everyday is halloween

pumpkin pie wars [2016]

another movie you ask?  wait, this one is a bit different than the usual fare i survey on this blog.  yes, it is a fall harvest kinda movie.  it does have pumpkins.  no, the pumpkins don't rise up from the patch to dispatch randy teenagers.  nor do the pumpkins declare war on humanity &/or other forms of life.  rather, this is a romance from Hallmark.  you know the brand.  the Hallmark channel is famous for a kind of formulaic romance movie centered on holidays & season, like autumn & christmas & spring & winter & & &...you get the drift.  i love 'em.  unabashedly.  these romance movies are the thesis of exploitation films.  find a fear, emotion, sentiment, etc etc. & make a movie capitalizing on it.  thus, we have, in varying degrees, a real need for love, connection, romance, sex, & place them in a bucolic setting, preferably an adorable small town located in, say, new england or upstate new york.  add a thirty- or forty-something woman from the big city who is attractive, smart, independent, & in need of a change.  she is either forced to move to that adorable small town, either for a working assignment, or that she got lost & ends up in that adorable small town, or she returns to it to help out a struggling family business.  lo!  enter casey, played by the lovely julie gonzalo [a regular in Hallmark movies] who returns to her adorable small town to help with her mother's bakery.  her mother, faye, played by michelle scarabelli, is the reigning champion baker in the annual harvest festival  faye's rival, & former best friend, lydia, played by jennifer-juniper angeli, owns a competing bakery.  casey, a graduate of the wharton school of business, & alleged brilliant business strategist, is tasked to take on baking duties after her mother injures herself & is forced to stay off her feet.  casey must enter into the harvest festival baking contest cuz it is critical that she win in order to keep the bakery in dough.  oh man!  the hatred between faye & lydia is scorching!  but to complicate matters is lydia's handsome, intelligent, & overall cool egg of a son, sam, played by eric aragon, who is also in town to help his own mother's bakery business.  guess what happens next.  no!  i'll tell ya.  casey & sam must work together, combine their baking strengths, their competing pumpkin pie recipes, & enter as a team in the baking competition.  sparks, & allspice, fly!  is there a happy ending?  this is Hallmark so of course all their movies end in a happily ever after.  the chemistry between casey & sam is pretty good.  the searing hatred between faye & lydia is soothed.  & in this world it is alway fall.  also, this pic is ably directed by steven r. monroe, who is a veteran director of horror & exploitation movies, like the remake i spit on your grave [2010].  & i fucking loved it.

boo!