pumpktoberfest #39 - happy trails.

film: blood trails
beer: long trail pumpkin ale

i really DO love horror films. i'm willing to accept them in all their varied forms but still, i've seen some pretty awful ones in my day, films so ridiculous or boring or poorly-made that i instantly chalk them up as a waste of time & bury them deep within the recesses of my brain, never to be heard from again. this pumpktoberfest, i've already found one such film--the 2006 bicycle-themed horror film, blood trails. i mean, it's AWFUL & i'm not just saying that because i don't know how to ride a bike.

let's start with the tagline: "you can't outride death." TOTALLY bicycle-themed. like, if you're tooling around on your bike & you look back & death is behind you on his mountain bike, no matter how fast you pedal you ain't going to outrun him, so you should just give up & die. as for the plot, there's this girl, anna (rebecca palmer), who's a bike messenger. at the film's opening, she's on her bike, racing through the city with somebody in pursuit. eventually, that somebody catches up to her & we discover that it's a kinda-creepy-acting bike cop (ben price). rather than arrest her, he writes his phone number on her arm & lets her go on her merry way.

if I was her, obviously the first thing i'd do is call up a dude who just scared the shit out of me by chasing me throughout the city. we think alike, so she rings him & they end up getting it on in a particularly rough manner. from that point on, for completely unexplained reasons, the bike cop becomes obsessed with her. unfortunately, she totally has a boyfriend & feels wicked bad about cheating on him. from what i can tell, things weren't going so well with the boyfriend but since she's all guilty & stuff, when he shows up at her door, they decide to get away to the country, where they can bike all over them trails & for her, get away from the bike cop.

little does she know that the bike cop is nutso. he follows them up to the country & into the woods, where he does some sort of ninja bmx trick to slice open the boyfriend's throat with his bike gears. from there, he continues with the psycho shtick, killing anyone who gets in his way. with no explained reason for why he's a murderer, i was left feeling like they'd forgotten the most important part of the horror film: motivation. add to that the random flashbacks to her one-night stand with the bike cop & it just feels like they're trying to be artsy. it doesn't help that nobody in the film is worth caring about either. maybe if it was kitschy or something, i'd respect it more but, man...don't waste your time.

when you're on the happy, happy trails of life, why not treat yourself to a refreshing beverage suited to trail-drinking? said beverage will be the long trail pumpkin ale, the central vermont brewery's first foray into the wide world of pumpkin beers. it's an autumn seasonal & they were so excited about pumpkins that they also released a big-bottled imperial pumpkin ale for the season (more to come on that in a near-future post). since i've tried a few of their beers & found them to be acceptable, i was looking forward to seeing what they'd come up with this pumpktoberfest season.

turns out that it's about what i've come to expect from long trail--an aight beer that's nothing spectacular. coming in at 5.9% ABV, it's a drinkable beer with pumpkin spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg & clove) at the forefront. it's not a spice bomb like a lot of pumpkin beers, which is a good thing, but between the low spice profile & the lack of pumpkin flavor & the noticeable-but-not-really hops, there's not much to it. it's not offensive but it's definitely boring. if you're not looking for something with ridiculous pumpkin beer flavor, you might enjoy it but for me, i probably won't bother grabbing another bottle this pumpktoberfest.