I must admit, I wasn’t expecting much from Turkey Shoot heading into my screening of it. I figured it would merely be a terrible little film that would be easy for me to skewer and as a result a good laugh would be had by all. I certainly wasn’t expecting a film that would somehow perfectly represent the goals of this site, and as a result somehow turn into a minor obsession.

I have always had a bit of a soft spot for Australian films. While it is probably due to my early introduction to the Mad Max films, as I slowly discovered others I realized that their was something about their visceral delivery along with their kinetic visual style that appealed to me even then , and has continued ever since.

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I don’t know if this has happened to other people, but I’ve been traumatized more then once by movies when I was a child. Now sure, most people will talk about how Poltergeist forever put them off clowns, but I’m trying to crawl into my past to point out some of the more ridiculous things that scared me as a child. And well, clowns were creepy to begin with. My own personal belief is that their painted on smiles trigger that ancient residual instinct from when we viewed teeth as a threat. But I am rambling.

The first time I ever had the pants scared off of me by a movie would have been around 1980. The event is still fresh in my mind, which probably means it is 100% inaccurate. It was early in the afternoon and my mom was at home. You see, is the distant past families were once able to survive on only one income. Quaint, to be sure. Nowadays people like that would most certainly be labeled lazy, a drain on society, or worse yet, Democrats. But I am rambling. (more…)

Next week I revisit a children’s film from 1986 that scared me so badly I never finished watching it. Join me as I battle my nightmares alongside Cher’s dead husband, Elaine Benes, the little girl from V, and Harry Potter … Junior against the evil wizardry of Torok the Troll.