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Five Horrifically Beautiful Traumatic Movies That Don Bluth Gave Us As Kids

Image June 17, 2024 Patti PaulterGeist Leave a comment

The 80s were a fantastic time to be a kid and a horror fan. If you were a product of this generation, chances are you were traumatized in one way or another by the dark delicacies of the media that gave absolutely ZERO fucks about not softening any blows when it came to life lessons in the form of movies and television. Whether it was watching Punky Brewster’s friend Cherie almost die in a fridge, or your grandma popping in a freshly rented VHS flick called WATERSHIP DOWN for the grandkids to watch because she thought it was a “lovely Easter movie”, we got hit with some messed up visuals that would never get past a writer’s discussion room in modern society. Which kind of pisses me off because I want my kids to experience something as cool and terrifying as a movie about the beloved Dorothy Gale getting sent to electric shock therapy and then facing off with a headless witch.

That’s some bullshit.

Anyway, one of the greatest culprits of true nightmare nostalgia for our childhood era is the great Don Bluth. For anyone unfamiliar or for Gen Z’ers, Don Bluth was a former Disney animator who made his mark as early as 1959 with Walt Disney’s SLEEPING BEAUTY, with his last animation directing credit with THE FOX AND THE HOUND before he left to start his own company in 1979- DON BLUTH ENTERTAINMENT. During the 1980s and 90s, he made a slew of gorgeous animated films that also, in turn, traumatized the shit out of a generation of kids.

And one animation for a video arcade game that I WOULD DIE TO SEE as a full-length movie.

Don Bluth radically distanced himself from his Disney days with animation he felt was more “pure” to the craft by keeping the hand drawn cel the way to go with his continuing work. The result was always one of passion and masterful craftsmanship that really pushed home some of the dark, and gritty themes Bluth films went balls deep with. That’s how you’ll always know you’re watch a DB movie. It always feels like something sinister is lurking right around the corner with the unnerving way he animated these films and of course, a central character always dies or has some type of serious traumatic event happen that in turn, spills into our own emotions, successfully grounding us into a euphoric depression. And I think somehow, as kids while it may have traumatized us, those moments served also as lessons that we, as children, needed to both see and hear for our own exponential growth and how to grieve in our own way.

Don Bluth never shied away from dealing with the shadows that are the human journey. Dealing with themes of sadness, loss, anger, and death remains a staple in almost all of his films. There were even moments where I felt like he was fucking with us and our emotions even more: Like when Littlefoot sees the shadow of what looks like his recently deceased mother but turns out to be his own, and he just sinks even deeper into depression. I was literally seven and screamed “FUCK YOU” to the screen while shedding my own tears; like goddamn was that necessary? But you know, looking back, it absolutely was. These are stages of grief, and it’s seen from the perspective of a child who had his world shattered. It really showed us kids that life isn’t all sunshine and fairytale castles. Bluth said, “This is life, little people. It’s a wild ride of emotions, and we need to talk about the realities of it.- also, fuck your feelings very much.”

That’s the best way I can describe a Bluth film, anyway. Narrowing it down to the top five movies that stayed with us through our childhood into adulthood from the DON of DARK ANIMATION was slightly challenging, but I think I got it right.

5. ANASTASIA (1997)

The legend of Anastasia comes to life in this late 90s Bluth entry about an orphaned Russian girl, the revolution surrounding her country, and the real-life villain of Rasputin (voiced by Christopher Lloyd). The animated reimagining of one of history’s darkest figures for a children’s film consists of the “wizard” in scenes where we see his eyes pop out, his jaws falling off as he lingers somewhere between life and death; much like the real Rasputin, who was infamously hard to kill, or so legend says. I mean, sure, what kid doesn’t love to see a decomposing evil wizard corpse do a full-on song and dance routine with his body parts popping off?

4. AN AMERICAN TAIL (1986)

AN AMERICAN TAIL was a personal favorite of mine as a little kid. The story of mice immigrants coming to America on a ship from Russia with SURPRISE, one little mouse named Fievel getting thrown overboard and being separated from his family; leaving little Fievel Mouskawitz on his own to navigate America on his own while he searches for his loved ones who presume him dead. This movie is where I also started to notice that perhaps Bluth is a dog guy rather than a cat person. I swear every film he makes, cats are villainous, vile creatures! Except for Tiger, anyway. The hoards of cats are almost downright terrifying and they really label them as bad animals! I suppose this was done metaphorically as immigrants, once upon a time, came to America thinking there was no violence in the streets. No cats in America? LOL. Let’s just stick with he hates cats.

That being said, Sir Derp of Derp of Pazuzu would like a word, sir.

With that out of my system, from the wave monster arising from the Atlantic Ocean that beats the hell out of the ship, and the reason Fievel gets knocked out to sea, to the Giant Mouse of Minsk, those two scenes in particular were visually pretty damn horrifying in such a beautifully artistic way. As a four-year-old, it successfully gave me nightmares, so hats off to a giant wooden rat with 20-foot-long teeth and the fact I would never ride on a boat until my teens because I was pretty sure I was going to get pummeled by a 100-foot wave monster man.

3. THE LAND BEFORE TIME (1988)

Yeah, well, we all very much know where this one is headed. One of Bluth’s most tragic films here just exhumes sadness at almost every turn leaning into the age of the dinosaur and the background of historic events that plagued the Earth at this time. Let’s also throw in a heavy scene where a mother is fighting to protect her child from being eaten by a T Rex and getting killed in the process. Exit stage left to an elongated scene of utter turmoil, and the dying mother mutters some final words of wisdom to her little one that “she’ll always be with him”. Make sure you have that Pizza Hut tie-in toy ready to clutch- If you don’t cry at this scene, you just might be a sociopath.

2. THE SECRET OF NIMH (1982)

An animal lover such as myself can find this movie extremely disturbing. Aside from all the beautifully dark imagery, the underlying tale of NIMH is sufficiently evil all on its own. Touching on the very real issues of cruel animal testing, rats and mice were taken to the NIMH labs and injected with needles full of fuck knows what.

One of these experiments led to their advanced intelligence and eventual escape, which brings us to another terrifying tale revolving around the struggles of love, betrayal, and ultimate power with the wife of one of the escaped NIMH mice, Mrs. Frisbey is on a journey to save her dying son.

Oh, and don’t forget again, the vicious terrible cat villain of the film!

Also, I can’t be the only one who thought that damn cave of bones-dwelling owl, was completely terrifying with those glowing eyes and no-nonsense demeanor. In fact, I know I wasn’t. So I’ll just leave Big Daddy Owl here for him to drum up some traumatic memories.

1. ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN (1989)

There are a few movies in my life that I make the conscious choice to never revisit, and ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN is one of them. It’s not because it’s a bad movie, it’s just that it’s way too sad. Again, being an animal lover, the last thing I wanted to face as a child was that my dog was, eventually, going to die. And while the sentiment of storytelling is that of the main title unless your dog is an absolute piece of shit I guess, is supposed to offer some comfort, all it did was make me cry- and a lot of other kids too. Hell, the story starts out of trauma hell already with street thug Charlie (voiced by Burt Reynolds), our main character mutt, being murdered and sent to Heaven where he of course can’t help himself and steals a pocket watch that allows him more time. Oh, but there’s punishment for that: when the watch stops ticking, he will be sent straight to Hell, where we get a nice sneak of it with dog skeletons and cat demons (because Bluth thinks kitties are the devil, right)!

He then befriends an orphaned little girl named Anne Marie who has been kidnapped and – you guessed it – coerced into forced labor by Carface, an evil dog who is also Charlie’s old partner and yep, murderer. Charlie forms a deep bond with the orphaned little girl, proving that his hardened heart can be softened but of course, dies at the end when she needs him most. However, the change in his attitude allows him to enter the pearly gates this time, for good.

What kills me most I think is learning about the death of Judith Barsi who voiced both little Anne Marie and Ducky (The Land Before Time) in a tragic murder-suicide at the hands of her abusive father after the fact, which really seals the deal in just how sad this movie really is.

Yeah, perfect bedtime story material, folks.

Now excuse me while I go wipe my face from cutting all these onions and go hug my animals.

Horror Nostalgia, Retro Reviews

The Omen Legacy – A Review Of The Past and Present Horror It Invokes

Image April 10, 2024 Manic Exorcism Leave a comment

Dark Powers Conspire

Religious horror hits a primal cord within us all. Even to unbelievers, there’s an unmistakable lure of curiosity that cannot be squelched by any amount of modern logic. Modernism, sincere as it may be, attempts to protect us from the arcane such as concepts locked away in frightful prophecies securely kept in musty and old esoteric libraries. Prophecies many today would prefer to leave hidden beneath a century of dust.

But can these mystifying forewarnings be sealed away forever and what dreadful truths may they reveal? The theological study of the End Times is known as eschatology and is a branch of research dedicated to deciphering the recorded warnings of cataclysmic events to come that’ll shatter reality and bring a final end to all we now know.

Denial, negligence, and good old tried-and-true blissful ignorance do precious little to expunge these dire foretellings that caused the ancients to quake upon their reading. Many people reduce them to nothing more than superstition and leave it at that. Thankfully for us all though religious horror takes such concepts and creates modern-day masterpieces to shock and sicken generations.

And so came a little movie called The Omen that rekindled the fires of Hell across the globe and audiences basked in its satanic glow. The film is subtle but brimming with evil intent as it focuses on the early beginnings of the scariest person found in New Testament literature – the Antichrist.

Christ’s satanic counterpart seemingly snuck into our world like a serpent beneath our noses and upset the establishment people were so comfortable with. Sure, Satan was no new concept in Hollywood. B-level films littered the Drive-In nearly every weekend and there’s nothing wrong with that. But people didn’t take such movies seriously. They were cheap popcorn thrillers. People watched them, screamed or jeered, and then went back home probably forgetting all about them. Satan slithered back into the shadows once the credits rolled and that was that.

The Omen on the other hand was a very different type of beast altogether. For one thing, as a project portraying the demonic, it was taken very seriously by the studio and placed into the hands of a competent filmmaker, Dick Donner, who decided to remove any overt satanic imagery. Donner’s approach was for the movie to look like a series of terrible tragedies. Imagine having the worst day of your life sort of deal.

As I stated earlier, it’s a subtle film but Darkness swells in every scene. From the moment the film opens and we follow Ambassador Thorn (brilliantly played by Gregory Peck) as he rushes to the hospital for the birth of his son to the final shot of the movie at a solemn graveside at the movie’s conclusion audiences were unexpectedly changed by something primal they had just watched.

One thing that made the movie work was the casting choices. Actors will either make or break a project and casting is vital. Originally, Charlton Heston, renowned for his portrayal of Moses in Ten Commandments and the titular role of Ben-Hur, Heston was a name that brought regality to a project. Donner wanted a serious actor for the lead role because he believed if audiences saw someone like Heston or Gregory Peck being scared on the screen it would unnerve them somehow. He was right.

Unlike many hundreds of movies featuring the Devil, The Omen struck a chord and audiences were fundamentally changed thanks to it. Suddenly people were exiting movie theaters with thoughts of the End of Days possessing their thoughts like black magic. A single movie managed to do what the clergy spend a lifetime hoping to achieve – get people’s asses back in church!

What if the Antichrist was alive today but was just a little kid?

That question ignited a nightmare that became one of the most influential horror movies of the century. To the terror of many, The Omen was more than fiction but acted more as an accurate account of prophecies they saw as being fulfilled daily.

The film was the apex rising out of a perfect storm of bizarre circumstances.

For starters, Satanism became a nationally recognized religion and was accepted for its darker practices of the occult to the shock and horror of many Bible-believing Christians. For many, it was a sign of darker things to come because, for the most part, many didn’t understand the actual belief system installed by its founder Anton Lavey. Following more paranoia than facts, many religious people saw the Church of Satan as a headquarters for an invasion of Satanic entities. A portal to things that could not be sealed once opened by willing mortal hands.

Not only had Satan been given his own institution but the ‘God is dead’ movement had swelled to alarming numbers and wasn’t hard for people to accept considering how few people still attended church on a weekly basis.

Strange cults like the Manson Family were also on the rise. Cults whose members broke into homes and cut the unborn baby from its mother’s womb disgusted the nation, leaving many to wonder how such a thing could happen in a God-fearing country. Murderous cultists were just another piece in the End of Days puzzle and everyday people found it easy to believe that maybe, just maybe, some left hand of Darkness was pulling the strings.

Added to this were political scandals which led people to lose faith in their governments, adding one more fallen establishment to the fro. Not to mention the Vietnam War nearly drove the whole country entirely insane.

The church had failed and the occult was rapidly rising. The government had failed and in need of some new power to take the reigns.

The Omen was released at the perfect time during a period of unsettling turmoil and managed to terrify audiences. The film’s creators expertly merged biblical prophecies with current events, resulting in an unsettlingly perfect connection.

This created a new kind of biblical cinema that shook society to its core.

The golden era of biblical epics such as Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments or Ben-Hur was long gone. The King of Kings was now the whisper of a bygone age and motion pictures like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby started a new wave of supernatural excitement proving Satan’s day was at hand.

The Omen was part of this new wave of spiritual horror. Its infernal genius lies in its boldness to crack open the Holy Scriptures and bring to life the darkest aspects therein revealed. The book of Revelation was a genuine inspiration behind the material.

The result is a remarkable achievement that speaks for itself.

Adding to the dark nature of the movie’s tone is the (sin)sational score composed by Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith admits the inspiration came to him while at Mass. The song Ave Maria was being sung and as the words flowed across him a black idea blanketed his thoughts. “What would it sound like if they were worshipping Satan instead?” he wondered. Thus one of the most haunting film scores of all time was brought to life.

Goldsmith took the established concept of Mass, the sacraments, the holiest act of Mass, and offered it to Satan. Sanguis bibimus – ‘The blood we drink,’ Corpus edimus – ‘The body we eat.’ Any good Catholic will associate this with the Holy Act of Communion. But this is where the ritual goes dark, Tolle corpus Satani. Ave! ‘Raise the body of Satan. Hail!’ Brilliant and covert. The song becomes a litany of Satan worship and serves as the movie’s main theme securing Goldsmith the oscar that year.

It’s one of those things where you may not have known what was going on – or why you felt uncomfortable hearing it played – but your brain surely did.

Not to mention the infamous priest’s death (impaled upon a church spike) was based on an actual event that happened nearby where the screenwriter lived. That and many strange accidents happening to the cast and crew both on and off set while the movie was being filmed led many to speculate the production was in fact cursed by the powers of Hell that did not want their wiles and ways to be made public knowledge.

Overall The Omen is a mystery even to this day. I grew up in a very religious home where it was forbidden to watch which only intensified its awe and wonder in my mind. What could be so horrible about this movie that preachers so profusely condemned it from behind sweaty pulpits? The fundamentalists I grew up under acted as if a world of the Satanic would be torn open upon a single viewing.

Naturally, it was on my must-see list of movies along with The Last Temptation of Christ. The movie is respectful to the biblical source material it borrows from though and, well frankly, is just a very damn good movie to watch. It has a regal class seldom spoken of. People love to talk about elevated horror as if it’s a brand new thing but I’d argue it’s a sophisticated branch of the genre that’s been with us for years. Movies like this prove it.

The Omen proved to be a box office success and became one of the most influential horror movies of all time. Its financial success allowed Fox Studios to funnel in a little more money into a little-known science fiction project being made at the time called Star Wars. I love that by the way. Damien might’ve helped save Star Wars!

It also inspired one of the most groundbreaking heavy metal records of all time, Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast! Bruce Dickenson (lead singer) says he saw the movie and then had one of the most vivid nightmares of his life later that night. That’s pretty fucking metal.

Final Thoughts – The New Prequel

I’ll admit I mocked the idea of a prequel to The Omen. I felt it would be just another nostalgic cash grab that would suck like most others do. Then the rumors started settling in and people were praising this movie, The First Omen. Naturally curious I had to check it out for myself despite saying I’d never give it my attention. I think I said something like I’d rather tickle my dick with a cactus than go see it.

Well, I went to watch it.

You need to understand I’m not a big fan of any of The Omen sequels. So why the fuck would I care to see a prequel? Let alone sing its demonic praise unless it genuinely deserved it? So what did I think?

I unexpectedly enjoyed this movie, despite my initial skepticism.

The First Omen is a welcomed addition to the lore and adds a few new insights into the darker conspiracies behind the original movie. As far as prequels go I have to admit it’s one of the best I’ve seen. I mean I had to come home and immediately watch the original classic right away. The two line up masterfully.

So to all my friends who endured weeks of me bitching about this movie here I am humbly eating a big fat mouthful of crow. I was wrong, y’all.

So is this the start of a new franchise? Like with this movie’s success will they skip ahead and do a new retelling of Damien’s adult life as the Antichrist? I would say ‘Please God just stop!’ but I was proven wrong by a prequel so who knows? If done right and done well I’ll be in line to see it.

So if you like sophisticated horror and religious thrillers The Omen is a great watch. If you’ve not seen it yet there’s no better time than now. Make an event of it and go watch The First Omen before you do.

Manic out!

Retro Reviews

It’s Time to Embrace “The Fly II” as the Solid Monster Movie it Set Out to Be

Image March 2, 2024 Patti PaulterGeist 1 Comment

Let’s face it. Martin is pretty fly for a monster alley.

It was February 1989 and a pretty highly spoken about film around the Mom-and-Pop video store (ACTION VIDEO) where I had frequented, rummaging around the horror video section like the very young gorehound I was, had just been released. At the time, I had only actually seen bits and pieces of David Cronenberg’s body horror masterpiece, THE FLY, mostly because I was six-years-old, and I had only caught a few scenes of the film courtesy of my cousins. The word around the video store via the owner and employees was that THE FLY II was highly anticipated around there, and I distinctly remember hearing those adult horror fanatic conversations as a young genre fan who had just made her crossover into able to rent slasher movies; (A Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday the 13th, etc…) I was truly fascinated by ugly movie monsters, so my parents allowed me to rent THE FLY for a watch so I could be cool like the clerks at Action Video. And holy fucking gross-out I had no idea what I was getting into.

And to be quite honest, nothing grossed me out and stuck with more than the hand-wrestling scene.

Now, being six-years-old, I didn’t really understand the true complexity of THE FLY. I knew it was gross, but also kind of sad. I also knew I kind of really dug it. So I had BEGGED my mother for us to go see the sequel because I knew it had to do with Brundle Fly Jr; and I had to see what the fuck would come next after this. She reluctantly agreed, and guess what? I lasted 30 mins before I began crying hysterically inside the theater over a beautiful dog that was turned into mush. I was immediately taken out and brought to the nearest Toys ‘R’ Us to try and help soothe my hyperventilating ass.

I cried for a damn week, y’all. Also, I’m reliving some PTSD and welling up now, even thinking of that image. Excuse me while I go cover my dog in kisses and hugs.

Anyway, it took me a few years and a lot of balls to finish the movie, I think I may have been around 12. Getting past the traumatic dog scenes was just as hard as it was the first time, but I managed to push through it- and beyond the PTSD, I actually rather enjoyed the movie.

Listen, we all know THE FLY II is in no way better than its predecessor, so let’s just get that out of the way. That being said, the sequel had some massive shoes to fill and with all the low-critic scoring on this one, I’m here to say that’s a bit unfair. Directed by the first film’s makeup and animatronic effects specialist Chris Walas, with a screenplay by Frank Darabont and Mick Garris, the sequel suffered “intense meddling” by studio execs on what they wanted to see; and according to Darabont himself, these were people that hadn’t even SEEN the first movie! That in itself is a crime and makes me want to regurgitate my own acid reflux.

That being said, THE FLY II went through at least several different ideas, scripts, and rewrites before settling on what we know starring Eric Stoltz as Martin Brundle (fun fact: Keanu Reeves was the studio’s first choice to play Brundlefly 2.0, but he turned it down), and Daphne Zuniga who took some time off from the Planet Druidia to play his love interest. We open with a woman who is supposed to look like Geena Davis giving birth in a laboratory surrounded by the assholes of Bartok Industries. She dies in childbirth as a horrified and hysterical and also now crippled, Stathis Borans looks on as what is pushed out is a wriggling larva pod (I’m so glad his smart ass in this movie) and the baby is now the sole property of Bartok Labs and what we see from the get-go, a very evil Dr. Bartok himself. The larva pod cracks and out comes a perfectly, beautiful baby boy! Or, well, so it looks like.

They name him Martin and the child grows at an enormous rate. When he’s 11 months old he looks like he is four; and to top it off his IQ surpasses that of even his own father, who he was told died of an aging disease that was passed down onto him. By year two, he looks to be about 10 and is becoming more curious about the world outside his small one, where he’s closely monitored. He eventually manages to copy a passkey that allows him to wander about the facilities late at night. He ends up in a room filled with animals that are used for experiments and befriends a cute Golden Retriever. He visits the dog often and it becomes his only friend and companion in a world where he’s led to believe he’s going to die soon from his disease. Then, that one part happens that fucking traumatized the hell out of me.

In one part of the facility, Seth Brundle’s telepods are being experimented with and of course, they decide to use Martin’s new friend as a guinea pig. And well. Ya’ know. Didn’t turn out so well. And poor Martin watched the whole thing.

Fast-forward to Martin (Stoltz) at his fifth birthday party and he is a fully grown man at this point. His gift from Dr. Bartok is his very own “private apartment” which turns out to be anything but, and his own work area where he can work on the secrets of his father’s telepods. Since Martin doesn’t sleep. he works all day and night and befriends Beth ( Daphne Zuniga) a night shift worker at the labs. The attraction to each other is noticeable right away and is kind of sweet. Kind of like watching a teenage kid discover love for the first time.

She invites him to a party at the lab and this is where the real heart of the story begins: Martin discovers that his dog hasn’t been put down, but rather being kept at the bottom of what looks like a dirty, dungeon. The mutated dog is in pain and barely mobile and Martin bursts into tears and runs away only to return later that evening and euthanize his old friend.

Things start to hit the shit fan from here.

Just like with Seth, Martin slowly begins to transform. The trigger point was an accident with an injection that left a wound that instead of healing began to ooze and drip out slimy, sticky goo. Just like with his discovery of the dog, he also finds out his real fate and what he is turning into and that Bartok is truly excited for his transformation. Hell, he straight up tells Martin upon the discovery, that’s why he’s kept him there and calm all those years. A truly devastated Martin, who looks at Bartok as the only parental figure he’s ever known,pushes him to the side and goes on a rampage inside the labs until he finally escapes. Ending up at Beth’s home, they both go on the run from Bartok and his cronies until Martin is physically unable to run anymore. A horrified Beth says he is getting worse.

But you know what, Martin at this point is starting to embrace this shit and delivers the best line of the whole movie.

Caught and taken back to the lab, Martin makes the full transformation and that’s where THE FLY II really starts to shine as a GREAT special effects monster movie of the 80s. The revenge and rampage of Martinfly is fucking perfect. IN Cronenberg’s THE FLY, we sympathize with Seth, and we feel sorry for him, but we’re really rooting for Geena Davis as Seth has completely lost his humanity side and just has “Insect Politics”brain. With Martin’s transformation, he is COMPLETELY in control. His humanity is still there. He might be a homicidal fly on the loose killing everyone in that lab, who goddamn deserves every bit of it mind you, but he still loves the puppies! And the puppies totally love him.

I fucking love this so much

Also, can we sit and appreciate the makeup effects? Chris Walas nad his huge team of artists really pulled it off here in making something similar, yet totally different from Cronenberg’s version. In fact, one could arguably say, superior in some regard as the devil is always in the details. You could see every damn insect hair on Martin’s body as clear as day and for me personally, it’s right up there with Pumpkinhead as far as extremely well-thought-out monsters go.

The killings along the way on the final rampage are gory as HELL. Also, quite satisfying as unbeknownst to Bartok and his cronies, Martin has actually figured out the cure for himself that involves swapping his DNA with another healthy human via the telepods. Of course, the human donor would render up dead pretty much so Martin, because he’s a pretty nice guy for a fly, never once considered it an option. Until NOW.

SPOLIER ALERT: Don’t continue if you’ve never seen this.

In a twist of beautiful fate and poetic justice, Martin has a showdown, wild west style, in the telepod lab with Bartok and once he tries to harm Beth, who was being held as bait for Martin, and then Martin being shot at by Bartok, Martin has enough of this shit and grabs that fat fuck, dragging him to the telepod for some Gene Swapping Therapy.

Once the teleportation is complete, Martin and Bartok are fused in a gooey mess but only by some sort of slime. Martin returns back into his human self as the gene swapping therapy was successful and Bartok.. Got his just deserts as he comes out looking just like Martin’s beloved dog. The kicker is he is placed in that SAME gross dungeon, force-fed gruel and to live the rest of his miserable and painful days paying for his karma as a terrible human.

I’ll never watch that dog scene again, but I’ll watch this a million times.

THE FLY II may not be the masterpiece that Cronenberg made, but it certainly has its own merits and deserves a little praise for the things it set out to accomplish with so much standing in the way. It’s a great revenge film with a cool as hell monster. It also has one of the most brutal kill scenes I’ve ever seen.

OOOOOOF.