Jingle All the Way

There comes a time in the life of every macho action movie star where they have to make a movie for the kids. Not only is it fun to watch a burly guy get humbled by everyday situations, but these scenarios effectively print money. Moviegoers enjoy watching muscle-bound protagonists deal with ridiculous and family-friendly scenarios as much as, if not more than, watching them suplex space terrorists.

The tradition of blockbuster beefcakes showing their G-rated sides started in the ‘90s, like so many delightfully awful things, with the perennial Kindergarten Cop. Genuinely funny though this film was, its successors were little more than cash-grabs. Thanks to Arnold showing his sensitive side, we’re stuck with TBS re-runs of Suburban Commando, The Pacifier, Tooth Fairy, and worse. Terrible as those films are, they pale in comparison to Jingle All the Way.

As our way of celebrating the holidays here at The Progressive Cinema Scorecard, we’re subjecting the nanobots to the hot cup of yuletide sludge that is Jingle All the Way. How long can their tiny robot stomachs contain the ham-fisted cautions against rampant commercialism before they ho-ho-ho all over this hackneyed portrayal of what parents subject themselves to year after year for their ungrateful children? Let’s find out!

• For featuring Harvey Korman being held hostage by Bull from Night Court, Turbo Man is the best kids’ show you never saw. = +4pts 
• Why, if it isn’t adolescent Darth Vader dancing around like his Ritalin wore off! Just looking at him makes the nanobots sad. = -10pts 
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is such a shark of a salesman that he can’t stop selling mattresses to pinch his secretary’s ass at the Christmas party. = -5pts 
• Missing Annie Skywalker’s karate class. = +6pts 
• Phil Hartman’s portrayal of Ted, the passive-aggressive, housewife-fucking lothario. = +7pts 
• Arnold’s Bruce Lee impersonation. = +12pts 
• Annie is reassured that he will not be a loser. = -3pts (Too late.) 
• Arnold saying, “It’s turbo time!” = +8pts 
• Despite the movie making it clear that Arnold is too busy with his job to complete even the most basic of tasks, his wife has no foresight to ensuring that he purchases a Turbo Man action figure for their spazzy son. = -11pts 
• Sinbad’s insane mailman is made complete when, in a paroxysm of rage, he punctuates his rant by strangling a nearby woman. = +5pts 
• Dr. Spaceman’s cameo appearance as the complete dick working at the Hollywood equivalent of KB Toys. = -3pts 
• Arnold reveals his sociopathic side by nearly breaking Sinbad’s neck after tripping him with an RC car. = -6pts 
• eBay was founded in 1995. This movie came out in 1996. The nanobots are keening in misery. = -16pts 
• Arnold’s reaction to Phil Hartman getting all up in his cookies has become an Internet sensation. = +7pts
• Whosever idea it was to have a Turbo Man doll raffle with bouncy balls as tickets has most likely been trampled to death under the snowboots of rampaging parents. = -6pts 
• Being labeled a pervert after chasing a child of indeterminate gender through a playplace does not deter Arnold from his quest to get his hands on a Turbo Man doll. = +5pts (That’s dedication!) 
• Arnold goes Oldboy on a warehouse full of black market Santas. = +5pts 
• The Big Show punches Mini-Me from one end of the room to the other. = +7pts 
• It’s all fun and games until the fuzz busts Santa’s thieves’ guild. = -4pts 
• We’re pretty sure that “swap recipes ” is suburban sex lingo for “dirty anal.” = -6pts 
• Arnold yelling at future Darth Vader for being a twerp. = +4pts 
• After failing to weaponize Christmas cards and holiday packages, Sinbad brandishes a mail-bomb to menace a ponytail-sporting Martin Mull. = -9pts 
• Sinbad uses his sickle cell anemia as a reason not to get punched in the face by Arnold Schwarzeneger. We’ll remember that the next time we’re in California. = +4pts 
• A police officer’s near-death experience with an explosive package is played for laughs. = -3pts 
• While regretting the decision to steal Phil Hartman’s kid’s Turbo Man, Arnold sets a deranged reindeer loose in the house and engulfs a plastic Balthazar in flames. = -16pts 
• Instead of going to the Wintertainment Parade with his family, Arnold celebrates a traditional Austrian Christmas by punching out a reindeer and then getting it drunk. = +7pts 
• Booger from Revenge of the Nerds dressing up as a pink tiger in a golden Speedo. = -12pts 
• With Arnold outfitted as Turbo Man and Sinbad as his arch-nemesis Dementor, the two grown men battle it out Power Rangers style on a parade float. = -4pts 
• Booger is thrown from the parade float and immediately attacked by a wild pack of children. Given that he’s never seen again, it’s unlikely he survived. = +4pts 
• Arnold Boba Fetts through the air and ruins a black family’s dinner by crashing through their window. We’re pretty sure that this is a sloppy-ass metaphor of some sort, but the nanobots are under too much duress to decipher it. = -6pts 
• When your own wife and child cannot see through your disguise or recognize your identity by your ludicrous accent, it’s time to take a vacation from selling mattresses. = -4pts 
• Annie Skywalker single-handedly undoes capitalism by idiotically giving his limited-edition Turbo Man doll to an arrested Sinbad immediately after the insane mailman placed him in mortal danger over it. = -17pts 
• Sinbad is no longer under arrest and Arnold’s family loves him again because of what? What in the actual fuck was the point of this movie, that Christmas sucks and you should give away your prized possessions to the undeserving? Screw whatever ham-fisted message this movie tried to convey. Christmas is great and so are personal belongings. Long live commercialism!= -30pts 
• The Brian Setzer Orchestra’s terrible rendition of "Jingle Bells." = -3pts 
• That the filmmakers included the possibility for a sequel as a stinger means that Jingle All the Way 2: I’m Dreaming of a Turbo Christmas may befoul the box office (or Wal-Mart straight-to-video vat) in the future. = -8pts 

Total Score = -97pts
Available on: Netflix streaming, TBS

Jingle All the Way can best be summed up as a middle finger to the Christmas season. Its attempts to appeal to parents with a message that will make them think, “Haha, I’ve done something like that for my kids before!” make it as entertaining as watching old news coverage of toy stores with Cabbage Patch Dolls shortages.

Without Arnold’s comical accent and Phil Hartman’s performance as a horny divorcee, the movie would have stagnated under the over-the-top acting and frenetic pacing. If not for the deluge of awful modern Christmas movies, this film would be among the worst. Thanks to the combined atrociousness of Santa Buddies, The Search for Santa Paws, and Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups, Jingle All the Way barely scratches the surface of mediocre. One positive thing to say about this film is that it mortally wounded Sinbad’s acting career. May he rest in peace.

The Progressive Cinema Scorecard wishes you a Merry Christmas far away from this film. If you’re going to brave Jingle All the Way, either ironically or driven by morbid curiosity, be sure to slip this scorecard in your stocking.

Score Technician: T. J. Geise

Die Hard

It’s a time-honored tradition in the Progressive Cinema Scorecard labs to gather the family around the yule log for our annual Christmas viewing of Die Hard. Probably the greatest action film of the ‘80s (which makes it a pretty strong contender for greatest action film of all time), it was responsible for turning Bruce “Moonlighting” Willis into an upper-echelon movie star overnight. And yet, we’ve always wondered, how would this rip-roaring action juggernaut hold up under the nanobots’ cold, unfeeling gaze? Be of good cheer, gentle readers. The answer awaits below.

• “Take off your shoes and make fists with your toes”: The worst piece of good advice in film history. = +18pts 
• Let’s all take a moment to remember the ‘80s, back before the nanny state told us it was “unsafe” to bring a loaded gun onto a plane. = +2pts 
• Note to the filmmakers behind Die Hard: “Argyle” is not a name that you give to a human character. What was your second choice? Houndstooth? = -5pts 
• ‘80s tech alert: The limo’s tape deck. = +6pts 
• Ingredients for a 1980s movie scumbag: 1 part wanting to sleep with someone’s wife, 2 parts narcissism, dash of moustache. = +5pts 
• Holly makes a healthy parenting decision and tells her daughter that Santa and mommy are working to get her parents back together. In the sequel, the Easter bunny and mommy work to bring her goldfish back from the dead. = -7pts 
• ‘80s tech alert: It’s a little-known fact that the first model of the iPhone came embedded in a receptionist’s desk. = +9pts 
• McClane walks in on Ellis rubbing coke into his gums, which was basically the 1980s equivalent of checking your hair in a mirror before joining a party. = +8pts 
• In true holiday fashion, John and Holly celebrate Christmas by renewing a bitter, resentment-filled argument. = +3pts 
• Karl’s use of a flash grenade to blind a single guard might be the most spectacular use of overkill in the entire movie (and that’s saying something). = +22pts
• Director sneaks obligatory boob shot in at the beginning of the terrorist takeover to make the most of their R-rating. = +8pts 
• Hans Gruber reads from his day planner: “Due to the Nakatomi corporation's legacy of greed around the globe, they're about to be taught a lesson in the real use of power...” So he can mastermind a break-in and memorize every line of Takagi’s resume, but the whole two-sentence explanation of why he’s there is just too much to remember? = -9pts 
• We want to criticize Karl’s brother for wearing sweat pants to a holiday party, but given his agenda it actually makes more sense than Hans Gruber’s $2000 suit. = +33pts (For practicality.)
• Random observation: We like to imagine that in the original version, John McClane gives a touching rendition of “The Night Before Christmas,” causing Hans Gruber’s small heart to grow three sizes that day. = +12pts
• “Was habe ich gesagt?!” For making German 101 totally worth it. = +6pts 
• Deleted backstory: Old Carl Winslow travels back in time to warn young Carl Winslow about the Hostess Bakery shutdown; young Carl Winslow smartly stockpiles Twinkies from gas stations, earns millions from eBay sales in 2013. = +16pts 
• Heinrich’s beautifully unnecessary barrel roll onto the board room table during his shoot out with McClane. = +9pt 
• ‘80s action movie staple: You know who everyone hates? Members of the free press (especially when they’re portrayed by the d-bag EPA officer from Ghostbusters/jerk scientist from Real Genius). = +3pts
• This. = +100pts
• ‘80s action movie staple #2: the willfully ignorant police captain (played by the principal from The Breakfast Club, no less). = +8pts 
• ‘80s action movie staple #3: Al Leong, Hollywood’s go-to Asian terrorist. = -4pts 
• That time when John McClane jeopardized the entire structure of the Nakatomi building in order to save four cops in a tank. = +65pts 
• But, ‘80s tech alert: the giant computer monitor he uses to ignite the explosives. = +6pts 
• ‘80s action movie staple #4: Pompous academic pontificating about his book learnin’ gets made to look like an asshole. = +3pts 
• FBI shows up and basically proceeds to play right into the terrorist’s hands, which brings us to ‘80s action movie staple #5: Anyone working in law enforcement above the street level is incompetent, sort of evil, or both. = +10pts 
• Case in point: “I’m totally cool losing 25% of the hostages, as long as we kill all the terrorists,” said no FBI agent ever. = -14pts 
• ‘80s action movie staple #6: Yelling expletive, jumping away from explosion. = +125pts
• In memory of Agent Johnson. = +3pts (No, the other one.)
• After the brutal beating McClane lays on him, Karl wishes he’d kept his day job as an orchestra conductor. = +32pts 
• The filmmakers avoid a hate crime by having Argyle punch out the black terrorist in the parking garage. = +7pts 
• Thanks to Always Sunny, we can no longer watch the climactic scene in this film without laughing. = +80pts (It’s still awesome.) 
• For a guy who had been dangling out of the window for a good minute or two, Hans Gruber seems awfully surprised when he (spoiler alert) finally falls out the window. = +8pts 
• Carl Winslow shoots terrorist Karl for spelling his name with a K, unrelated to his involvement in terrorist organization. = +14pts
• For making an action movie with four speaking roles for black characters, and three of them actually survive until the end. In 2013 = +60 pts; In 1988 = -30pts. Net score = +30pts

Total Score = +612pts

Available on: DVD; probably the USA network, only with all the all the swears badly dubbed over.

While its badassticity is unquestionable, Die Hard offers some interesting contradictions in terms of its progressiveness. Sure, it’s rife with blue collar contempt for intellectuals, journalists, and figures of authority, and the ending seems to imply that Holly McClane will be giving up her career as a high-powered executive to tend the children, but the sheer amount of black supporting extras that survive to the end of the movie is basically unheard of in the at the time (hell, it’s not really all that common these days, either). John McClane has since become a Hollywood institution, spawning four sequels, video games, sex toys, and a Broadway musical (we’re assuming on the last two; there are some things you just don’t want to Google). Yet no matter how far the series devolves into farce, it can’t detract an ounce of luster from the heavenly bolt of lightning that John McTiernan, Bruce Willis, and Alan Rickman caught in a bottle with this first Christmassy sock in the jaw.

Score Technician: Amanda Hemmerling, Joe Hemmerling

American Horror Story: Coven, Episode 9

With the last few episodes of American Horror Story: Coven hitting on all cylinders, it seemed as if the "mid-season finale" was as good a time as any to stop all momentum and drop the exposition hammer. You know, for those sticks-in-the-mud who only show up to watch the mid-season finales.

• Nothing helps prepare a young man for witch murder like a nice hot cup o' joe. = +3pts
• Diagnosing someone with terminal cancer based on their hairstyle. = -2pts (For trying to make us think this is a voodoo power and not simply a killer sense of style.)
• "Welcome...to the League of Extraordinary Exposition!" = -5pts
• Nothing ruins cocktails between Coven council members quite like a good exposition. = -5pts
• Oh, and having your eyes scooped out with a melonballer. That also ruins a good cocktail party. = +2pts
• Waking up with two new eyes, each from a different person, and your first reaction being "I can see!" And not "Gross!" or "Who were the lucky (insert ethnic/economic disenfranchised group here)?" = -2pts
• Just in case you didn't recognize Patti Lupone, Ryan Murphy has her sing a song for you. = -5pts (For crossing the Glee/AHS streams. Never. Do. That. Again.)
• Queenie and Madame LaLaurie: The greatest interracial team-up since Rush Hour 3. = +3pts
• Headless racist bragging about keeping her eyes closed throughout Roots. = A wash (In 1840, during the actual time of Roots, +50pts, In 2013, -50pts) 
• Headless racist shedding (unconfirmed?) tears (of racist joy?) at sound of old negro spiritual playing over images of the civil rights movement. = Motives unclear. Nanobots still calculating....
• If there's one thing movies have taught us, it's that Frankensteins should never be allowed to hug soft animals. = -3pts (Or children.)
• American Horror Story employs the oldest trick in the American horror playbook and has unstable witchhunter start his murder spree by killing all the black characters first. = -10pts (For being predictable.)

Total Score: -20pts

Season Score: +141

An exposition heavy show that basically serves as a table setting re-cap to the final three episodes of the season, in which the only significant thing to happen is an episode-capping hate crime. Let's hope that the holiday break restores some semblance of order.

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

The Progressive Cinema Scorecard's Holiday Gift Guide

The holiday spirit warms even the coldest of hearts, including those of the nanobots at the Progressive Cinema Scorecard. To show our reader appreciation, we’ve assembled this handy gift guide to simplify your holiday shopping. So grab a slice of Kwanzaa cake and join us for the first ever PCS gift giving guide.

Fifi Stole ($258)

• We love dogs at the PCS but they seem to dislike it when we drape them across our shoulders to exude luxury. This item solves that problem and also instills a sense of fear in your household pets, further establishing your position as pack alpha. = +10pts

• Its lifeless body will serve as a sturdy reminder for Fido not to piss in the house again. = +6pts

Brooklyn Beard Oil ($29)

• It’s important for us to know that if our hygiene products ever become sentient, they would listen to the same bands we do. = +4pts
• See also: Portland After Shave. = +2pts

Library Letter Books ($20)

• You know what sucks about books? Being able to read them. Thank goodness for Anthropologie and their new book mutilation service. = -7pts

Gaming Helmet ($70)

• For defying gender stereotypes and showing a female gamer. = +25pts
• For the above happening only because this item is too batshit ridiculous for anyone to pull off but a hot model. = -10pts

Polar Bear Coat ($200)

• For that friend who talks way too much about furries, then laughs nervously and says “not that I’m into that or anything!” = -3pts

Tufted Ursine Rug ($498)

• This Christmas, make family and friends think you killed an adorable baby bear in front of its mother, only for her to meet the same fate. = -12pts

Sweater Pup Cookie Jar ($68)

• Well, look at this little guy, being such a good boy, in his cute little sweater! Except that it’s not a dog, it’s a cookie jar, and it costs $70. = -5pts

Off the Hook Shower Head ($24)

• Is he screaming in pain or in the throes of ecstasy? Only the shower phone knows for sure. = +18pts

Rolling Pin and Peg Stand ($138)

• Rolling pins are great, but sometimes we feel like they’re not exclusive enough. At $140, this item will really show your other cookware that you’ve made it. = +15pts

Hedgehog Boot Brush ($50)

• Remember that National Geographic special on hedgehogs, which are known for their innate ability to clean boots? Yeah, neither do we. = -3pts

Total Score = +40pts

These items are all available for your gift giving pleasure from Anthropologie and its unwashed sibling Urban Outfitters, a place to get that real New York funky style (Trigger warning: Shia LaBeuof). Because if you’re going to spend money this season on tacky bullshit that no one needs, it might as well be a LOT of money.

Score Technician: Amanda Hemmerling

American Horror Story: Coven, Episode 8

American Horror Story: Coven is back from the holiday break with more zaniness, otherworldly shenanigans, and racial segregation!

• Queenie nonchalantly tearing out a rapist’s still-beating heart to make it clear that she’s done hanging out with them white bitches. = +10pts 
• You can tell that you’ve been a terrible mother when you tell your daughter that you’re dying of cancer and she asks you to keel over before Thanksgiving so that no one has to eat your cooking. = -4pts 
• Giving your teenaged son an enema for Jesus. = -20pts 
• Killing the butler is a bad idea if you don’t want to have to do stuff yourself. = -4pts 
• If only all Frankensteins chose to fill their abnormal brain with words rather than jerk off to porn. = +6pts 
• Madison using her bitchcraft for a just cause. = +7pts 
• Strike Spalding down and he shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine. = -5pts 
• Sniping a self-righteous Bible-thumper. = +10pts 
• Bringing said Bible-thumper back to life. = +5pts (A positive score because she’s going to flip her wig after finding out that she was torn from Heaven’s gate by a swamp hippie.) 
• Teaching FrankenKyle how to love again! = +6pts 
• Angela Bassett really got ahead of herself by sending an early Christmas gift to the coven. = +6pts (Wink!)

Total Score = +17pts
Season Score = +161pts

The folks behind American Horror Story: Coven know their stuff if they can have the central plot point of an episode fizzle out and still keep the show captivating. Jessica Lange’s mental torture scenes went on too long, but the flashbacks to The Sacred Taking were enjoyable. Now that Misty Day has joined the coven, can we expect to see her in a four-way with FrankenKyle? We wouldn’t be surprised if the coming episode is just the characters grinding into one another in one supernatural orgy.

Score Technician: TJ Geise

The Walking Dead, Season 4 Episodes 7 & 8

Shaking off our Thanksgiving torpor, the PCS bounces back with a double-helping of Walking Dead. Episode 6 took us on a detour away from the prison gang in order to catch us up with all the hijinx The Governor had gotten into since murdering his entire raiding party, setting fire to Woodbury, and taking off for parts unknown. The results left the nanobots a little underwhelmed. Let’s check back in and see what wacky adventures that silly Governor has gotten himself into this week!

• Oh good, a cold open full of more chess metaphors and on-the-nose dialogue. We definitely didn’t get enough of that last episode. = -4pts 
• Oh, shit, that’s the tank from the comics. Never mind, you guys. Everything is going to be okay! = +6pts 
• Call us cynical, but we have a sneaking suspicion that a lone dude showing up in a predominantly male camp with two women of child-bearing age would probably end up more like the end of 28 Days Later than this. = -2pts 
• Hey, The Governor, just a free piece of advice: If you’re really so desperate to avoid the pressures of leadership, then murdering your camp’s de facto leader is probably a bad way to go about that. = -10pts 
• Image of a bunch of zombies sunken to the waist in the middle of a muddy road is pretty badass. = +5pts (No joke here; it’s a good visual.) 
• So, after a whole episode-and-a-half of sort of trying to be a good guy, and then kind of trying to escape from the camp, The Governor throws in the towel and returns to his douche-baggy ways. = -9pts (For wasting two weeks of our time.) 
• Kind of digging his new aquarium, though. = +6pts

Total Score = -8pts
Season Score = +79pts

These last two episodes felt like a really long walk to just get us back to where things were before the back half of Season 3 crapped the bed. The Governor is evil again, he’s got another makeshift army, and once again he’s poised to rain hell on Rick and the prison crew. With just one more episode before the mid-season break, let’s hope that the showrunners deliver a little harder than they did last time.

• The Governor’s love interest may seem like an improbably pure and good-intentioned pillar of virtue, but what you don’t see is that when her character is off-camera, she says really racist things about Puerto Ricans. = -6pts 
• Dammit, D’Angelo Barksdale, just accept gratitude from Tyrese’s sister. She can find out that you almost got her brother and everyone else killed over a bottle of hooch later. = -1pt 
• Hershel and Michonne running the old “good hostage/bad hostage” routine. = +2pts 
• The Governor and Rick may never have been able to live together in the same prison structure in this world, but it sure gave us a great idea for a sitcom. = +14pts 
• That look of paternal pride that Hershel gives Rick right before things go sideways. = +11pts 
• A major character just died and… What is this? What’s happening? Are we actually feeling something here? Did this show finally make us feel something?!? = +20pts 
• In her zeal to defend the prison, Carol’s little blond psychopath abandons an infant in a car seat to be devoured by walkers. = +4pts (For nailing the headshot.)
• The Governor: Dead. The prison: Destroyed. Rick’s crew: Disbanded. Rick’s baby: Probably eaten. Yes. This is exactly what we want, creators of The Walking Dead. Good job. = +25pts

Total Score = +69pts
Season Score = +148pts

If this wasn’t the best episode of Walking Dead, then it’s definitely on the short list. God knows what they’re going to do for the second half of the season, but no matter what the show got us here, and for that, we are eternally grateful.

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

American Horror Story: Coven, Episode 7

American Horror Story: Coven clearly has the good sense (and taste) to take Thanksgiving week off. Because even Americans have a limit regarding the amount of racial violence they can take. The good news is that the nanobots have scored the most recent episode so that you have the most up to date scores before the show returns tomorrow fat on turkey and slave blood.

• Beginning anything with Toto’s Rosanna. = +4pts
• The realization that your masturbation hand has been replaced with the hand of your rape-y frat brother. = -5pts
• Eating your feelings. = -3pts
• Losing a game of quick-hands to a Frankenstein. = -2pts
• Curing racism with the television version of a Sonic. = +3pts (See image above.)
• The Axeman is so sexy he can spend almost a century as a trapped spirit and still walk into a bar and pick up cancer riddled hottie Jessica Lange. = +5pts (For having, literally, mad game.)
• Danny Huston (The Axeman), talking about blowing himself…or his sax. Maybe his penis though? It’s hard to tell… = +8pts
• Sleeping with “the daughter you never had.” = -10pts
• Any flashback featuring Kathy Bates should be accompanied with a blindfold and ear plugs. = +5pts (Seriously, that Sonic burger must be made of some magical shit, yo.)
• FrankenKyle/Tate follows the typical 8-steps that lead one to a threesome with two hot girls. They include… 
1. Being molested by his mother before deciding to...
2. Become an architect in order to save the world from the Army Core of Engineers, and then...
3. Continuing the hero’s path by joining the most rape-y fraternity in all of New Orleans, which obviously leads to...
4. Being dismembered in a horrific bus crash and then...
5. Getting re-assembled by some chick you met at the party you died at and her friend (who, by the way, was raped by all your friends), and then...
6. Returning home to have your skeezy mother take advantage of your new and improved package, which would naturally lead to you... 
7. Bludgeoning her to death and then...
8. Agreeing (a loose term here as you are now, as a Frankenstein, essentially mega-retarded) to a threesome with the (now) zombie rape witch and her friend with the poisoned vagina...  
• ...Which is a story we all know by heart. I mean, is American Horror Story even trying anymore? = +10pts (Because, in the end, hot consensual three-ways are always a plus.)

Don’t let the Ménage a Death bonus score fool you. As hot as that was, Danny Huston and Jessica Lange were really the ones on fire this episode. It’s not every day that an older couple makes jazz and cancer sexy. It just goes to show you how great actors have the ability to elevate what, when spoken out loud, is actually rather ridiculous.

Total Score: +15pts
Season Score: +144pts

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Home Sweet Home

A fodder family of slasher-film numbskulls tries to have a pleasant early ‘80s Thanksgiving at an isolated ranch house in the Southern California mountains, but instead find themselves being rudely murdered at the hands of an escaped PCP-shooting mental patient/Semitic-looking body builder (Jake “Body by Jake” Steinfeld). Yes, it's the holiday season at The PCS, so get ready to stuff your face with (insert shadow production company name here)'s Home Sweet Home.

• Our first victim is a man sitting in his station wagon, drinking beer on the side of a downtown L.A. freeway. Is this a dangerous pastime? We should probably stop doing this ourselves. = -7pts
• Our killer sports a very well done tattoo of what it might look like if you rubber stamped “Home Sweet Home” onto your hand in Times New Roman font. = +7pts
• Yay, you can shoot PCP into your tongue! We were running out of injectable flesh on our genitals. = +12pts
• Do you want to feel ashamed for laughing at the sight of an old woman being mown down in a crosswalk by Jake Steinfeld? Watch this. = +17pts
• Director: “All right Jake, have you ever been around any people with mental problems? No? Ok, just laugh a lot. Roll your eyes. Laugh some more. Keep laughing. Trust me. And, action!” = -10pts
• Admit that, you too, instinctively want this non-mime, Kiss inspired clown to die. = +13pts:

• Fourteen minutes in and Jake Steinfeld is still laughing. = +7pts
• Scene with broken electric can opener reminds us of the stages we go through every time we find and use an electric can opener: 1.) Incredulity at the usefulness of an electric can opener. 2.) Attempt at use. 3.) Initial satisfaction/ bemusement with ease of use. 4.) Frustration when machine stops working halfway through opening. 5.) Growing frustration and attempts to bang on can opener to start it working again. 6.) Placement of electric can opener back in dark corner of cabinet from whence it was discovered. 7.) Search for manual can opener/old Swiss army knife we threw in a drawer somewhere, probably during our last attempt to use the electric can opener. = -4pts
• The power just cut out, but rather than checking the fuse box, let’s wander out to the back-up generator. You know, the generator that’s out in the woods where the homicidal maniac lurks? = -3pts
• How to siphon gas from someone else’s car: 1.) Find abandoned car in woods. 2.) Shout “Hello! Hello?” over and over again. 3.) Keep shouting as you siphon gas into your own can. 4.) Shout, “Goodbye!” = -2pts
• Jake smashes first family victim by jumping on the hood of the car while the victim is looking in the engine. Jake may be a homicidal maniac, but you have to admire the way he throws himself into his work. = +5pts
• Hey, why is this scene between the non-mime and the young daughter actually endearing? Get your sincerity the hell out of our irony fest! = -7pts
• Non-mime gets best line: “Hey everybody! Now that the redneck is gone and the other two assholes haven’t returned, we can have a party!” = +12pts
• For having a scene in which cops pull over a couple of young women, and even though it doesn’t involve any horrible abuses of power, somehow manages to creep us out just as much as  that scene with Harvey Keitel in The Bad Lieutenant. = -9pts
• For the first 50-minutes, everyone who stays in the house is trapped there with no plot. = -13pts
• Laughing in wonder at another person and saying, “She is so Latin, I don’t believe it!” = -17pts
• Don’t try to hide, non-mime guy! We foresaw your death in the trailer. = -7pts
• The worst part of watching a bad movie on YouTube is being able to see how many minutes you have left to watch. = -14pts
• 20-minutes of characters checking doors to see if they’re locked. = -12pts
• Let’s sit in front of the only light source in the house so the killer can find us easily. = -5pts
• In case you didn’t get that he’s CRAAAAAZY, Jake Steinfeld will scream for you every time he murders someone. = +7pts
• Always check to make sure that Jake Steinfeld is dead! = -5pts
• Yes, yes, we’re all very concerned for the safety of the last surviving skinny, blonde, white woman. = -3pts
• Cop #1’s inner dialogue: Yep, I’ve poked him in his face with my gun long enough. He’s dead. = +2pts
• Credits: “Film production in association with Movies Anonymous Partnership Limited.” A.K.A., the people who didn’t want you to know they bankrolled this film. = +2pts
• Credits also thank the LMU internship program. We all know the interns were the real victims here. =  -17pts

Total Score: -51pts

Available: YouTube

Why are there so few Thanksgiving themed slasher films? What a question! Why would you even ask that? Is there something wrong with you? We’ll be keeping a wary eye on you from now on. 

We can imagine two situations in which a film about slaughtering people might play well on Thanksgiving. In one, you’re too broke to travel, or maybe you don’t even have loved ones to visit. You take on the holiday shift at a convenience store because you don’t want to spend the day home alone. In the evening, you drive past the well-lit houses where you can see families hugging and laughing through the windows, back to your studio apartment, where you slump into a chair with a warm can of Schlitz and turn on Home Sweet Home. Yes, you think to yourself, it’s better that I’m not with a family today. Families gathered together are perfect targets for PCP shooting maniacs.  

In the other scenario, you do go home to your family, but you all hate each other. After the arguments about politics and religion have been exhausted, after the last seething innuendo about past grievances and present affairs has been flung around the room, you all sit in stony silence in front of a Thanksgiving murder movie. As you watch people being butchered, one by one, the ice in your heart is gradually replaced by a warm resentment, and you smile to yourself and think, yes, those people dying on the screen could be my family members… 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Score Technician: Alex Pearlstein

The Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 6

We now interrupt this stellar season of AMC’s The Walking Dead with an update on everyone’s favorite homicidal pirate, The Governor.

• Taking a break from a good season to flashback to a bad one. = -10pts 
• Thank God there was an on-the-nose song handy to explain, quickly, how we should interpret the actions of the suddenly superiorly coiffed Governor. = -2pts 
• Zombie Apocalypse Note: Governors must first be invited into your home before they can drain the life from you, or your show. = +2pts 
• Wasting a good can of SpaghettiOs?! WTF!? Hands down—apocalypse or no—worst decision The Governor’s ever made. = -4pts 
• You know how cheap AMC is when they shoot an entire sequence in an old folks' home and don’t even bother with the zombie make-up. = +3pts (ZING!) 
• What? The song wasn’t enough for you? How about a shave and a haircut? Is that an appropriate metaphor for a state of mind? = - 4pts 
• Or would a game of chess be better? = -6pts (Guess who’s the king and who’s the pawn? No, seriously, guess. SAVE US. THEY’RE RUNNING OUT OF CLICHES. WE MUST UNDERSTAND THAT HE’S A CHANGED (BUT NOT REALLY) MAN.) 
• Zombie Apocalypse Note: If you take in an abandoned long-haired vagrant with an eye patch, chances are he’s seen some shit. So, look, just don’t get all weird about it when you see him use a large dinosaur bone to rip off the top of a zombie’s head in a fit of survivalist rage. Do everyone a favor, act like you’ve been there before. = +10pts

Episode Score: -11pts
Season Score: +87pts

We all needed a breather after 3 episodes of zombie super-flu. So it stands to reason that taking a day off to visit with one of the show’s least successful translations from page to screen might have seemed like a good idea. The fact that AMC greenlit a spin-off show has us concerned that we may have been force-fed a test pilot nobody really wanted to see. So, no thanks, AMC. We’d rather eat a cold can of SpaghettiOs than do that. (To be fair, there aren’t many things we’d rather do than eat a cold can of SpaghettiOs, but still…)

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

American Horror Story: Coven, Episode 6

American Horror Story: Coven has shown us two things: witches are awesome and the character Zoe should not be allowed to make decisions. The newest episode proves both!

• Tonight’s episode is called The Axeman Cometh, but the subtitle very well could have been “Confessions of a Fell Demon from the Hottest Hells.” = +4pts 
• New Orleans has a long and proud history of playing jazz music to ward off axe murders. = +6pts 
• A better subtitle has surfaced: “The Operatic Stabbing of a Fell Demon from the Hottest Hells.” +5pts 
• Getting buzzed on absinthe leads to freeing evil spirits with an Ouija board like getting buzzed on PBR leads to making out with a twenty-something sporting a handlebar mustache. = -4pts 
• It’s a good thing that chemotherapy only unlocks telepathic powers exclusively in witches, otherwise we’d see a lot of Professor Xaviers wheeling about. = -3pts 
• Despite being caught cheating in flagrante delicto, beardy murder-husband demonstrates his chutzpah by denying what Cordelia witnessed in The Dead Zone. = +4pts (What balls!) 
• We were saving a Riff Raff reference for Spalding since his first appearance, but then Queenie goes and steals our thunder. = +3pts (We can’t give such a good burn a negative score, hurt feelings or not) 
• FrankenKyle pops his bolts at the thought of having his Frankenberries touched and does the unthinkable – he breaks Stevie. = -5pts 
• The third and final subtitle: Beardy’s Betrayal. = -4pts 
• Watching the immolation of a jerkwad. +=6pts 
• Madison’s first words upon returning to the land of the living. = +4pts 
• There’s no better time to cut to scenes of a ghostly axe murderer menacing a blind woman than immediately after someone recently-vivified states that there is no life after death. = +7pts

Total Score: +23pts
Season Score: +129pts

Though most shows would falter with the addition of new characters mid-season, American Horror Story thrives on the new. New characters, new revelations, and new twists are what make the show so unpredictably charming. We’re certainly looking forward to seeing more of the Axeman and his love of murder and jazz. Coincidentally, look for Minotaur Sex Gouges newest album Murder Jazz wherever fine records are sold.

Score Technician: TJ Geise

The Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 5

So last week on Little House on the Prairie, Caroline and the girls were suffering from a deadly flu outbreak, so it was up to Michael Landon and a party of townsfolk to make the dangerous journey to a nearby city to bring back some life-saving medicine… Wait, were we supposed to be talking about The Walking Dead? Oh. Well, screw it. Our synopsis still stands.

• Rick reminds Carl that even in a world overrun with the living dead, good dental hygiene is important. = +5pts 
• Hershel ascends stairs the way that knights in Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail rode horses. = +3pts 
• Somber Scottish musical interlude. = +4pts 
• The mixture of blood and saliva that Glenn hacks up is easily the grossest thing we have ever seen on this show. = -5pts 
• A note to anyone attempting to survive the zombie apocalypse: when the father (lover?) of a dying super-flu victim tells you that his son (boyfriend?) “just needs to rest” and you don’t need to check him, for the love of God, don’t listen. = -2pts 
• Leaving an old dude with one leg in charge of an entire ward full of dying people turns out about the way that you would expect. = -4pts 
• The little blonde psychopath Carol was raising might just be the world’s first zombie groupie. = +6pts 
• Rick finally allows Carl to become the pint-sized killing machine that he was always meant to be. = + 25pts 
• Somber Scottish musical interlude reprise. = +5pts 
• The Governor is back!!! = [Score pending until such a time as we can determine whether or not his presence on the show will be a total clusterfuck or not]

Total score = +37pts
Season Score = +98pts

They really turned up the heat with this one. Between the outbreak in the sick ward and the perimeter breach at the fence, things got pretty hairy for the gang, but Hershel’s quiet courage (and the momentary fissures in its façade) kept things tightly character-focused. Well-played AMC.

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

American Horror Story: Coven, Episode 5

After last week’s Night of the Living Dead cliffhanger, the Real Witches of Orleans Parish stop squabbling long enough to team up against your typical band of racist zombies. Good times!

• Anytime Kathy Bates invites you to see her "Chamber of Horrors," say no. = +7pts
• Nothing says “Chamber of Horrors” like the covered containers of eyeballs/intestines/chunks of abused slaves! = -10pts (No, seriously, nothing says horror like that does…)
• Anytime your sisters ask you to help kill your mother, and your mother is Kathy Bates, say no. = +5pts
• We may not be kids anymore, but dammit if an image of annoying teenagers being eviscerated by zombies doesn't put a smile on our faces. = +3pts
• Watching doctors in a hospital rushing to respond to an emergency—an emergency that’s apparently unrelated to the obvious mental patient jailbreak, seeing as how the doctors run right past the crazies. = -2pts
• Forcing a distraught mother to hold her purple/dead stillborn and berating her into promising to love it/mother it until it (ahem) dies. = -6pts
• Resurrecting said baby! = +20pts (Suck it, David Blaine!)
• Cutting your own throat in an effort to kill an approaching zombie. = +2pts
• New Orleans Chainsaw Massacre: Reconstruction. = +5pts
• Nothing gets the smell of dead teen out of your doll-cave quite like a can of…nothing. Really, nothing gets the smell of dead teen out of your doll cave. = +4pts

Total Score: +28pts
Season Score:  +106pts

American Horror Story: Coven continues to make its claim as the most progressive horror show/mini-series/movie ever made. That being said, the nanobots took a long time calculating the progressiveness of Kathy Bates’ chamber of horrors. Ultimately, the thick soup of “irony” that underscore Madame Delphine LaLaurie’s realization that she was a horrible mother brought the score into the positive. Still, it’s one thing for the show to ask you to feel sympathy for a character’s realization that she could have done things differently. It’s another thing when the show takes the audience on a tour of Madame Delphine LaLaurie’s basement and introduces us to all the ways in which she’s gleefully dismembered her slaves for a good laugh. That’s a mighty thin line, Ryan Murphy. Mighty thin…

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 4

Big things are afoot in the prison. With all of the nonessential characters (and a few essential ones) laid low by a super-flu outbreak and Daryl leading a search party to retrieve potentially life-saving drugs from a faraway veterinary clinic, it’s up to Rick and Carol to head into town and try to find enough supplies to keep the community afloat in the meantime. Given last episode’s revelation about Carol’s newfound penchant for stabbing people and burning their corpses, though, we’re thinking Rick is in for one awwwwwwkward car ride.

• In the Walking Dead comic book, Tyrese was a complex character and a strategic thinker who quickly became Rick’s second-in-command. So, of course, in the show he’s portrayed as a sulking ragemonster. = -12pts 
• Zombie falling down stairs. = +4pts 
• In the remains of a once-affluent suburb, Rick and Carol uncover something even more terrifying than the living dead: hippies. = -2pts 
• Daryl’s response to D’Angelo Barksdale’s heartfelt confession: “That’s bullshit.” = +7pts 
• …And so, is it any wonder that, for the second time in just four episodes, D’Angelo almost kills everyone in the group while trying to get a drink? = -2pts 
• Suburban hippies get eaten, proving that even a cloud as dark as the zombie apocalypse has a silver lining. = +8pts 
• Carol takes her banishment into a nightmarish wasteland populated by flesh-eating ghouls with greater equanimity than a losing contestant on Chopped. = +5pts 
• But unfortunately this means that the most interesting female character on the show has just been written off. = -6pts

Total Score = +2pts
Season Score = +61pts

A relatively low-key episode, but one that will surely have some serious long-term consequences. How is Daryl going to take to his platonic lifemate being abandoned in the post-human wilderness? Only time will tell…

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

American Horror Story: Coven, Episode 4

After the third episode’s chilling and gruesome cautionary tales of aberrant sexual appetites, the nanobots were ready for American Horror Story: Coven to focus more on witchy drama goodness. Time to turn the drama up to eleven!

• There’s no vigilante justice quite like voodoo murder Confederate zombie vigilante justice. = +12pts 
• Spalding isn’t as concerned with the book value of his doll collection as to not have a lovely tea party with them. = +7pts 
• Fiona makes her first non-homicidal act on the show to help to heal Queenie’s minotaur sex gouges. = +6pts 
• Damn it, Zoe! Didn’t anyone teach you not to leave the front door open? Now the Frankenstein’s loose! = -5pts 
• Angela Bassett’s flashback afro. = +2pts 
• FX makes it clear that it’s alright to show sex on TV as long as the accompanying orgasm is appropriately terrifying. = +4pts 
• Fashion isn’t the Witches Council’s top priority, but shouldn’t it be? = -3pts 
• There’s nothing creepy about Spalding giving the newly-constructed effigy a big hug. Nothing at all. = +3pts 
• When you meet a guy in an “online community” for Thomas Kincaid painting collectors, you’re pretty much asking to be his latest victim. = -2pts 
• For Zoe to be present at the Council interrogation implies that she didn’t pursue FrankenKyle or dispose of his mom’s body. = -4pts 
• We’d like to think that if Alfred had his tongue enchanted to give away Bruce Wayne’s secret, he’d do exactly as Spalding did for Fiona. = +4pts (That’s love!) 
• To celebrate the acquisition of his newest “doll,” Spalding dresses up in his finest grandma nightgown. = -3pts (It clashes with his beard) 
• The producers must have sat down with the writers and said, “You know what would be a good way to counterbalance the boring flashback scene? Having someone throw acid in Cordelia’s face for no good reason!” = -5 pts 
• Voodoo Murder Zombie Vigilante Justice 2: The Revengening, starring the LaLaurie Sisters! = +6pts

Total Points = +22 pts
Season Score = +78 pts

This episode left more loose ends than a deep-fried fish taco buffet , but was just as delicious to consume. Can’t wait to see Witches vs. Zombies!

Score Technician: TJ Geise

Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 3

Captain Tripps continues his extended cameo on the most recent episode of The Walking Dead, thus sparing us, the viewers, from another episode featuring the (now) ridiculous Governor (Talk about lost in translation!). Don’t be mad, David Morrissey! We’ll always have State of Play (and that episode of Dr. Who)!

• For reminding us how gravedigging was likely developed by a gatherer culture with nothing exciting to do all day. = +3pts
• Daryl tossing in the towel during the Rick vs. Tyrese fight, thus preventing a possible hate crime. = +10pts (Merle rolling over in his grave is an added bonus…and likely because he is a zombie now. SPOILER ALERT!)
• Who’s going to speak in homily once Hershel buys it? = No points. Just a legitimate question.
• Needing a pep-talk from your younger teenage sister who also happens to be the only person taking care of a baby in a jail full of plague and zombies. = -2pts (Seriously, grow a pair…of something.)
• D’Angelo’s natural suspicion of his fellow prison inmates. = +1pt (You know, because it didn’t work out so well last time.)
• Having to abandon your car because your rear tires are skidding out on a pile of moaning corpses. = +10pts #zombiepeopleproblems
• Waiting in a car surrounded by a zombie herd for the purposes of dramatic effect. = -2pts
• Subsequently fighting your way through a herd of zombie with nothing but your average hammer for the purposes of dramatic effect. = +10pts
• Oh, good! We were wondering how good this new doctor was. After coughing up a mouthful of blood on Hershel’s face, we have our answer: shitty. = -5pts 

Total Points: +25pts
Season Total: +59pts

The Walking Dead continues its string of strong episodes with another more than tolerable episode. It should be noted that this episode was written by creator Robert Kirkman, who should be commended for not George R. R. Martin-ing the episode, which had previously been his wont to do.

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

American Horror Story: Coven, Episode 3

It may have been a Man’s Man’s Man’s World for James Brown back in 1966. But here in 2013, it’s all about a Woman’s Work, as American Horror Story gets to the dirty roots of the witches and their Fuckin Problems.

• Nothing helps one sleep like a nice stiff drink and memories of their first murder. = +3pts
• “Gash,” the Victorian version of the word “Cunt.” = -6pts (Come to think of it, “gash” is also the any age version of “cunt.”)
• Arnold Poindexter is alive and well. He’s also apparently leading a jazz band in New Orleans. = +5pts
• Not quite sure how FrankenTate found his way from SAT tutoring and supporting his baked hippie mom, to leading the frat “party” bus, but such things are rarely explained in AHS. = -3pts
• Nothing like watching an immortal racist weep at the sight of a black man being re-elected president. Quick, save her tears! They must be the most exquisite of poisons! = +8pts
• To say that Misty Day really likes her Stevie Nicks is to say that Rush Limbaugh really loves his illegal prescriptions. = +4pts
• AHS Survival 101: Fire and Fleetwood Mac have the same repellent effect on a Frankenstein. = +3pts (The more you know…)
• Watching a young fame whore get totally gash-blocked by a developmentally challenged fellow witch. = +10pts (You can’t get more progressive than that!)
• It’s official: Ringing the doorbell and dashing is much cooler when you leave behind a Frankenstein, than a bag of poo. = +4pts (To be fair, poo has never actually murdered anyone in a rage of confusion. So there’s that.)
• Mother becomes suspicious of her Frankenson when she catches a lingering glimpse of his new and improved Frankenjunk, which naturally leads her to want to awkwardly make out with him. = 0pts (The fantastic/ingenious/bold industrious nature of the young witches who made this abomination of nature manages to negate what is an almost an off-the charts negative score. Good job, ladies!)
• 2 full ounces of baby gravy required for your average voodoo fertility spell!? Who did you marry, Cordellia? James Deen? = +6pts
• Having sex with the body of a man and the head of the minotaur. Or, as it’s called in Louisiana, the missionary position. = -5pts
• •AHS Survival 101: Never molest a Frankenstein. = +5pts (All of a sudden FrankenTate’s college choices become much clearer.)

Total Points: +34pts
Season Score: +56pts

At this point in the season, it’s worth noting that every significant male character that has appeared in the show so far has either been silenced, muted, or deformed in some way that continues to make this season all about the ladies. That’s not to say women aren’t doing their part for horror, as fringe bestiality and oedipal issues abound! Keep it up ladies! Only all of recorded history to go!

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 2

Last week’s Walking Dead premier brought Sean’s longtime fantasy to life by making it rain men (they were pretty well decayed, but that’s fine; he’s not a picky guy), but gave us fairly little in terms of direction for the season. The gang is still holed up in the prison, recruiting new survivors into the community and struggling daily to keep the ever-increasing number of walkers from pushing down the fences surrounding their home. We were introduced to some new faces, and a lot of those new faces got bitten off. What’s this all going to mean long-term for our embattled heroes? Let’s let the nanobots suss that out for us.

• Carl’s friend, who while alive somehow looked like he was simultaneously ten years old and one hundred, rises again following his mysterious death and starts a zombie outbreak in the prison. = +4pts 
• In the first ten minutes, we get a throat-ripping, intestinal spillage, and a good old-fashioned head-stomping. Way to get down to business, WD. = +9pts 
• A superflu outbreak, guys? Isn’t the one apocalyptic scenario enough for you anymore? You don’t get to also rip off The Stand. = -3pts 
• Also, how is this mysterious new doctor guy able to diagnose death-by-superflu just by analyzing the blood spatters on a walker’s face? We didn’t realize that House M.D. survived The Turning. = -6pts 
• Little girl who is more upset over her “pet walker” getting put down than over witnessing the death of her father seems poised to carry on the proud Walking Dead tradition of completely intolerable female characters. = -15pts 
• Zombie pushed through chain-link fence. = +12pts 
• Thanks to the Greene daughter whose name we never bothered to learn, Tom Waits super-fandom continues to survive the apocalypse. = +7pts 
• Not sure if it’s a fault of our own or the show’s that we are more upset at Rick using his potentially diseased livestock to draw walkers away from a buckling fence than we were over the countless deaths of nameless human extras. = no points, just an observation 
• And with that, Rick’s two-episode-long flirtation with being a pussy comes to an end. = +6pts 
• Tyrese’s quarantined girlfriend found dead and burned with another sick survivor in the yard. Now we’re cooking… um. Now we’re getting somewhere. = +8pts

Total Score = +24pts
Season Total = +34pts

Things are starting to shape up a little bit. The walker outbreak in the prison and the crisis at fence gave us plenty of sweet living-on-dead violence to quench our insatiable thirst for blood, while the vigilante burning at the end points towards the kind of human drama that the show is sorely in need of. Let’s see if they can keep the momentum going another week.

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

American Horror Story: Coven, Episode 2

Despite its frequent lampshading of witch-related dramas (with "Sabrina the Teenage Cracker" currently being our favorite jibe), the second episode of American Horror Story: Coven is really setting itself apart from the shows that helped pave the way by creating a bouillabaisse of the occult and then turning it on its head. From Satanic fertility magic to groovy hippie necromancy, the show is finding interesting ways to bend our expectations. Here's what the nanobots had to say!

• Swamp poaching pro-tip: gators can't resist the allure of jerk chicken. = +2pts 
• Upon encountering the hippie Misty Day at their camp, one of the swamp poachers draws and aims his pistol at her. = +6pts (It's a natural reaction.) 
• Black Magic Hippie taps two swamps and casts Raise Dead on the poached alligators. Unaffected by summoning sickness, they immediately avenge their deaths. = +10pts 
• The tension between roommates is released when Madison apologizes to Zoe for killing her "boy candy" crush, Evan. = +3pts 
• Chiding a 19th century immortal for being startled by a cell phone. = +4pts 
• Queenie's origin stemmed from an altercation when she worked for a fried chicken joint called Chubbie's. = -10 pts for her being fat and -15 pts for her being black. Total score = -25fat/black pts (That they played up her intelligence made this scene even worse.) 
• "He's still kinda cute," Madison says of the mangled remains of Zoe's boy candy. = +2pts 
• Despite Zoe's objections, she goes along with Madison's plan to stitch Evan together like some sort of Fratenstein and then shout at the Devil to bring the corpse back to life. = +6pts 
• Cursing your adversary with everlasting life and then burying her alive seems like the perfect strategy. = +8pts 
• ...until someone digs up your now-unkillable enemy. = -8pts 
• After botching the attempt to resurrect Evan, Zoe and Madison leave his sutured corpse on the examining table and hope that no one notices. = -5pts 
• When someone immediately notices and confronts Zoe – FRATENSTEIN SMASH!!! = +3pts 
• There's little that we wouldn't do to get our hands on a cash-shitting unicorn, Angela Bassett. Just sayin'. = +5pts (Call us!) 
• Cordelia invokes blood sugar sex magic in hopes of being impregnated by her beardy husband. The only things missing to make this an episode of Bewitched 2013 was a laugh track and a chuckling Paul Lynde interrupting the coitus. = +8pts 
• To say that Misty Day really likes her Stevie Nicks is to say that John Belushi really liked cocaine. = -4pts 
• Zoe confuses Stevie Nicks with Steven Tyler. This truly is an American Horror Story. = - 6pts 
• Poison in the buckwheat – what a way to go! = +3pts

Total Score = +12pts
Season Score = +22pts

Focusing more on character development and less on dry exposition, this episode gave a real taste of what's in store for the season. We're looking forward to more witchy shenanigans, albeit without the ham-handed treatment of Precious's character.

Score Technician: TJ Geise

Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 1

Although there will be many spoliers ahead, we don’t think we’re ruining anything for anyone by saying that last year’s Walking Dead finale sucked hard. A season’s worth of tension between Woodbury and Rick’s band at the prison came to a head in a conflict that lasted minutes, ended with the Governor gunning down his own soldiers and taking off for parts unknown, and resulted in nothing more exciting than Rick taking in a busload Woodbury’s orphaned, elderly, and infirm. It’s as if the last season of Walking Dead was an elevator that we were all riding on, and the creators ripped ass right as they were stepping off of it. We fans have been stewing in that rank fartbox for the better part of a year now, pinching our noses closed and waiting to reach the next floor. The only question is, will we be greeted by a draft of cool, refreshing air when those doors open again on Season 4, or another gale of warm, eye-watering flatulence?

• A dude engaging in agriculture doesn’t normally make for a riveting cold open, but they sort of carried it off this time. = +2pts 
• Dorky kid in glasses reminds us all how cool Daryl is. Does the Daryl Dixon Fan Club really need to have representatives on the show itself? = -5pts 
• Folks on “cleaning duty” around the perimeter fence help fill our quota of zombie splatter for the episode. = +8pts 
• Michonne comes back to the compound on horseback with a stack of comics for Carl. = +3pts (That lady’s a keeper.) 
• D’angelo Barksdale has returned from the dead, and he wants to accompany the gang on a supply run. = +6pts (Here’s hoping he’ll teach them a thing or two about chess.) 
• Since when does Rick Grimes need to be reminded to carry a gun when he’s beyond the gates? = -3pts 
• Rick stumbles across a random-encounter woman with an ambiguous accent (Is it Irish? Afrikaans? Your guess is as good as ours.). = -1pt 
• D’angelo proves his usefulness to the group by getting himself pinned under a liquor shelf and drawing the attention of the heard of walkers previously standing dormant on the roof. = -4pts 
• If the zombies were on the rooftop all along, we’re not sure why, all of a sudden, their movement would cause it to start collapsing. = -5pts 
• But honestly, who cares? We could watch them tumble through holes in the ceiling and splatter on the concrete all day long. = +20pts 
• Boyfriend of the Greene daughter whose name we never bothered to learn gets eaten. = +3pts 
• Rick’s meeting with the twitchy, feral looking refugee woman and her “husband” ends about as well as you’d expect. = -2pts 
• Carl discovers Carol giving self-defense lessons to the kids under the guise of “story time.” For some reason, this has to be kept secret from Rick. Rick Grimes, do we even know who you are anymore? = -4pts 
• Patrick, the president of the Daryl Dixon Fan Club dies in the middle of the night from… we’ll say a cold? And he comes back as a zombie. = +2pts 
• We still have no idea what the arc for this season is going to be. = -10pts

Total Score = +10pts
Season Score = +10pts

A decent opening gambit. The sight of an undead horde raining down on our heroes through holes in a decaying roof was atonement enough to cover all manner of sins. Still, we couldn’t quite shake off the feeling of general directionlessness that’s been plaguing the show ever since its second season. Frankly, WD has struggled for a long time with scattershot character development and aimless plotting, and four seasons in, it's probably futile to hold out hope that the show will ever live up to the audacity of its premise (or its excellent source material). Still, if there's one things nerds love more than having their socks knocked off by a show, it's having an excuse to bitch about it, so we know exactly where we'll be every Sunday for the next seven or eight weeks.

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

American Horror Story: Coven, Episode 1

American Horror Story (AHS) is back! After exploring the world of scary haunted houses and scary insane asylums, AHS delves into the terrifying world of…witches (?). Okay sure, Harry Potter may own the world of magic, but Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk are going to try their darndest to make witches scary! And if they fail? Well, there’s always (insert italicized name of actual scary movie featuring witches here).

• New Orleans, 1860’s: Kathy Bates giving her three daughters the same name a hundred years before George Foreman does. = +10pts
• Annie Wilkes beauty secret revealed! (Here’s a hint: It involves face scrubbing with a liquid that contains a lot of iron.) = +5pts
• We didn’t think it was possible for Kathy Bates to be scarier than she was in Misery.  = +10pts
• Kathy Bates and her house slave “partying” with a severed minotaur-like head. = -10pts (“Party” in AHS lingo generally means “murder/rape.”)
• Credits! (Items include: the black KKK, Manson-shoes, voodoo, cats(!), heels, leather, spikes, more voodoo) = -5pts (Note: The nanobots are calculating this as a negative score due to the utter imbalance of terrifying depictions of white people in comparison to black people. It’s like the opening of True Blood, only with more racism.)
• In case you missed the first X-Men movie, AHS shows you how Rogue—we’re sorry, “Zoe”—discovers her powers. = -2pts
• Francis Conroy doing her best Sybill Trelawney impersonation. = +4pts
• Staffing your secret service squad with male ethnic albinos. = +3pts
• Nothing says “typical girl-school hazing” like threatening to stab the new girl while wearing black robes and masks with penis noses. = -7pts
• Dennis O’Hare doing his best Filch impersonation. = +4pts
• Call us crazy, but while four people makes for a shitty “school,” it makes for an even shittier “club.” = -4pts
• Dialog exchange between Supreme Witch (Jessica Lange)  and her daughter (Lilly Rabe, the unfortunately named “Misty Day”—seriously, we need to see her “special” powers right away) has us confused as to whether we are watching a remake of the first Harry Potter movie (only she’s a girl!), or X-Men: First Class. = -2pts
• Frat “party” van! = -10pts
• Flipping said "party" van and killing a bunch of fleeing "partiers." = +10pts
• Nicholas Cage lived/lives in New Orleans? Terrifying! = +5pts (For giving us a heads up.)
• Digging up a living Kathy Bates 100+ years in the future and her confused and moderately indignant reaction. A bit like how we imagined Veruca Salt would react when released from whatever prison Willy Wonka had set her off to. = +7pts
• In closing, there’s nothing more dangerous than a witch with a vagina. = +10pts
• Total exposition deduction. = -8pts (-2pts for every scene.)

Total Score: +20pts

Not a bad start for a show. The complete absence of men, except in the context of “partying” or being “partied” with is a nice change of pace. But it’s a long season, so don't get too excited. Instead, put on your warpaint and strap on your severed Minotaur head, because things are about to get weird.

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

So many things made 1988 great. But it was probably the release of Hellbound: Hellraiser II, that was one of the best-est things. Fans of horror films were first titillated by Pinhead and his merry band of demon dominatrices only a year earlier. This was a good omen for many, as clearly this quick turnaround meant that surely we needed only wait 12-15 months for Bobby Brown to put out the follow-up to his already (and aptly titled) classic album, Don’t Be Cruel (the other best-est thing of 1988). But it turns out Bobby Brown was cruel. Bobby, the follow-up album, wouldn’t be released until 1992. Yet, it would be hard to match the cruelty in the knotted mind of the (then) Vice-President of 80’s horror, Clive Barker. Barker, who had directed the previous film, for some reason, decided to turn over almost everything about the franchise to (insert name of disposable director here). Would turning this franchise over to a “real” filmmaker experience result in a film as good/better/worse than the original? Let’s leave such things up to science. Where it belongs. So grab your scorecard. The nanobots are fired up and ready to go. Things are about to get icky.

• Hey, remember the end of the first Hellraiser? You don’t? Well, allow us to remind you: “Hey, you signed the puzzle-box end-user agreement: Violation of the terms stated hereunder may result in penalties not to exceed $250,000 and/or the fiery destruction of all your material goods by Sesame-Street quality visual effects. = +23pts” (Courtesy of Technician John Ormond.) 
• Remember when that fat cenobite was all about to kill the lead girl’s best boyfriend from the first movie and was felled by cheap dry-wall, thus sparing his life, and we all thought, “Wow, the gravity must be way different in hell dimensions because that looked like a bunch of Styrofoam”? Good times! = +3pts 
• Subverting classic horror tropes by swapping the franchise title and number with the episode title. = +5pts 
• Maintaining the classic horror tropes that matter: Like, for example, not having a single recognizable name attached to the movie, from grip to actor, from writer to director, outside of Clive Barker, whose legendary demands that everyone wear nipple clamps and cock rings still resonate in the contemporary bondage horror films of today. = +10pts 
• On a completely unrelated note: “Director” Tony Randel’s body has never been recovered. They did, however, find his skin suit in the closet of an abandoned building in Birmingham, England. = +3pts (For closure.) 
• Clive Barker is not gay. (In 1988, = +10pts, In 2013, = -10pts) 
• Slow lingering shot of a soldier’s “uniform” with accompanying leather whips, belts, strings and harness. = +2pts 
• Does this film come with a safe word? = No points. Just a question. 
• Total screen time devoted to Pinhead’s origin story: 1(ish)-minute. = +60pts (Can somebody send this over to the people at Marvel Studios?) 
• Recycling significant portions of the plot of Nightmare on Elm St III: Dream Warriors. = -4pts 
• Storing a corpse in a bread basket. = +4pts 
• In case you were wondering if the creepy brain surgeon was hiding a dark Nazi past, rest assured his references to a mysterious “final solution” and obvious egomaniacal demeanor make him a strong candidate for a good hooking. = +3pts (For complicating the narrative.) 
• Naming your Nazi doctor Dr. Channard and not Dr. Makebelieve, a more accurate description of the type of medicine he practices. = -5pts 
• Clive Barker doesn’t like doctors. He especially doesn’t like Psychiatrists. We wonder what would happened if he just combined the fields for narrative sake? Hmm… = -1pts 
• On an unrelated note: Clive Barker is not gay. (In 1988, = +10pts, In 2013, = -10pts) 
• Using the fact that you are a doctor—thus gainfully employed and ready to make babies—to try to pick up a mentally damaged young woman who just saw her skinless uncle and dad’s murderous wife ripped to pieces by a band of transdimensional sex demons. = -5pts (In any decade.) 
• Man, that puzzle box sure was fun! Playing with it had such a positive outcome for all involved! Maybe I can help this traumatized blonde girl who doesn’t speak make her own! = +3pts 
• Welcome to 1988: Where doctors could just walk up to you in their casual clothes and offer you a sketchy bottle of “sleeping medicine.” We’re on to you, “Kyle.” = -2pts 
• Using your own blood to send a text from hell asking for help. = +5pts ( ;-) LOL) 
• Tasting hell blood during the age of AIDS. = -5pts 
• The sudden realization that the iconic puzzle box of the entire franchise was likely inspired by the gift stand at Sharper Image. = -4pts 
• Doing dispassionate rounds on the scream floor of your local psychiatric ward. = -10pts (Unless you’re a Nazi. Then it’s like Christmas and off the charts good.) 
• “Please, wait outside my open door while I have this incredibly suspicious conversations about something of which you may have tangential knowledge of.” = +4pts 
• Hellbound: Hellraiser II alternative title: Hellraiser Highlights: Hellraiser II. = -2pts (Just in case you forgot that borderline pornographic sex scene from the first movie.) 
• On an unrelated note: Clive Barker is not gay. (In 1988, = +10pts, In 2013, = -10pts) 
• Face painting with pieces of face. = +5pts 
• Filming Herr Channard’s interior home shots in the same house that The Human Centipede was filmed in. = +3pts 
• For all of the probing psycho-sexual musings of Clive Barker, no observation has ever been as astutely (under)stated as Kyle’s monosyllabic utterance, “Weird,” spoken in the bowels of Dr. Channard’s library/lab (lab-rary?). You’re right, Kyle. It is weird that you have somehow found your way into your supervisor’s home, without an obvious key or apparent animal you’ve promised to feed. This never ends well for anyone. We hope you’ve had your anus bleached. = +10pts 
• Skeletons always look cool when hung to look like they are screaming. We’ve been saying this for years. = +3pts 
• “CHILDREN OF THE VORTEX: Puberty Link with Psychic Phenomena.” = +4pts (This explains so much! Our bodies ourselves!) 
• On an unrelated note: Clive Barker is…not gay. (In 1988, = +10pts, In 2013, = -10pts) 
• “Is death the fourth dimension?” Let us help with that one, Encyclopedia Brown; it’s Spacetime. = -4pts 
• We don’t know what this crazy guy’s problem is. Everybody knows maggots are good for infections. = -2pts 
• Mattress resurrection. Giving “quality bed rest” a new name since 1988. = +15pts. 
• Aunt Julia sure could use a drink. = +5pts 
• Aunt Julia, we’d like you introduce you to our friend Uncle Tobias. We think you two would have a lot in common. = +3pts 
• Disguising Aunt Julia as a used tampon for Halloween was a great idea, Herr Channard. She shouldn’t have any problems cavorting with the yokels now! = +9pts 
• Wait, we were wrong. Sexy mummy is a way better idea and would go over much better at cocktail parties. = +3pts 
• Leave it to Clive Barker to make a sexy woman without skin the pinnacle of horror. = +4pts 
• On an unrelated note: Clive Barker is…not gay. (In 1988, = +10pts, In 2013, = -10pts) 
• “Hello, I’m Kyle and I have a knack for appearing in private places. For the record: I was not implying your vagina.” = -4pts 
• Kyle is such a terrible doctor that he thinks making clothes is part of his job. = -2pts 
• What kind of doctor are you, Kyle? Medical? Psychiatric? Or are you a doctor in the way Dr. Dre is a doctor? We have no sense of your latent talents, other that appearing in previously locked rooms and your ability to score high quality roofies. = -5pts 
• The establishing shot of Herr Channard clearly locking his centipede palace. = +2pts (For valuing quality security of potentially dimension destroying weaponry.) 
• The subsequent shot of grifter Kyle and his favorite mental patient easily walking into the unlocked lab-rary door. = -4pts 
• Kyle orders Kristine to not do anything helpful until Kyle can fill his pockets with swag. (Basically.) = -3pts 
• Death by make-out. = +2pts 
• On an unrelated note: Clive Barker is…not gay? (In 1988, = +10pts, In 2013, = -10pts) 
• Aunt Julia is strangely overexcited to see the guys who reduced her to a bed stain. = -2pts 
• Why do parts of this hell dimension look like Fraggle Rock? = -4pts 
• Hell is full of clowns, skinless women, and babies! The reverse corollary being that heaven is full of nothing but young cowboys in assless chaps. = (In 1988, = -10pts, In 2013, = +10pts) 
• On an unrelated note: Clive Barker is…probably gay? (In 1988, = -10pts, In 2013, = +10pts) 
• Babies with their mouths sewn shut. Never let anyone tell you that Clive Barker doesn’t have strong ideas about parenting. = -4pts 
• It’s never a good idea to cock-tease a gang of cenobites. = -3pts 
• Never let anyone tell you that cenobites are ungracious hosts. = +5pts 
• Hell is an MC Escher painting. You have no idea! Who wrote this movie, Jerry Saltz? Are we right? ARE WE RIGHT? = +2pts (For a quality post-modern critique of contemporary art.) 
• The mouth rape of Herr Channard. = -3pts (All rape is bad. Even mouth rape in hell.) 
• Private hell of Uncle Frank consists of being cock-teased by a trio of bloody sirens. He’ll feel better once he rapes and murders his niece, though. = -6pts  
• On an unrelated note: Clive Barker is…probably gay. (In 1988, = -10pts, In 2013, = +10pts) 
• Whirling anus lobotomy. = Suspended score (To be determined by your feelings around anus.) 
• Super Herr Channard going Hentai-hands on a room of crazies. = +3pts 
• Appealing to Pinhead’s memories of being an old-timey colonial fascist as a way of appealing to his soft side and getting out of a jam. = +5pts 
• Man, Fat Cenobites are like the black people of hell dimensions. They can’t catch a break! = -5pts 
• Wander into a hell dimension once, shame on you! Wander into a hell dimension twice and WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU GO BACK INTO A HELL DIMENSION?! = -5pts 
• SPOILER ALERT: The Leviathan will make his return in the year 2013 and only Tom Cruise’s clone will be able to stop him. = -3pts 
• You’ve seen an entire hell dimension, the countless deaths and dismemberment of many of your psychotic inmates, some hardcore double-penetration, as well as mutilated babies, and one image of ol’ Herr Super Max Hentai Channard getting decapitated by Tom Cruise’s daddy and now you scream? = -3pts (“Women are a terrifying mystery to be endlessly pondered.” –Clive Barker-ish) 
• “My friend is about to die. I should probably run back into the maze and find my crazy aunt’s skin and dress and put it on so I can help!” = +7pts (For getting the job done.) 
• 1:29:53 and FINALLY we get to see some dong. Talk about a tease! = +8pts

Total Score = +113pts
Available on: DVD, Netflix streaming

For a film in which the talent of most people on camera is borderline amateurish, Hellbound: Hellraiser II offers up quite a few great horror moments. One of the reasons has to be the fact that most of the film’s budget clearly went to the costumes and effects, which remain relevant and repugnant to this day. While, Pinhead and his gang remain awesomely grotesque, the film also does a great job of alluding to the complexities and politics of their interdimensional sex abattoir (sex-attoir?).

Still, we must ask: Why, during the age of endless horror remakes (we see you TCM!), has the world of Hellraiser never been re-launched properly? The answer to this question is probably that its world is so grafted to its creator, Clive Barker (minus the Lovecraft ending), that everything about it seems inseparable from him. Revelations of Barker’s sexuality non-withstanding, his worlds have always been dark places where looking too deeply into the minds of humanity was the surest way to go insane. The way that sex devolves into an agonizing and tortuous experience, and the manner in which blood and flesh reveal an individual’s true nature--to the point where many of the antagonists literally climb out of their skins in ecstasy and horror-- clearly suggest that Barker was suffering from a lot of identity issues. Something, let’s face it, Jason, Michael, and Freddy never really struggled with. It would be wrong, given the context of everything we know, to reduce the first two Hellraiser films to exercises in extreme fetish. Perhaps there is something dated about the underlying metaphor that clearly informed the work. Maybe the struggle for sexual identity in the face of real violence and shame in the age of Glee and the collapse of DOMA comes across as downright quaint and old world in comparison to what can be found in the dark corners of youporn.

Score Technician: Sean McConnell