The Tommyknockers is a 1987 novel by Stephen King. It is a mixture of horror and science fiction.
It was made into a mini-series in 1993.
Bobbi Anderson is a woman who lives alone near the woods in the town of Haven. She lives with her dog Peter. She is walking with Peter in the woods when she finds a metal object embedded in the ground. She is spellbound by it and it has a strange effect on her. She decides to go and dig it up. That is when the trouble starts. Her pal Jim Gardner who is a poet comes to visit her and he discovers that she has changed. He is an alcoholic and he and Bobbi have been meeting on and off for a long time. They have been lovers in the past and he comes to see her. She tells him about the strange object that she has found and he is intrigued by it at first. People in the town are changing too and they are all making new inventions from electrical items and getting tonnes of batteries.
A local boy, David Brown, disappears when he performs a magic trick. Strange things are happening and Jim notices that Bobbi is looking ill. The locals are losing their teeth too which seems to be an effect from the object in the ground. They are also turning into violent and insane people who won't let anyone in or out of Haven. They have been taken over by the object which releases a toxic gas which has poisoned the minds of the locals and they are protecting the object from the outside world. The object turns out to be an alien ship and it has been using the locals to get it out of the ground and moving again. Jim is unaffected by the gas because of a steel plate in his head. He can see what is happening but it powerless to stop it and turns to drink. He finally steps up and he manages to get the ship moving and into space but has to kill Bobbi. Most of the locals die and he dies too as the ship leaves. The town is invaded by the authorities and David Brown appears back in town..
An interesting read, I thought that this was a good novel and I liked the premise. It is a mixture of sci-fi and horror and it was entertaining. It wouldn't be my favourite Stephen King novel, but I liked it and I would recommend it to any reader. Beware though, it is a long book so if you are not a fan of a long read, you might want to give it a miss. It took me a while to read it, but it was worth it and I will re-watch the mini series...
No One Lives is a 2013 horror movie directed by Ryuhei Kitamura released by WWE studios and starring Luke Evans, Lee Tergesen and Brodus Clay of WWE fame.
The movie started like a run of the mill horror where a couple are driving along and run into this criminal family who make them crash their car and take them captive. What the family don't know is that the guy(Evans), whose name we never hear, is a total psychopath and he sets out to kill each and every one of the family. Let's start at the beginning. The psycho is with a woman and they are driven off the road by Flynn(Derek Magyar) who is part of this family of criminals. They are led by Hoag(Tergesen) and he is mad at Flynn for just taking them. The couple are with Ethan(Clay) who is a huge guy with a knife. The woman kills herself and then the guy overpowers and kills Ethan. He is a killer and when the gang realise this, they are uneasy.
Flynn looks through the couple's car and finds a young woman in the back. She is a prisoner of the driver and she tells them that he will kill them all. She is from a rich family and they have been looking for her for ages. She was taken captive by the driver and he has been teaching her about his sociopathic ways. There is a huge reward for her return so the gang want to bring her back and get the cash. Problem is, the psycho is outside and he is killing them one by one. He wants his prisoner back and he doesn't care what he has to do to get her. He kills them all and then there is a showdown with his captive. She tries to kill him, but he is too smart for her. He decides to let her go and heads off on his way. She is taken into hospital and that's the end.
Not a bad horror movie. It was entertaining enough and I liked the fact that the psycho was the victim in the beginning. That was interesting and made the movie better. I would recommend this as I found it worth a watch. There is some gore though so be warned..It gets a 5/10.
Well, there are so many TV shows on at the moment that it is hard to decide what to watch. We watch a lot of TV and some of the shows are crap and others are very good. I like a good story and good characters. The first show that we like is Dexter. It is based on a series of books by Jeff Lindsay and it began in 2006. There have been seven seasons so far and the final season begins soon.
The main character is Dexter Morgan played by Michael C Hall who is a bloodstain pattern analyst who works for Miami Metro Police. He is very good at his job and very clever. He was adopted by a cop called Harry Morgan(James Remar) who found him at the scene of his mother's murder and took him in. He still talks to Harry who appears as an advisor throughout the series even though he is dead.His sister is Debra Morgan played by Jennifer Carpenter and she is a cop too. She is foul mouthed and is a tomboy. She dresses like a guy most of the time and can be tough when she wants to be. The only gripe I would have about her is that Carpenter is way too skinny but that's just my opinion. Dexter works with another analyst Vince Masuka played by C.S.Lee. He is a pervert and is always talking about sex but is harmless. Angel Batista is played by David Zayas and he is a detective at Miami Metro. He is a good cop and he is good friends with Dexter and Debra. He is divorced and he misses the company of women and confesses to be lonely.Lieutenant LaGuerta is played by Lauren Velez is a no nonsense woman who will do anything to further her career. She does not like Debra and wants to keep her down. She likes Dexter.
The first season, Dexter is working away at his job but we find out that he is a serial killer who disposes of those evil people who the police cannot get. He takes them and secures them to a table with plastic wrap and then stabs them through the chest with a knife. He disposes of them in the sea. He
has a boat and that comes in handy for his dumping of bodies.He chops the victims up and throws their bodies in the water thus getting rid of the evidence. Of course, the bodies are found and the cops have an investigation on their hands. Dexter has a girlfriend called Rita(Julie Benz) and she has two children, Cody and Astor who Dexter gets on well with. He is with her in the beginning as a front. He needs to appear normal to the outside world. He has little feelings for her but after a while, he begins to like her and they marry. She is totally oblivious to his serial killing and she never discovers it. She wonders where he goes off to at night when he is hunting victims, but she is never suspicious of him killing.
The series always has one bad guy who Dexter is trying to get. In season 1, it is The Ice Truck Killer who turns out to be Dexter's brother and whom he kills. The cops find his bodies in the second season and they begin the search for the Bay Harbour Butcher, not knowing that Dexter is him! Dexter has a nemesis at the police station called James Doakes(Erik King) and he suspects that Dexter is not as innocent as he seems. He follows him around and eventually discovers the truth. Dexter has to get rid of him so he makes Doakes look like he is the Bay Harbour Butcher and he gets killed in an explosion so nobody learns about Dexter's secret. Season Three,Dexter finds a friend Miguel Prado(Jimmy Smits) who is an assistant DA and who shares Dexter's dark impulses. He wants to kill bad guys too. Dexter and Miguel become close friends until he crosses him and Dexter murders him. He also gets married to Rita in this season.
Season Four starred John Lithgow as serial killer Trinity. He was really good in the part as the creepy Arthur Mitchell. He has a family who he terrorises and he meets Dexter and they become pals until he realises that Dexter is out to get him. He kills Rita as revenge and Dexter murders Arthur. Arthur was a very clever man and it was hard for Dexter to get him. He was an even match for him and it was a very good season with the cat and mouse games they played with each other. Lithgow played the part very well. Rita had a baby with Dexter called Harrison and now Dexter has to be a single father to him and Rita's other two children.They eventually leave to live with their grandparents. Season Five finds Dexter rescuing a woman called Lumen(Julia Stiles) from a group of rapists. He finds her when he murders a man and she is his captive. She thinks that he is out to hurt her, but he doesn't kill her. He takes her away from there and she tells him what happened to her. She was a victim of rape by a group of men who like to film their antics. Then they give the women to a creepy sanitation worker who kills them. Dexter kills him and then he and Lumen get the other guys in the group one by one. The hardest one to get is a guy called Jordan Chase(Jonny Lee Miller) who is the head of the rape ring. Dexter and Lumen become very close and he is sorry when she leaves after killing all of the men who hurt her.
Season Six was very good and it revolved around killers called the Doomsday Killers. They are two guys who kill to bring about the Apocalypse. They are Travis Marshall(Colin Hanks) and Professor Gellar (Edward James Olmos) and they work together creating scenes from the Bible.Dexter finds Travis and he tries to get him to turn against Gellar as he thinks that Gellar is the brains of the outfit. He doesn't realise that Travis has killed Gellar and has been seeing him in hallucinations and he believes that he is still alive. He kills Travis but is caught by Debra who cannot believe what she is seeing..Season Seven sees Debra struggling with the news that her brother is a serial killer. She helps him cover up the murder of Travis Marshall but LaGuerta is suspicious and starts investigations. She is also trying to bring up the Doakes case to prove his innocence. Dexter meets a woman called Hannah McKay(Yvonne Strahovski) who has a dodgy past and they become lovers. She tries to poison Debra though and that is the end of their relationship as Dexter gets her put in prison. She escapes though and he whereabouts are unknown.Laguerta discovers the truth about Dexter and wants Debra to kill him but Debra shoots her instead. That brings us to the 8th season which will be starting the end of June. It should be a great finale I hope.
The series is very good and Hall is great as the main character. I like Dexter and his double life is interesting. He is a clever guy who takes care of the baddies who the cops can't touch. I like his sense of justice and he has had some close shaves where he got into trouble. I think that he will have to be found out sometime and I am not sure if they will end the series with him going to prison but I think that it would be better if he continues on his path. There were some really good actors in this. I liked Jimmy Smits, John Lithgow and Colin Hanks not to mention Jonny Lee Miller as the creepy Jordan Chase. It is a great TV series and I recommend it to anyone. I am just waiting for the next season! I hope you liked my quick synopsis of the show. Obviously, I don't have time to go into every storyline so this is just a fraction of what happens! Watch the series if you haven't seen it and you will enjoy it...
Hatchet for the Honeymoon is a 1970 Italian horror movie directed by Mario Bava and starring Stephen Forsyth.
John Harrington(Forsyth) is a wedding dress designer and he lives with his wife Mildred. He hates her and their marriage was one of convenience. They fight all the time and she won't give him a divorce. He employs young women in his business to model his clothes and some of them have disappeared. All of the women who have gone missing were going to be married. There is some mystery in his past and he needs to murder the brides to be in order to find out the answers. The local inspector is very suspicious of John as all of the missing women worked for him.
John kills another of his models when she says that she is leaving to get married. When Mildred annoys him once too often, he kills her too! Then he buries her in his greenhouse but she comes back! She tells him that she is going to be with him forever and never leave him alone. He takes her dead body and puts it in the incinerator and burns it. He puts her ashes in a bag and throws it into the river. He thinks that that will put an end to her, but he is wrong. Meanwhile, one of his employees, Helen likes him and she and John become very friendly. He kisses her and they get close. He tells her to go away as he is afraid that he will hurt her. He doesn't realise that she has been planted by the inspector and he gets caught when he is going to kill her. He is taken away to an insane asylum and who is waiting for him only Mildred and she tells him that he is the only one who can see her and that she will be with him forever!!!
An interesting horror/thriller and it is not very gory. I liked the story and it was a good offering from the man who brought us A Bay of Blood...I would recommend it as a horror fan and there is some interesting 70's fashion on display!!I will give it a 6/10.
Final Exam is a 1981 horror movie directed by Jimmy Huston and starring Cecile Bagdadi and Joel S.Rice.
At a college, kids are being murdered by some unknown person. It is the week of final exams and there are plenty of pranks being played around the college. The killer drives around in a van and he has his eyes on some of the college kids for his victims. They all begin to die in horrible ways as the killer stalks the campus. The Sheriff has his hands full with pranks and then the killer too. He thinks that the kids are all playing tricks and calling in the cops for fun. He decides that he has had enough and won't come to the college when they call him about real killings.
The kids are dropping like flies and the killer has his sights set on all of them. One of the college students, Courtney(Bagdadi) comes face to face with the killer. He chases her all over the campus and she has to try and get away from him. He almost kills her, but she gets to him first and kills him. The movie ends with Courtney coming out of the college and sobbing over her dead pals. This movie was okay. I found it a by the numbers slasher, but it is not rubbish by any means. It is entertaining and worth a watch if you like 80's slasher movies like I do. I will give it a 5/10.
