My first thought on R was RoboCop. A movie I loved in high school (I took the cover off my Othello book for English, turned it around, glued it back on, and changed the outside to be “RobOthello”! It amuses me even to this day. I still have it.) And the Christmas movie Rare Exports. Reeker too. But why am I talking about them here instead of getting into it?

A decade ago, they did a remake of RoboCop. A not terrible film, but to me I was more interested in what a RoboCop 2 remake would bring to the table. The first one had to retread the origin, but a number 2 would be all original! Alas, it never surfaced.

The movie is a simple premise. Good cop in a dirty city gets killed, super corporation takes the leftovers and makes a cyborg cop. And go…

Peter Weller did a great job in the role. And while the movie was, in many ways, a crime story, it fully embraced the blood and guts of 80’s horror movies in spectacular fashion. And was a good movie to boot.

Everything about this was a hit. The sequel was pretty good, but the they had a Frank Miller script that went unfilmed. It was released as a comic eventually. There was a third. And then some Canadian made for tv movies. A tv series. A 2014 remake. And talk now of a new chance for RoboCop to return. So there is a lot to digest out there. None fully cashed in on the amazing world established in the first, but I have engaged in all of them, and read all the comics (They even did a RoboCop vs Terminator!!)

On a scale of all the movies I have done in this two month project, I would put RoboCop somewhere in the top 10-20 (currently there have been about 60+ that I have written about.)

There have been two Reeker movies to date, and based on details I have gotten over the past decade, there won’t be another. Sad to say.

Reeker is essentially a grim reaper. But the film takes place in the moment between a death and the moving on part. That does put a ton of spoilers on the plate though. Because knowing what is going on means you know what’s going on.

So right to spoilers then. (And this is from memory as my copy is missing.) After an accident that doesn’t seem as bad as it was, the survivors wander off to a roadside hotel/restaurant that is abandoned. They decide to spend the night and hope to figure things out the next day. But it doesn’t go that well, because Reeker is stalking them.

But he’s a grim reaper. So stalking them feels a lot like playing with your food. Because they are already in his realm. We find this out when there is an attempt to escape the realm and an invisible wall prevents that. Spectacularly.

There is an inevitability to this similar to Final Destination. Once you dance with death, the odds aren’t good for you.

There was a second movie that explored the backstory of Reeker, and also expanded the world by suggesting that there were many reapers, each with their own territory. And I want to see more of this world!

In recent years, I have realized there is a sub-genre of grim reaper tales. And I love that. Many really good ones too. If you haven’t explored this yet, Reeker is a good place to start.

This movie deals with a monstrous version of Santa, much more akin to Krampus. And that was a wonderful deviation from the normal Deck the Halls type of holiday fare we are all inundated with from the day after Halloween until the new year.

Specifics of the movie aren’t that necessary, because this either tickled a part of your brain and you already looked it up (or have already seen it) or it didn’t and you prefer the idea of a Charlie Brown Christmas (nothing wrong with the Charlie Brown one, but it is a very different itch being scratched.)

This is easily in my top 5 Christmas movies (sorry It’s a Wonderful Life, you got bumped out of the top 5.) And well worth the time to find and watch. I would say and own, to be honest.