YEAR 2004 directed by john shepphird

STARRING john rhys-davies, giancarlo esposito, dylan neal

Qs: 12.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS

N       0:09:33.  The “HMS Shepphird?”  Wonder what that could be a reference to…

N       0:19:53.  A trail of blood and chopped organs (liver?) lead to the beast itself chomping out a man’s guts, his rubbery intestines flopping about as he’s devoured.  A splash of blood and the woman he was searching with is gone in a flash as well.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:22:41.  Bodies, bodies, bodies.  Eight people have died thus far, mauled to death by the Goat Sucker, these last three running red.  The worker who was mauled second has his pockets picked, in the shot are bloody bills (100s) and entrails just above the belt buckle.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:29:39.  Two more bite the dust – Death Count: 10.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:30:30.  #11 goes, throat ripped from ear to ear.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:32:38.  A pair goes, man and woman, in love.  How short and sweet.  The guy goes first, bloody splats ensue; then the screen goes black on the girl, but we know she’s a goner.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:36:20.  We get a look at the damage on both; yep, dead.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:39:35.  What’s another body between friends?  Well, if it’s your friend, you might start getting concerned.  As it is, the friend doesn’t have long before he gets jumped and loses one of his arms before the beast has his way with the rest of him.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:47:04.  They needed warm blood to lure the creature; guess what they get.  Remember the dude who lost his arm a scene ago?  That’s it – the arm, skinned and cooked.  An extra point is for having to excoriate the thing and then put it in the oven, having to handle it still even after it’s done.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:54:17.  It was just a matter of time before little Jeffrey became a quick hors d’oeuvre.  Millie doesn’t last much longer, though we don’t actually see it.  Death Count: 17.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:02:42.  The baiter becomes the prey: Pena gets slashed with three good ruts into his face and throat.  That’ll teach him.  Shortly after, a man trips over a bloody head before becoming chow himself; later, a comrade goes down and twitches quite a bit, but we can presume his fate.  DC: 19.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:14:35.  McGrew gets it next…yippee-aye-o.  One of the armed men goes later, upping the Death Count to 21.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:18:21.  The beast oozes green blood down its legs and feet and between its terrible clawed toes, its end nigh.  A wicked shot follows of a really poor sap rent totally in half, organs hanging out in a way that would make George Romero proud.  SR: SSSSS

aka: paura nella città dei morti viventi

YEAR 1980 directed by lucio fulci

STARRING christopher george, katriona maccoll, carlo de mejo

Qs: 12.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS

N       0:10:30.  A rotting corpse in a highly advanced state of decay, complete with worms.  SR: SSSSS

N       “THE BODY PURGING” 0:31:30.  A girl’s eyes start to bleed…then it gets really sick.  She starts to foam at the mouth as if rabid, the foam quickly turning red and then into strange things: intestines – yards and yards of them – and then organs of several shapes, sizes and colors.  In time, the girl vomits up her internal organs while the specter of the suicidal priest stares her down.  After the body purging, a hand reaches into the boy’s hair and grabs out a chunk of his brains, leaving a grapefruit-sized hole.  SR: ããããã

N       0:34:48.  A writhing pile of Lord-knows-what.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:42:14.  An unscrupulous funeral director has a bite taken out of his left wrist, apparently by a discontented corpse he was trying to steal from.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:54:30.  Walls bleed…a sure sign something is amiss.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:58:30.  Mr. Ross takes on some vigilante justice and bores Bob’s head with a rather substantial drill in his garage.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:02:23.  A maelstrom of maggots, millions of ‘em, spray in through an open window.  The idea and the feel of the squirming things causes one woman to throw up (no organs this time.)

N       1:04:43.  Blood drips onto the dinner table from where it soaked through the ceiling.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:08:30.  Another handful of brains…yummy.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:20:20.  A feast of the dead leaves three bodies in its wake.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:22:15.  A third handful of brains (seems to be the preferred method of execution) is extracted and rats feast in the gaping hole.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:23:21.  A jab into a zombie draws blood, but saves a life.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:28:10.  Another jab into a form of the undead (this time the ubiquitous but still deceased Fr. Thomas) is a gooey one, slime and ooze of all sorts falling out of the hole just before he and his army of walking corpses collectively burn to cinders.  SR: SSSSS

YEAR 1993 directed by renny harlin

STARRING sylvester stallone, michael rooker, john lithgow

Qs: 5.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS

YEAR 2004 directed by michael mann

STARRING tom cruise, jamie foxx, jada pinkett smith

Qs: 6.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS

N       0:19:09.  It’s only Vincent’s first hit but already things are messed up.  Instead of simply dying, his hit falls out the window and lands with a bang on Max’s cab.  His bloody face impacts the windshield, his dead eyes staring through Max as he tries to get a handle on what happened.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:45:30.  Missing a jazz question, Daniel receives shots to the head, courtesy of Vincent.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:54:06.  Fanning inspects gunshot victims, namely Vincent’s, in the morgue.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:16:20.  JFF: In one of the most unusual but moving moments in any film I’ve yet seen, a very special thing happens at a nondescript LA intersection.  After Vincent and Max have made the rounds of three out of the five victims set up for that night, their cab pulls up to an empty intersection at the wee hours of the morning.  There, Max sees something on the asphalt that is never seen in the streets of Los Angeles that stops him and his cab in its tracks.  There, prowling around in the roads like they owned them, are coyotes.  Two coyotes, padding around like they belonged there.  It’s never explained, not even attempted, what they’re doing there, how they got there, anything about them.  It doesn’t matter, however.  Beholding them in their predatory sleekness, Max and Vincent alike are caught in the moment of watching two wild animals strutting around the streets of a major city.  Their very presence, a confounding but mesmerizing sight, establishes a certain rapt atmosphere of supernatural mystery that keeps both men – cool, unflappable hitman and nervy, introverted cab driver – entranced while Audioslave’s Shadow of the Sun plays over the scene.

N       1:19:50.  In a hot and frantic shootout at a nightclub, many dynamic things happen simultaneously.  It is easily the most chaotic and energetic sequence in the film.  Prowling around through the dancing crowd for his fourth hit, Peter Lim, Vincent has unknowingly walked into a veritable beehive.  Vincent is there…armed.  FBI agents are there to protect their witness, Peter Lim.  They’re armed.  Felix’s guys are there to pick Vincent off if anything goes wrong.  They’re armed.  Lim’s guys, naturally, are crawling all over the place to keep him alive.  Guess what?  They’re armed too.  With a substantial percentage of the occupants of the club packing heat, you very well know the roof is going to be blown off shortly.  At the mark, Vincent sees Peter.  The inevitable clash of arms is only a matter of time.

N       1:20:55.  Spotting trouble, Vincent goes after an armed man, slamming him in the back and breaking his neck before shoving him to the floor and kicking him as he walks off.

N       1:21:17.  Vincent breaks another man’s leg sideways at the knee before breaking his neck with a swift kick to the jaw.  The ruckus summons another man whom Vincent cracks several ribs of before spinning him around, putting an arm around his neck and holding his piece out in front of him with the other, using him as a shield to navigate through the crowd.  It is ridiculously easy to hide in the serried masses, and so none of the men from the FBI have any idea this is going on.

N       1:22:26.  As the agents move in on who they think is Vincent (Max), things are coming to a head between Felix’s guys and Peter’s.  Pedrosa is shot in the leg and as blood flies, the screaming and scampering starts.  One of Peter’s men takes a shot at Max, thinking too that he’s Vincent, capping some other guy who had the bad luck to be standing next to him then.

N       1:23:13.  His human shield long ditched, the real Vincent is free to defend Max who is the focus of several laser sights from Felix’s crew.  Vincent wipes them out and he and Max share, for a few moments, a strange bond – he just saved his life.  True, he got him into the situation, but he saved him.  Could have let him go down then, save himself, but he didn’t.

N       1:24:00.  Men are dispatched at Peter’s request to deal with the white-haired threat on the dance floor.  Vincent whips out a switchblade and plunges it into one of his current captor’s legs, wheeling around fast to snap the other guy’s neck before Peter’s men can open fire.  Vincent wipes them out in a hurry, even taking down a man with a rifle, before heading after the entire reason he was there: Peter Lim.  Picking off a man who tried desperately to save him, Vincent fires a single round into Peter’s chest before he has to reload.  The first two shots when he does go where the last one of the previous clip went, another going into his forehead, assuring mission success.

N       1:25:00.  If that wasn’t enough, say goodbye to Det. Fanning.  Vincent beat them out of the club and was waiting for Max.  When the former saw his favorite driver in the hands of the police, he took the latter down with three shots to the chest.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:44:06.  In the showdown at Annie’s building, Max shoots Vincent in the head, albeit only in the left ear.  Blood flies while his body spins as he falls to the floor while Max and Annie flee.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:49:15.  The final face-off on the MTA leads to a fatally shot Vincent and a satisfying conclusion to a rapt cinematic achievement.  After a tense ride and a trainload of car hopping, it’s down to the wire.  Vincent and Max are on opposite sides of the same door, both armed, both motivated.  Both fire repeatedly, several quiet seconds separating event from resolution.  Both Max and Vincent hold their fire while they assess what happened.  Vincent finds he’s out and so goes to reload.  Before he can insert the next clip, he drops it.  He swallows hard, lowers his gun and sees what’s going to happen.  As he sits in one of the seats by the door, it’s clear he’s been hit in the chest, in the lung specifically.  Knowing he’s going to die, Vincent repeats his question from long ago to Max and Annie – “A guy gets on the MTA here in L.A. and dies.  Think anybody will notice?”  SR: SSSSS

YEAR 2005 directed by francis lawrence

STARRING keanu reeves, rachel weisz, pruitt taylor vince

Qs: 7.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS

N       0:02:08.  A man rummaging for who knows what discovers the Spear of Destiny, becomes enchanted by some supernatural force and starts heading off toward nothing immediately visible.  With no warning given whatsoever (except maybe for this), a car comes in from left frame at high speed and crashes directly into him in a most violent collision but one we soon see was many times more dangerous for the driver than for Manuel.

N       0:05:44.  Constantine reports to the address of the terrified whose daughter is thoroughly possessed by a soldier demon.  He sifts through several medallions and, finding the correct one, presses it firmly into the girl’s forehead, burning its impression into the skin and smoking quite a bit, an unnatural amount of kicking and screaming on her part and much horrified screaming and crying from her family members roundabout her.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:17:39.  The new Manuel leaps over a fence like Superman and strolls down a road running between two fields studded with livestock, which, one by one, drop dead as he passes them.

N       0:43:42.  We get our first truly apocalyptic vision of hell borne directly from atomic bomb tests.  The land is streaked with exceedingly vibrant variations of red and orange, absolutely everything on perpetual fire as the flames of hell rage around them.  That all, of course, is above ground.  In the subterranean, which hell is regarded as anyway, countless half-head creatures (you’ll see what that means shortly) scamper around a human sea of misery, damnation and much suffering, rending their victims endlessly as they will for eternity.

N       0:45:00.  Here we get a really unpleasant close-up look at one of the half-head creatures which has nothing whatsoever above its nose, just a flat top where it looks as if things were sheared off with a  laser, not even a fleshy covering pretending to be the top of head, its brain fully visible and resembling something from an autopsy.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:49:55.  Hennessey pulls down a container of corkscrews and, intent on delivering a message to John, pounds the curly point into his palm repeatedly.  A little later, when John arrives, he wets the area with an ice cube and presses a napkin into the site, lifting it away to see a symbol of a circle and a cross, something which leads him in a new direction.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:00:35.  John calls Beeman and asks for information.  Beeman tries his best to relay it, but things get to a point where he can’t concentrate any longer and eventually disconnects.  He feels a strange sensation in his left eye and has no choice but to sit and take it as a fly works itself from under his skin and out into the air.  When John and Angela arrive later, they find him overrun with flies and various insects coming from his mouth, eyes, ears, etc.

N       1:12:27.  John tracks down Balthazar and is mighty unhappy at the two murders of his friends Hennessey and Beeman, killed just for associating with him.  He fires through a mirror with his new golden shotgun and demands to know the truth.  He then chucks one of his holy water bombs (Christmas ornaments, really) directly at his face.  The blessed substance eats away at the flesh, revealing the hellish gruesomeness that lay just below.  A fistfight gets turned up a notch when John pulls out a set of golden knuckles and proceeds to beat the life (?) out of the demon.  Later, when he’s ready to go, John blasts “Bally” again but we don’t see for a few seconds that he wasted everything it was, leaving a person-shaped pile of talking ashes.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:33:21.  It’s Chas’s time to die now.  Some force drags him off his feet and slams him into the ceiling, the floor, back into the ceiling and back down to the floor.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:38:38.  The actual cuts are off-screen, but John gets an idea and uses a shard of glass to slit his wrists, which bleed out into the water surrounding him.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:47:40.  It took a while after seeing this for it to hit what happened.  John is inches from being taken into heaven when Lucifer seizes him, rips his shirt open and digs his hands into his chest, extracting two black blobs of a thick, greasy substance – his lung cancer.  Pulling that out enabled his lungs to function properly again and thus return him to life.  SR: SSSSS

YEAR 2005 directed by christopher smith

STARRING franka potente, vas blackwood, jeremy sheffield

Qs: 7.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS