The WORST Horror Movies of All Time

It’s February, the month of love, black history, groundhogs, and awards shows (and if they ever have an award show honoring the most lovely groundhogs in all of history, you can bet that event would take place in February). With the Academy Awards and love on the brain, it seemed like the right time to countdown the worst horror movies of all time. So here they are. (I’m not big on segues).

The WORST Horror Movies of ALL TIME

The Passion of the Christ
Blood! Guts! Zombies! While this movie contains all the staples of a good horror movie, it really fails to deliver that jump-from-your-seat terror that we’ve come to expect from modern horror movies. Mel Gibson just doesn’t have the directorial chops to pull off a horror movie of this magnitude, hopefully things will look up for his career after this misstep.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
This may be a movie about a blood-thirsty alien that crashes into Earth with the intention of savagely devouring its inhabitants to slake its bloodlust, but the only thing that crashes and burns here is the idea that this alien could be a danger to anyone. Drew Barrymore as a child pulls off the screaming victim ok here, but ultimately the terror of this film just falls flat.

Toy Story 2
The much-anticipated follow-up to the terrifying legend about one boy’s dolls that come to life and terrorize an entire town, the sequel sadly doesn’t live up to the scare-levels of the original. With not nearly enough blood and gore for die-hard screamsters like myself, Toy Story 2 is at best not scary, and at worst infuriatingly tame. Some parts are even downright laughable. But in true horror movie fashion, once they get one sequel made they just start cranking them out nonstop, so don’t expect Toy Story 3 to be any better (and SHOCKER, there’s already a Toy Story 4 in the works. It’s the Saw franchise all over again).

Mary Poppins
The premise is a tried-and-true one: a supposed children’s caretaker flies into town on the wind of a dark spell and uses her evil magic powers to wreak havoc in the lives of all whom she encounters. Whether it’s trapping her young wards into mystical drawings, or imprisoning children in chimneys, this is one bad-news nanny, but that sadly doesn’t make up for a lack of scares that leave this movie feeling more like a walk in the park rather than a scream-filled fright-fest that viewers want. Even when the nanny summons her dark familiars like her demon-possessed umbrella harpy, or her chimney-sweep henchman, this movie fails to make you feel like there is ever any real danger afoot. Better luck next time, Scary Mary.

The Nightmare Before Christmas
Stop-motion animation can definitely make for some spooky movie-making, but this film about the dark lord of the netherworld rising to take-over Christmas for him and his dark minions feels more like a daydream than a true nightmare. Too many stockings, not enough stalkings for THIS horror-movie-lover.

The Little Mermaid
The well-known Hans Christian Andersen tale — about a young mermaid that wants to steal a part of a prince’s soul so she can get into Heaven but ultimately can’t bring herself to kill him, so she kills herself by throwing herself off a cliff into the craggy rocks of the seaside — FINALLY gets the big screen treatment it deserves. BUT unfortunately the Hollywood Machine does what it does best and totally ruins the source material with this horror movie. Say goodbye to Andersen’s trademark gory details about the Mermaid getting her legs split with a sword and having her tongue ripped out by the Sea Witch’s curse (and who could forget the cost of the spell, that any movement the Mermaid makes with her legs will feel like she is constantly walking on sharp knives), and instead get ready to see a Mermaid that’s so untrue to her source character that she doesn’t even commit suicide at the end. Just like the mermaids in HCA’s tale, this movie turns into sea-foam and fizzles away before we get the horror movie we wanted!

…Hope you got some ointment for those BURNS, would-be horror movies, maybe next time you won’t short us on the scares that we crave! ;) On the upside, I finally got my hands on the film adaptation of the famous Brothers Grimm’s scary story, Snow White, so I’m excited to let that one scream me to new heights of scariness (I’m especially excited to see how they depict the scene where Snow White and her prince force the Evil Queen into a pair of glowing-hot iron shoes and force her to dance until she drops dead as punishment for her attempted murders).

Play on,
Dustin

I haven’t seen this horror movie yet, but I imagine it’s a lot like Taken.

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox! …Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…even I don’t like me enough to keep up with all that.

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Live, Die, Repeat…Repeat

Tom Cruise’s summer action movie, Edge of Tomorrow, was more lackluster than blockbuster, so when they released the movie on BluRay and digital, they retitled and rebranded it as “Live. Die. Repeat.” hoping the more straightforward title would attract viewers that passed over it the first time. But what you probably didn’t know is that it kickstarted a trend with the studios that has made retitling movies the new hot marketing tactic in Hollywood. Here is a guide to the films you may recognize and their new release titles, feel free to use and share it with your friends.

MORE ACCURATE REBRANDED MOVIES:

X-Men: Days of Future Past = The Original Jennifer Lawrence Leaked Nudes

Divergent = Hunger Games

Transformers: Age of Extinction = Michael Bay’s Three-Hour Explosiongasm (Plot Optional)

Neighbors = A Less Good Version of the Movie ‘Old School’ for People Too Young to Remember ‘Old School’

A Million Ways to Die in the West = Forty Million Dollars to Waste in New Mexico

Captain America: The Winter Soldier = Avengers 1.5

The Fault in Our Stars = How to Lose a Guy in Eight Days

Godzilla = Breaking Dad

Blended = The Brady Bunch (with Fewer Laughs)

Guardians of The Galaxy = Christ Pratt & The Quest to Determine Who You’re Less Familiar With: The Alien Characters on His Superhero Team or The Actors Playing Them

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 = The Only-Amazing-By-Comparison-to-the-Tobey-Maguire-Trilogy Spider-Man

300: Rise of An Empire = 300: Fall of a Franchise

Grand Budapest Hotel = Wes Anderson and The Exact Same Actors As Always Make a Movie Only Your Elitist Hipster Friends Saw

Aaron Paul’s Need for Speed = Aaron Paul’s Need for Work

Noah = Anything As Long as Russell Crowe Isn’t Singing

Draft Day = First Round Bust

22 Jump Street = 22-Year-Olds Love This Movie

The Purge: Anarchy = Leaving Las Vegas

Wish I Was Here = Zach Braff’s Ponzi Scheme

TMNT = Megan Fox’s Last Shot

The Expendables 3 = theexpendables3.torrent

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For = Sin City: An Audience to Kill For

The Maze Runner = Hunger Games

Sex Tape = All Your Favorite References From Five Years Ago

Malificent = #YesAllWomen

The Giver = Hunger Games

And there you have it…remember boys and girls, if you’re gonna watch, watch educated.

Play on,
Dustin

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox! …Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…even I don’t like me enough to keep up with all that.

Pitching the Perfect Game: Summer Blockbusters 2013

A couple weeks back in my WILDLY POPULAR PODCAST (available on both iTunes, this incredibly futuristic podcasting site, and youtube if you’re more of a vodcast guy/gal), I mentioned something somewhat briefly, but I wanted to make sure it got the appropriate amount of attention:

We are in the middle of a summer blockbuster movie season that is pitching the PERFECT GAME!

Here are several characters that I own zero copyrights to.

As my inner circle of close friends and court-appointed psychologists can tell you, my baseball analogies are a little on the weak side due to my limited knowledge of the game…that said, I’m pretty sure that in baseball, a perfect game is where the pitcher only throws strikes, and thus strikes everyone out in exactly 81 strikes. I also believe that this is somehow different from a “no-hitter” though I’m not really sure how, so I will stop embarrassing my friend Crocker by trying to guess.

Back to the analogy, this summer blockbuster movie season is pitching us nothing but strikes so far, and is well on its way to pitching us nothing but strikes over the next eight weeks. As a fan of summer blockbuster movie seasons, I’m ecstatic. I’m rooting for the SBBMS to pitch the perfect game, and you should be too.

Dustin’s Three to See: February

Don’t get out to the movies as often as, say, a single 29-year-old man-child with an escapism complex? Well don’t fret, I’ve taken all of Hollywood’s shoddy offerings and narrowed them down to the three that won’t make your $20 movie ticket feel like a total waste. I call it Dustin’s Three to See because I was raised to believe that rhyming things are better than non-rhyming things.

February is historically known for three things: Valentine’s Day, Black History Month, and $5-Footlongs at Subway. If I’m being honest, all three get me about equally excited. February is typically a pretty slow month for movies — and despite its romantic trappings, nary a single rom-com or rom-dram was released (rom-dram is an abbreviation I just invented for romantic drama). But I get it, even if there aren’t any good romance movies out, you’re still gonna need to find an hour and a half to kill between your romantic dinner and when you and your super hot girlfriend can go makeout in the car. With that in mind, here’s the three movies worth seeing from February:

Movie 1) — Warm Bodies
It’s a classic story of boy meets girl. The only snag is that the boy is dead, and sort of wants to eat the girl’s brains. It’s like Twilight, except for in this movie the lead’s acting is actually supposed to be stilted and lifeless (sorry K-Stew (not really)). I’m a little biased toward this movie because it’s essentially the same premise as a movie idea I had in college, and so the fact that it got made gives me some weird sort of validation (it doesn’t take much) despite the fact that I had nothing to do with it. The story is cute enough, the gore is calmer than trying to convince your girlfriend to watch The Walking Dead with you every week, that’s a win/win in my book.

AKA Drop Dead Fred

Dustin’s Three to See: January

Don’t get out to the movies as often as, say, a single 29-year-old manchild with an escapism complex? Well don’t fret, I’ve taken all of Hollywood’s shoddy offerings and narrowed them down to the three that won’t make your $20 movie ticket feel like a total waste. I call it Dustin’s Three to See because I am as creative as a kindergartner. As always I keep things as spoiler free as possible.

As any even casual observer of movie culture can tell you, January is a bad month for movies. Generally considered the graveyard of the release calendar, January is where bad movies go to die. After the holidays people usually have less in the budget for activities like moviegoing or tipping their bartender, and as a result, movies that are deemed not as good as movies like Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection end up here. Whether it’s rewrites, poor focus group results, or just an overall bad film…if you think of a movie as a toddler, January is the timeout-chair its sent to when it’s misbehaved.

That said, there were still a couple diamonds to be found in the rough of this January, and if you got an AMC giftcard for Christmas like I did, here are the January releases that are worth your while.

Movie 1) — Gangster Squad
Remember a second ago when I said how January is full of mediocre movies? Gangster Squad is not a good movie. However, it’s not a terrible movie, either. And against the rest of the January slate, that makes it…watchable. The awful tragedy in Aurora, Colorado last summer meant that Gangster Squad’s much-publicized scene where the gangsters shoot through a movie theater screen and into the audience instantly became extremely inappropriate, meaning that the newly-infamous scene and the ending of the movie both needed to be rewritten and reshot before the film could be released. Whether it was those drastic post-wrap changes or something else that made Gangster Squad only okay, we’ll never know. But if you like Ryan Gosling (and just a cursory glance at any social media suggests that you do…a lot), flapper-style Emma Stone, and some cool period-accurate visuals, Gangster Squad is worth a go…if only to whet your whistle for when The Great Gatsby comes out.

Hey girl, sorry you couldn’t be in Drive.