Legend (1985)

What is light without dark?

This movie is the battle between the powers of good (light) and those of evil (darkness).  It is told in the form of a fairy tale.  The main character is Jack (Tom Cruise) he is a forest child.  He lives in the woods and is in love with the princess Lily (Mia Sara).  One day Jack takes Lily to see the unicorns (creatures of light).  They are followed by goblins who work for the Lord of Darkness who want the horns of the unicorns so he can destroy all light and plunge the world into never ending darkness.  The goblins succeed in cutting of one of the unicorn horns.  This causes an instant change in the world.  Where it was once spring it is now winter.  The world seems to have frozen including its inhabitants with the exception of the main characters and a few magical creatures.  Jack and Lily get separated.  Lily wanders through the cold, dark forest to a friend's house.  She is eventually captured (along with the uninjured unicorn) and taken by the goblins to the home of the Lord of Darkness.  Jack is recruited by some dwarfs, a fairy, and an elf.  Lily is tempted by Darkness and starts to turn to the dark side of herself.  She agrees to marry the Lord of Darkness if she can kill the unicorn.  Darkness plans to kill the unicorn and permanently destroy light from the world.  Jack and his friends infiltrate the Darkness's lair and overhear Darkness say that the only way to destroy him is with light.  As Lily goes to kill the unicorn she frees it instead.  The Lord of Darkness and Jack battle while Jack's friends try to bring light to the darkness.  They use plates to bounce sunlight into the darkness and eventually in the room where Jack is and the light destroys the Lord of Darkness.  As he is being destroyed he cries out that you can never truly get rid of him since there is darkness in everyone.  The world turns back to spring and Lily and Jack are as they were and together again.

Lessons learned

-Love makes fools of people.  Jack allows Lily to see the unicorns even though he knows that it is forbidden. 
-Their is darkness in all of us.  We all have a dark side and can be tempted by good or evil.
-Tim Curry is an excellent actor and always good when playing a bad guy.  Let's just say it, he's awesome in whatever role he plays.
-Unicorns are good and goblins are evil.
-All movie princesses are English

Creepy factor

-Tim Curry's Lord of Darkness.  He is sinister and perfect and the make-up is amazing.
-The goblins and other workers of the devil.  They pose an ever present threat to the main characters.
-Meg Mucklebones.  She's the scary swamp creature that Jack battles.  It's super creepy watching Jack try to flirt with Meg.

Little Monsters (1989)

Don't look under your bed

Fred Savage stars as Brian, the new kid in the neighborhood who is befriended by the monster under his bed, Maurice (played by Howie Mandel).  At first it is all fun and games.  The underground world seems like a kid's dream come true.  There are no parents and no rules.  Brian uses this new world to get back at the class bully and play all night long.  The fun doesn't last very long though, Brian is starting to change into a monster himself. All monsters are children.  Maurice was tasked to convert Brian into a monster.  When Maurice fails to convert him, Brian's younger brother is kidnapped (played by Ben Savage, Fred's real life brother).  Brian then recruits his friends to help him rescue his brother from the head monster called Boy.  They use light to destroy any monsters that try to stop them and eventually defeat Boy (played by a young Frank Whaley).  They have one last hurdle to jump over, sunrise is coming and if they don't get out and into the real world they will all become monsters.  They start running from bed to bed trying to find one where it isn't morning yet.  They end up finding one in Malibu and escape there.  Maurice remains a monster and the kids call home.

Creepy factor

All of the monsters are creepy. Maurice and Boy are the creepiest.

Lessons learned

This movie basically teaches kids that there are monsters under your bed and they are out to get to you.  Monsters, Inc is the friendly version of this story.  Monsters are now your friends.  In Little Monsters the threat is still there, looming underneath your bed.  Most of the movie shows Brian and Maurice causing mischief.  They create a lot of messes in other children's homes and then frame the kids in the house so they will get into trouble.  It's only when there is a sense of danger that Brian changes his mind.  He's not really a bad kid but not really a good kid either.  He's kind of a punk.  I feel like the message is kind of muddled.  They want kids to behave but only if their misbehavior will lead to irrevocable harm (becoming a monster or being kidnapped by monsters).

The Gate (1987)

And so it begins . . .

This is a horror movie that stars a very young. Stephen Dorff as Glen.  The basic premise of the story is that Glen and his friend inadvertently open up a gate to hell in Glen's backyard.  The movie begins with the large tree in Glen's backyard been cut down and a huge hole is left where the tree once stood.  Glen and his friend Terry dig in the hole and find a geode.  That night weird things begin to happen.  When they crack open the geode it leaves imprints of words on a notebook.  The boys read the words and unknowingly begin the process to opening the gate to hell.  Glen's parents leave the kids alone for the weekend with almost 16 year old sister Al in charge.  That night strange things begin to happen.  Glen is levitated in his living room by some of his sister's friends.  Terry has a dream of his dead mother and wakes up with the family's dog dead in his arms.   While listening to a heavy metal album in his own house, Terry discovers the words that Glen and he read out loud are part of the lyrics to this album.  The lyrics for this album were supposedly taken from "The Dark Book" which is like the Devil's bible.  More strange things continue to happen.  Little demons start attacking Glen, Terry, Al and Al's friends.  They try to close the gate by reading from the Bible, but it only temporarily closes the gate.  Both Al and Terry are taken by the demons into the hole.  It is left to Glen to figure out how to get them back and close the gate.  The only way to close the gate is through love and light.  So Glen uses the rocket he built with his sister and shoots it into the demon god.  All goes back to normal (well mostly, the house is pretty destroyed).  This includes their dog coming back to life.


Creepy factor

Gate to hell opening in the backyard.
Face melting.  A special effect they seemed to love to use in the 80s.  See Poltergeist and Raiders of the Lost Ark
Kids all alone left to deal with demons.
Kids being dragged to hell.

Lessons learned

Never let children dig around any kind of hole or construction site. 
Never read words in a language you don't understand.  You could end up invoking demons.
Don't try to levitate anyone, ever.
Heavy metal is the cause for Satanic occurrences (this was a big issue in the 80s, people thought that heavy metal and playing Dungeons and Dragons would lead teenagers into becoming killers, they were wrong it's actually violent video games).
Neighbors don't care that smoke or demons are spewing out of someone else's house.  Nor do they call the police because of those things or that they hear children screaming.

Scary Kids Movies from the 80's

I was thinking the other day of all the creepy, scary movies for children in the 1980s and how it is amazing that any of us from that generation grew up to be normal and not psychotic.  Some of the movies from those years that were aimed at children would not be considered appropriate for children today.  Who made these movies and why did everyone think they were okay?  Well, the conclusion I have come to is that the creators of these films were hippies that did way to many drugs in the 60s and 70s.  This is evident by watching some of these movies because it seems like the creators dropped acid while making them.

Some of the movies I will be discussing are Legend, The Gate, and Labyrinth.  Feel free to suggest movies to discuss in the comments below.  What movies scared you when you were children?

White Chapel Episode 6

Beware of your neighbors

A connection was made between most of the victims.  The younger victims had all been friends with escaped killer Mantus's younger sister.  This fact however, did not connect the oh so suspicious psychologist Morgan to the other victims.  She had no connection to the Mantus family. 

Questions arose as to whether or not Mantus was playing the bogeyman.  This was brought up by Miles who believed all of the victims should be connected.  He started looking into other possible suspects and found David Whatney.  He lived in the same apartment complex as the former classmates and had complained about them to the home association.  He died because of a heart condition that was aggravated when he was forced to take the stairs because one of the residents had broken the elevator.  So now his son was taking revenge on all of the residents that his father had complained about and the psychologist that said his death was an accident.

Suspicious behavior

I was suspicious of Morgan last week and even more so this week.  To begin with, she survived a second attack by the killer.  She even stabbed the killer in the leg but no evidence was found at the scene, a fact that Miles brought up and Chandler quickly shot down because he likes her.  Then Kent confronts Morgan about the fact that she managed to survive both attacks.  Chandler totally lost it on Kent for treating Morgan like a suspect instead of a victim and for pointing out the fact that Chandler likes Morgan.  I like that Kent didn't give up on his suspicions.  He overheard Morgan make a suspicious phone call and did some research on couples that kill together.  Now I know the episode ended without giving any proof of her involvement with the murders but I still think she was involved.  Here's why: she acted super suspicious and guilty when Kent asked who she was speaking to on the phone, she was super creepy when Kent apologized for accusing her, and she survived both attacks.  I think the scenes of the attacks that they showed us (especially that of the second attack) were just her delusions.  She mentioned that she was interested in Mantus because he behaved normally while suffering from complex delusions.  I think she has the same thing.  I don't believe they will mention this again next season since she died at the end of the episode.  I do think Chandler's relationship with Kent and quite possibly Miles will be affected by his behavior on this case.

Whitechapel Episode 5

The Bogeyman comes at night . . .

This episode has one of the creepiest looking murderers.  That mask freaks me out.  I find all masks to be creepy.  People wear masks to purposely hide who they are.  They also behave differently when wearing a mask. 

All I can say is I'm glad I was never told any stories of the bogeyman when I was little or I might never have grown up to love horror shows and movies as much as I do.  I'm not sure what people were thinking when they decided to tell their children if they don't behave a monster is going to come and kill them.  It's one thing to teach a child about consequences it's entirely another thing to freak them out so much they have nightmares.

So the creepy masked killer kills a babysitter by choking her with her own cell phone.  The little girl being watched is a witness but not a believable one, who believes a child when she says the bogeyman did it?  The killer then proceeds to garrote a psychologist when she is heading to her car in an empty parking lot.  She survives by pretending to pass out until the killer leaves.

Suspicious behavior

I find it highly suspicious that the psychologist could pretend to be dead long enough for the killer to leave.  The detectives on the show made the point that the average person can't hold their breath for very long.  So, either she is lying about what happened when she was attacked, or the killer purposely let her live.

Stealing ideas from Christopher Nolan

I saw the final scene coming since I've seen The Dark Knight.  I knew that the man in the mask that the police had surrounded was not the killer.  It was pretty obvious that the person had tape over their mouth and that the gun had been attached to their hand. You could tell that something was wrong and that the person was trying to speak but couldn't. Scenes like this bother me because it perpetuates the idea that the police always shoot first and ask questions later when most officers go their entire careers without using their weapon.