The Film Thugs Movie Show

I love anthology horror movies. I love anthology horror movies for the same reason that I love horror short stories – the stories are short. They tend to be all killer and no filler if you’re lucky. Creepshow, Black Sabbath, Campfire Tales, Cat’s Eye, the more recent Trick ‘r Treat, and the underrated Tales from the Crypt from 1972 all vary in quality and in delivered goods but at least if one of the stories sucks they don’t last long! Netflix, Amazon, On Demand, etc are all stacked to the ceiling with crap horror flicks that go on forever with little or nothing in return for your time. I’m happily surprised to report that V/H/S does not waste your time.

Are you sick to death of found footage genre films? Well too bad because this flick doubles down on the found footage premise. Not only are the individual stories found footage but the entire movie is framed around the “Tape 56” found footage arc that follows a group of particularly dumb and awful young criminals as they land a job to steal a certain tape from a seemingly abandoned house. What does this merry band of jagoffs stumble upon? A whole damn bunch of tapes!

Now, bear in mind that they don’t know which tape they’re looking for or even have a title or general description of the footage on said tape so as to identify it. Damn. I guess they’re going to have to watch a few, huh? What follows are five shorts directed by five different directors each choosing a different style of horror story to showcase. 

Amateur Night, directed by David Bruckner, is the creature feature of the five and a damn good one too! Writer and director of 2009’s The House of the Devil Ti West, takes on murder in what I found to be the most disturbing story of the five with Second Honeymoon. The slasher of young folks in the woods a la Friday the 13^th is offered up with an interesting twist by Glenn McQuaid as Tuesday the 17^th. The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger directed by Joe Swanberg is sci-fi story that uses the trappings of a haunting. While this one was not my personal favorite it should still be applauded for trying something different. Finally we have a straight up effects heavy haunted house story in 10/31/98 directed by Radio Silence that I found, for the most part, quite clever and refreshing. “Hey, Chuckles? There are like fifty other tapes in this place. Why watch only five?” Because shit starts to get real for our criminals away from the VCR, son! Also, the possibility for a sequel abounds and is apparently already in pre-preproduction. Hazzah!    

Wait... What? What happened to part 2? What about part 3? If you know the show then you know that things like chronological order take a backseat sometimes. This is one of those times. Since "Skyfall" came out this week (in America at least), and is currently making all the money in the world, we decided to skip ahead and cover the Craig Bond era, which we do... kind of. This week we are joined by Campbell's wife and Jim's girlfriend to discuss the highs and lows of the Daniel Craig following our viewing of "Skyfall." Warning, things get strange.

Hey, remember the 80's. We sure do, and now so can you. This week we decided to commemorate that most evil of holidays by discussing that most of of films from that most evil of decades... 1980's horror!!! That's right, all the fake blood, fake boobs, and fake... something else to complete this sentence you could ask for. Also, check out this wonderful blog entry to find out why Jim thinks art is important. We also need you, that's right, you to e-mail any questions you might have about anything to thugquestions@gmail.com. The best of these will be answered on a future episode... the catch is, we won't know what the questions are until they are read during the recording of the episode. Questions can be about ANYTHING AT ALL, so try and get creative. As always we can be reached by phone at 512-666-RANT, as well as The_Film_Thugs on Skype, and thefilmthugs@gmail.com Thanks for listening. <A HREF="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?rt=tf_sw&ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fthfith-20%2F8002%2F6d9e48d3-8e52-4e27-9357-4dff26240f24&Operation=NoScript" mce_HREF="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?rt=tf_sw&amp;ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fthfith-20%2F8002%2F6d9e48d3-8e52-4e27-9357-4dff26240f24&amp;Operation=NoScript">Amazon.com Widgets</A>

Last week we gave you the interviews, this week you get the commentary. What did we see and what do we think about what we saw? Learn the answers to these and many more questions on this weeks Film Thugs Movie Show.

Once again the Austin Film Festival is upon us and this year we decided to do something different. Instead of just hearing from us, we figured you might like to hear from some of the people who participated in this years fest. So, we camped out and did some interviews. Its a different kind of show, but we think you will enjoy it. So, check out our on the scene AFF 2012 show, complete with fabulous guest, and come back next week for the festival wrap up.