Puke Flick of the Week - Drag Me To Hell

Welcome to my life. Day 5794. Hello my Tortured Tortoises. So I just watched this flick on DVD called Drag Me To Hell. Pretty awesome! Especially this uber-creepy old lady that haunts the whole thing. The flick's worth it just for her.


It's about this pretty little prissy chick (Alison Lohman, who reminded me of my sister, Helen) who works in a bank when said old lady comes in and starts begging for an extension on her loan. The chicky is trying to get a promotion and rejects her application. The old lady is scary and keeps taking out her false teeth - which are like green and pointy and decaying - I mean doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of false teeth? Anyway, the old lady is a crazy Hungarian gypsy and she does this cool curse on said chicky. I like the idea of a curse being inside an object. In this case it's a button off her jacket. I wonder what object of Helen's I can curse Helen with. The curse in this movie invokes an evil demon called the Lamia, basically a cousin of Pazuzu from The Exorcist. Only Lamia actually drags your ass to Hell if she's called on. I like it. Though I wish we got to see Hell as I the title sort of suggested. The only movies I know that really show a version of Hell are the Hellraiser flicks. I guess that requires a lot more imagination.

But Drag Me To Hell does have some very fun times including the greatest nosebleed I have ever seen. This thing sprays like twenty feet! It's a great little scene where girlfriend is at work in the droll little bank, the walls are all like ashy faded blue and grey and off she goes! Spraying the entire office especially her boss who was standing in front of her and is now screaming, "Did I get any in my mouth?!" Hilarious.


Alison Lohman is a little too pretty and looks a little lost in this genre. She was great in Matchstick Men, playing a twenty something pretending to be a 12 year old. But this flick doesn't really give her a chance to work out that acting muscle. The film is directed by Sam Raimi and is a welcome return to his roots (Evil Dead). He never took his horror too seriously and this is no exception. It is more 'fun' than scary. And Lohman kind of plays it that way. It's not really an attempt at pure terror like, say, Last House on The Left, which was pretty good, by the way. Although that microwave oven thing at the end totally ruined it for me. Everybody knows you can't just stick someone's head in the microwave! Believe me, I've tried it on my sister. Doesn't work. The door has to be closed. It's these little lapses in reality that really piss me off at the movies. For instance, in Drag Me To Hell, the chick has to sell all her shit to come up with 10 grand to pay off this psychic but when we meet the psychic, she's like, "I've battled the Lamia once before and lost. I've been waiting my whole life for a chance to get my revenge." Great, bitch! Maybe you could have waived the friggin fees in that case! God! People are so materialistic! Fine, battle away.


But as I said, the best thing about the flick is the old lady, Mrs. Ganush, (played by TV veteran, Lorna Raver) who has a penchant for puking green slime, maggots, and general gobs of yellow goo all over cute little Lohman. I kept imagining Helen in Lohman's place and got great satisfaction from so doing. It just occurred to me that in Hungaria they call old ladies Baba. So she's Baba Ganush! Great stuff.