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Horror Pets To Keep Out Of The Pet Sematary
Everyone loves their pets. And, as our own Kelly McNeely showed us a few days ago, there are plenty of good dogs and cats in horror movies that are so good that they deserve to get the Pet Sematary treatment and be brought back for another chance at life after they pass.
But then, there’s the other end of the scale. Some horror pets were mean and nasty enough in life that they aren’t worth the risk that they’ll come back worse. Like Jud Crandall said – sometimes, dead IS better.
Cujo – Cujo (1983)
The most obvious entry on this last, and therefore, the first one, is Cujo from, of course, Cujo.
Now, Cujo was just a big St. Bernard puppy who happened to get bitten by a bat and catch rabies. He’s a fluffy good boy who deserves a second chance, right? Wrong. The evil Cujo that would come back from the Pet Sematary would be just as strong and powerful as the rabid Cujo, but would have a mean streak that would overshadow his cuteness. It’s best to leave him alone.
Max – Man’s Best Friend (1993)
Max from Man’s Best Friend is another pup that gets a bad rap. He is a genetically altered Mastiff who is freed from his cruel animal testing lab by a news reporter, and he of course becomes attached to his rescuer.
He also becomes very protective of her. Needless to say, things go very badly for everyone who is not his savior reporter. So, unless you’re that reporter, Max should be kept out of the Sematary. He was mean enough the first time. He’d come back even nastier.
Ella – Monkey Shines (1988)
Speaking of experimental animals…Ella from Monkey Shines is a helper monkey who is injected with human brain tissue that makes her super smart. It also makes her super aggressive, and like Max, she develops a bond with her person, who happened to be a quadriplegic.
Also like Max, she takes her rage out on anyone and everyone who crosses her master, whether he wants her to or not. Again, unless you’re her person, Ella is not an animal that you’d want to come back.
Ben – Willard (1971/2003), Ben (1972)
There are a slew of rats in Willard, but only two – Ben and Socrates – who are named. Of those two, Socrates is the good guy, while Ben is the bad. We already let you know that Socrates deserves the Sematary. Now we’re telling you that Ben does not.
At first, he’s an ally to Willard, the young man who has an unexplainable psychic connection to him and his rodent brethren. But Ben seems to take Socrates’ unfortunate demise a bit too hard, and goes out for vengeance until even Willard stops trusting him. That kind of disloyalty doesn’t deserve a second chance.
The Cat from Hell – Tales From The Darkside: The Movie (1990)
Cats are cute. But they’re also sneaky, conniving, and, sometimes, in the movies, they’re downright murderous.
The cat from the second segment of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, known only as The Cat From Hell, is so evil, his owner hires a hitman to rub him out. He’s tougher than that, though. Not even David Johansen and a $100,000 bounty can stop the Cat. If The Cat came back from the Pet Sematary, he’d be even more unstoppable.
Ramon – Alligator (1980)
Ok, so we’ve covered dogs, cats, rats, and even a helper monkey. Let’s do a reptile.
In Alligator, a baby gator named Ramon is purchased by a teenage girl while on vacation. The girl grows tired of her pet, so Ramon is flushed down the toilet. He winds up in the sewers of Chicago, where he grows to monstrous size on a diet of discarded animal carcasses from a nearby agricultural drug test facility. When the animal corpses dry up, Ramon starts feeding on sewer workers before, finally, leaving the sewers to hunt. Not that there’s room for a giant gator in the Sematary, but just in case anyone gets any ideas…nope.
Hellhound – The Omen (1976)
Any good antichrist needs a Hellhound as a protector, and Damien from The Omen has a fierce one.
First showing up at Damien’s fifth birthday party (where the hound psychically convinces Damien’s nanny to commit suicide in front of all of the screaming kids), the Hellhound becomes a faithful and obedient servant over the course of the Omen movies. The Hellhound is evil enough. No Sematary needed for him.
Black Phillip – The Witch (2015)
Ok, now we’re getting Satanic. And what’s more Satanic than a black goat, right?
Although he’s not really a pet, Black Phillip is the goat that is owned by the family in The Witch. He turns out to be much more than just a farm goat, though. He’s actually the assumed mortal form of Satan himself. So, he probably doesn’t even need the Pet Sematary to come back to life. But, just to be safe, we should keep him out of it.
Togar – Roar (1981)
Remember everything we said about cats up there? That goes double for lions. And Roar was packed full of lions, tigers, panthers, jaguars, and leopards.
Really, any of the carnivorous cats in Roar could be on this list, but Togar, the dominant male lion who challenges pack leader Robbie for control, is the real jerk. Togar and the rest of his pride cause all kinds of problems for the humans in the movie, both on screen and off. Of course, he is a lion, and any attempts at domestication should not have been made in the first place, but an (even more) evil Togar would not be good. No Sematary for him.
Mr. Whiskers – The Voices (2014)
And we’re back to domestic cats. And Mr. Whiskers from The Voices is the epitome of a “domestic” cat.
Mr. Whiskers isn’t so much evil as he is just an a-hole, which is par for the course. Still, Whiskers is meaner than average. He and his dog companion Bosco serve as sort of the devil and the angel on the shoulders of protagonist Jerry, causing him to kill the women he dates. Or, to be more specific, Whiskers talks him into killing his dates while Bosco tries to get him to stop and turn himself in. Yeah, without Bosco to reel him in, Whiskers would be out of control. He should stay out of the Sematary.
Have you seen the new Pet Sematary? Check out our review to see if it lives up to the hype.
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Movies
‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.
We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.
“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”
That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”
Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:
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Movies
‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.
Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.
Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.
Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.
Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.
The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.
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News
Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date
Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.
Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.
These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:
According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”
Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.
Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.
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