House of 1000 Corpses (2003) [REVIEW]

October 10, 2011 4 Comments

 

Wait a second, since when does the number “one thousand” not require a comma?! Grammatical errors aside, I remember this movie only existing as a rumor for quite a few years. It was shot in 2000 and was apparently so filled with “sadistic violence/gore” that studios never thought it would be released. It’s kind of insane thinking that just ten years ago, this film was considered the epitome of violence in movies, when I’d say it’s somewhat tame compared to some other things that are getting a larger distribution. Remember the teaser trailer for it? Where it was just some crew of people digging up bodies in the rain? That was pretty intense. And the name of the movie is pretty cool, too. The first time I saw it was a bootleg copy in my friend’s house, so it was in shitty quality, and I felt guilty about breaking the law. If any of you are policemen, please don’t arrest me.

 

Where did you learn to practice medicine, Dr. Satan?! And who licensed you?! Hey wait…that’s the guy from Singled Out! Where’s jenny McCarthy!?

 

We start off in a shitty gas station/truck stop that’s run by Captain Spaulding, played by Sid Haig, as some unfortunate bastards attempt to rob him. If his foul mouth wasn’t enough to scare them away, he has henchmen back him up and kill the attackers. We cut to a group of young travelers who are in pursuit of local legends in hopes of writing a book. When they stop at Captain Spaulding’s they learn the legend of “Dr. Satan”, a serial killer who is worse than any other you can imagine. Spaulding gives directions to one of Dr. Satan’s hotspots, and on their way, pick up a hitchhiker, played by Sheri Moon Zombie, who goes by the name of “Baby”. Baby offers her family’s assistance, only for the travelers to realize that her entire family is psychotic. They are responsible for the abduction, torture, and murder of dozens of local youths, possibly coming to the total number of 1000. They decide to start torturing and killing these youths, drawing out one torture session by lowering one girl into a deep, dark hole while in a coffin. When she gets out, she finds herself in an underground series of tunnels, and while following the tunnels, looking for escape, she encounters Dr. Satan, hellbent on her destruction. She is able to make her way back topside and is picked up by a car driving by. This car is driven by Captain Spaulding, promising to bring her to safety, only to have one of the family members pop up in the backseat, ensuring her ultimate demise.

 

Otis then went to Norway with Immortal. So kvlt.

 

Back when this movie first came out and people asked what I thought of this movie, I told them that “if I wanted to see a 70′s exploitation film, I’d watch one”, thinking I was really cool and hip, and I still stand by this statement. There’s quite a few stories about the development of this movie and the changes in the plot and visual elements of this film, that it really does just feel thrown together. There’s no argument here about Rob Zombie having a sense of style with his horror movies, and considering this was his first movie, it makes sense that there’s an abundance of style and lack of plot cohesion. The first chunk of the movie makes you think it will be about the terrifying Dr. Satan, only to realize the family is far more terrifying. At the end when Dr. Satan shows up, he’s not even scary anymore. There are lots of segments that were shot on 16mm and blown up that were shot in Zombie’s basement that, although are kind of creepy, distract you from the story as opposed to add to it. It really isn’t all that graphic when it comes to portrayed violence, but instead realizes on camera tricks and sound effects to achieve its feeling of discomfort. The highlight of the film would be the standout performances of the actors. From Mother Firefly, played by Karen Black, to Captain Spaulding and Baby, and most importantly the brother Otis, played by Bill Moseley, that really make you glad that these are just characters in a movie. This movie belongs to them much more than any of the directorial choices, and when you found out about the sequel to this movie, there was a big sigh of relief that made you hope it would be less confusing.

 

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The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011) [REVIEW]

October 9, 2011 1 Comment

 

 

Not to be one of those “I saw this movie before you had even heard of it” kinds of guys, but, that’s what happened with the first movie. See! Look! I reviewed it way back on May 10, 2010! Incredible, huh? Well, that post brought me a shitload (pun intended) of traffic, so I figured I owed it to you guys to watch the second installment. I had seen the posters, and I saw one trailer, but that trailer didn’t teach me anything. Did you see that trailer where there were people in a truck watching the movie, acting all grossed out? Yeah, that’s the trailer I saw. I’m quite proud of myself for avoiding all of the “attention” this movie was getting, and avoiding the “hype”, so I could watch it with an open mind. Let’s also not forget that I wasn’t really all that disgusted by the first film, nor was I too big of a fan of it. Oh yeah, and luckily I got to this screening early enough to get a complimentary Human Centipede II barf bag and staple remover. Add me on Twitter to see those pictures! And before I get, this review will be pretty spoiler-filled, since I’m not sure how many of my readers will subject themselves to sitting down and watching this. You’ve been warned.

 

Close your eyes and picture the type of person who staples people together, butthole to mouth. Now open your eyes. HERE HE IS! Also, how did you read my instructions to open your eyes if they were closed?

 

This film starts off right where the first film (supposedly) leaves off, with the three-segmented human centipede that we all know and love. After watching the ending of the previous film, we also see the credits start to roll, only to realize that we were watching someone watching the movie. Whoa! CRISS ANGEL MINDFREAK! That person, played by Laurence R. Harvey, is a parking garage attendant who is seemingly obsessed with this film. So much so that when he goes to “assist” a couple having car trouble, he smashes them on their heads, duct tapes them, and tosses them in the back of his truck so he can relive the events of his favorite film. Through some drawings he’s made in his journal, we see that he is planning on making a human centipede with twelve segments, instead of just three. To say that Harvey’s character, named Martin, has a shitty home life, would be an understatement. His mother yells at him, he is tormented by an upstairs neighbor, and we also learn through some audio flashback sequences that he was sexually molested as a child by his father. And Martin just kind of looks like he is mildly retarded, which is something his tormentors make sure to frequently point out. The only one who truly seems to care for him is his pet centipede, in the sense that the pet centipede is the only one not calling him a fat retard. Maybe it would if it could speak English, or use sign language, or maybe draw a picture, but it can’t do that because it’s a fucking centipede.

 

EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW

 

After his mother attempts to stab him in his sleep, and he bashes her face in with a crowbar, Martin eventually gathers twelve subjects which he has placed, naked, in a garage he is renting. The last person he has acquired is special, having traveled to London, where Martin lives, after he tricks her into thinking she is auditioning for a Tarantino movie. Who is this mystery actress? Well, it’s none other than Ashlynn Yennie, star of this first film! This shit is getting meta. Unfortunately, two of the subjects for the centipede die before construction, which includes one woman who was pregnant. With Martin not being an actual doctor, he relies and smashing in the subjects’ teeth with a hammer, cutting their butts open with kitchen knives, and attaching them together with a staple gun and some duct tape. Remember when I said the pregnant lady was dead? Well, she wasn’t, and as she makes her escape into a nearby car, she shits out her baby onto the floor. Sadly, the baby slips under the gas pedal, and in hopes of escaping Martin, stomps on the gas pedal and crushes her baby, right in the fucking head. It was like the whole thing was a soft spot. Back inside, Martin rips out the tongue of the centipede head, which happens to be the lucky Ms. Yennie. And since it seems as though the members of the centipede were having bowel issues, he gives them all a laxative, and they, surprisingly, start having explosive diarrhea out of one butt and into the next mouth, over and over and over and over and over–you get the idea. It seems at least one member of the centipede is unhappy with this, so he rips out the staples in his face, and we now have two centipedes with five people on each. The back-end centipede tries to escape, so martin starts shooting them in the head, and in the distracting escape, the front-end, whose head was Ashlynn Yennie, grabs Martin’s pet centipede and a funnel and shoves it in his butthole. I mean, seriously, you really think it’s that easy to grab a centipede? I DON’T THINK SO. As Martin grabs his stomach and cries, we then cut back to Martin in the parking garage as we saw him in the beginning, because it was all a fucking dream. ARE YOU GODDAMNED KIDDING ME?!

 

Poor, poor Ashlynn Yennie. And here you thought you could be involved in something other than people attached to your buttholes.

 

How the fuck do I even begin to analyze this movie like it’s some actual thing? I guess I’ll just diarrhea out of my fingers and onto the keyboard and see if there’s anything coherent afterwards. Not knowing that the director, Tom Six, would take this film in a self-reflexive direction, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this film was based on a viewer of the original film. I couldn’t see how there would have been a sequel to the first, given its ending. The thing that was so fucked up about the first movie was the concept, as opposed to the actual things portrayed onscreen. When people would talk about how disgusting the movie was, I knew they couldn’t have actually seen what the film had shown. This movie, however, was as graphic and disturbing as what everyone had imagined the first film was. To see ten instances of explosive diarrhea coming from the seams of human skin that were stapled together, to baby headcrushing, to teeth being hammered out of someone’s throat, I can admit that this was pretty fucking brutal. Far more brutal than anything in the first. Another difference between this film and the previous was that rather than an evil surgeon, it was an overweight, aesthetically challenged individual, who may or may not have actual physical or mental disabilities. I saw this with JD and he claimed that this caused sympathetic feelings towards him, and I was frustrated with those sympathies. Whether you want your torturer sympathetic or not is debatable, but that’s what you’ll get with this villain. Oh yeah, I totally just remembered that he jerked off with sandpaper at one point. How could I forget!?

 

“I’M SO EXCITED! I’M SO EXCITED! I’M…SO…SCAAAAREDDDDDDDD WAH WAH I’M JESSIE SPANO!!!”

 

As you can see from all of the photos I’ve posted from this movie, you might notice that it was in black and white. I had no idea! This is another topic that JD and I debated. Considering how many times the name “Tarantino” was used, I had assumed that Tom Six was doing with this film what Tarantino had done with segments of Kill Bill Vol. 1, which was tone down the intensity of the violence by losing all of the color saturation. This way, when we see someone gargling his own blood and someone pulling teeth out of that bloody orifice, the censors won’t be as cranky. JD argued that Tom Six intentionally wanted it to be in black and white, because he’s an “artist”. I forgot to leave out a crucial ingredient in the black and white-ness…have you guy’s seen Schindler’s List? Remember how everything was black and white, except for the girl int he red coat? Well, just like in Schindler’s List, everything in this film was black and white, except for…wait for it…THE BROWNISH GREEN DIARRHEA. Yes, that’s right folks, I just compared Schindler’s List to The Human Centipede II. If you have seen this movie, or have an opinion of your own on why he did this, I’d encourage you to leave a comment. This movie really wasn’t for me, but I was glad to see it going above and beyond the graphic nature of the first, and if you are a fan of brutal violence and have a scatological predisposition, you might like this…you sick fucking weirdo.

 

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Zombie Strippers! (2008) [REVIEW]

October 5, 2011 Leave a comment

 

With all of the insane movies that have been released over the past few years, it seems quite tame to have a movie involving zombies and strippers. But at the time it came out, it certainly garnered a lot of attention. Not only were there zombie strippers, but it also managed to combine one of the most famous pornstars, Jenna Jameson, with one of the biggest names in horror, Robert Englund. I saw this when it first came out and was somewhat entertained, but why am I reviewing it now, three years after its release? Well when I first got a Blu Ray player, I was really excited about Blu Rays. This movie was on sale for ten bucks, so I took that plunge and bought it. I looked at it on my shelf the other day, and realized I haven’t watched it again, nor did I have a desire to watch it. Before I traded it in, I gave it another watch to see if I had wasted my money, and that’s why I’m reviewing it. And just so I don’t keep you guys in suspense, I did sell it, because once you’ve seen zombie stripper boobs in 1080p, there’s no reason to relive the experience.

 

Not that I’ve ever, EVER seen Jenna Jameson in any other type of movie, but she was disgustingly skinny in this movie. Well, except her tits, those were still huge.

 

At some sort of scientific laboratory, there is research being done involving soldiers or zombies…or something. An elite military squad comes in to put an end to madness, but one zombie is able to escape. Where does he seek refuge? Well, a strip club, of course! Not just any strip club, but a shitty strip club, owned by Robert Englund where Jenna Jameson is the main attraction. Granted, those aren’t there character’s names, but did you really care about their names? Jameson’s character gets attacked by the zombie and turns into one, but has enough competency and flexibility to go and strip anyway. This bitch strips like she’s never stripped before, and the crowd goes wild. The other strippers take note, and offer themselves up to turn into zombies. Eventually there are a shit ton of zombies, stripper and non-stripper varieties, and luckily the military squad from the beginning comes in to save the remaining non-zombies. It is then discovered that this whole ordeal was orchestrated by George W. Bush in an effort to distract Americans from the shitty war situation. So political!

 

I will never, ever get sick of seeing how movies portray a character that’s “goth”. It’s so awesome.

 

Maybe I am using the term “political satire” a little too freely, because “satire” generally implies there could be something funny about it. And when you put in a movie called “Zombie Strippers”, I don’t think anyone, ANYONE is looking to see some witty, political satire. The “satire” isn’t prevalent throughout, but it was pretty heavy-handed in its delivery. Of course, you also don’t expect subtlety about anything, but it was painfully sophomoric and childish, which really started the movie off poorly. Considering this movie was released 7 1/2 years into an 8 year presidential run, there was nothing original or entertaining about it, and was less funny than anything you could have seen on Saturday Night Live. Maybe I am looking too much into this stuff, and it was really meant to just be a one-off joke from the filmmakers, but considering the film is bookended by this humor, as well as the reveal about the plot being based on a shitty president, it was really just unnecessary.

 

Even the army lady couldn’t help herself from stripping! It’s infectious! Like herpes!

 

Ignoring the first and last five minutes of the movie, it is everything you anticipate it to be and, well, neither more nor less of anything. You get to see lots of boobs, including a weird, Skeletor-looking Jenna Jameson, as well as a plethora of other nameless and forgettable strippers. The humor was about as creative as any entry into the Scary Movie franchise. Robert Englund was pretty entertaining, as always, and played a character that is slightly different from what we usually see him play. You’d think that the biggest focus for the filmmakers would be getting A+ jugs to bounce around, and I’m not saying they didn’t do their job well, I was far more impressed with the special effects. A lot of the “special effects” with CGI were kind of lame and the thing you’d expect from a movie like this, but I think the makeup effects on all of the zombies was pretty cool, especially when the effects have to compete onscreen against boobs. Oh yeah, and there was some weird fight where Jenna Jameson shoves billiard balls into her cunt and then squeezes the inner walls of her cavernous vagina with enough force to shoot them out. Kind of funny, but also made my vagina hurt. WAIT…I DON’T HAVE A VAGINA. If campy, gory, silly zombie movies are your thing, you might be a bigger fan of this than I was, but as far as that “genre” is concerned, I’d say it sets the bar. It doesn’t set it very high, but gives a pretty good archetype to follow.

 

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George A. Romero Presents: Deadtime Stories: Vol. 2 (2011) [REVIEW]

September 24, 2011 Leave a comment

 

Good luck finding out which fucking installment of this “franchise” I’m talking about, since nobody can seem to agree on what the fuck the titles should be. I think that there was something originally called “Deadtime Stories”, which was a few short horror films, and these had nothing to do with George Romero. I’m assuming that these films were shown to him, and he agreed to be involved with “hosting” more movies that were composed of short films, in hopes of getting the films more exposure and Romero more money. The movie I reviewed can be found in stores and on Netflix with that image I posted, but if you look it up on IMDb, the summary of the film is completely different from what I watched. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!

 

That goth is so pissed at those pregnant boobs. Don’t worry, goth, they’ll be attached to a dead lady soon!

 

The first story is kind of like the movie “The Descent”, because it’s about people who go exploring caves and get trapped. One of the three rock climbers has some huge rock mangle his foot, and as the foot starts rotting and being really shitty, the other the explorers decide to amputate. After amputation, they eat the leg, and the floodgates really bust open, and these two kill the third to eat his body. Eventually rescued, one of the surviving people has an insatiable hunger, and kills the other, and then goes to live back in the cave. Oh yeah, and this turns her into a cave monster or something. The next story is about a teacher who is really strict, especially when it comes to the affair he has with one student. He gets her pregnant and he treats her shitty, so she kills herself in his classroom. He starts having hallucinations about her, and this eventually drives him to kill himself in the very same classroom. The last story was about a security guard whose wife has cancer, but a scientist at the laboratory he protects mentions some magical space dust from Mars. The security guard feeds this to his wife, and not only does it cure the cancer, it gets her super horny all the time, but also turns her into a zombie or something. I think the space dust was supposed to be alive or something and now it’s colonizing humans on Earth? I don’t know, it was dumb.

 

Despite being trapped for weeks, it’s good to see that shitty beard stays perfectly intact.

 

Wait, come to think of it, ALL of these stories were dumb. The first story was a typical cannibal becoming insatiable story, and the fact that it was set in a cave for a good amount of it didn’t really add anything. The effects were pretty good, but that’s about it. I’d give it a 2 out of 5. The next story, again, was pretty cliché, and didn’t really bring anything new to the table. Some of the hallucinations that the teacher had were kind of gruesome, as far as effects are concerned, so that’s another 2 out of 5. The last story was a little sillier, so it made it a little more tolerable, but still, nothing new. This story gets yet another 2 out of 5, bringing the grand total to, well, you can do that math, dipshit. The good thing about this one is that all of the stories worked well when compared to one another, and there wasn’t one that was worse than any of the other two. The problem though was that they were all equally shitty, as opposed to all equally good. Not really worth watching any of these stories, unless of course you watch horror movies for their props and special effects.

 

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The Messengers (2007) [REVIEW]

August 22, 2011 1 Comment

 

 

I am including two different posters for this movie not because that bitch from Twilight is some super hottie or whatever, I just thought it was hilarious that they used the same exact picture and just changed the outfits. Whether or not the picture was even originally of that bitch from Twilight is probably up for debate, and maybe they just photoshopped her face right on there. According to Netflix, I’ve seen this movie before. I know what you’re asking, you’re asking how I could have seen it and not remembered it. Well how the fuck should I know the answer to that question? I have vague memories of watching it while at work and just poking my head into the theater sporadically, but I don’t think I actually watched it start to finish. I remember that bitch from Twilight was in it and remember it had something to do with ghosts on a farm, but what movie DIDN’T have ghosts on a farm in 2007? Wasn’t there one with Buffy that year too, in addition to the sequel to The Grudge? Goddammit, why are there so many movies that are exactly the same?

 

I forgot to mention that Dylan McDermott Mulrooney is in this. Hahaha get it? I combined two actors names because they are similar! Oh that was a good one.

 

Kristen Stewart (that Twilight bitch) is moving to a new house in the country with her family. If you want to know what the house looks like, just close your eyes and picture the most haunted looking house that you can, and this is what that house looks like. After being at the house a while and finding frustrations in not knowing how to fucking farm, the toddler of the family appears to be seeing things. I should mention that the taglines and trailers of this movie imply that little kids can see things that others can’t. Also, people watching a movie can see things that characters in the movie can’t, because it’s not fucking real life and there aren’t any rules. Anyways, a good farmer guy stops by the house and offers his assistance because he is so awesome at being a farmer. The longer the family is there, the more and more that Twilight bitch starts seeing weird ghost stuff. We then learn that her parents don’t trust or believe her because the reason they moved to the country was because she got into an accident while driving drunk, depleting their resources. What a bitch. Twilight bitch then makes the discovery that the ghosts she is seeing are the former residents that were murdered, and they were murdered by the farm helper guy! Noooo!!! Apparently he used to live there and when his crops failed, he killed his family. He snaps and starts trying to kill the family, but the ghosts swoop in and kill him in dirt before he can hurt anyone else. I guess then the family has good crops or whatever and everyone is happy.

 

Holy shit, I forgot about this part. There’s a stain on the wall that the mom keeps washing, but just keeps getting worse and worse every day. Then, a fucking ghost comes out of the stain. There must be a dead body behind that stain, right? NOPE. NOTHING RELATIVE TO ANYTHING OTHER THAN IT WAS A STAIN ON SHITTY WALLPAPER. That’s annoying.

 

IF YOU FUCKING MURDERED YOUR FAMILY AND NEVER TOLD ANYONE, WHY WOULD YOU GO BACK THERE TO HANG OUT?! Fuck. I mean, had they made it a little more clear as to how this guy didn’t remember any of it, I might have let it slide, but did you really need to make it that obvious? Granted, you didn’t necessarily think he was an asshole when you were introduced to him, and it was somewhat of a surprise that he had murdered his family, but why couldn’t he have gone next door? I mean, maybe this guy was murdering people all over town and it didn’t matter where he was helping, but it seems like if he was aware of his murderous past, he wouldn’t go back to hang out where he murdered the shit out of everyone. But if he had no idea, it would have made a little bit more sense to give some backstory as to why this guy was wandering around the countryside looking for work by showing up at people’s houses. Other than that, I suppose it was a pretty typical contemporary haunted house story where we find out the ghosts aren’t trying to hurt anyone, but rather warn them or whatever. They also really never followed through on the importance of the little kid seeing things, because his older sister, who wasn’t a baby, also saw stuff. A little misleading, I guess, but it’s not like the promotional materials made it sound like a unique or original ghost story. Nothing too awful about this movie, but also nothing that warrants a repeat viewing.

 

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When a Stranger Calls (2006) [REVIEW]

August 17, 2011 Leave a comment

 

Yes, I do own this movie on DVD. Why? Well I’ll fucking tell you if you can wait a goddamned second. The first time I saw this movie was when I was working at a movie theater and I had 90 minutes to kill. I was a projectionist and couldn’t just leave the booth, so I watched this movie in 10 minute increments, knowing that I couldn’t be missing all that much of the plot. Once this movie was released on DVD, I was killing some time in Best Buy before going in to that same job. At this point, I was bringing my laptop and watching movies on DVD, so that way I could pause movies and turn on the closed captioning since it’s loud as shit up there. Seeing that this movie was only five dollars, I figured there were worse ways top spend five dollars. Cut to this past weekend when I went to see Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. The movie theater wanted to show “vintage” trailers, and clearly the trailer for this was lying around. It reminded me that I owned it so I decided to give it another shot and see if there was anything at all worth remembering about this movie.

 

Rampaige pointed out that Camilla Belle has her mouth open in almost every single shot. Not saying this is a bad thing, just an observation.

 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before (which you have, especially because this movie is a remake): a high school girl, played by Camilla Belle, is going to babysit for some new people. While there, she starts getting prank phone calls, varying from no one responding, to heavy breathing, to verbal harassment. The babysitter starts getting worried, as she’s alone with the kids somewhere she’s never been, so she decides to call the police and lets them know. They somehow have the power to trace the phone call as she waits to see if this person contacts her again. When that person does, they give clues that make the babysitter think this person can see her, and the cops call back immediately to let the babysitter know that the calls are coming from INSIDE the house. While trying to get the kids out of the house, she is confronted by the mysterious caller. There’s a little bit of cat-and-mouse being played in the house until eventually the babysitter and kids get out, and the caller gets apprehended by the police.

 

That wet t-shirt certainly is sexy enough to draw young boys into the theater, but is innocent enough that you can pretend you aren’t fulfilling the “babysitter from high school home alone” erotic fantasy!

 

One of the oldest urban legends/scary stories in the book, so how do you put any sort of original or creative spin on things? Well, don’t give away the fucking ending in the trailer. I mean, they don’t tell you until more than halfway through the film that the killer is in the house, and I’m sure most people would have guessed it, but couldn’t you have at least delayed that “surprise” until people had bought their tickets? Considering you already know exactly what’s going to happen, this movie did hold my attention. The first thing that was enjoyable was that in this “updated” version of the story, the house is technologically advanced, meaning that when you walk in our out of a room, the lights automatically turn on or off, and there is a garden with live birds in it. This caused a few “tense” moments that were variations on just having to slowly open a door to see if there’s anything behind it. I think another thing that could be considered “enjoyable” was Camilla Belle’s performance. Rampaige’s only comment was that her and the other actresses actually looked and acted like high school girls, which I suppose is true, but I also never really thought that the babysitter was an idiot. The concept would make it too simple to have the main character continuously making stupid decisions which would result in putting herself in harm’s way, but things like double-checking the locks and alarms and constantly calling the homeowners made you realize this girl wasn’t an idiot. The opening also established that she was some sort of runner, so when you saw her doing physically strenuous activities, like escaping killers, she didn’t seem like super woman. I did find it weird that she didn’t check on the kids to even see if they existed for the first part of the movie, and always kind of hoped they had capitalized on the kids being involved somehow. Maybe some other weird or creepy thing about the kids could have pushed this remake further. Other than those two things I already mentioned, there’s really no reason to watch this movie and should instead buy the “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” books.

 

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Laid to Rest (2009) [REVIEW]

August 7, 2011 2 Comments

 

I mean, come on! Look at that fucking poster! I will completely own up to the fact that the cover of this movie, and the cover alone, is what made me willing to sit down and watch it on Netflix Instant. I probably watched it for the first time about a year and a half ago and didn’t really pay attention to it. I knew that there was a guy who wore a mask, and you can see that mask on the cover, and I also remember that every time I looked up from what I was doing, someone was being chased or killed in a poorly lit area. Considering I had rated it 3 stars but had no goddamn clue what had happened, and the fact that there is going to be a sequel to this movie coming out, I figured I’d give this another shot to see if I’ll watch this sequel. Oh who am I kidding, if that sequel is also on Netflix Instant then of course I’ll be watching the shit out of it.

 

Are you filming this shit on MiniDV? Did this movie come out in 2009 or 1909? AM I RIGHT?!

 

Our main female character, played by Bobbi Sue Luther, wakes up in a funeral home having no fucking clue what is going on. As she wakes up and tries to escape, we see who we presume to be her killer, whom we will refer to as “Chromeskull” from here on out. Why? Because he wears a fucking chrome skull, that’s why. The female is able to escape him long enough to hitch a ride from a character played by Kevin Gage in all of his “Hey is that Stone Cold Steve Austin?” glory. Unfortunately, Chromeskull is able to follow them and kills fake Stone Cold’s wife with that brutal knife thingy from the cover. Trying to find help, the pair drive to the nearest house, which happens to be owned by that guy from one of those old “Got Milk?” commercials where he can’t chew his sandwich, also known as Sean Whalen. Now the three are in it together, and they go back to the funeral home in hopes of the main female remembering anything. She doesn’t, and Chromeskull shows up, and chases them away. He chases them away from a lot of places, don’t they?

 

Just as a tip for the people doing publicity for the sequel, when it comes to releasing pictures of your large-breasted main actress, make sure you release more than just pictures of her covered in blood and screaming.

 

Anyways, the trio make it to a convenience store to hold up until police arrive, but before the police show up, Chromeskull does! Oh no! They manage to sneak into his car or something like that and the girl watches footage of herself being taken into a hotel room by Chromeskull because apparently she is a prostitute, then gets bashed on the head, presumably causing the rest of the film. We also learn that Chromeskull has some special adhesive to make his mask stick, so the Got Milk guy decides to replace that adhesive with SUPER powerful superglue, because obviously that will cause hilarity to ensue. The Got Milk guy gets his head filled with that shit you put into a tire when it gets punctured, and fake Stone Cold gets stabbed in the stomach, leaving the girl to hide in a freezer until Chromeskull’s mask falls off. When he goes to put it back on, the intense superglue shit melts his face right off of his fucking head, causing him to lay down for a while. When the girl goes to leave, she makes sure to smash the guy in the head one last time, and also checks his pockets or something and she sees a police report with her name on it and all the prostitute crimes she’s done. Hopefully she learned her lesson!

 

This is what happens when you over-medicate on Proactiv.

 

Let me at least talk about the things I liked, just to make sure I don’t forget them, because there weren’t that many. One thing I thought were really well done were the makeup effects. The scene where Chromeskull glues the mask to his face and attempts to pull it off and everything looks like melted mozzarella, as well as what happens when all the mozzarella was pulled off, was pretty gnarly. The good gnarly. Also, I liked that the movie started up right away, and rather than waste 10-15 introducing you to any of the characters, this movie gets right to it. You know everything you need to know, which is that there’s a girl, a mask guy, and the mask guy wants to kill the girl. Also the fact that we never found out who this guy was or why he was doing it made it a little more entertaining. The things I didn’t like were pretty much everything else. Every fucking scene was incredibly dark so you couldn’t really tell where they were or what they were doing most of the time. The acting was fine, but the material the actors were working with wasn’t really all that exciting or interesting. I didn’t care about anyone living or dying or any of their connections to one another. There was also this awful scene where Chromeskull captures the girl and forces her to go into a gas station, and the whole time he is interacting with her through poorly worded, not at all intimidating text messages. I think the texts I send to my girlfriend are scarier than the psycho killer saying things about “little piggy will turn into BACON!” or whatever it said. Hopefully the filmmakers learned from their mistakes, and by mistakes I mean entire story and running time, and make a more entertaining and concise gorefest.

 

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Phantoms (1998) [REVIEW]

July 26, 2011 2 Comments

 

Faces lined up? White text on the bottom? What is this, the late 90′s?! Oh, right, it is! The day and age where all you needed for a scary movie was a black background and the title of the movie in white. Throw some pretty faces on there, and who the fuck knows what you’re going to be seeing? Along with Mimic, this is another one of those movies that I saw on VHS, one time, and remember nothing about it. Although while watching, I did remember shit about a dog, and yes, there is still shit about a dog all these years later. Even though I fell asleep once while watching this, I still think I remember most of the story! Whether or not that story made sense is up for debate, but it sure was a story…kind of.

 

Did I mention you get to see Affleck in a cowboy hat?

 

Rose McGowan’s character is on her way to a ski resort with her older sister, played by Joanna Going. When they get there, they realize everyone’s dead, including their maid and a local police officer. Upon being discovered by some of the other police dudes in town, played by Ben Affleck, Liev Schreiber, and Nicky Katt, we learn that something spooky is going on in this town. The find the name “Timothy Flyte” scrawled on a mirror, and through contacting the FBI, are able to get Timothy, played by Peter O’ Toole, along with a military team into town. Timothy writes for a tabloid magazine and was writing about some being or creature or something capable of living underground and wiping out entire species and civilizations. I guess these are the “phantoms” that the title refers to. For the most part, the phantoms ingest living creatures, gain all the knowledge which those creatures contain, and are then able to replicate practically any living thing. That’s why a dog keeps popping up! The phantoms kill most of the people I already listed, but the survivors discover they have avoided death because this underground being wants more people to know about it and fear it. However, the phantom monster thing hasn’t taken into account the fact that it has the cellular composition of petroleum, or something, and Dr. Timothy Flyte exposes that weakness to infect the creature with a bacteria that eats petroleum. When the creature ingests this bacteria, it instinctually replicates it, resulting in the creature’s demise. Dr. Flyte goes on to tell the public the truth about this creature, and when we see two people in a bar debating whether he was telling the truth, we see one of the victims of the phantoms alive and well, indicating that the creature managed to survive.

 

This scene involves Timothy Flyte confronting the creature, who replicates all of the citizens of the town. Coincidentally, the amount of people the creature replicates is more than the amount of people who saw this in theaters.

 

It’s a rare occasion when typing out the description of the movie that it sounds better than the actual film was to watch. Obviously based on that description, this movie can be passed off as another indistinct creature-feature that could have gone straight to video. Probably would have been better than way, because even in 1998, this movie didn’t even make $6 million at the box office. I think that knowing it was a monster movie, in retrospect, is something that made it a little bit more enjoyable. It was reminiscent of The Thing in the whole isolation/shape-shifting kind of way, but had that late 90′s kind of charm with the “technology” aspect, as well as the whole idea of killing something with a bacteria it will unknowingly replicate. I don’t generally point things like this out, but I can’t give it the WORST rating because I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the special effects. One of the characters was killed by getting his brain sucked out through his face, and the body looked pretty cool afterwards. The dog segment was kind of silly, but we get to see Ben Affleck trying to go back and forth between two vans with a dog looking at him, and Affleck is fucking terrified. Pretty silly. There’s also a lot of corpses found that looked like they melted that I enjoyed. This movie wasn’t great, and it wasn’t good, and it was barely watchable. Sadly, I’ve sat through far worse.

 

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Deep Rising (1998) [REVIEW]

June 19, 2011 Leave a comment

 

I know what you’re thinking…you’re thinking that this movie is Ghost Ship. WELL IT’S NOT, OKAY?! This movie was the ORIGINAL “let’s steal stuff from a cruise ship, only to have things go terribly wrong” movie. It was a big year for Treat Williams. As if filling Tom Berenger’s shoes for The Substitute franchise wasn’t enough, he also got to be in a movie where his love interest was Famke Janssen! What a lucky fucking dog! Also, if it wasn’t for this movie, we wouldn’t have had Steven Sommers directing such films as The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Van Helsing, or that G.I. Joe movie! Wait, I meant that we can blame this movie for the existence of those four I just listed. Except to be completely honest, I don’t remember the first Mummy movie being too awful, it’s just that Steven Sommers has built a reputation as a more tolerable Michael Bay-ish director.

 

If this trio can’t stop a giant sea creature, I don’t know WHO will!

 

Treat Williams plays some hotshot boat captain guy who is escorting a ragtag group of dudes to some huge cruise ship out in the ocean. Before the team can arrive, we see something come up from under the cruise ship and attack it, leaving it floating in the water. When Treat and company get there, they want to know where everyone is, until they start finding blood and skeletons. Once Treat and pals find survivors on the ship, we find out that it has been attacked by some deep-sea creature, and also learn that the team who hired Treat were planning on robbing the boat and blowing it up. The owner of the boat set it all up to get the insurance! The rest of the movie has chase scenes of tentacles coming after them some people escaping, some people getting killed. Oh, and Famke Janssen is one of the survivors who also happens to be a jewel thief. Treat, Famke, and one of Treat’s buddies/comic relief character played by Kevin J. O’ Connor blow up the boat and escape on jetskis. Of course that’s what they escape on. Once at the nearest island, they all sit back and relax, and basically say “Well it’s a good thing all of our problems are over and we got away from that big scary monster and have nothing to worry about here on this beautiful island” before we hear and see a giant monster destroying trees…BUT THEN THEY CUT TO THE CREDITS! Are we to assume that the characters made it out okay?! We’ll just have to wait for the sequel!

 

High five

 

Sadly, there was no sequel to this movie. Well, not actually “sadly” because this movie wasn’t very good. However, I think everyone involved in this movie knew that this movie wasn’t for Hollywood, and that it was a B-Movie that just happened to be released theatrically. I’m sure everyone could also admit that the characters, dialogue, and concept were predictable and unoriginal, but hey, it was just a monster movie. Rather than trying to pick apart everything about it that was shitty, it’s easier to assume the whole thing is shitty, and only point out the good parts. Those good parts being, uh, well, I guess the background information about what this supposed creature was, and just discussing how vast the ocean was and that anything at all could live down there was good justification, as opposed to chalking it up to some science experiment gone wrong. Obviously watching Famke Janssen doing anything at all was entertaining, and Kevin J. O’ Connor really is the new Clint Howard when it comes to comedic relief weirdo characters. The effects hold up over time, and by hold up, I mean don’t look that much worse than some movies you see SyFy producing. I suppose if monster movies are your thing, this movie has some sort of cult following, but the only cult I belong to are the ones where you drink a lot of soda and then talk shit about things on the internet.

 

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Wrong Turn (2003) [REVIEW]

June 18, 2011 5 Comments

 

Have I seen this movie before? Nope. Did I have the poster for this movie? Yup. Why? That’s a rhetorical question, and might only apply if you are blind, otherwise you would see Eliza Dushku on the poster, and you’d immediately know why I had it. To be fair, I was working at a movie theater at the time, and I had a habit of stealing posters that I only kind of sort of thought I might want, only to eventually throw it away. I think I considered going to see this movie, then my friend Joe, known as “Beardy” to some, told me that the movie had something to do with “retards” in the woods. Granted, those might not necessarily have been his words of choice, however, whichever word he DID use, the connotation of “retards” was implied. I was quite a busy guy at the time this movie came out, so I didn’t find time to watch a movie about retards killing people in the woods. Having to type that statement out, looking back on my life, and realize that I am now the kind of person to watch movies about retards killing people in the woods eight years after they originally came out…yeah, that doesn’t make me feel better.

 

Good thing you ar wearing appropriate gear, with your cargo shorts and everything. Ya know, for all of your cargo…that is best carried in pockets…

 

Two rock climbers are climbing, well, rocks. If they weren’t climbing rocks, why would I call them rock climbers? Either way, doesn’t really matter, because they get killed by unseen murderers. Some dude is then driving his car through the backwoods of somewhere, and when he stops to ask directions, the single-toothed gas station attendant is of no help. While exploring alternate routes to his job interview, he gets too caught up listening to Queens of the Stone Age and smashes into a car that is parked in the middle of the road. The car belongs to two douche-y couples and Eliza Dushku, and all the cars are fucked. While exploring the woods, and without getting cell phone reception, the members of the group start getting picked off one by one using various manner of backwoods murder tools, like barbed wire and, well, probably more barbed wire, I think. At some point, there are only three left, and they climb some sort of forest ranger watch tower thing, so they climb it. While climbing it, the mysterious woodsmen set it on fire. We then get to see a nice little Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon type of tree branch hopping chase scene, resulting in two survivors and one dead woodsmen. Dushku eventually gets herself captured, and the main guy goes to rescue her. He, well, does, and the two of them escape. But guess what? There is still one woodsman alive! It’s almost like they were setting themselves up for a sequel!

 

Behind you, Dushku! BEHIND YOUUUUU! All you do is have to turn…I just hope it’s not…A WRONG TURNNNNNNN!

 

Original or inventive this movie was not, but I was still able to pay attention to it, which is saying a lot. The plot was simple enough, and has been seen countless times, but it was relatively different for a Hollywood release that people thought might be well-received. For as far-fetched as the chase scene on the tree branches was, I hadn’t really seen that in a horror movie before. Something that I had seen in a horror movie before that this movie did was the opening credits montage. It combined images of deformed people, newspaper images about people being in the woods, and essentially just giving you an idea of the fact that the villains were people who were victims of inbreeding and lived in the woods. It was almost the exact same opening as in the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, which instead used images of nuclear weapons, the desert, and had a light-hearted, and therefore creepy, song playing. However, after some fact-checking, The Hills Have Eyes came after this movie! So that movie took the opening credits of this movie, but just with the addition of a song, made it a lot more creepy, and got the movie off to a better start. In fact, Rampaige even commented on how similar this movie was to The Hills Have Eyes, and she’s not nearly as big of a dork as I am. Ultimately, this movie’s heart was in the right place, and almost did some cool things, but wasn’t original enough to stand on its own as a viable franchise. That won’t stop me from watching the two sequels!

 

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