Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

Not quite. You actually own them. It’s just a slightly cheaper way to buy all the titles they put out. They used to have an option to get the adult titles as well, but I guess they got rid of that.

I’ve never tried it out myself though. As much as I love the work that Vinegar Syndrome does, a lot of their movies are…questionable in quality.

Being a person who talked about Forced Entry on a second date, I'm in no position to judge what people divulge on dating sites. But, from my not so great perspective, it could just be someone who wants to know if fringe common interests are shared. And is cutting to the chase.



But, that said, they should also know when they are saying this, that a lot of not great connotations come from being fans of these kinds of things. So....who knows. You just keep feeling it out.

lol I still haven’t seen Forced Entry

Wait, so you pay some amount per month and they just randomly send you a title? Or you subscribe and then you get a discount on buying the discs?

I plan to insist that you continue explaining this to me instead of just googling it myself.

I mean, so far it was just one mention and it was buried among other things. I responded to the other things. I'm in no rush, so there's plenty more conversation to see if it's a thing they're into (fine) or if it's the thing they're into! (no thanks).

At least it's a step up from being solicited for prostitution! The bar is so low!

That must have been a rough second date!

My ex once showed me all of the messages she received on a dating app. And as low as my bar already was for people, I was dumbfounded by how bad it was.



So, yes, the bar is low. So ****ing low.

Looks like it’s the latter, based on this article.*

https://www.highdefdigest.com/news/s...worth-it/46354

Obviously we’re rooting for you here, but deep down I’m rooting for this person as well, because of there’s hope for them, there’s hope for me.

I can confirm that Crumbsroom did not bring up Forced Entry when we met in person.

So we're all just pretending it wasn't Rock that messaged you? Cool.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

I don’t have a VS subscription.

So we're all just pretending that Rock doesn't have a VS subscription?

Hey, I bought my Doris Wishman box set in person! I don’t need to hide behind a mail order subscription!

Some time ago I attempted to buy The Black Cauldron on Blu Ray and found that in order to do so I had to join some kind of Disney DVD club. I'm not sure if it's the exact same model as VS but it didn't look like something that would be beneficial to me. Similar to the old Columbia House record clubs, it seems you'd find yourself with a lot of product that you ultimately don't want.
If you're an avid collector, it's probably worth it I guess. I'm somewhere in the middle. I buy more physical product than most of the people I know, but I'm not a "buy everything" guy.

The only label I’d consider a subscription from if they offered one would be 88 Films, because they have a more narrow focus on the kinds of movies they put out (Hong Kong actioners, American slashers, Italian horror and crime flicks).

I have to delete them because seeing them in my inbox gives me major anxiety. But I have kept some screenshots.

Boo! I like my random title idea better. Just imagine, you shell out $20 a month, you walk out to your mailbox. What's that inside the package?! It's . . . In Search of Bigfoot.

I'm rooting for them too! Again, the bar is so low!

So he's two-timing you with some FLOOZY?! And regaling her with stories of forced entries?!

"I walked in and I put my money down on the counter and I said 'I'm here for my Doris Wishman box set.' They said, 'But sir, this is a Mattress Warehouse!' I looked that man in the eye and I said 'Karl', (a quick glance at his name-tag told me all I needed to know. His name was Karl. It was a Mattress Warehouse.) 'Karl,' I said. 'I . . . want . . . my . . Doris . . . Wishman . . . box set.' Well what could they do? They certainly weren't going to sell any mattresses with me there, sweating and demanding only the most pristine restoration of Deadly Weapons. A hushed conversation. Some googling. Some giggling. A lesser worker sent out on an errand with very specific instructions. Well an hour later I had my Doris Wishman box set. And a ban from every Mattress Warehouse location in North America. So do I need your fancy mail order service? What do you think?"

No, that’s the first set. I got the second one.

They may have banned you from every Mattress Warehouse, but I'm sure you're more than welcome to sign up for their Mattress Warehouse subscription service, where, for a mealy $83.33/month, they send you a new, random mattress every 12 months.

I just stopped by to say Jess Franco has now taken the lead for the most number of films by a director I've seen, surpassing Jean Rollin (both are in the double digits). Which is to also say, Jess Franco is also now my most watched actor by far.

I buy my mattresses in person... from the video store.

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Imagine it’s 1983 and you’re standing in line for Return of the Jedi. You’ve spent two movies getting wrapped up in the story of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, of the Rebels versus the Empire, and Princess Leia and Han Solo and all our alien and robot friends. The last movie dropped a bomb right at the end revealing that Darth Vader is actually Luke’s father. So you’re going into this movie hoping that it’ll give you more thrills and chills and wrap up the story of these characters and this conflict in an emotionally satisfying manner. Now imagine the movie starts, and instead of Luke or Vader or any of our old friends, we get a new character named, I dunno, Blando. And instead of following through on the setup from the previous movies, we spent the whole movie exploring how Blando was traumatized by the Empire and how that’s made him follow in Darth Vader’s footsteps. That would be a pretty dogshit narrative choice, wouldn’t it?

Well, that’s basically what happens in Halloween Ends. Instead of actually trying to provide a satisfying resolution to the Strode-Myers conflict, it introduces a brand new character named Blando...sorry, Corey, and has him turn into a murderous sociopath to follow in Michael Myers’ footsteps. So you get an opening scene where a babysitting mishap results in a kid getting killed, and then scenes where he’s bullied by a bunch of local chuds, and then see Michael Myers take him under his wing, and eventually have him killing people willy nilly. I suppose I should hand it to the movie for making such an offbeat choice here, but going back to Star Wars, I feel like I’m reliving The Last Jedi, where the offbeat choices are just not enjoyable and I feel no need to reward any points for their novelty. If anything, sidestepping to his character is an admission by David Gordon Green and Danny McBride that deconstructing Michael Myers is a futile exercise, but it’s a lesson they learned two movies ago in the 2018 Halloween, and that movie was at least well paced. Both this and Halloween Kills lurch awkwardly under the weight of their attempts to expand on this idea, but in both cases it’s a self-defeating and obnoxious exercise. Endless scenes of characters spouting themespeak do not an entertaining movie make.

I actually don’t think Rohan Campbell is bad as Corey, but everything about his arc is so heavily underlined that it never feels like a surprising or interesting progression. While I admit that Campbell’s resemblance to Charlie Kirk doesn’t do him any favours in the empathy department, the movie really fumbles in that area with respect to his victims. Every single minor character in this movie is unbelievably obnoxious and refuses to shut up for even a second, meaning that they don’t earn even the small hints of empathy that Halloween Kills generates when its characters are killed by Myers, where despite how obnoxious their speechifying is, you can at least see them as actual people. Here, these characters are just asking for it. And this is another area where it comes up short against Kills, which at least had pleasingly gruesome murders. The kills here are comparatively limp, and it’s especially annoying when the most loathsome of Corey’s victims is killed in a deliberately out of focus shot. I can’t believe this movie is softening my dislike of Halloween Kills. Just another thing to hold against it.

All that being said, I must disclose that part of my crankiness involving this movie involved the godawful crowd I watched this with, where a row of audience members refused to shut up for the entire movie and were outright yelling at times (despite aggressive shushing from those around them), and some mother****er in the front row was flashing their phone light at the screen. I’ve been spoiled in that the majority of audiences I’ve watched movies with have been very well behaved, but this is easily the worst audience I’ve ever experienced. Definitely stirred up my misanthropy a little. Maybe Corey had the right idea...