented young Danielle Harris.  Jamie is the daughter of Laurie Strode who apparently died in a car accident.  Dr. Loomis is still alive and only has a minor face scratch despite being blown to crap along with Michael.  After many deaths Michael is hunted down and shot multiple times until he falls down a mine shaft.  Before he died he touches Jamie’s hand and she goes home and kills her foster mother which makes this movie seem really eerie since it’s as if the little girl is going to take over as the new evil of Michael Myers.  This movie is the start of what is known as the “Thorn trilogy” in this series. 

Halloween 5: The Curse of Michael Myers

You just got face forked!

The movie takes place the same evening as fourth movie.  Michael survives his gunshots.  Jamie is placed in a mental care facility and seems to have some sort of psychic link to Michael Myers.  Dr. Loomis uses her as bait most of this movie to try to find and kill Michael eventually they find a way to put him in a jail cell where a mysterious man in black breaks him out.  Danielle Harris is still great as her role as Jamie in this movie and it shines big time.  Luckily she comes back to the series but not as Jamie. I’ll come back to that in a bit.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

Good now Paul Rudd can bland Michael to death.

Six years after the events of the last movie Jamie is now pregnant and is giving birth in front of an evil cult.  She escapes and is being pursued by Michael. She hides the baby but is killed. Tommy, the boy that was babysat by Laurie in the first film, played by a dull as dishwater Paul Rudd finds the infant and takes care of it while trying to protect a local family from the return of Michael Myers.  He discovers that Michael is powered by a curse of the thorn.  Dr. Loomis shows up for his final appearance in a Halloween movie before Pleasence’s death and Tommy is able to thwart Michael by beating him to death with a metal rod.  This movie is really weak.

Halloween: H20

Help? I'm in a washing machine!

I really enjoy this movie despite the fact that it retcons an entire 3 movies.  In this case now Laurie Strode is alive and played by Jamie Lee Curtis again, she has a son and not a daughter and its 20 years after the events of Halloween 1 but not 2 since it implies that he was never found.  She is a teacher at a private school and she is paranoid for the safety of herself and her son.   Still, Michael eventually finds her.  However, she fights back in a very awesome scene that was very fun to watch.  She eventually pins Michael between an ambulance and a tree and decapitates him with an axe.

Halloween: Resurrection

Feel the music of the night!

Any fun that “Halloween H20” brought to the table. Halloween Resurrection shoots itself in the foot. The movie retcons itself AGAIN.  She apparently doesn’t have a son in this movie.  This time they are saying that the man that Laurie Strode killed was an ambulance driver that Michael dressed up to look like himself.  This caused Laurie to go nuts and commit herself.  Michael comes to kill her and SUCCEEDS.  This movie kills Laurie Strode.  The rest of it is Michael in a house filled with Tyra Banks and other weirdlings that are pretending to make a reality show inside the Myers house and getting picked off one by one.  Busta Rhymes shows up and does kung fu on Michael which is about where any sane person would walk out of the theater.  Michael dies of electrocution and it seemed like his franchise would as well.

Halloween-remake

Did they give Michael steroids?

Rob Zombie made a pretty fair interpretation of “Halloween” it’s got good points and bad points.  For one thing the cast is great.  It’s got Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Loomis and they have brought back Danielle Harris as Laurie’s best friend.  There are many other cameos that I could spend a lot more time with as well.  They focus a lot on what made Michael the monster that he is showing his broken home and abusive family life.  I think it’s a lot more scary to not know.  Also they cast Tyler Mane as Myers which is an odd choice.  I think making Michael Myers a thug like Jason Voorhees makes him just intimidating but not scarier.  The movie itself has a great soundtrack and is visually appealing and the dialogue is fresh.  It’s made in that Grindhouse style way that Rob Zombie is good at. As a whole it’s pretty hit or miss.

Halloween 2 -remake

A steam tunnel killer?  Sounds like a Freddy Krueger thing.

This was Rob Zombie’s follow up to “Halloween”.  This time the hits and the misses are lot more obvious.  For one I was bummed to see them kill off Danielle Harris. The cast is still great and the soundtrack is still wonderful.  The problem is the movie tries to be a tad too surreal for what I imagine when I think of “Halloween.”  There are scenes when Michael is taking to the “ghost” of his mother in his little kid voice. When I think of little boy in the mind of a giant murderer I think of Jason Voorhees, not Michael Myers.  It also had Laurie kind of take the mantle as the new killer at the end which just felt wrong. However, it wasn’t nearly as wrong as hearing Michael Myers grunting and talking.  Michael Myers is a lot of things but he has always been a silent killer.  When he shouts “Die!” to Dr. Loomis I died a little inside.

According to Wikipedia there are plans for a Halloween 3D but it is in development hell.  I am sure it’ll get off the ground eventually since there are always going to be fans of these movies.  As long as there are Halloween’s to celebrate we can be sure there will be stretched out painted William Shatner Masks for us to put on and scare the crap out of babysitters.  It’s nice to see that for some of us the boogey man is still out there even if he is sometimes credited as “The Shape” or by his name of Michael Myers.  Let’s hope he can keep up the good work.

A Nightmare on Elm Street- a mass retrospective

            For the 100^th review I wanted to talk about a series that is iconic in the horror genre.  Freddy Krueger is easily one of the best villains of the slasher style films for his humor and comic timing that went into each inventive kill.

The development of the story, according to Wes Craven, started when he read a story in the paper about a Hmong man that was not sleeping because he was terrified he was going to die.  His family kept trying all sorts of things but he kept fighting them claiming that if he slept he would die.  Eventually they got him to sleep and sure enough he died.  All I know is that is an awesome way to come up with the concept.

So anyway there are nine movies out there and we got a lot of ground to cover.  Oh well, reviewing them is nothing.  Robert Englund played the Freddy character in EVERY movie with the exception of the remake.  Not even the goober in the Jason mask had that kind of stamina.  So without further ado let’s get this nightmare in gear. 

Oh this guy is bad.  This is his first and last movie.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

            This movie is great. It’s the one that started it all. It’s all based around the question what happens if you die in your dreams?  In this case there is an imaginative God-like serial child murderer in the dream realm to help the kids along.  It is also a story of revenge as Freddy died at the hands of the parent of the teenager’s he now kills.  Even though it seems rather justified since he did supposedly kill over 20 kids. Luckily the teenager Nancy has the genius and the gumption to stop him despite all her friends dropping like flies.

            It also marks the feature film debut of a young Johnny Depp.  And he gets knocked off in a most awesome way, sucked into a bed, liquefied, and blasted onto the ceiling.   All in all it’s very cleverly done for 1984.  It has themes of loss of innocence in suburban American life.   I totally recommend it if you have never seen it.   

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

            Supposedly taking place five years after the first story we have a new family that has moved into the house on Elm Street that Nancy, the protagonist of the last film lived in.  Oddly enough Nancy left her journal in the new teenage boy, Jesse’s, closet and he is slowly discovering that he is having dreams about the Freddy fellow. 

Viagra anyone?

            Except now Freddy is working THROUGH Jesse like a split personality and killing people.  This is an okay concept and might actually work for a bit until he literally rips out of the teenage boy’s skin. There are all sorts of neat effects with it for the time but as a whole it’s probably the most forgettable of the series. 

           

The writer claims to have made this script with homoerotic overtones though the director knew nothing of this.  I find that a bit odd because a homoerotic subtext is supposed to be obvious and I missed it in a big way on my first viewing and I think it had a lot to do with the fact that it is so damn forgettable and you will honestly not care about these people, gay or straight. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

            People generally say this is the best of the series.  Not only did it wisely bring back John Saxon and Heather Langenkamp from the original film but it also has Patricia Arquette in her first roll, Laurence Fishburne, and Zsa Zsa Gabor and Dick Cavett in funny cameos.  It was showed that maybe the series had folks that gave a rat’s ass about the story and wanted it to have some power. 

Turkey time.  Gobble Gobble.

            Patricia is a girl named Kristen who gets sent to an insane asylum after Freddy almost causes her to kill herself.  She meets and befriends all the other colorful characters and soon realizes that Freddy Krueger is tormenting the asylum.  Nancy’s character returns this time as a psychiatrist trying to help these kids fight off the dream demon.

            Along the way Freddy displays some awesome powers and really amazing kills.  Such as using a kid’s veins and arteries to turn him into a marionette and cause him to leap to his death.  However Kristen has a power of her own.  She can bring other people into her dreams.  This sort of makes things interesting since it allows the kids to attempt to gang up on Freddy in their idealized dream selves. 

            It’s in this movie that it’s revealed that Freddy is the son of 100 murderers supposedly.  Apparently years ago a nun names Amanda Krueger was watching over some of the dangerous criminals. The guards just decided to leave for the weekend and locked her in.  So I guess they don’t’ feed the insane in this story. If you’re crazy it’s your ass.  They all rape the shit out of her until she is almost dead and thus Freddy is born.  It’s definitely a sequel worth seeing.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master

When they had a good thing going with good characters that happen to survive the producers pull a bland sequel with a complete recast.  Kristen is back with a few survivors and she even has a few other friends.  Not that it really matters the characters from the third movie get killed by the newly resurrected Freddy and Kristen gets killed mid-movie and passes her power of bringing people into her dreams to a friend of hers named Alice.

Wish you were here.

            Alice is a nice, shy character who has to now face Freddy which sucks for her.  Luckily she is somehow able to absorb abilities from her loved ones in order to face Freddy.  It’s a tad odd because in the battle there is a big reveal that Freddy collects the souls of the kids he kills.  It’s very creepy and stuff but honestly I liked it more when it comes off more as being a modern boogie man.  Not some sort of soul stealing demon.  It’s also a bit of a forgettable sequel.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

            In this movie Alice is back but now she has her own friends and a boyfriend named Dan.  At this point the formula is about the same standard.  A group of teens are hanging around and Freddy kills then in their dreams in creative ways.  In this movie we expand the story of Amanda Krueger’s rape.  Freddy also kills Dan but not before he knocks up Alice.  Real nice movie. 

The Swedish Chef really let himself go.

            Alice’s power that she got from Kristen is passing to her baby.  This is causing issues since Freddy is using her unborn kid to kill her friends.  With the help of the soul of Amanda they find a way to stop these shenanigans.  All you really need to know is everything revolves around the unborn kid.  It’s a bit convoluted and it was the lowest grossing of the Nightmare movies.  Once again we have a sequel that I don’t care much about.

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare

            With a supporting cast of Breckin Meyer, and Yaphet Kotto this movie wanted to put an end to the Freddy character.  This movie even brought back Johnny Depp in a brief cameo.  All in all this movie is much more like the first movie.  Freddy has to be killed by dragging him into the real world. 

3D?  Oh this will never catch on.

            The big draw for the movie was that when going into the dream world it goes into 3-D. The effect is very weak but I’m sure it would have been funny back before 3-D was overused for damn near every movie.  I guess even Peter Jackson tried to get a version of a script in but it never got made.   It’s just as forgettable as the other sequels thus far.   

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

            Wes Craven is back and it shows.  This movie was really great.  It’s got most of the original cast from the first movie playing themselves.  The concept is that they are making a movie about Freddy and because of it the legend becomes reality.  It’s a really cool concept and the effects have gotten a great overhaul.

 Nothing beats kids. Juicy to a fault. Chomp!

            There is a big theme connection with Hansel and Gretel’s story.  Freddy reveals himself to be a type of demon in the end.  It’s all a very well done movie and makes a great conclusion to the series. However, in the last Friday the 13^th movie “Jason Goes to Hell” There were two hints of characters that would face Jason next.  Before Jason is dragged to hell there is a necronomicon from “Evil Dead” and as Jason is dragged into hell his mask is grabbed down by Freddy’s glove.

Freddy vs. Jason

This comic was the bomb.com!

            A movie that fanboys and the fangoria crowd were clamoring to see.  There was a lot wrong with this movie. The dialogue was a joke and the acting was awful.  They basically made it so that folks could watch teens get chopped up in that “ooh that’s gotta hurt” factor.  Strangely enough they decided to make Jason Voorhees an antihero of sorts.  I don’t see it.  Sure he is a big dumb zombie but it’s never stopped him from killing indiscriminately.  Does anyone really win?  You’d have to see it to really judge.

            They also made a sequel to this movie in comic book form which pitted Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash from “Army of Darkness”.  It’s a good follow up.  Really it makes up for the pretty lackluster end that you get with the film.  It’s not as bad a versus movie as “Alien vs. Predator” but still kicks both franchises in the balls which might be a reason they decided to go ahead and remake the originals rather than make a sequel. Sort of a sad note to end on.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

            Well the remake is not too bad.  Jackie Earle Haley is the new Freddy and he is wildly different.  Mostly because he lacks the humor that Robert gave the roll.  Jackie is still a great actor and it’s played well.  But you don’t really care about the teen characters. 

That's never gonna heal if you don't stop picking.

            That is a big flaw.  For whatever reason they decided to only focus on the killer as a character but the teens get no real depth.  It’s a movie that really makes a person miss the old 1984 version. Hopefully they won’t go nuts and make a shitload of sequels based on the new version of Freddy.

            In conclusion there the series is rather decent but as a whole the ones that are really worth watching are the first the third and new nightmare.  The first film, because it gives you all the great scares and clever tension in one great movie.  The third because it raises the bar a tad with new effects and funny jokes tossed in to make it a worthwhile add-on to the series. Finally “New Nightmare” because it takes the same old concept and gives it a great new look.  All of which have many of the same actors.  So pull on a red and green sweater and check out some of the greatest horror series of our time.

Heroes-retrospective

So I found out that the TV show “Heroes” was cancelled.  That really is disappointing.  I wanted to see the loose ends tied up.  I even heard they were going to make a TV movie or something to tie up those ends.  But alas, that was cancelled too.  Crap on a crap cracker!  No closure for me I guess.

​“Heroes” began in 2006. It was about people worldwide discovering they had superhuman abilities and what they were going to do with it.  Slowly they start to come together to save the world as they become aware of each other.  It was a sweet concept.  A solar eclipse seems to be the trigger that makes these powers start happening too.  That always confused me.  Since solar eclipses aren’t so irregular.  This would have likely happened a lot earlier in their lives.

​So one dude can fly, a cheerleader has wolverine style healing, an awesome nerd in Japan finds out he is the master of time and space, so he can teleport, speed and stop time, and even travel to the past or future.  Honestly, if the show was all about Hiro Nakamura I’d have been fine with it.  A cop who finds out he is psychic, and a woman who has a multiple personality, but the other personality has super strength.  That actually was a weak one.  I thought that didn’t sound like a power as much as it did something you’d want to find treatment for.

​There were others, LOTS of others actually. Then there was the agency after them to kill or capture the freaks.  And of course there was Syler.  Syler was the villain of the series, played by Zachary Quinto, who would later go to play Spock in the new Star Trek movie.   He has ability where when he cut into your brain he could find out how your power works and then gain that ability for himself.  He was so hell-bent on getting all the powers that he could that he hunts down super humans to kill for their abilities.

​So there was some interesting drama.  But there were some problems too.  The cast was gigantic.  It got to a point that there were too many people as some points.  They also led themselves into writing character arcs that went nowhere and so they would often either abandon the arc or the character altogether.  That is just shitty writing.   Usually though people came back for the characters they liked so much.

​By season 4 the show was on an even keel.  The story was good and kept linear and there was a new threat.  The Heroes of the show had faced villains before besides Syler but this one was a real scumbag.  The only problem of course, was that in the course of the story they redeemed Syler.  They let him become a hero inevitably.  I don’t know if they should.  This man is a monster of epic proportions.  It ended with Hayden Panettiere revealing her healing abilities in front of reporters.

​So that is what we got.  Fans of the show got messed up writing that you’d expect from a soap opera or comic book. But we loved the characters.  We loved the fact that it was taking average people and giving them extraordinary powers.  It’s a dream that many people have.  It’s a shame that the show had so many ups and downs.  It’s too bad.  I’d have really liked to see a spinoff about Hiro.  He was one of the few guys I’ve seen on the show that fully accepts his role as a hero and loves having powers.  He doesn’t lament getting them.  He never thinks he is strange because of it.  He accepts it.  I admired his character so much for that.

​If you like the superhero genre give it a watch.  It’s a fun show that really shouldn’t be forgotten so quickly.  Granted it’s not epic TV like a “Dexter” but I think you’ll at least appreciate the fun they are having and enjoy the ride too.  There is a character for everyone here.  It’s a show that I’ll miss now that it’s over.

White Zombie-A retrospective with spoilers

White Zombie was a 1932 horror film that was produced independently.   At the time it didn’t do very well compared to the other larger budget productions from studios like Universal.  Still, it is considered by many to be the first feature length zombie film even though zombies in this case is more the hypnotic state of being rather than walking dead.   It’s an interesting movie and worth seeing if you like classic horror.

On arrival to Haiti fiancés Madeline and Neil take a carriage ride to the Charles Beaumont plantation.  On the way the driver stops to ask for directions but sees the men staring vacantly back at him.  “Zombies!” he yells and whips his horses to haul ass out of there.  In his escape Murder Legendre, played by Bela Legosi, steals Madeline’s scarf.  They arrive at the plantation and are greeted by Dr. Bruner, a missionary sent to perform the marriage for the two of them asks, “Excuse me have you got a match?”  The mature man in me immediately yells at the screen “Yeah my butt and your face.”

Charles meets up with them and is bummed since he is in love with Madeline.  He decides then to meet in secret with Murder.  He meets him at his creepy sugar mill that is being worked by zombies.  There they strike a bargain and Murder gives him a potion that will turn Madeline into a zombie too.  Make her follow him like one of his mill workers.  Charles is really hesitant.

Charles literally asks Madeline not to go through with the marriage as he is about to walk her down the aisle.  He gives her a flower laced with the potion.  Then the marriage takes place.  By now I am wondering what kind of cheap potion he paid for.  But apparently it requires some sort of arcane element as well.  Murder is watching outside with Bela’s patented Dracula glare.  He makes a wax voodoo doll of Madeline out of a candle and seemingly kills her.

She is put in a crypt and Neil is a mess.  Meanwhile Charles, Murder and the gang of zombies get to the crypt and get zombie Madeline.  Neil actual catches a glimpse of her walking away and runs to talk to Dr. Bruner “Can I trouble you for a match?” he asks again. I told you “My butt and your face.” Are they really making that line this guy’s catch phrase? They talk about the process of zombification and who might have a motive.  Well it must be the one guy who has always wanted Madeline, Charles. They also talk about how Murder has turned all his former rivals into zombies.

Meanwhile, Madeline is playing the piano in a zombie state.  Charles is regretting turning her this way.  He asks Murder to turn her back.  He says he won’t so they have a drink and Murder reveals he has poisoned Charles and soon he will become one of his zombies as well.  He then has his horde of zombies kill Chuck’s butler.  Neil and the Doctor are waiting outside thinking of an opportune time to go inside.  Madeline and Neil share a moment locked in time.

So he and the Doc break into the castle of Charles.  The Doctor and Neil separate. Neil finds Madeline in a room with Murder and the almost drugged out Charles.  Murder orders Madeline to kill Charles with a knife.  Dr. Bruner grabs the knife from her and they escape to an escarpment.  Murder has had enough of this crap and orders his zombies to attack but is shortly knocked unconscious by Dr. Bruner.  The Zombies, with no command now wander off the cliff to their death. Murder gets up and is about to make a bond villain style escape when Charles stumbles in and wrestles him off the cliff to both their deaths.

The resulting death frees Madeline from the zombie state she was in apparently.  She and Neil are happily together at last. The Doctor asks “Does either of you have a match?” “I told you! MY BUTT AND YOUR….OH FORGET IT.” Roll credits on the zaniness.