"Looks like you've got some kind of alternate universe in there or something."

House II: The Second Story (1987)
Director: Ethan Wiley
Stars: Arye Gross, Jonathan Stark, Royal Dano, Bill Maher
Plot: Jesse and his girlfriend, Kate, are the new owners of the incredibly haunted house and find themselves on a quest to help a cowboy zombie get ahold of an ancient skull.

House II is another horror movie that is more funny than it is scary. I'm actually more of a House fan, which was scarier, but my boyfriend wanted to watch this one because there's a Halloween party. The new owner of this notoriously haunted house becomes friends with a cowboy zombie, Gramps, and assists him in searching for an Aztec skull (kind of like the crystal skull in the latest Indiana Jones movie, in the sense that it is a crystal skull) that  possesses powers. Of course there is an evil cowboy zombie, Slim Razor, who tries to get to the skull first.

If you haven't seen any of the House movies, I should probably mention that every room in the house is haunted by different things. One room is a jungle, for example, and Gramps also comes from within the house. Even the skull that they're looking for is somewhere in the house. Here's a pic of the skull:

 Apparently there are four movies in this series, but I've only seen the first two. Maybe I'll watch the others; it usually isn't a good thing, though, when no one seems to acknowledge that the other sequels exist.

 I realize I kind of started this review off negatively, but the movie is fun with zombies and monsters and other creatures. I just preferred the creepy haunted house plot of the first over the more humorous, adventure-themed second. Which would you prefer?

"Dying isn't the end, it's a beginning."

Spookies (1986)
Directors: Brendan Faulkner, Genie Joseph, Thomas Duran
Stars: Felix Ward, MAria Pechukas, Dan Scott, Nick Gionta, Joan Ellen Delaney
Plot: A group of people decide to party in an old, seemingly abandoned mansion. They end up in the middle of a sorcerer's "game" to take their youth so that he and his reluctant wife could live forever.

You know how some horror movies are so bad that they're good? This is not one of those movies. It's just bad. There's too much going on in the story and way too many creatures, which I assume are the "spookies." The spookies include:

-A dapper cat-man who looked like Nightcrawler from X-Men
-A goblin child
-An Asian spider woman
-An exploding grim reaper
-Normal zombies
-Gasy zombies whose weakness was wine
-A demon girl
-Witchy woman
-Snake demons
-An octopus demon thing with electric tentacles

 I think that was it. While some of these things were mildly exciting, it took them way too long to attack the people. I might have liked the movie better if the focus was just on these people being attacked, but wait! There's more.

Why are the party people being attacked? The spookies kill some of them to create zombie children for a sorcerer and his "wife," while others just get the life sucked out of them so that the sorcerer can live forever. I assume the young lady dressed in a bridal gown is the sorcerer's wife, since she's dressed as a bride and states that they have one child together, and the sorcerer constantly speaks of how he's in love with her and has stayed by her side for 70 years waiting for her to come back to life. However, she didn't seem too happy when she awoke from her deathly slumber.

Overall, there was too much happening in this movie and some parts of the story were confusing. This was my first time watching Spookies and probably the last time. Here's the trailer: