This weekend my parents gutted the attic and in doing that, I was reintroduced to boxes and boxes and boxes of my childhood. The GIANT bin of books didn't surprise me, I've always been a huge nerd. However, I guess I never realized how long I really have been into the paranormal.
I give you... the first paranormal investigation team ever formed by Haley Haunted:
The G.H.G.P., or Ghost Hunters/Ghost Patrol (yes we even had an acronym) was started in 1993 and had seven active members. The picture above is the cover of our logbook which contains member information, logged activity, investigation notes, investigative methodologies (surprisingly scientific), and legitimate research on theorized historical spirits, demonic names and characteristics and our town history of deaths and tragedies. I was incredibly thorough. And I was seven years old.
The majority of the rest of the bin was filled with books about hauntings, UFO's, ESP, myths and legends, and OBE's. All between 1991-1994 (ages six to nine).
First of all... who lets their first grader pick up a book like that, but more importantly what little kid would want to study the possibilities of psychic phenomenon?
I guess I was just born to study the paranormal. No turning back now, I'm screwed.
One of my favorite YouTube videos of the moment is "Eat Like Snake", a supposed Burger King Commercial from Japan. My boyfriend introduced me to the odd and surprisingly racist spoof and a few hours after seeing it, while looking for my next movie to review, the title "SnakeEater" immediately caught my eye. As soon as I read the info on it, I was sold. I don't know that it's considered a horror movie, but it is absolutely necessary that I review it. Watch this trailer and you'll understand:
The movie SnakeEater made its assumably sell-out debut in 1989. I'm not even going to bother with actor names, but will say that the "supporting" actors were reused as different characters often throughout the movie so do watch for that. I'm not really sure why they felt the need to recycle these actors as they are TERRIBLE. While watching the opening scene, I actually reconsidered my movie choice, not knowing if I would make it through. Thank God I waited it out. Not only did this movie feature cheesy catchphrases, feathered hair, and a Harley Sportster made into a jetski, it had more masturbation references than I knew what to do with.
The plot of the movie goes something like this: "Soldier" is an ex-marine that was part of a special ops group called the "SnakeEaters". However, Soldier was too much of a rebel to stick to government protocol and spent the opening scene as an undercover cop on a drug bust.
You'll want to pay attention to this scene as it will feature the only bra in the entire movie.
The drug bust turns into kind of a weird sex scene. Maybe I'm being overly romantic, but being in an abandoned, grimy warehouse with a man about to sell me some crack is not exactly on my list of sexual fantasies. I will give them credit for this gem of a line though:
"What do you think I'm going to hide a wire in my underwear?" "Honey it looks like you got the whole radio in there."
I think this may have been an illusion though as his underwear looked to be the same make and model as hers.
Ooh la la.
Thankfully they didn't show any down and dirty details, but the sneak peaks they did show made me want to take a shower.
But it's a good thing Soldier rigged the entire area with booby traps both Data and Macaulay Culkin would be envious of because low and behold... the sex was a trap (it always is fellas) and two very handsome characters bust in to steal the drug money!!!
Blah blah...
Ok so cut to a girl in a bikini sunning herself on the front of a boat. In the dark. On a boat that can only be described as a motorhome that floats. And it's floating down a river that just may be the same location filmed on "Swamp Loggers". Exactly where you'd take your family on vacation to right? Ugh.
Suddenly, the boat is overtaken by a wild gang of my ex-boyfriends
who steal the girl and take her back to their shack where they lock her in a shed to be reproduced with later. This really upsets the bandits' sister who is used to being the only hen in their henhouse. The boat scene is also the first (but far from the last) appearance of an unnecessary hard hat.
Now, I'm not sure if this is an extremely overlooked mistake in the movie, but sitting right behind the hillbilly shack is an enormous colonial style house. It's fairly obvious in multiple scenes. I would think that having neighbors would prohibit a kidnapping and later multiple homocides. I found other mistakes throughout the movie too, like someone drinking from a ketchup bottle that was very obviously filled with water, and various sound effects for no actions. I think maybe the editors of the movie saw the errors, thought back to the quality of the movie and just said, "ah, screw it".
Anyway, it turns out that the girl that is kidnapped is Soldier's sister. When he gets word of his family's attack, he sets out to find out who is responsible. Somehwere around this part in the movie is where you meet my favorite character, "King", the local marina owner.
King is my favorite because he is always drinking from a brown paper bag and used the word "fart" twice in one scene. He also comes crashing through the boat house on his harley and flies directly into the river.
Ol' Boy King is who we have to thank for the Harley Jetski...
When King presents this horrible defacing of a great Harley to Soldier, he warns that "You'll thank me later". The foreshadowing of this line kept me in suspense until the bitter end. Actually, I think the director forgot to follow through on this line as the only benefit I saw was that 70 miles of river goes by awfully fast when you're on a Harley jetski.
Now it wouldn't be the 80's without a slow motion shot of a woman running through the water in a white shirt, and this movie did not disappoint. I'm just glad that despite running from a band of hillbillies, participating in hand-to-hand combat, being hung from a sleeping bag cocoon, and bathing in a river, she managed to keep her slip-on flats firmly on her feet.
I absolutely LOVED the last scene where Soldier returns to his job as an undercover cop. In fact, I really enjoyed the whole movie. Despite my heckling, I would own this movie. And if there were a SnakeEater shirt like the one Soldier wears available, I would absolutely rock it with pride.
I gave this movie a 23 for the amount of teeth I think the entire cast put together has and for using the phrase "diddling his fiddle".
Unfortunately, there were only two references to a snake which throroughly disappointed me. And for that I give you... "Eat Like Snake"...
