I think this is called The Outing on IMDB – fyi

Is this about that lamp that your mom gave you a few years ago for Christmas and asked you and texted you about it every day for three weeks asking how much you liked it and where did you put it and how well it fit into your house and finally you said you put it by the windowsill and she acted all offended and in big surprised words she asked “THE WINDOWSILL??!!?” and you said yeah that’s the only place it could go and she mumbled “well ok i guess” meaning aren’t you an ungrateful son like she has most of your life and you replied “you know it’s pink right?” and she was all “IT’S PINK??!!??” and you thought – did you even look at the thing before you wrapped it up and then realized that it was just another re-gift from someone else she paid forward and you said “yeah it’s pink” and that was that and she never asked about it again?

Or is it about that green ‘retro’ lamp you bought with your hard earned money and put it on your dresser for some nice atmosphere and even went and bought one of those nice smart light bulbs and and a smart plug so you could tell your machine to turn it on and off without having to get up and turn on a switch like some barbarian and the thing is so bright it’s not fit to look at and for some reason when you turn it on to 50 percent the lighting isn’t really worth shit but you still like it for spite and it’s still there but you dust around it anyway and think of it wistfully when you’re trying to go to sleep or even right now while you’re upstairs writing on your blog?

Or is it about the time your friends rented that one house that had the hidden room under the stairs and they bought the UV lamp and you were young and in college and you could be free and smoke weed out of that six foot bong even though you’ve never smoked grass and you were sitting there and got lost in that UV looking felt poster thing of Jimi Hendrix just like nature meant you to do and man those were the days weren’t they?

Well, it’s not about any of those light fixtures – and it’s not really even about a lamp so much as it is what’s inside of it – a 4000 year old genie that wants to kill everyone for some reason and wants to grant you that one wish it heard you say about wishing your dad had never been born that’s what it’s about! Snap!

You see, as this goes, at some point in the past where I missed the date on the screen, some old boat was carrying some old crates from some archaeological dig we learn later is Iraq and someone opened the lamp and the thing got out and there was something to do about some glowy bracelet. *Nods in approval. Cut to today which is the late 80s and these three beer drinking hoodlums are going to bust into this old lady’s mansion out in the swamp and steal her goods. While they are rifling through her things for some reason they decide to go into her bedroom and bust her wall open with an axe and find a chest with the lamp in it and kill the old lady for good measure and then two of them decide to go for a skinny dip and the hoodlum lady runs around topless for a while screaming when the thing from the lamp sets itself free and murders everyone. True story. The thing I kind of liked about this is that, being set down in Houston, these three actors sounded like Texans and not some East or West Coast versions of southerners where they just say things like “zip my britches and call me greasy!” or “y’all it’s time to do some lootin’ y’all gather up them pitches and scoot through them armadillo droppins so we can line dance later y’all” or “Y’all I’m from Texas and I just got done makin’ sweet generous love to my horse so let’s go do some stealin'”. And while I am absolutely not from Texas and like to make fun of them all of the time and one time went on about something I called a Texas boilermaker that involved someone’s testicles, they didn’t overdo it here like I just did for way too long in this paragraph.

Now everyone is dead and the police are there for some reason even though she live(d) out in middle of the the swamp alone but someone called them somehow I guess and they pack up all of her shit and take it to the Houston Museum of Science where our key players – a dad who wears a night gown and likes to stomp out burning toast with his bare feet and his daughter a pretty girl who must have this stage direction “spend most of your time looking sideways and upwards” are getting ready to understand the meaning of latex and pain I mean some high schoolers are going to sneak in and spend the night in the museum and probably drink beer and have sex while the dad museum curator guy is off with a roll of quarters in his pocket I mean proposing to the school teacher, seen here below, protecting her fellow teachers and students from a racist asshole.

Now – as a propagator of fair but zero quality journalism, I feel like I should tell you that out of the blue and really unexpectedly someone drops the big N word in here which I am super surprised no one has gone in and edited that shit out and later on there’s a also an unexpected big R unwanted sex scene and it’s not like it’s one of those super violent I Spit on Your Grave bullshit but it’s there so if either of those things get under your skin – I wanted to point that out.

But aside from those two unfortunate things – this movie is kind of fun for a cheap monster movie. You might be entertained by the opera singing security guard or dudes wearing vests with a necktie, or maybe you like it when people cruise around in a VW Rabbit or have always liked the horror movie effect of blood splattering on walls. Do you like green glowy eyes? This has them! Do you like characters named Faylene? You’re in luck. How about when someone spills beer on her chest so she has to go take a bath in the specimen washing tub and some mystical spirit reanimates snakes and they bite her to death? This is the place. How about 4000 year old Djinns?

I mean – is someone going to say “He liked it so much he ate the spoon too!” about this? Probably not. Is it better than a movie I watched recently called Night of the Bastard? I think so. Is it better than the prime rib and shrimp I gorged myself on during that Sunday brunch on my vacation? Absolutely not but it’s decent enough for an 80s movie if you can get around a couple of things. And some shoddy early FX. And snakes. And men in night gowns. It would probably just remind you of high school maybe and who wants to live through that again with the cafeteria and the secret smoking and the fistfights and the lady who bopped the seniors and the homework and the baseball practice and the cyanide leaks and the mopey teens and Motley Crue and that girl who kissed you in chemistry class and you both got in trouble and art class and when those sandpipers got mad and killed all those people and morning pledge of allegiance and streaking and mooning an-

FILED UNDER: COME ON IN THE POOL #FAYLENE THE WATER AINT COLD AND SNAKES UP YOUR PANTS AND TORTURE HELMETS AND MAKE A WISH YAR YAR YAR HA HAR HAR HA GOOBLEDY GOOBBLEDY IM A SCARY GENIE GARBLEDY GARBLEDY GAK