Preparing to SCREAM Some More…

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After reading a post by Johnny over at one of my favorite horror blogs, Freddy in Space, I thought I should get a SCREAM-themed post together as well. My tickets for Scream 4 have been purchased and I don’t think I’ve been this excited for a theatrical horror release since Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows came out. That one let most of you down, but not me, I loved it. BW2 aside, now it’s Scream time!

Two things about Scream 4 are gripping my attention. Foremost, I’m looking forward to seeing the new cast members as well as some familiar faces. Some of my favorites have been cast in the film including Kristen Bell, Marley Shelton, Aimee Teegarden, Adam Brody, and Heather Graham.

It will also be interesting to see if Wes Craven can rebound from My Soul To Take. I realize a lot of horror fans out there enjoyed it, but I wound up bored out of my skull. I never thought I’d be scanning through a Wes Craven horror film. Shit, I’ve sat through all of Wes Craven’s movies, even the ones he merely “presented.” Wes deserves to have another true classic for the new generation of horror, so please let it be Scream 4!

Although I’m hoping Scream 4 will be a triumphant culmination of the series, even if it tanks at the box office it’s sure to yield more installments in the future. And why shouldn’t the Scream franchise continue on? All the great horror franchises keep evolving. They’ll probably go on forever, long after The Sexy Armpit has disappeared from the net, only to be found via a wayback machine. The original Scream was released in 1996, so the Scream Team has had a hell of enough time to perfect its formula. Who knows, maybe Scream 4 could even surpass the original?

Are you going to see Scream 4? If so, let us get you geared up for the film, with two classic Scream posts:

All about the night of Scream 2’s premiere. I dressed up as Ghostface when 
I worked at Loew’s Menlo Park Cinemas.
One of the best cameos in the Scream series!

Jay and Silent Bob in Scream 3

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Movie sequels arouse heated debates, especially when their reason for existing is questionable. Back in ’96, Scream took horror to another level, but its two sequels brought it right back down to its previous depths. I wanted desperately to LOVE Scream’s sequels but they were uninteresting and quite frankly, Neve Campbell’s character, Sidney Prescott, bored the shit out of me. The genius behind the original film was the innovative characterization and chemistry between Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard.

The opening of Scream 3 brings us onto the set of the movie within a movie, STAB, based on the killings that occurred in the original film. In an extremely random cameo, Jersey icons Jay and Silent Bob are seen taking a tour of the studio. (They may as well have been opening up a window while one of the actors scales a building with a rope.) Jay sees news woman Gale Weathers and mistakes her for Connie Chung and says “Oh Shit Silent Bob, it’s that TV news chick Connie Fucking Chung! Hey Connie, how’s Maury?” Silent Bob just waves with a super goofy smile on his face while Weathers (Courtney Cox) gives them the finger. It was actually one of the finer, more amusing moments in the film.
Considering the awful hairstyle they gave Courtney Cox in the film, the duo’s mistake wasn’t too far off base. It clearly would’ve been funnier if they said “hey it’s that TV news chick who’s married to the former host of A Current Affair,” now that’s comedy.

Upstate Farms Intense Mint Chip and Orange Scream Milk

I don’t scream for ice cream, I sort of give a half-assed whimper. Considering all the junk food and candy that I talk about here at the Armpit, I’m actually not a big fan dessert or candy. If I have to choose a dessert, I enjoy simple stuff like milk and cookies. Not surprisingly, chocolate chip cookies are one of my favorites, and if they’re homemade I like them even more. But when you’re dealing with a strange guy like me, it can never be that easy. Milk and cookies aren’t much work to whip up, but not in my case. I like my chocolate chip cookies homemade, and WITHOUT the chocolate chips! To me they just interfere with my favorite part of the cookie.

Amongst my profusion of hangups, quirks, and pet peeves, I also loathe the chips of chocolate in Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream. The funny part is, I’m not a chocolate hater, it’s just that the chips ultimately get in the way of my enjoyment of the dessert. The chips in mint chocolate chip ice cream always get stuck in my teeth and it’s super annoying. I’d like to enjoy the chocolate but I can’t because it makes a pit stop in my molars and doesn’t come out until I brush my teeth. If I could just get the pastel green mint ice cream sans the chocolate chips, I’d be a pig in shit. The only way I could take it to the next level is if I had mint (remember: no chocolate chips) in “soft ice cream” form rather than “hard.” 
When I was a kid I remember telling my sister that I liked letting my ice cream turn into “soup.” Once my ice cream liquefied I would just drink it right out of the bowl. Drinkable ice cream was my favorite, and still is. I even like to let my ICEE’s and Slurpee’s melt so I could get the prime flavor of the syrup without the minuscule ice pellets getting in the way and freezing my brain. To sum up what you’ve just read: I like my Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream melted and without chocolate chips in it.

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On my weekly trip to Wegman’s, I was waiting in line to check out but got distracted by a plastic bottle of green liquid in a refrigerated section near the exit. Wegman’s has an extra dairy section at the front of the store for convenience, in case you don’t feel like running all the way to the back of the store just to grab a gallon of milk. I grabbed the “Intense” Mint Chip flavor by Upstate Farms immediately as if I was the only person who knew this treasure was on the shelf! 

Aside from name dropping their own brand name about 62 times, (Intense!) the label on the back of the bottle describes the drink as “…a creamy and indulgent drink…” Then the label goes on to say “This is the drink of choice for the mint chip ice cream lover on the go.” It’s fairly awesome that they’re actually marketing a drink to a group of people known as “mint chip ice cream lovers.” I never realized I was part of that demographic, but I like it! The Intense Mint Chip contains the typical benefits of milk such as vitamins and protein, but unfortunately has 35 MG’s of cholesterol in case you’d rather not have a heart attack.

Intense Mint Chip is the type of drink you want to sip on a crisp moonlit night while you’re rolling down the highway as the street lights are streaking past you like your in light speed and the stereo is blasting Laura Branigan’s “Self Control.” It doesn’t matter that you’re sipping milk…you still feel really cool. Trust me.

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Considering how exalted the Mint Chip flavor is, the Orange Scream can’t come close to its greatness. Think of the Intense Orange Scream as the sub par sequel, or the redheaded stepchild of the Intense milk family. Upstate Farms falls short with their Orange Scream, which is yet another failed attempt at creating the classic orange cream flavor. (Sunkist also failed recently with their miserable orange cream float.) One of the major strikes against Orange Scream is that it substitutes what’s supposed to be a nondescript “cream” flavor for a strong vanilla flavor. The cream shouldn’t necessarily be defined as “vanilla” because then it has the chance to overpower the orange flavor. The vanilla flavor may be forgiven if it isn’t a true “vanilla bean” flavor since a regular “no frills” vanilla would work better. There’s an exact balance of orange and cream flavor that needs to be perfected to achieve orange cream paradise. On a positive note, unlike the mint chip, the orange scream is creamy yet still low fat. Its label is pretty exciting or should I say…INTENSE! Even though I didn’t enjoy their Orange Scream formula, I have to hand it to Upstate Farms just for their sheer variety of offerings such as Chocolate, Strawberry, Vanilla, Cookies and Cream, and Mocha Java. Now all us Star Wars fans need is an “Intense Blue: A New Hope Special Edition Milk.” I hear it’s going to be high in midichlorians. Come on, where’s the freakin marketing people now? Can I get some kickbacks for that?

Cineplex Odeon Memories: The Night I Was Ghostface

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In addition to donning the bat costume earlier that year for the premiere of Batman and Robin, I was also tapped to play Ghostface from the Scream series in honor of the premiere of Scream 2 in December ’97 when I worked at the local Cineplex Odeon Theater at the Menlo Park Mall. My coworkers were aware that I was a huge horror fan as well as completely obsessed with the first Scream film. Electing me to stalk the popcorn gorging, giant soda drinking filmgoers while threatening that that I’d “gut them like a fish,” was a given.

Compared to spending 6-8 hours shaking hands and sweating in the hot, awkward bat costume, I took much pleasure running around in the free flowing, comfortable Ghostface costume. Stalking theatergoers with a fake knife and sneaking up on unsuspecting girls coming out of the bathroom became my pastime for the evening. The most memorable part of being Ghostface happened during each presentation of the film. Right after the moment Jada Pinkett has her excessively dramatic death scene in the film within a film STAB, the Scream title slashes onto the screen. During the short fade to black, a theater usher slammed through the emergency exit door and up the aisle in the dark theater as if he was being chased. Seconds later, wielding a knife high above my head, I barreled through the door and sprinted up the aisle after him. When I reached the door to the lobby I blasted through it and had a laugh with my fellow employee, Victor. In the fleeting seconds that the stunt took place, I remember feeling quite a rush as I heard almost the entire crowd scream and gasp in shock and fear.

What made the occurence even that much more clever was the fact that that part of the movie featured a “film within a film,” which blurred the lines of fiction and reality. I like to believe that my performance magnified that idea and added a little more thrill to the atmosphere.

Would you expect something like that to happen when you’ve spent nearly 10 minutes immersed in a film that you payed $8 bucks (at the time) to see? Nowadays anything that can be classified as an “interruption” would start a line of 12 people complaining in attempts for free passes. As I noted in “The Day I Got To Be Batman” I give credit to the Cineplex Odeon theater staff for taking liberties and being creative as film exhibitors.

It’s not everyday you walk into a movie theater and see a cavernous homemade Batcave erected or a knife wielding killer from a horror film chasing innocent ushers through the theater at high speed. I would’ve liked to have been one of the people watching Scream on that Friday night. It was almost a throwback to gimicks like “smell-o-vision.” I would love movies to become more of an event, like when I go to see an film in IMAX. Do you think witnessing the killer chasing someone through the theater would intensify your viewing experience? Maybe if it doesn’t succeed at creeping you out, it would definitely make for a memorable bit of conversation!

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F–K You Nielsen ratings!

I just finished watching the 2nd episode of Hidden Palms on the CW. You can say what you want about that, I really don’t care! I’m enjoying the show and many of it’s details. For one thing Kevin Williamson is responsible for it and he’s the guy that wrote Scream and Dawson’s Creek among others. The teaser trailers that were released on TV and online really caught my attention because of the frightening shots and the talk of “people come here to die.” I thought it was a horror show but I figured it couldn’t be since they already have Supernatural which isn’t a bad show either! The setting appeals to me since Palm Springs is one of the best places in California for its architecture which I appreciate. There’s definitely something original about Hidden Palms though. The show definitely has a dark side and the plot takes twists and turns as it almost veers on being a thriller at times. I wish it would go more in that direction because I think that’s where it will find it’s niche audience. I’d rather not see a mystery but it never hurts to throw in some tense buildups to a climax that might even be scary. As for the cast, I already knew Cliff (Michael Cassidy) from the O.C as well as Taylor Handley who plays the lead character Johnny. Cassidy’s Cliff character is very reminiscent of James Spader’s roles in the ’80s. Amber Heard plays the love interest, Greta, and she’s just freakin hot. Johnny’s mother is played by Gail O’Grady who isn’t so bad either if you’re into milfs.

It’ll bother the shit out of me if this show gets cancelled. After all, it IS a summer replacement shows and I’ve read that only 8 episodes were originally ordered. The first episode had pretty poor Nielsen ratings. Why do we as viewers allow this to be the only way that ratings for shows are calculated? It’s bullshit! Now, who the hell actually has a Nielsen box anyway?No one I know or ever have known in my entire life has had a Nielsen box. There’s only one box that dictates anything to me and it isn’t named Nielsen. We’re letting good shows get cancelled, we need to get Nielsen the f— out! Their process is not a good one. They have no idea who is really watching which shows. While I’m on the subject, Arbitron has no idea who is listening to which radio station at certain hours of the day. It’s crap! The viewers with a Nielsen box know that their habits count and they can watch a certain show religiously to keep it on the air. What about the voices of the millions AND MILLIONS of TV fans that DON’T have a Nielsen box? Their favorite shows get cancelled. Let’s take the upper hand and collectively give Nielsen a big F-U!

Film Review: Invitation to Hell!

Typically I love terrible, shlocky movies. I do have my standards though. I’m not into stuff that’s beyond bad. Some people run websites honoring the worst movies of all time and there are about 93 million entries. Occasionally I like films that are on the brink of being great. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy great films, because I do. Fortunately, if we’re talking Wes Craven movies then we’ll get the best of both worlds with this review.
I am a fan of certain directors and I’m the type of person who tries to see the entire filmography of a director or actor if I enjoyed at least more than one of their films. Ever since my early childhood I thought Wes Craven was the king. Boy was I dead wrong – pun intended. After Scream, Wes put his name on almost any movie that came out in the theater or direct to video if it had one remotely gory scene in it. In reality it was Wes Craven Presents: a truly shitty film made by someone who’s not Wes Craven.
He kind of shot himself in the foot by lending his name to these pieces of garbage. Some of the films that he didn’t actually direct were abysmal. Attaching his name only brought his credibility down. When people see the video box WES CRAVEN PRESENTS – THE PIECE OF SHIT THAT YOU’RE HOLDING IN YOUR HAND. But it’s a clever marketing gimmick because I would be more inclined to see it with his name on it even though I know full well it’s gonna blow Oprah turds. Some of the films that he actually is responsible for blow even worse!
If I may turn your attention to a movie called INVITATION TO HELL. One of the shittiest movies I’ve seen. Of course, it’s no NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET but it did have Susan Lucci playing a whacked out Spa owner who‘s trying to lure Robert Urich to join her mysterious club. When I say whacked out Spa owner I mean a character that they are trying to depict as Satan incarnate. Of course Satan would own a Spa/Country Club. I guess we just figured out where all the golf balls go when they fall into those bodies of water randomly placed in golf courses….STRAIGHT TO F’N HHHELL!
For Zabka’s sake, If Susan Lucci never won an Emmy she should have won a friggin’ Oscar for her portrayal in this movie. And give Robert Urich a fucking lifetime achievement award for being brave enough to play his dumbass role in this film. He’s created a spacesuit that can decipher what species the person is that the helmet zooms in on. What a great idea the writers came up with to OVERLY EXPLAIN that some of the people in the films were demons!
Urich’s kids were played by Punky Brewster and the kid from D.A.R.Y.L. Punky was definitely not in top form, she didn‘t seem punky enough. It’s now a scar on her spectubular resume. FYI I just coined that, I get royalties.
It’s only a rumor so I don’t want you to get excited but I’ve heard through the grapevine that the Weinstein company has the rights to the hot commodity known as “The Script for the Invitation to Hell.” Paris Hilton will take on Susan Lucci’s role. And, it’s a no brainer and I shouldn’t even have to tell you because you probably could have guessed but I’ll tell you anyway: BEN AFFLECK is the obvious frontrunner for Urich’s role. Can Affleck offer anything to a role that was so masterfully played the first time around? Is there a point? I’m actually pulling for Affleck to accept his invitation to hell, then we could be rid of him.
Imagine buying a ticket for this? “can I have one invitation to hell?”