Spooooooooon!

Film: Ticks
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on various players.

When I tell you that I watched a horror movie from 1993 called Ticks, you almost certainly have a number of initial thoughts and expectations. I’m here to tell you that many of those are exactly right while others are much more in the “pleasant surprise” category. It would not be at all a stretch to suggest that Ticks is clearly a spin on the much more successful Arachnophobia from several years earlier. In fact, in a lot of ways this wants to be a more urban, street-smart version with a different arachnid.

What Ticks has going for it is a very entertaining cast that includes Peter Scolari, Clint Howard, Ami Dolenz, Alfonso Ribeiro, and Seth Green. Interestingly, it also features Virginya Keehne, who has exactly three films listed on her Letterboxd page. Why is this interesting? Because one of them is The Dentist, which I watched yesterday, making this weekend a sort of unofficial mini Virginya Keehne filmfest. (Additionally, I do wonder if, in the post-coital milky afterglow, her partner once leaned in closely and whispered “Virgin-Nah!” in her ear.)

Ten Days of Terror!: Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Film: Hellbound: Hellraiser II
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on the new internet machine.

If memory serves, I saw Hellbound: Hellraiser II (which I’m going to call Hellraiser II from this point forward) before I saw Hellraiser. This wasn’t by design. I think I walked into my living room when a college roommate had just started watching this first sequel (there are 10 total Hellraiser movies with the tenth released in 2018! Who knew?) and I sat down and watched it, too. It’s plenty gory, far more extreme in that respect than the original film. And because it doesn’t have to do a great deal of world building, it gives us a lot more of what we’re hoping for in a film from this series.

Hellraiser II picks up pretty much immediately after the conclusion of the first film, although we do get a little prequel of British military officer Elliott Spencer (Doug Bradley) opening the Lament Configuration and becoming the Cenobite Pinhead. From there, we jump back to the film’s present with survivor Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence) in a mental institution because of her wild stories of the dead returning, skinless humans, and monsters from another dimension. Her boyfriend from the first movie will not appear in this sequel—somehow he’s managed to escape dealing with puzzle boxes and Cenobites.