There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to take a risk. When looking for a title to review this week, I was faced with a dilemma. Namely, I was tired and stuck on my computer, which mean Blu-ray was out of the question. I could have spent ages pouring through the Netflix queue, or I could dive into “the pile.” Every critic has a pile – movies you’ve been sent to review that aren’t topical, timely, or generally wanted. Stuff you should review, but won’t feel bad if you never get to it. I went to the pile and pulled Psycho Sleepover, a low budget movie filmed in 2007 and released by Troma in 2010 and sent my way in 2011. Psycho Sleepover is a strange flick. It’s low budget to the point that it was pretty much literally all filmed in one location – the producer’s house. A lot of the people behind the camera end up in front of it. The quality isn’t so great. The plot is non-sense. Basically 30 psycho-slasher killers walk out of an unlocked Asylum and head to a sleepover to get their murder on while a couple of dudes make a ton of dick jokes and masturbate. In “The Making Of” extra, the co-director says of the film: it’s pretty retarded, but it’s awesome. He was 60% right.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr dresses up in a fabulous blue feather outfit and takes a trip to Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. There, he runs into a couple blue macaws trying to escape exotic bird smuggles, but he’s too busy getting his freak on to help out. Later, he comes back to the states to visit the quaint town of Woodsboro, only this time he’s traded in his fabulous blue feather outfit for a long, black cloak and a “ghost face” mask. After making some calls to random twentysomething girls who are supposed to be teenagers and asking them what their favorite scary movies are, he spent a night in the hospital from a stab wound to the face. Oh, the humanity!

This rant is entitled “Hey, Horror Movie Characters” for three reasons. One, 31 Days of Horror is in full effect and we’re talking horror every day. Two, it’s directed at characters in a horror movie. Three, I can’t put “Kill the Mother Fucker” in the subject header. I love horror movies. This much is true and obvious. That doesn’t mean I give them a blank check written out to idiocy. There are plenty of bad things in horror movies, even in good ones. Primarily, people making bad decisions. Granted our victims are almost always young teenagers, unwise in the ways of the world, potentially inebriated, and often thinking with their sex organs rather than their central nervous system. Still, even in my most obliterated of states I know that I’m not going to fit through the doggy door in the garage. So hey, horror movie characters. Quit making dumb decisions and kill the mother fucker.

On Kick Ass, Roger Ebert, and why old people need to grow up and learn a thing or two from us whipper-snappers who know fiction is fake and not a life-map.

You know it’s a guaranteed thing when a “very reliable source” says it’s so. Could the master of horror be back at the helm for Scream 4?

We’ve been talking a lot about slashers and the fun we have watching them. But is there more to the blood soaked hack ‘em ups? Robert Fure makes the case for the Slasher as Artistic expression.