Breakdown, go ahead give it to me..

Breakdown

Synopsis from the interweb: "On their cross-country drive, a married couple, Jeff (Kurt Russell) and Amy Taylor (Kathleen Quinlan), experience car trouble after an accident. Stranded in the New Mexico desert, the two catch a break when a passing truck driver, Red Barr (J.T. Walsh), offers to drive Amy to a nearby café to call for help. Meanwhile, Jeff is able to fix the car and make his way to the café, only to find his wife missing and Barr claiming ignorance. Jeff then begins a frenzied search for Amy."

Release date: May 2, 1997 (USA)
Director: Jonathan Mostow
Writers: Jonathan Mostow, Sam Montgomery
Stars: Kurt Russell, J.T. Walsh, Kathleen Quinlan

In this teeth clenching thriller Writer/Director Jonathan Mostow took 1970s comedian Henny Youngman's very dated and mysonigystic joke "Take my wife, please!" a little too seriously when writing the screenplay for this film. What if Steven Spielberg's Duel and George Sluizer's The Vanishing had a sweet lil thriller baby? Throw in a little Race With The Devil with it's dusty highway car chases, except instead of Satanists there are shitbird truckers and instead of Warren Oates you have Kurt "Pliskin" Russel.

Would you get in some random truckers cab if your car broke down in the middle of the desert? Better yet, would you let your partner go alone with them while you stay with your car and dehydrate to death? I would not. Just saying. Maybe I remember 1996 differently but I'm pretty sure people were still awful.

So yeah, that's the setup for this film. Kurt Russel is supposed to meet his wife at a nasty little truck stop diner that I could actually smell the food poisoning coming off the screen. She's not there according to the beautiful diner patrons choking on pickled pigs feet sandwiches or whatever and Kurt Russel becomes increasingly unhinged as he races to uncover the truth. Who took his wife, please? Is it the truckers? The cops? The mean redneck assholes? The lady puking on the diner bathroom floor? You'll have to watch to find out.

Awesome car chases, a few tense scares, Kurt Russel getting a sunburn in real time, action packed twists and turns and a pretty sweet bone crushing finale.

I give it 💀💀💀💀💀💀 out of ten corpses.

Welcome to Candy and Corpses

Past Halfway to Halloween.

The time has come and gone. Did you feel it? That's right. We are past the halfway mark to the most glorious night of all nights: Halloween. So I'm sure most of you reading this has watched Michael Myers stalk his (not)sister across all of Haddonfield on super duper high-def 30k whatever. However, have you had the pleasure of watching the NBC 1981 Halloween night television premiere of the John Carpenter classic Halloween recorded on a used Radio Shack video tape that previously contained recordings of bland people in beige suits speaking in "How to Sell Time Shares" seminars? If you answered no, boy-howdy it's your lucky day. One LUCKY winner will win the VHS copy of Halloween I just described complete with commercials, extra tv made scenes (that Carpenter himself made and later was sad about), and occasional weird tracking lines from my VCR.

How to Enter: Tell me what your second favorite Halloween movie is. Either in the comments section of this post or in the Facebook post for this contest. That's it. That's all you have to do and at the end of the week I will randomly pick a winner and send this beauty to your home.

Disappearing Act.

Hello there fiends. So I know what you're probably saying: "Why the hell did you just disappear in the middle of the Candy and Corpses Halloween Strychnine awards?" Yeah, sorry about that. I had hand surgery (twice) to try and repair torn ligaments in my dominant hand and it was just too hard to bring you creeps content without hiring a shady minion typist. Now my hand feels like a semi-useful bag of bones and I can once again type away to my shriveled hearts content.

Anyways, whether you like it or not I am back to shove weird substance into your eye sockets. Wanna watch a Giallo you might have never heard of? How about we watch La Coda della Scorpione aka The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (1971).

Skeazy wife Lisa finds out that her super rich rich hubby exploded on a plane and left his fortune to her. She travels to Greece to meet her skeazy lover while the insurance company suspects that perhaps a bomb was planted on the rich husband's plane (aka murder). All kinds of twists and turns and murdery hijinks occurs. Who killed who? Why is everyone dying? Where can I get good spanakopita? Who gets to keep all that murder money? Which one of these people has a scorpion tail? Watch and find out.

I Can't Feel My Face.

Hey you. Yeah you. Welcome to day 18 of the Candy and Corpses Strychnine Awards. I'm currently sitting here watching the Knight Rider Halloween episode titles "Forever Knight" and there's a guy in a gorilla suit strangling women while Laura Branigan's "Self Control." plays in the background. That has nothing to do with this award but I'm just telling you to show yo my frame of mind. 

Anyways, on to the awards!

October 18th, 2021: The award for best Original Face-Off goes to...  

Les Yeux sans Visage aka Eyes Without a Face (1960)
Directed by Georges Franju

If my loved one lost her face I would do whatever I had to do to get her a new face. Even if I had to steal someone else's face to give it to her. Does that make me a bad person? I think not. And I would continue stealing peoples faces until we found the right one. And once we did I would still steal people's faces just in case her new face ever started to look droopy or anything. I'm going to keep her face looking great forever. Anyways, let me know if you wanna come over and hang out. We could watch Eyes Without a Face. I have snacks.

In Korea, Ghosts Hunt You.

Hey there fiends, welcome to day 17 of the Candy and Corpses Strychnine Awards. When I was younger I really wanted to be a ghost hunter. Especially after watching Ghostbusters in the theater as a kid. Little did I know that instead of running around with proton packs and chasing people turned into demon dogs, "really life" ghost hunters mostly just sat in dilapidated buildings watching rats scurry by their feet as they ate a bologna sandwich and listened for the occasional eerie noise to be made. "No, it wasn't the old rusty pipes. It is the cries of a 17th century barmaid who may have died of consumption right at this very spot." Don't get me wrong. I'm believer. I just don't like being dirty and I get tired easily so...

Anyways, on to the awards!

October 17th, 2021: The award for best Possessed Youtuber Gone Wild goes to...  

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018)
Directed by Beom-sik Jeong

Condemned asylum's are not somewhere you could make me hang out even if you were paying me money. Especially an asylum where historically horrible shit took place. I'm way too sensitive for that. I would probably just imploded from anxiety before I even got past the front steps. Say, what would you do if you were hanging out with people in a spooky place and suddenly one of your friends went all black eyed and started speed mumbling gibberish and jerking their head around all creepy like? Or suddenly there's a hairless old naked man squating in the corner smiling at you. That's the kind of awful stuff that happens when you hang out in messed up asylums. Screw that.

Boob Tube.

Hello creeps and welcome to day 16 of the Candy and Corpses Strychnine Awards. I talk about it all the time but damn I miss those days of walking into a video rental store and spending forever looking at all the VHS boxes in the horror section. I pretty much always rented movies based on how cool the cover looked. Lots of gore and sexy ladies and monsters sign me up! They just don't make movie posters and dvd cover art like they used to with 80s VHS. It all looks the same now. Okay now I just made myself sad. At least I'm just glad there are companies like Shout Factory and Vinegar Syndrome and Severin films that continue that horror shock art tradition.

Anyways, on to the awards!

October 16th, 2021: The award for best Lipstick Magic Trick goes to...  

Night of the Demons (1988)
Directed by Kevin Tenney

My adoration for Linnea Quigley is no secret. She is definitely one of my all time favorite 'scream queens'. So imagine if you will young teenage me watching Night of the Demons on VHS late one night and Linnea Quigley's Suzanne draws all over her face with lipstick, removes her blouse, then shoves the tube of lipstick right into her boob until it disappears. My mind was blown and I remember rewinding to that scene over and over again just to see if I could see how it was done (not just to look at tits). That's some spooky weird shit Linnea. Thank you for being you.