"Meat's meat, and a man's gotta eat!"

I just can't get over it, mortals. Has Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman never disappeared anybody before? Because the day Jamal Khashoggi went missing, just about everybody who isn't dependent on Saudi defense spending said, "Whoa, they just straight-up had that guy killed." It was a sloppy job. Witnesses saw the bone saws.

The Saudis' version of what happened have changed almost weekly ever since, and almost no one has ever believed them. It's the most high-profile hit job anyone's seen in a long time, which means it's a failure, because hit jobs are supposed to have low-profiles.

So it would seem bin Salman isn't very experienced at this, and I find that hard to believe, because come on, the head of one of the wealthiest families of dictators in the world never disappeared anybody before? Why wasn't this handled more discretely. It's baffling.

You know who's good at disappearing people? Farmer Vincent.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Motel Hell.

Kevin Connor directed this 1980 comedy about Farmer Vincent (Rory Calhoun), an entrepreneur with a lot of irons in the fire and bodies in the garden.

Vincent and his sister Ida (Nancy Parsons) are the proprietors of the Motel Hello, a cozy, little place off the beaten path -- a place you can really get away from it all. Vincent's primary claim to regional fame, though, is his line of smoked meats, which he sells only within a 100-mile radius of home, and, naturally, in the motel's gift shop. The secret to his flavor is that he blends his meats, mostly pork with human.

He keeps a little hidden garden behind the hedge where he buries his victims up to their necks. He and Ida remove their larynx's so they won't scream. Instead they gurgle and hiss. He keeps them fed until he's ready to throw them in the smoker.  His victims include a couple sexual adventurers who found the motel through an ad Ida placed in the swinger's guide, a nosy government inspector, and a punk band called Ivan and the Terribles (featuring John Ratzenberger). There's also Bo (Everett Creach), the biker boyfriend of Terry (Nina Axelrod), a pretty blonde Vincent decided to bring into the motel instead of planting.

Paul Like plays Bruce, Vincent and Ida's little brother. Bruce is also the sheriff and he knows nothing about the cannibalism business. He takes an immediate shine to Terry, even takes her out on a date, but Terry falls for Vince, and eventually the dispute has to be settled by chainsaw duel, beating Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 to the punch by about 7 years.

What I really like about Vincent is his devotion to his work. He's speaks reverently of its importance and feels blessed when he can be creative. It's not just a job to create delicious, smoked meats for people to enjoy. It's his calling. Calhoun is creepy and hilarious in the role.

It's a funny movie, hardly gory at all. There are a couple good songs in it. Wolfman Jack plays a TV preacher. Definitely worth a watch.

Motel Hell streams on Amazon Prime and YouTube.

"I guess I'm not used to being chased around a mall in the middle of the night by killer robots."

I'm sitting here, mortals, thinking about your holiday. I'm sure it has different meanings for each of you. Some of you are genuinely excited about eating turkey. Some of you just want to see your families. A ridiculously high number of you can't wait to get out and shop.

Even though many of you are catching on, there are still a lot of you caught up in the Black Friday scam. You can't wait to jab and elbow and trample your way to the front of the line. Some of you can't wait for a reason to use that pepper spray, maybe it's nearing its expiration date.

The reason you behave this way is obvious. You love violence in a retail setting.

That's why this week's Thursday Thriller is Chopping Mall.

This 1986 Jim Wynorski film is about some mall employees whose after-hours fuck party goes seriously awry when the mall's security robots spazz out and start killing.

Of course the company that sold the Protector 'droids to the mall assured all the merchants that it would be highly unlikely that the robots, equipped with tasers, lasers and sleep darts, would do any such thing. Their job is to incapacitate burglars and haul them to a detention area for police to pick them up. The salesmen also threw in some heavy, time-locked, blast-proof, steel doors that would keep anybody from getting in (or out) of the building from midnight til opening time.

A malfunction in the system would be as unlikely as their main sever being struck by lightning three times on the same night the guys at the furniture store convince the boss's nephew and trusted keyholder Ferdy (Tony O'Dell) to let in their girlfriends to test out the mattresses after the store closes.

Well, guess what happens?

One guy's girlfriend Suzie (Barbara Crampton) brings her friend Alison (Kelli Maroney) to introduce to Ferdy. They hit it off, but they don't get it on. They're happy enough to watch Attack of the Crab Monsters on TV. Everyone is safe from the robots so long as they stay in the store but then Leslie (Suzee Slater) realizes she's out of cigarettes. Shortly after, a Protector's laser explodes her head. Then the kids have to fight the robots by breaking into stores and using whatever they find guns, propane tanks, paint thinner. Lots of stuff blows up and catches fire. People die. Somewhere in there Suzie takes her top off. It's a lot of fun.

Chopping Mall is a silly, gory, independent, sci-fi/horror flick that I enjoyed quite a bit. It streams on Amazon Prime and YouTube.

"You tell him it's open season on all suckheads."

I received Stan Lee this week. What a guy. Did you know he started writing professionally at age 16? Just obituaries at first, but still. Then at 19 he took over as interim editor of then Timely Comics, which later became Marvel. In a career that started in 1939, Lee saw times that weren't as comic-book friendly as the world we see today.

For example, in 1954, psychologist Frederic Wertham suggested comics contributed to juvenile delinquency in his book Seduction of the Innocent, which is ironic because few industries have done so much to help young men maintain their virginity.

Lee is credited with creating the Marvel Universe, and as a way of helping you mortals say goodbye, I'd like to talk about a movie I've plucked from there.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Blade.

This 1998 martial arts film by Stephen Norrington stars Wesley Snipes in the title role as a guy whose mom was bitten by a vampire when she was pregnant, so Blade is half-human, half-vampire. Sunlight and garlic don't bother him, but he still has a blood thirst, for which he has to take injections of a special serum. He has sworn to kill all vampires for what they did to his mother. He has the help of his mechanic/weapons maker Whistler (Kris Kristofferson).

Blade barely rescues a hematologist named Karen (N'Bushe Wright) from a vampire attack and she begins working on a cure for vampirism, if only to save herself.

Meanwhile, there's a schism in the vampire community between those who were born vampires, the old-money types, and those who were turned into vampires, the nouveau riche led by Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff). Frost thinks it's ridiculous that vampires should hide. He thinks vampires should take over the world. He throws wild parties where he drains human slaves for laughs.

Frost's grand scheme of world conquest involves summoning a blood god, and he needs to sacrifice Blade to do it. Blade clearly has other ideas. Blade and the vampires often resolve their differences with kung fu, sword play, silver stakes, stuff blowing up, and hollow-point bullets with garlic in them that cause the vampires to dissolve.

It's a good action film. The opening sequence where Blade destroys a whole vampire rave is compelling stuff. I would highly recommend it, but I feel like that might be letting the movie off too easily.

I don't know what year it started, but at some point, vampire movies started playing fast and loose with the rules, and every time they do, a character has to say something like, "forget what you see in the movies, these are REAL vampires we're dealing with," and thus scores of writers get to throw away whatever vampire norms they find too inconvenient to write around. It seems kind of lazy after you see it a few times, and it happens in Blade.

Not that the write-arounds are much better. In a broad daylight scene when Blade and Frost exchange tough words, Frost doesn't explode because he's wearing sun block. Sun block? You've got millennia-old vampires running around and none of them ever thought to use sun block? It's so simple it's stupid.

An ambitious production, Blade features state-of-the-art computer generated effects. Frost pulls off a Matrix-style bullet dodge a year before The Matrix even came out.  The problem is the state of the art in 1998 was not very good at all. It looks kinda wonky.

Glad I could get that stuff off my chest. It didn't ruin the movie for me, just kept from being perfect. It's still kicks ass.

Blade streams on Netflix.

Excelsior!

"You go by the name of being alive and you are dead."

Do you mortals find shopping the day after Halloween more rewarding than shopping the day after Thanksgiving? Don't you just love getting glow-in-the dark mad scientist beakers for 80 percent off at the craft store or socks with skulls on them at the grocery for two bucks?

If you're one of those smart shoppers, you've found the right blog, because Old Scratch is here year-round to tell you about where to find the best horror movies online.

You've no doubt noticed your creepy gear occupying less and less shelf space to make room for Christmas bullshit, which can only mean one thing -- the holidays are upon us. Now, I love a good orgy of consumerism just as much as the next demon, but I want to remind you to think of those less fortunate, specifically the homeless, as y'all start bickering about what the coffee cups at Starbucks look like this year.

This week's Thursday Thriller is C.H.U.D.

This 1984 conspiracy theory was directed by Douglas Cheek. It stars John Heard as George Cooper, a photographer who makes ends meet doing fashion shoots with his girlfriend Lauren Daniels (Kim Greist) but would rather spend his time doing gritty, hard-hitting photojournalism. His pet project in progress is a series documenting the homeless and he's way past deadline because his preferred subjects have gone missing. One of them, Mrs. Monroe (Ruth Maleczech) turns up in jail for trying to steal a gun from Officer Crespi (Sam McMurray). George ditches a commercial shoot immediately to go bail her out.

Meanwhile, A.J. "The Reverend" Shepherd calls police captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) down to his soup kitchen to report some of his regular clients, particularly those who live underground in the sewers, are missing. What's more, the ones who still show up to eat are arming themselves and babbling about monsters.

As you can probably tell by my summary, C.H.U.D. takes a little while to get moving, but otherwise it's not a bad movie. Hang in there for the gnarly looking, glowing-eyed, sewer monsters, massive explosions, and a brief appearance by a young John Goodman as a beat cop.

C.H.U.D. streams on Shudder.