Electron Sex Party Reviews: The Movie Masochist

Heavy Petting (2007)

2010-11-23T00:30:00.001-06:00


Wow. Not one, but two miserable excuses for a poster? And, nice photoshopping there, Tex.

Best bad quote: "Don't take it out on me 'cause you're getting cock-blocked by a terrier."

This movie is really fucking weird. I think I may have said that previous sentence more than twenty times during the hour and thirty minute run time of Heavy Petting, and days later I'm still thinking "Man, this movie is really fucking weird." Now admittedly, I'm not really a fan of slapstick-y romantic comedies. But this is a case of "It's not me, it's you, movie." The romantic leads (Malin Akerman, Brendan Hines) are bland, voids of boring cuteness, but I won't waste my time complaining about boring people that were cast just for their attractiveness when there is so much other strangeness going.

We follow around Charlie and his Comedic Sidekick. Both are a special breed of douchey doofus who inexplicably hate dogs. Once, a dog took a shit and Charlie stepped in it. So, they hate all dogs forever. When Charlie bumps into Daphne, it's lust at first site. He just can't resist her squinty-eyed channeling of a wholesome Anna Farris. His hard-on (that he mistakes for love) doesn't even shrink when he finds out she's a creepy dog lady who keeps her dead dog's ashes in an urn among a shrine on the mantle. His "love" for her is so strong that when she gets a new dog he decides to pretend to play nice in order to further his conquest. But, then it turns out there is a brilliant pediatric surgeon/vet/hot dude that is also vying for Daphne via her dog. So, then Charlie is trying to one-up the other guy by buying illegal horse-cock chews for the dog instead of the limp-dicked Snausages Doctor McHottie has been providing.

The cock-measuring contest goes absolutely nowhere, as do many plot points in the film. Like the Comedic Sidekick's penchant for dumpster-diving for antiques. Or the coffee connoisseurs at Charlie's shop that always bitch about his blends. There are all sorts of things I think are supposed to be jokes, like the scene where Charlie complains he has fleas, but just serve to uncomfortably pad out a movie that is short on laughs and heavy on what-the-fuckery. The source of the strangeness is the main conflict of the film. The difference the two leads must overcome does not have to do with Daphne finding out that Charlie doesn't actually like dogs, but that... well, he loves dogs too much.

Charlie starts spending time with her dog, a lot of quality time. And something changes between Charlie and Babydoll the dog. Something magical happens. Charlie falls in love with Babydoll. He wakes up with Babydoll in his arms after a night of failing to get into Daphne's pants. After their night of passionate ball-fetching, Charlie only has eyes for Babydoll. He goes on dates with Babydoll and watches her try on outfits, he eats pizza with her. He tells her he loves her. But, when Daphne finds out that Charlie loves Babydoll and not her, she kicks him to the curb. So he mopes and pines for Babydoll; he creepily watches dogs at the park and caresses a slipper that Babydoll chewed up. When his friend steps in dog shit, Charlie bends down and longingly sniffs the wafting aroma. No fucking joke. He longingly sniffs dog shit. At one point Daphne asks him what he did to Babydoll to make her so unhappy. She asks him as if she suspects something strange has happened between them, something illegal.

I have no idea why the writer is insinuating that Charlie is in some sort of romantic relationship with a dog. He misses the mark on funny and shoots way into creepy and weird territory. Creepy and weird territory that I think even romantic comedy fans would find strange. This is the kind of missed mark territory where you wonder, "Who is this aimed toward?" Kindergarteners, zoophiles, sea anemones? Is this a movie for people who hate romantic comedies?

Ah, and there you have it. It's a movie by people who hate romantic comedies for people who hate romantic comedies. This is evidenced in Daphne and Charlie's first date scene, where the bartender's utter disdain for Charlie's dopey request of "gin and juice" with "cran...juice" and the couple's cow-eyed blandness seems to mirror how romantic comedy haters, like me, feel about the generic non-jokes and superficiality of this typically squeaky clean, staunchly conservative genre. It's also worth noting as supporting evidence for the anti-romantic comedy interpretation that writer/director Marcel Sarmiento went on to co-direct Troma associate, Trent Haaga's, script for Dead Girl, a film about teenage boys raping a zombie.

The more-than-meets-the-eye realization doesn't make Heavy Petting easier to watch, however. It's still a film whose surface jokes are supremely unfunny and who has unappealing characters and a script that half goes nowhere and half goes somewhere really strange and outrageous. It's maybe worth a onetime viewing with a group of drunk and snarky friends, but it's not a movie to be taken as anything more than a mediocre joke without a punch line.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Flea-Powdered Pretty Boys

Guess What Happened to Count Dracula (1971)

2010-10-25T04:22:00.001-05:00

Best bad quote: "I don't know how to tell you this... SANTA CLAUS!"

No. You know what? Don't even bother guessing what happened to Count Dracula; there's no point. This movie never provides the answer. This movie is about the son of Dracula, Count Adrian, who is awakened by a cult full of the a-little-too-human-but-still-fucking-weird-looking cast-offs from the movie Freaks chanting "Puma! Puma!" or maybe "Pumbaa! Pumbaa!" Count Adrian, once awakened, decides he's tired of his main vampire bitch, ashes his cigarette in her hand and sends her away because her character has no point in this movie. He then opens his restaurant/night club, called Dracula's Dungeon, for that nights business and sets his eyes on its one female patron, the dull, clueless Angelica. Angelica gets the heebie-jeebies, but her boyfriend, a dopey-faced, missing fifth member of The Monkees, tells her she's a baby and leaves her to sleep alone, though she requested he stay.

That night Count Adrian dons his toy capsule vending machine teeth that give him a Bubba lip and bites Angelica. However, she must be bitten three times in order to be turned into a vampire, so Count Adrian somehow gets in good enough with Angelica's idiotic friends to become a tag-a-long to an impromptu party. What follows is one of the worst party scenes, with some of the whitest, most terrible dancing that was ever recorded on film. After receiving a second bite that night, Angelica becomes sensitive to sunlight and makes a snack out of a piece of bloody steak.

Despite the fact that she's reading a book on the "vampir," Angelica isn't sure why she's feeling ill. So, Angelica makes a date to go to a cult meeting at Count Adrian's nightclub castle home with him, where she witnesses a man eat a tiny rubber lizard and meets a gypsy who cackles at everything. She also meets Count Adrian's lethargic pet tiger, Alucard. Angelica's boyfriend shows up to save her from Count Adrian's third bite, but he's too late! She's been turned in a vampire- a vampire that causes the boyfriend to emit a very girly, Daniel Stern-ian scream.

The plot of this movie sounds ridiculous, and it is. It's also boring. It has several laugh-out-loud unintentionally funny moments, but the sheer amount of nothing that also goes on really causes the movie to drag. There's a terrible part where the movie actually attempts to be genuinely funny; an attempt that falls so flat that it might as well have dug its own grave. There are great, terrible lines of dialogue, though. Lines that make you scratch your head in confusion, and then make you laugh at their absurdity. One the best of these moments is at the end when the boyfriend attempts to menace the son of Dracula with his tenuous connections to Hollywood, the connections that Count Adrian himself set up in exchange for Angelica.

But, the funniest parts of the movie have to be Count Adrian's facial expressions. His attempts to be vampire-y end up looking like a strange combination of surprised and concerned. His attempts to merge his eyebrows with his hairline almost succeed, however. Aside from the ridiculous story, stupid dialogue and questionable acting, also be ready to have your ears raped by grating organ music. Count Adrian's club plays annoyingly half-hearted circus music, as well. The editing is jumpy and sometimes cuts off lines, though that's somewhat a given with low-budget, exploitation films.

So, the question you must ask yourself now- now that you don't know what happened to Dracula, but do know what happened to his son, a dull woman and her dopey boyfriend- is: Should I watch this movie? You'll have to decide if slogging through seventy percent of nothing is worth it for the thirty percent of unintentional hilarity. I think it was. It's probably worth it just for the boyfriend's marvelous scream alone.

Rating: 2 out of 5... This Guys?

Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) (1969)

2010-10-20T23:16:00.002-05:00

Best bad quote: "It was a day just like any other day......... which doesn't say much."

I've never really been afraid of vampires. Out of all the movie monsters, death by vampire always seemed the best way to go. Sure, some vampires have been written as monsters, but, I find that more often than not, vampires are portrayed as sympathetic, almost human creatures who, unfortunately, have to drink blood to survive. Or, they are portrayed as so mysterious and sexy that death by vampire might as well be called la petite mort. Vampires, and especially Dracula, are not often portrayed as lecherously lovable goofs with thickly stereotypical Jewish accents. So, let's hand it to Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) for being the first.

This movie is a joke. I don't mean that like "Oh, this movie is so bad it has to be a joke!" I mean, literally, this movie is a joke. All of the dialogue is dubbed, and has been so in a way that seems as if the narrators are lampooning the film. A lot of the time it sounds as if their lines are being improved. And, most of the time, the narrators speak even when the mouths of the actors are not moving in order to wrench in something funny. The movie seems to originally have had very little dialogue, but with the dubbing it now features lots of funny internal soliloquies that almost make it seem as if the narrators are riffing the movie Mystery Science Theater 3000 style.

The nonsensical, outrageously redundant opening narration is a good gauge as to the strange hilarity Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) has to offer you during its 69 minute runtime. Newspaper reporter Mike is sent to meet a Mr. Alucard, (that's Dracula spelled backwards, as the movie helpfully points out several times, even going as far as to put "Alucard (Dracula spelled backwards)" in the opening credits) who lives out in the middle of nowhere. But, for Mike, "death lurked behind those beautiful hills, behind the beautiful hills, behind the beautiful hills." Well, not death, really. More like a dopey Dracula who decides that Mike should become his half-bear, half-rat, all-furry rubber masked henchman, whom he dubs Jackalman. Irving Jackalman. At night, Mike changes to Jackalman and then must capture sexy girls for Dracula to teleport to his mine shaft lair. There Dracula ties them up, strips them, rubs his weird face all over their bodies and then bites them on the breast, all the while saying the most ridiculous things.

The film isn't all fun and camp, however. There's a rather brutal rape scene where Jackalman finally gets to have a girl of his own. The narrators try to make the scene funny by riffing on what's happening on screen, but it just serves to make the scene more disturbing, even if it does manage to twist a couple of laughs out you due to the ridiculousness of the dialogue. There is an even more ridiculous rape scene later, where a randomly masturbating woman cuts to having Jackalman going down on her. And, despite having her eyes open and looking down at Jackalman's nappy mask it takes her quite a while to realize that the wolf creature is not, in fact, her doughy boyfriend.

Mike, as Jackalman, ends up capturing his own girlfriend to give to Dracula, but then decides that he wants her. Stripped naked, she sort of tries to escape as they fight. She giggles a lot and takes a rest after only jogging a little way and is thus promptly captured. Dracula is defeated via his own stupidity as it turns out his lair is right at the mouth of the cave. He decides to take a step outside during he and Jackalman's fight and is then turned to dust. Jackalman is turned back into Mike and then he and his girlfriend decide to screw right then and there in a painfully long, very softcore scene on Dracula's dirty makeshift bed.

The moving picture part of this movie isn't the main attraction. It's the dubbing that makes Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) worth watching. It's almost like you are watching a commentary track for a silent film where the actors decide to make fun of the shitty movie they were in. I haven't been able to find any information on the original script, but I know that the reason it was dubbed was because there were serious sound issues. I find it highly unlikely the finished product that I watched, with its goofy accents and ridiculous lines, was what the filmmakers originally intended. But, without the ridiculous dubbing, this movie would have just been another boring, sleazy exploitation film for kids at drive-in theaters to not watch while making out in their cars. But, with it, Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) turns into a strange joke of a film that, surprisingly, works.

You can go to Something Weird Video to check out this movie.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Rape Faced Jackalmans

The House That Drips Blood On Alex (2010)

2010-10-15T03:21:00.003-05:00

Best bad quote: "Yeah... blood. From something that was once alive."

New cult hero Tommy Wiseau is back. He's back in all his bizarre glory with a hysterically campy short film written by Brock LaBorde and directed by Wiseau himself. Wiseau might say that "The Room", the movie he's infamous for, is meant to be a campy film, but I've never believed him. Because Wiseau fails so miserably in his attempt to create a sincere and serious drama, The Room ends up appealing to our love of schadenfreude; his absolute failure becomes the entertainment factor, because the movie is not entertaining in its intended way. "The House That Drips Blood On Alex" is entertaining in its intended way. It's a comedy, almost parody-like film. This time, you are meant to be laughing. If you aren't, then you need to check that your sense of humor hasn't flat lined.

Wiseau's strange, corpse-like appearance, weird accent and voice inflection, droll delivery and all around terrible acting are the main draw. In "The House That Drips Blood On Alex" Wiseau's strangeness is tapped and condensed down to a magnificent 12-minute stretch of hilarious insanity.

Joey Greco, of "Cheaters" fame, shares a scene with Wiseau and together they chew more scenery than I ever thought possible. Greco mugs hardcore for the camera while Wiseau acts as if he lives on a diet of hard liquor and whippets. Wiseau's acting is marvelous. Most of the time he's acting as if he just took twelve consecutive shots of Wild Turkey, and his serious lines are delivered with all the inanity of someone who just realized that they forgot to send back their Netflix disc. All the comedy doesn't fall to Wiseau and Greco, either. The other actors, including Wiseau's Luke Wilson-y friend Thomas, play it fairly straight and low-key, which is a great contrast with Wiseau's amped up performance. Wiseau's two friends have some great comedic lines that work well with less outrageous delivery.

The fact that this film is a short I think is a definite boon. I know we all can't get enough of Wiseau, but compressing him down to 12 minutes works so well that it'll be tragic if someone doesn't utilize him in this way again. I have to say , as well, that however insane Wiseau is in front of the camera, he's actually pretty good behind the camera. His directing adds to and does the intended campiness of the film absolute justice.

"The House That Drips Blood On Alex" is a tongue-in-check effort that does not fail in its comedic attempt, nor in its attempt to showcase Wiseau's special brand of strangeness. Wiseau might be a joke to many, but here he shows that now he's in on it. LaBorde and Wiseau use our fascination with Wiseau's eccentricities to their advantage, creating a film that not only satisfies Wiseau fans, but a film that should also satisfy anyone with an appreciation of B movie-esque camp. This film is genuinely funny because it succeeds, not because it fails.

You can watch this film over at Atom.com. I highly recommend that you click that link.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Naked, Bloody Wiseaus

Blood Gnome (2004)

2010-10-13T22:09:00.001-05:00

Best bad quote: "You can't kill me; I'm a cop! What the fuck you gonna do with body?"

I steeled myself for this one. I mean, come on. Just look at that cover up there. And the title. Seriously, it looks terrible. I expected to be miserable five minutes in. But, ten minutes in, Blood Gnome had kept me waiting. The movie had yet to descend into a sarlacc of suck. And, I kept waiting for the moment when my palm would meet my forehead in Picard-ian disbelief. I kept waiting for Blood Gnome to commence with the pain. But, as we took our journey through what looked like a colonoscopy image tunnel to where the credits finally rolled, I knew. It didn't suck. Hallelujah! It didn't suck!

Blood Gnome is a micro-budgeted film that works with its limitations, not outside or against them. A lot of micro-budget films have serious issues with sound and video quality that often render them virtually unwatchable. Though here it's painfully noticeable that you are watching a movie made with a tiny budget, the sound and video quality are excellent. The director/writer, John Lechago, succeeded in creating a polished finished product with very few imperfections.

Our hero is Daniel, a mumbly, awkward Bill Pullman look-alike. Though he may not seem like hero material, I found his absolute dorkiness rather charming. Having recently been put back to work after a stint in a mental hospital, Daniel accidentally captures a Ghoulie-looking Blood Gnome on his very sensitive infrared camera at two murder crime scenes involving BDSM. Knowing no one would believe him if he tried to explain without proof, Daniel decides to learn more about the BDSM angle of the murder while waiting for some special film for his camera. He calls gorgeous Divinity, whom he met at the scene of the first murder, to help him understand the BDSM world.

Meanwhile, we already know the villain from scene one. Elandra, Divinty's mistress, keeps a tentacled thing in a box, a thing that's possibly just a giant vagina with a bad case of dentata. This thing births the Blood Gnomes from its toothy vagina and Elandra extracts from the squealing puppets a potent substance that she sells to the BDSM community. The Blood Gnomes target those who take the drugs and engage in bloodsports in order to feed themselves and their mother. I assume. We don't actually see them really eat anything, just lots of hacking and slashing. But, I'll let that slide, because the Blood Gnome puppets are pretty cool. And creepy.

After the Blood Gnomes set Daniel up for failure at work by removing the film that allows him to see them before taking pictures at a crime scene, Daniel starts to spiral into insanity. His insanity is justified, however, as the Blood Gnomes are taunting him and just waiting for him to fall asleep so they can kill him. This sets up one of the most hilarious scenes in the movie, the first fight scene between the Blood Gnomes and Daniel. The Blood Gnomes threaten Daniel via Generic Instant Messenger (under the screen name blood_gnome) and he retaliates by stomping some heads. Literally. He even goes as far as to bash one in its non-existent balls. It's a great scene, full of plenty of intentional and unintentional hilarity. Soon after comes the final showdown, where doofy Daniel must not only destroy the Blood Gnomes, their mother and Elandra, but he must also save his love interest, Divinity.

The movie's biggest strength is probably its directing. As I've said, director/writer John Lechago works hard to make sure we get, at the very least, a watchable product- which is more than I can say for other low budget films I've reviewed. (Yeah, Skeleton Key 2, that means you.) Scenes with dialogue are always filmed up close to the actors' faces in order to compensate for, most likely, lack of proper audio equipment. The filming locations are small, as well- tiny rooms, usually- and thus the director focuses close on the actor in the scene. This gives the film a bit of a claustrophobic feel that I think ends up working to its advantage.

The writing is fairly tight as well. There is never an attempt to explain the Blood Gnomes' origins, and that ends up working as well. Any story we got would probably come off as insubstantial, idiotic, or both. All we need to know about the Blood Gnomes is already present in the film. The story is a fairly simple slasher. But, you know, with invisible killer gnomes who target the subset of the BDSM community involved in bloodplay.

If you are willing to give Blood Gnome a chance, I promise you will have a good time. Despite the ridiculous sounding premise, the film is fairly solid. And campy. We mustn't forget that camp is often what makes B-movies so fun.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Baby Blood Gnomes

8213: Gacy House (2010)

2010-10-09T20:53:00.002-05:00

Best bad quote: " Clown, you are not alive. Loki, make mischief here tonight!"

For those of you who don't know, or for those of you who haven't seen the movie yet, John Wayne Gacy is an infamous serial killer who had a taste for young men and boys. He killed 33 people and kept 26 of the bodies under his house and in his backyard. In 8213 Gacy House, a bunch of idiots hoping to catch some paranormal activity on camera go to the new house that has been built on the Gacy property. Of course, they all die. This is stated at the beginning of the movie, as is typical of these Blair Witch Project type movies. That's okay, if unnecessary. As soon as we know that they aren't content with just catching some of the ghosts of Gacy's murder victims on film, that they want Gacy himself to show them what he's got, we know they'll all be dead by morning.

The majority of the group is from "the institute," and has been trying to capture "verifiable" paranormal activity at serial killer sites. They bring along a psychic who is only useful in conjuring up Gacy and having huge breast implants. The psychic asks for protection from a bunch of moon goddesses, and then offers Gacy's spirit the white, pure t-shirt of her neighbor's fifteen year old son in order to coax Gacy back from the afterlife. It's the moments like this conjuring scene that make the movie even remotely watchable. If not for these scenes that make you laugh out loud at their ridiculousness, then you might as well be watching the wall. Or, at least a better found footage film, like Paranormal Activity.

You've got a lot of minutes of virtually nothing to slog through to get to the funniest moments at the end, however. The director does a fairly decent job at setting up potential jump scares and then not delivering the scare, which set me on edge a bit. The fact that I was watching this late at night in a dark room probably enhanced my unease. However, my unease was muted by the fact that I didn't care about the idiots on screen. I knew they were going to die, and they hadn't done anything to show me that I should care that they died.

They conjure Gacy, then taunt him. To their taunts he responds "Kiss my ass," his supposed last words before his death. And, "Kiss my ass" is what I'm thinking too. They might not deserve what happens to them, but they sure asked for it. So, let the killing commence. The last twenty minutes, when Gacy starts slaughtering people, is the best. At first he's busting heads out of sight and behind closed doors, but then he starts throwing people around. He rips off Fake Tits' shirt so she can show us exactly why she was hired. Gacy also jerks off the young cameraman's pants and drags him away to the basement for some ghost rape. At one point, Gacy shows up dressed as his Pogo the Clown alter ego.

These scenes are fairly hilarious, but it's a chore to make it through to see them. The scenes with the psychic are pretty funny, but they are sparse. This movie just doesn't have much going for it. It's boring and pointless and not campy enough. It's another lackluster release from The Asylum.

Rating: 1 1/2 Undressed Ghost Gacy's out of 5

Dark House (2009)

2010-10-06T01:30:00.004-05:00

Best bad quote: "What kind of black guy plays chess and watches PBS?"

Jeffrey Combs can do no wrong. Sure, the movies he's in are sometimes the biggest sack of wrong to ever be committed to celluloid. But, Jeffery Combs is always awesome, always chewing the fuck out of the scenery like a starving man, and generally just commanding your attention in every scene he's in. But, thankfully, Fangoria's Dark House has more going for it than just Combs. Despite its devastatingly generic title, Dark House turns out to be a fun little slasher flick.

You'll have to forgive the beginning, however. It's absolutely stupid (but perfect for some Mystery Science Theater 3000 style riffing). You see, there's this creepy house. A creepy immaculately maintained Victorian house that's painted a pleasant shade of light blue, with quaint architectural details, and a sunny, welcoming porch. But, it's creepy, okay, because this weird foster mother lives there with her eight foster children. One day, fourteen years ago, a young girl decided to trespass on this creepy house to prove to her friends that she was bad ass. So, in broad daylight, she walks up to the creepy, adorable door and goes right in. The dead body of a kid at the front door has the audacity to just lay there and bleed, so she enters the creepy house further, looking for someone who will properly greet her. The dead kid on the stairs just lays there too. And the dead kids in the parlor. One kid even decided to be murdered on the table! What a little snot!

"Like, let's get outta here Scoob. That house looks too cute to be haunted."

Finally, she finds someone who is not dead. In the kitchen, the foster mother has decided to murder her hands too. So she sticks them in her garbage disposal. Because movie garbage disposals are bladed and magical, this reduces the foster mother's hands to a bloody stump. Our intrepid trespasser sees the pantry door move, so she walks past the murderous woman grinding her hand to a pulp and puts her eye to the keyhole. She promptly freaks the fuck out when another eye meets hers and she slips on the copious amount of blood coating the floor, causing her to pass out.

Now, years later, we meet this basket case brunette who is traumatized by what happened in the house. Her psychiatrist instructs her to meet her trauma head on by visiting the house, with a seven nation army if need be. This surely will cure her trauma and not end in slaughter! Convenient coincidence kicks in when her drama class is recruited by a flamboyant Jeffrey Combs to be actors in his horror attraction that utilizes the house as a creepy backdrop.

The Dark House uses advanced holographic technology to create realistic images of scary things. Like clowns and mad scientists and witches. But, when some cannon fodder- I mean- two reporters come to the attraction for a sneak peek at the horror, the ghost of the murderous foster mother decides to give the computers running the show a ghost virus. This, naturally, causes the holograms to become solid and start killing. Then it becomes a slasher film, with different holographic images killing people with glorious sprays of blood.

You might be saying, "But, wait! Aren't holograms just recordings of scattered light?" (Thanks Wikipedia!) And, normally, I'd say, "It's a movie about ghosts. Just sit back and try to relax." Dark House has an explanation for this, however. Though, it's possibly a more problematic one that just rolling with the fact that a ghost caused it. But, don't worry. There are multiple endings, and a few explanations, just so you really know just what happened. And, there is no ambiguity, really, about what happened. It is what it is. I like that in this case, because it makes the movie so easy to watch. No brain power required, which is nice occasionally.

You'll get a kick out of, not only Jeffrey Combs' scenery chewing, but that of the foster mother. She's amazingly over the top. You'll think she's choking back vomit with each line she spits out. That is, when she's not flying into a psychotic rage. It's absolutely fantastic. There are a couple of annoying characters, as is required in a slasher movie, but they get killed off fairly quickly. The film is also refreshingly self-aware. There's one scene where three characters pull out their Zippo's to illuminate a dark room. One of them says "It's a good thing we're all smokers."

I know, it sounds kind of stupid. But just trust me, it's not as stupid as it sounds. There are many things that make Dark House a surprisingly enjoyable film. From the laughable beginning, to scenery that gets ripped to shreds by many of the actors, to the... well, look, okay. It's kind of stupid. But, the kind of stupid that's fun and leaves you laughing, not the kind of stupid that leaves you banging your head on the wall. It's a bad movie lover's kind of stupid.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Evil Clowns

Dot.Kill (2005)

2010-10-03T18:06:00.001-05:00

Best bad quote: "Go see a doctor. That's why we call 'em doctors."

Despite the stupidly redundant and ridiculous title, this film isn't half bad. That isn't to say that it doesn't have some major issues, but it does manage to create a compelling enough story that kept me entertained through the majority of the run time. Charlie Daines (Armand Assante) is a hard-nosed, gruff New York detective who hides the fact that he has terminal cancer. He refuses to get any sort of treatment and eventually resorts to hitting up a former junkie for some morphine.

Det. Daines is assigned to the case of a killer who broadcasts his kills online, even going as far as to hijack the televisions in Times Square. The human mind has a disease, the killer says. A disease that makes one want things, and then want more things. (So, human nature then?) The killer's cure for this disease is to kill rich white dudes.

The severity of Det. Daines illness, and the fact that he refuses treatment, means we already know the ending of this movie. He and the killer will clash and the brave detective will go out in a blaze of glory, taking the murderous psychopath with him. I'm okay with the predictability, as long as the movie can hold my attention as we try to discover the identity of the killer.

This movie has many, many weaknesses, but its strengths lie in the scenes where Det. Daines interacts with the people close to him. The scenes between him and his wife are tender and bittersweet when they aren't rife with tension. The scenes between him and the former junkie who has now become his deliverer from pain are heartbreaking . There's a scene where, frustrated and desperate, Det. Daines beats the shit out his worried and accusatory partner.

The major problem with this film is that it blows its load too early. As we already know what the ending will be, we need to be strung along with false leads until the very, very end as to the identity of the killer. But, about thirty minutes to the end Det. Daines starts getting really suspicious of someone who has given him no reason to be suspicious. Maybe in Det. Daines' world complimenting a man's nice family means you are a killer? Maybe, it's just cop's intuition?

No, it's just plot convenience. It has to be the least likely suspect, fuck logic, because the audience won't suspect it. But, we know it's the least likely suspect far from the end. And, even before that, we were being beat over the head with clues. Everything else goes down as expected, and thus we lose interest, because what was holding the thin plot together was the mystery behind the killer. And, the movie never really explains his motivation, or how he set anything up. He's just "the killer" and that's that.

Another problem I had with the movie, maybe one you might find a bit superficial, was the music. It was terrible. Half the time it sounded like someone let their three-year old compose the score, and half the time it sounded like the cheesiest of porn music. The porn music kicked in at the most inopportune times, almost killing any tension or power the scene had.

Though, despite its numerous problems, this film is not rendered unwatchable. It's well-acted and mildly interesting enough that you don't feel completely let down when the screen flashes up the unnecessary "THE END."

Rating: 3 out of 5 Banana Phones

The Thing With Two Heads (1972)

2010-09-29T23:33:00.001-05:00

Best bad quote: "Honey, I was wondering... uh, do you have two of anything else?"

The trailer for the film so succinctly sums up the major plot points with these two sentences: "It seemed like a good idea at the time. The white bigot was dying the black soul brother needed time to prove his innocence." With lines that ridiculous I bet you're thinking that The Thing with Two Heads is the epitome of camp, with its outrageousness culminating in the most awesome movie ever made. Well, you'd be wrong. Though, that's not to say that this film doesn't have any redeeming features.

Of the hour and thirty minute run time, the first fifty minutes is a somewhat interesting drama concerned with racism that, unfortunately, seems such a distinct disconnect with what one was expecting based on the trailer. The disparity between what you are expecting and what you get makes it hard to enjoy the film. Well, that, and it's rather boring for most of that fifty minutes too. After that, we get two chase sequences that are fun at first, and more in line with what we are expecting. But, they are not fun enough to really sustain twenty-five minutes and become repetitive. The fifteen minute quick-fix finish ends with an unsatisfying, but hilariously abrupt ending.

The white bigot, Dr. Kirshner (Ray Milland), is a surgeon who has been experimenting with a way to transplant a head from a dying body onto the body of another, allowing the new head to ultimately take control of the body. After a month or so, the old head is removed. Dr. Kirshner is comatose and dying of chest cancer, so his right hand man must make a quick decision: let the old man die or transplant his head onto the body of a black death row prisoner Jack Moss (played by Rosey Grier) who, at the last minute, decided to donate his body to science in hope that he would gain more time to prove his innocence. What the "black soul brother" didn't count on was that he would wake up with the head of a racist old white man attached to him and sneering in his ear.

As Dr. Kirshner doesn't have control of his new body yet, Jack escapes and takes along not only the reluctant head of the bigot, but also the brilliant Dr. Williams. In one of the more compelling scenes in the first part, Dr. Kirshner wrongs Dr. Williams in a confrontation that cements the fact that Dr. Kirshner is a bigot in a believable way- in a way that is unsettling in its unfairness and wrongness. Dr. Kirshner meets Dr. Williams for the first time after hiring him based on just his excellent credentials. However, after he discovers that the Dr. Williams is black, he tries to back out of their employment contract by saying that something unexpected has come up. Unfortunately for Dr. Kirshner, there is no "Void if the man you hire is black" clause and Dr. Williams is allowed to work out his time allotted in the contract after an uncomfortable confrontation.

After the confrontation Dr. Kirshner has an excellent line in defense of his actions that sums up his stupidity and bigotry perfectly. He says: "I just got carried away by some superficial accomplishments before interviewing the man." He doesn't say that Dr. Williams is only a brilliant doctor if he can't see the color of his skin, that the perceived wrongness of being black supersedes his excellent accomplishments. The wrongness of his dark skin now defines him, and thus relegates his accomplishments to a superficial, unimportant status. That it doesn't occur to Dr. Kirshner that he is making decisions based on the superficiality of skin color would be hilarious in its idiocy if it weren't so terrible and so true to life.

The rest of the film involves Jack and Dr. Williams running from the cops. Because this is the 1970's, the duo, along with the reluctant head of Dr. Kirshner, end up at a motocross rally where they steal a bike. The subsequent chase scene results in a couple of cops crashing their cars at multiple angles- I mean, fourteen doofy cops crashing their cars in wacky ways. The end of the film comes rather quick, as I've said. And, though it's rather unsatisfying, the sheer absurdity of the last two scenes will make you laugh.

This film had its moments. At times it was intentionally and unintentionally funny. And, despite the ridiculous premise, the bigotry of the Dr. Kirshner was believably written. The problem is that the movie gets bogged down by, well, nothingness. There are so many long stretches of nothing, especially with the twenty-five minute chase scene, that watching becomes a test of patience.

I almost just want to recommend the trailer for this movie, as it really boils the film down to its best components. But, then you'd miss the magnificent last two scenes. So, I recommend that you watch the trailer and then watch the end of the movie. Five minutes of its best parts, without all the nothing, is really the only way you can enjoy the absurdity of The Thing with Two Heads.

Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5 Two-Headed Gorillas

Here's the trailer for your veiwing pleasure.

Fantastic Fest Double Feature: Machete Maidens Unleashed! and Sharktopus

2010-09-25T10:48:00.004-05:00

Fantastic Fest is an Austin, Texas film festival that specializes in horror, fantasy, sci-fi. I was lucky enough to attend the screening of Mark Hartley's follow up to his 2008 documentary on Australia's exploitation scene, this time about the Filipino exploitation scene, and the premier of Syfy's new creature feature on a double bill that revolved around Roger Corman.

In Mark Hartley's documentary, Machete Maidens Unleashed!, he explores the American B- movie, low budget film industry's use of the Philippines and its people as a vehicle for making cheap movies with the popular elements: beasts, blood and breasts. Pro-Americanism, a "Wild East" (an Asian Wild West) climate where everyone was packing heat, the fact that so many people would do anything for a little cash, and exotic jungle sets proved the perfect mix of elements for low budget film makers looking to capitalize on the popular genres of drive-in fare in order to turn a profit. The film featured insightful and funny interviews with directors, including Roger Corman, actors, and film critics. Of course, the film also featured hilarious trailers and clips from Filipino exploitation films such as Corman's The Big Dollhouse, a women in prison type film, and For Y'ur Height Only, a movie about a Filipino midget James Bond, as well as many others.

The director, in a Q and A beforehand, mentioned that unlike other documentaries, we wouldn't learn anything from this film. I'll have to disagree with him, as not only did I feel like I learned quite a bit about Filipino filmmaking but, also, a little bit about Filipino history in the '70's and '80's. And, even if I hadn't learned anything substantial, I would have at least learned that there are a lot of really awesome movies I have to get my hands on. Overall, I found Machete Maidens Unleashed! to be a lot of fun and a superbly entertaining look into a genre of film that's often unfairly overlooked.

Next up was a Q and A with Roger Corman himself. Also in attendance was his wife, Julie. In reference to a comment made in an interview from Machete Maidens Unleashed! someone asked if Corman was really in it for the money. He and his wife's answer was a hilarious (and I'm paraphrasing): "What? Are you fucking kidding me? Of course." Then he and his wife received a "Syfy Imagine Greater" Lifetime Achievement Award that was, for some reason, some sort of sword.

The introduction to Sharktopus really set the mood for the film to come. It was going to be fun, it was going to be campy, and should not be taken too seriously. The director, Declan O'Brien, and the Cormans cheekily warned us that Sharktopus was under the impression that the movie was about his plight, but when he found out how evil he had been portrayed he became upset. It was an amusing segue into the film, and a hint that even the filmmakers didn't take the film too seriously. And, really, how could you? It's a movie about a half-shark, half-octopus military experiment gone wrong presented on the Syfy channel. If you take something like that seriously, you're doing it wrong.

Like I said, this movie was fun. A lot of people like Mega Pirhana and Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, and yeah, those films have their moments. But, I've seen better. Sharktopus is better. It surprises me that those films get a lot of attention when Syfy and the Asylum have put out so many better films with more than just a few entertaining moments in films that are, overall, rather boring. Sharktopus is not boring. Everything about Sharktopus works, from the ridiculous premise to the campy death scenes to the slightly douchey characters. And, of course, it features Eric Roberts, who is always awesome.

One death scene I found particularly hilarious features the Sharktopus jumping up to grab a bungee jumping woman. The Sharktopus itself is particularly hilarious, as well. It has the head of a Great White Shark, with huge superfluous (read: awesome) spikes sticking out near the gills, with the tentacles of an octopus. And, it was created to fight pirates. Seriously. Apparently military scientists drop a lot of acid when brainstorming.

Really, it's just a fun movie. As Declan O'Brien's previous ventures with Syfy show, he knows how to play to the B-movie genre and craft a film that's not only entertaining from start to finish, but hilarious too.

Sharktopus premiers tonight on Syfy at 8:00 central time. I'm going to watch it again, and I hope you don't miss it.

This article is also posted here and here at badmovienite.com.

Solarbabies (1986)

2010-09-24T00:26:00.003-05:00

Best bad quote: "Cut your breath before you betray your putrid thinking!"

Solarbabies is a strange film that screams 1980's CHEESE so loudly you almost can't hear the whispers of the decent film that attempt to permeate its cheesy surface. The film is set in a post-apocalyptic future where some sort of fascist, Earth hating police force control the water supply. They also run a prison for children, called the Orphanage, where children they've captured are indoctrinated into their ways in order to become good members of their police force.

For some reason, they also are indoctrinated into the way of roller skating. Our heroes, the Solarbabies, are a team of Skateball players (Lacrosse on skates). This really has no bearing on the plot, except to maybe establish why the heroes are friends, and to give the heroes faster means of getting around rather than walking. I don't know. Was roller skating cool in the 1980's?

The adorable Lukas Haas, called Daniel, discovers a glowing, sentient extraterrestrial sphere that communicates telepathically and does magic things. The sphere heals Daniel's deafness and later creates a thunderstorm in the Solarbabies' club room that results in a cheery, awkward water fight.

Don't ask why I'm dressed as Raiden.

Unbeknownst to the Solarbabies, they have a stalker who witnesses this little display. He's Darstar, some sort of gorgeous not-quite Native American falconer who is one with his owl. He's also played by Adrian Pasdar, he who gives all those blessed with sight a serious boner. (Guys and girls.) He decides to steal the sphere -for some reason- and runs away.

Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you.

The movie already feels like it is running at a fairly fast pace, though a lot of time is spend watching the characters fuck around, but it is here that the story telling becomes noticeably choppy. We the audience know that Darstar stole the sphere, and it is conceivable that Daniel will go after it as he has a connection with it. But, we never see the Solarbabies find out about the theft, nor do we see Daniel leaving. The girl, Terra, tells the leader, Jason, that Daniel has gone after the sphere and the Solarbabies decide to go skating after him. It feels very rushed, like a lot got left on the cutting room floor. I felt like I was being told to "MOVE MOVE MOVE" by a gruff Colonel Director who was really eager to get on with it.

What follows is a montage of skating and running away from the police, complete with terrible '80's music and impossible stunts. The Solarbabies were standing in the danger zone, but love just wouldn't leave them to ever stand alone. How'd they end up in Danger Zone anyway? Doesn't that highway have signs? At one point, the kids launch themselves over a huge crevice, like twenty frikin' feet, with just the power of love and their sweet ass wheels.

The jump in Speed is more believable.

We find out, through a couple of slaughters and scenes of horrific torture, that the bad guys want to destroy the sphere for some reason. The heroes just want to keep the sphere away from them because, well, I guess it wouldn't be cool if it was destroyed. I said "for some reason" and "I guess" because, really, we never really find out what the sphere really does (besides magic things).

At the end of the movie, it destroys the dam that holds in all the water, creates a thunderstorm and then goes back to space. The breaking of the dam gives everyone free water. But, really, an extraterrestrial being came from space to free water for some humans living in a specific region on Earth? Did it jumpstart Earth's natural processes in order to get things growing again? Is it from a race that just really hates evil monopolies of life sustaining substances? Is it Jesus? We never really find out.

Solarbabies is an interesting, if flawed, ride through 1980's apocalyptic fiction. There are many things I found laudable, but also many things I found laughable to the point of being awful. The laudable? The sets are cool. Tiretown had this awesome Mad Max crossed with a carnival thing going on that I found appealing. I was compelled by the sentient, alien sphere and what it was. (Though, we disappointingly never really find out its purpose.) Also, the effects are rather well done for the time period.

The back story was interesting, with the fascist police state fighting with people called Eco Warriors and then stealing their children to be indoctrinated in prison-schools. Unfortunately, a lot intriguing ideas (more than I can cover here) have been reduced to half-baked threads that don't go anywhere. The film seems to have been reduced to bare bones, and that's a shame. And, the roller skating. It's just awkwardly shoved in there, like they needed something to appeal to kids. The roller skating scenes could have been better spent filling out the more interesting plot points.

This movie is much better than its title and premise suggest, but overall, disappointing. As a big fan of post apocalyptic movies and fiction, I think they often tend to try to do too much and end up having to skim off the basics in order to even have a viable movie. Solarbabies is certainly guilty of this. We are treated to too many interesting concepts that can never be fully explored within the time constraints. And, then, we waste time with fucking Lacrosse on skates.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Glowing Extraterrestrial Balls

Titanic II (2010)

2010-09-22T22:23:00.002-05:00

Best bad quote: "Airplanes are big, babe. Trains are big. This? This is monumental."

The Asylum sometimes puts out some pretty good films. I mean, pretty good as long as you think of them in the context of what they are: direct to DVD, cheap schlock made solely for raking in cash. When The Asylum does good, sometimes their films are actually decent movies, sometimes their films are just mindless fun, and, sometimes, their films are just hilariously bad. And, a lot of the time, unfortunately, their lowest common denominator films are just plain boring.

"Titanic II" is less electric boogaloo and more a bland Saturday afternoon film perfect for filling up time slots on SyFy. I find it hard to believe that you could take this ludicrous premise and make it bland, but it happened. In the film, someone with too much money and too little grey matter commissions a replica of the Titanic, calls it Titanic II, and has it set sail on the exact date the original Titanic did. That someone would tempt fate that casually is inherently hilarious. However, the rest of the film's mediocrity really overwhelms that hysterical nugget of idiocy.

This surely will not end in tragedy.

The first three minutes of the film consists of some guy preparing for and then surfing a wave caused by a glacier falling into the ocean. You might wonder, as I did, if this has anything to do with the story. Surprisingly, it does. You see, the Titanic II's downfall this time is not just caused by one man's hubris and a glacier. It's global warming and two huge chunks of glacier that fall into the ocean. The first causes icebergs to smash into the ship, piercing the hull. And, just to add insult to injury, the second wave wipes out all the passengers who managed to escape via lifeboat and turns the ship over. The Titanic II's maiden voyage was even more of a clusterfuck than its predecessor's.

The "love-story" in this film involves the young-ish playboy who commissioned the ship and his ex-girlfriend, a nurse that he hired to work on the ship. Once the four women he showed up with die (or are rescued via helicopter), he and his ex make amends while frantically attempting to escape the sinking ship. As seen in the titanic piece of shit that was 2012, imminent death plus conveniently dead current love interest equals reconciliation for ex lovers. Let's hope that the next time my heart is broken by some douchebag, a disaster will soon be on the horizon to bring us back together.

I appreciate that though The Asylum just makes films just for the money, films that essentially rip off Hollywood, occasionally their films skew enough from Hollywood to make them worth watching. They skew from Hollywood not only in the sense that the films are lower budget, B to Z grade films, but also in the sense that they do take some risks that we don't usually see in the typical Blockbusters.

I say usually, because in this case, the male love interest dies saving the female's life, just like in Titanic. In most insipid movies like Titanic II, though, your possession of a love interest means you'll likely live if they live. I mean, who wants to survive a disaster if you've got no one to bone afterward? So, in this case, the love interests' death is a bit of a surprise. This isn't the "What if the movie Titanic had a happier ending?" that is expected.

And really, that's all there is to say about the film. It's just bland. The CGI is bad, the character's are unlikable and the story is uninspired. I really wish the "Titanic II" could have been better, but The Asylum really failed this time. Despite a great title that is just begging to become a classic piece of B movie trashy fun, Titanic II turns out to be one of The Asylum's more forgettable films.

Rating: 2 Sets of Arm Candy out of 5

Skinned Deep (2004)

2010-09-19T01:52:00.000-05:00

Best bad quote: "I didn't know if you were hungry, so I brought you some soup and money."

A vacationing family get a flat tire and rely on the kindness of a weird old woman at a local rest stop. And, because the family have never seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they find themselves brutally and hilariously murdered by a strange set of monstrous siblings and their grandma-mother, Granny, after being invited to a dinner of raw flesh served on cardboard. There's nothing really interesting about the human family except that they are ridiculously stupid and annoying. Oh, and their acting is atrocious, but in a hilarious way. The mother, father and brother are, as I've said, thankfully, brutally and deliciously slain very early on. However, the "better actress," moody teenaged Tina, is kept alive because the sensitive sibling, Brain, wants to keep her. He's called Brain because he has a huge, grotesque exposed brain, often covered by a disgusting burlap sack. Despite his absolute filthiness and the murderous tendencies that run in his family, Brain is very sweet and just wants Tina to love him.

Just look at that face. What's not to love?

Of course, because all homicidal families consist of radically different personalities, Brain's two brothers are completely different from him. First, there is Surgeon General. He's the bad ass motherfucker you see on the box art with the huge metal jaws. He does most of the killing in the family, though, disappointingly, not with his jaws. He does have a small hand held blade that's good for slicing throats and dicing stupid people. He slices Tina's little brother completely in half, for fuck's sake. Then, there's the veteran of hilariously bad movies himself, Warwick Davis. In Skinned Deep he plays an albino (or flour covered, I'm not quite sure which) twitchy, insane imp called Plates. On his back he wears a spring loaded basket of, you guessed it, plates and throws them at his enemies while laughing manically. He only actually kills one person this way, but it's the murderous intent that counts!

No! Not the plates! Not the PLATES!

If the wacky homicidal characters don't have you interested yet, then what the hell is wrong with you? Ahem, I mean, then just wait! It gets more ridiculous. With Tina imprisoned in a room plastered floor to ceiling with newspaper, Granny gets back to running her rest stop diner, where a group of geriatric bikers called the Ancient Ones stop for coffee. The leader of the pack stays behind in order to get some sweet grandma lovin,' but is quickly slain when Tina, who has escaped, begs for help. When their leader doesn't show up, the Ancient Ones go back only to discover his blood soaked jacket. Of course, this means war. The battle comes later, though.

In the mean time, Tina and Brain go on date! Brain dons a Kindergartener's construction paper and plastic bead Indian headdress and takes Tina for a ride on his motorcycle. While on their picnic Brain and Tina have a serious conversation about Brain's daddy issues with his Creator and Brain fantasizes that he were normal. Everyone wants to run down the streets of New York completely naked with their penis flopping about, right?

Don't laugh. He takes Arts and Crafts very seriously.

The next day Tina and Brain are wed in beautiful ceremony where several fat rednecks are slaughtered by Surgeon General and Plates waxes poetic about his love of plates. The ceremony culminates with Surgeon General and Plates forcing Tina to feed one of the rednecks sand until he dies. Pitiful Brain begs them not to make her do it because she is innocent, but the redneck just dies too darn fast for them to have a good conversation about it.

Look, I said don't laugh.

Luckily for Tina, Brain is a sweet boy and he decides to let her trauma subside instead of consummating their marriage the same night. What Brain doesn't know, however, that Tina's first kill has awakened an angry beast inside her- a beast that is thirsty for blood and vengeance. Brain comes to apologize to Tina and she tries to convince him to run away with her. Because he is basically a dweeby, filthy human with a huge brain and a homicidal family, he understandably declines. So, in the saddest and most hilarious scene ever, she rips open his head and he dies horribly, writhing on the floor. As he dies, the contents of his brain, wooden children's blocks covered in green goo, spill out and spell "LOVE." Tina stomps the blocks and when she lifts her foot, they spell "HATE." Harsh, man.

As Tina escapes into the bowels of the house, the Ancient Ones show up to wreak some vengeance of their own. One by one each member of the family, including the mysterious Creator- a headless, oily body builder with a loincloth labeled "DYNO-MITE!!" - meet their well-deserved fates in horrible, horrific and hilarious ways. The film even has a twist ending in store for poor Tina, who escapes to the local Sherriff's office. Well, it's a twist for anyone who doesn't know anything about horror movies, but still.

I did say horrifying.

When I first saw this movie in 2005 I was just getting into B-movies. Back then, I had a lot of fun with it. But, five years and many viewings later, I can honestly say that this is my favorite "bad" movie. Everything about this movie is hilarious, from the acting that's so bad it almost seems intentional to the absolutely balls out absurdity of the story. Skinned Deep is the epitome of the hilariously bad movie, or so-bad-it's-good movie, that we, as bad movie lovers hope to be blessed with when we put a new film into our DVD player.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Strangled Cats

Bonus picture:

Skeleton Key 2: 667 Neighbor of the Beast (2008)

2010-09-15T20:54:00.002-05:00

Best Bad Quote: "This is hot sauce. And you'll dip your balls in it."

Unbeknownst to me as I began my journey into the madness that is Skeleton Key 2, this was not the sequel to the 2005 Kate Hudson film The Skeleton Key. It took me about a minute to realize that I'd made a very grave mistake. I felt fear grip me as I discovered that this was not a terrible direct-to-DVD sequel capitalizing on a decent, if a bit insubstantial, horror film.

Skeleton Key 2 is a terrible, independent micro budget horror spoof comedy. Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with independent, micro budgeted films. No, the key words here are horror spoof comedy, a trifecta of words that, if uttered together, automatically create a vortex of unfunny suck that threaten those who watch a film with those descriptors with permanent insanity.

Skeleton Key 2 is a film within a film. You, yes you, have been tied up and forced by a prancing, squealing man-child to watch Skeleton Key 2. In this moment you have no mouth and you feel you must scream. But, you have a hand, right? You can turn off the movie. No, you can't. You can't turn away from the horror before you. It's the best and most terrible train wreck you will ever see. And, you must watch.

Your descent into madness continues as the hero, Howard (writer/director John Johnson), explains to you (yes, you!) that he is a new man. Because he wears a tie. It's like watching an unfunny sketch comedy show. You can't laugh, because it's so painfully not funny. However, you can't laugh at the awfulness of it either because it's not absurd enough. So, you cry. I did.

Nothing in the film makes sense. It randomly rips off Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, classic video games and TROLL 2. Though I never figured out what was really going on in the film, I do know that Howard had been summoned to the infamous town of Nilbog to rescue his attractive Indian friend, Cornelius. Nilbog might be goblin spelled backward, but in Skeleton Key 2 Nilbog is overrun with Smurf-faced zombies. Along the way, Howard is terrorized by a leprechaun, shadowed by a Hulk-ian demon, and becomes a participant of several orgies. In one scene, two women standing behind old washing machines are milked and the black woman produces chocolate milk. Really.

At one point, you manage to change the channel to a USA Up All Night type show called Cinema Insomnia while your man-child kidnapper is occupied. The host of the show lampoons Skeleton Key 2 with a scathingly accurate review saying it's a good thing for director/writer John Johnson that other people made movies with good ideas in them or he wouldn't have been able to make Skeleton Key 2 at all.

That John Johnson includes this is a real kick in the gut. Not only are you watching a movie that is pure, undiluted excrement, but then John Johnson reminds you that it is you who is the fool, not him. He made this filth, not caring if it were good, or even entertaining, and released it onto the unsuspecting world. And now you've wasted two hours (yes, two hours!) of your life not being able to turn away, slowly feeling as if you have descended into madness. Surely something could not be this bad? But it is, it truly is. Skeleton Key 2 is the worst movie I have ever seen.

Rating: 0 out of 5 Demons Wearing Pink Foam Cowboy Hats

See this review also at badmovienite.com. Link.

The Hunt (2006)

2009-12-11T13:34:00.002-06:00

Thanks for spoiling the movie. Assholes. See the alien face on the box? There's the movie; it's aliens. I hate when movies spoil themselves. Like Yor: The Hunter from the Future. Spoiler in the fucking title of the movie and on the box art too.

He's not really a caveman , he's... Blast Hardcheese!

This movie wasn't quite sure what it wanted to be. It claims to be "an alarmingly frightening film that combines horrific elements of The Blair Witch Project and Predator." What "horrific elements?" The part where people bitch and screw around in the woods for hours and the fact that there are aliens? This movie could have benefited from some "GET TO DA CHOPPAH!" There are multiple first-person POV cameras, which end up being a bit stupid and confusing. Then, in addition to the first-person POV's, there's also a third-person POV for the audience. So, we get to see the cameraman filming his Blair Witch-ian POV as well seeing him doing in third person. Well, that's okay if this was supposed to be a sort of The Fourth Kind reenactment set side-by-side to real footage. Except, it's not a reenactment of any kind; it's the director's POV. "We can't have all first person footage," he probably said. "That's a rip-off of The Blair Witch Project. But, we can't have it just like a regular movie either. That's boring!" So, he combined the two. All these POV's STILL don't make the movie interesting.

The audience, or at least the observant members of it, already know the ending. So, the film has to interest or provide a bit of suspense to keep us watching. It doesn't do this either. Hunter Dad is going to make an educational (?) hunting video to distribute at Wal-Mart. I'm not sure if he has some sort of contract with Wal-Mart or he's just hoping they are in need of some more crap to add to their bargain bin. He gets his wife's ex-husband to invest in his project after showing him his super-duper amazingly fantastic new invention: a bicycle helmet with a camera attached. Add a flashlight on it and he could hunt in caves! Amazing! Hunter Dad and Wife hire Surly Cameraman to film their expedition, but Wife is a bitch and immediately has a problem with him even though he hasn't shown his Surly side yet. They talk shit about him while he eavesdrops with his camera audio equipment. Later, he gets drunk and breaks the fourth wall while bad-mouthing everyone alone in his basement. There's also son of Wife, Wimpy Kid. He's wimpy because he wears glasses. He doesn't really want to go hunting with his step-dad, but, unfortunately for Wimpy Kid, Hunter Dad only had enough funds to make a bike helmet camera to fit kids. Oh, and he can't afford a pack mule either, so Wimpy Kid gets to carry all their shit.

They take off to the woods, but on the way stop at a diner to order PANCAKES! from a mentally challenged guy. Guy talks ominously about the local hunting grounds, but I kind of lost consciousness at this point from humming dueling banjos so furiously. When I woke up they were being menaced by another "special" local at the hunting grounds. Did I mention the third first-person POV yet? Well, this movie just likes to spoil itself so much that all these hunting scenes are inter-cut with scenes of Wife's ex-husband and his wife searching for the group. These two handle the third first-person camera, saying things like "We are making this tape so when we find you, you can watch this later and see how we did it." Hey, after you get over your frightening experience of being lost in the woods let's watch the tape I made about rescuing you. Later, in these scenes but before anything interesting has happened in the hunting scenes, the kid and the other POV tapes are found and the search is called off. The couple then goes around filming people who may have been involved in the disappearance (the two locals) in some sort of amateur investigation because they think there is some sort of conspiracy. However, WE don't know there is supposed to be some sort of conspiracy because the hunting scenes haven't gotten there yet.

In the hunting scenes, Hunter Dad and Surly Cameraman follow John Cusack's example of what to do when you are with your kids and see an ominous fence that screams "No trespassing." They trespass under (a hole has been dug) the fence with BARBED WIRE FACING IN (to keep something inside! Oh no!) to see if there are more deer to shoot for their video. They screw around in the woods, trying to shoot a deer and failing. At one point the pack mule Wimpy Kid tumbles down a hill with exposed tree roots sticking out and no one seems to really give a shit apart from "Hey, don't fuck up our stuff!" Now, the film is trying to make Surly Cameraman out to be an asshole, but Hunter Dad is supposed to be a good guy. I'm not saying he should coddle the little snot, but he's already carrying all your shit on a hunting trip he didn't care to be a part of where you dragged him into an area that just screamed danger. You can at least help him back up the hill. Hunter Dad makes up for his inadequacies by giving the kid a nuclear-powered compass. Maybe the dad thought he was being cute or something, but I'm pretty sure compasses are magnets and have no reason to be nuclear-powered. It's obviously not nuclear-powered, but a regular magnetic compass, when then find themselves in a false North that causes the needle to go all wonky. The area looks like a baby Stonehenge with bidets instead of stones and piles of fire ant killer.

The group decides they should get out of there because maybe that "No trespassing" sign did have a point. They find a campground and a prison issue slipper and really start to get freaked that maybe there is an escaped prisoner or something, but decide to stay overnight instead of getting the fuck out of there. They have flashlights, why not just keep going? Surly Cameraman is surly and drinks from a small flask for over two hours. I forgot to mention that this movie really likes timestamps. Every ten minutes we get a tap-tap-tap timestamp telling us the date (including the day) and the time. The movie takes place mostly during one day so it gets a little redundant to see: OCTOBER 16, SATURDAY 10:22 AM … OCTOBER 16, SATURDAY 10:34 AM typed out.

Then Surly Cameraman takes off with his camera for a little Blair Witch running through the woods shaky cam. I don't know why he ran off though. Maybe he heard the vehicles coming for Hunter Dad and kid, though that happens some time later. Everyone runs off, but meets up again at bidet Stonehenge where Menacing Local # 2 tells them he's sorry but he has to do this but he's glad they have cameras blah blah. It's obvious the government is in on it. Menacing Local # 2 dumps deer piss on Wimpy Kid and tells him to run off with the tapes. He falls down and his camera helmet comes off and somehow gets turned around so we can see the kid's face in a snotty nose "I'm so scared right now" scene. FINALLY the aliens show up and kill the adults, but I guess they don't like deer and just sniff the kid with their fingers. The aliens are actually kind of cool, but it was completely unnecessary to show them in as much detail as the movie did. I think it's scarier not to show them.

Wife's ex-husband has the tapes and has been studying them. In a non sequitur conversation with his wife about how the maid Conchita must have stopped being lazy and started really cleaning he realizes that there's no way a woman with a Hispanic sounding name would really do her job! The government has broken in and cleaned his house and bugged him! If the government broke in and trashed his house to get the tapes, I would think they would just make it look like a robbery rather than wasting time cleaning. So, Wife's ex-husband GOES TO THE GOVERNMENT with a file o' proof complete with a perfect picture of one of the aliens. I think the picture would have been enough, and more effective than the other scene where everyone gets killed. The government agent at the UFO Bureau says he'll help, but shreds that shit as soon as the dude walks out. Then, he and his wife die due to complications from a car accident.

Overall, it's a fairly inoffensive movie and a mediocre fake documentary. It's thankfully not as over the top with its "THIS SHIT IS SO REAL AND BASED ON A TRUE STORY!" like The Fourth Kind was. It's poorly thought out and can't quite decide if it wants to be a first-person POV movie or a regular third-person POV movie. The two POV's don't mesh well and hinder the story telling. The hunt scenes and the search scenes with Wife's ex don't mesh either. The search scenes end up being pretty pointless. They could have told the story linearly, had the kid and tapes found, and then had Wife's ex-husband go to the government with his proof. Instead we get this cutting back and forth that ends up spoiling any surprises the hunt scenes had to offer. Not that the whole fucking movie wasn't spoiled already by the box art.

Haunted Boat

2009-10-08T14:28:00.003-05:00

With such a generic title, you'd think this movie could at least deliver what the title suggests? A boat that's haunted can't be so hard, can it? Ghost Ship did it fairly well, after all. So, with a movie called Haunted Boat, all I ask is for a boat (check) and some sort of haunting. And, this is where the movie fails spectacularly.

The plot seems straight forward at first. Six party-loving teenage twits board a boat that was gifted to one of them as a birthday present and head to Catalina to party some more. The party loving teens get stalked/killed/haunted/sick/stupid is a pretty standard starting point in horror movie plots, albeit one beaten so thin that I can't imagine a good movie with that plot coming out any time soon. Our Haunted Boat teens either have great fake ID's, or they know the right people, because they are clubbing in the first scene and getting completely hammered. Or, they actually supposed to be over 21, as they look, and the writers can't even get their characters straight.

As for the characters, these are as paper-thin as the plot (another failure of modern horror). There's the insipid brunette lovelorn naive girl. There's the inane sexy, take charge guy. This is guy Naïve Girl has a crush on and they share some sort of "Why didn't we ever get together?" moment at the beginning. There's the vacuous, bitchy blond. She's the brunette's best friend, but they hate each other throughout the whole movie. There's the other vacuous blond, but this one is sexy and possibly Australian (or has cotton in her mouth, I couldn't tell). Then, there's Kevin, the owner of the boat and birthday boy. He's a stoner, with a bad heart and used to be on the swim team. His friends think he retarded. Yes, he dies first. And lastly, there's the other vapid guy who does nothing except knowing "everything about boats." He knew so much about boats that he didn't check to see if it had a working radio first. As with most ridiculous movies with moronic characters, the characters names are not really worth remembering.

The director first tries to introduce you to the fact that this boat is haunted by flashing something on screen in the dark so fast you barely register that it happened. I hate these false "jump" scares in place of real horror because they are incredibly stupid, but the scare tactic happened so fast in this case that I was mostly left mildly confused. Was it something wrong with the film? The editing? Was it a subliminal message? I had to rewind it and single-frame step my DVD player to see what I was supposed to be scared of. Eh. It was some sort of irritated looking albino.

This subliminal ad brought to you by Stay Puft marshmallows.

Our party-loving teens clean up their party boat so they can trash it again when they party that night. Did I mention they like to party? They get wasted and play strip truth-or-take–a-shot. Naïve girl gets all jealous that Take Charge Guy wants to engage in a boring soft core porn scene with Australian girl and huffs out of the cramped cabin into the night where nothing happens. The kids wake up in the morning to discover that somehow they've dropped anchor over night and are dead in the water, despite the Master Boater assuring them he left the boat on full-throttle or whatever all night before he passed out. Luckily Kevin shows up to entice them into smoking some "doobage" (he seriously says that) and they forget all about their problems. Oh, never mind. They take the opportunity to set up the plot by explaining all the ways they are afraid to die. The writer failed Writing Interesting Exposition class in school, I see.

Remember how much everyone bitched that the talking scenes in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof were boring and pointless? Tarantino's scenes served a basic purpose at least, despite what you think of them; they were a throwback, or homage, to '70's Grindhouse flicks. The talking scenes (and there are two notable ones) in Haunted Boat serve no purpose but to waste time. The characters don't really get killed by a supernatural force exploiting their fears because the end of the movie negates everything that had just happened in the film. And, if we exclude the end of the film, only one of the characters, Kevin, sort of gets killed by his fear, but there is not a supernatural force that looms over his death.

Let me explain: After the doobage smoking comes to a close, the Take Charge Guy and the cotton mouthed Australian retreat to engage in some sexy times while the rest of the dullards decide work on their skin cancer and swim. The Blonde Bitch mildly teases Kevin into doing an unnecessary back flip into the ocean right after he revealed that he was afraid of having a heart attack and drowning. So, what happens? He has a heart attack and drowns, or is possibly eaten by a poorly rendered blind CGI shark that bashes its head on the camera resulting in an explosion of blood. Of course, it takes a minute for anyone to try and save Kevin (who is physically smaller than all the girls, I might add) because they have to get Take Charge Guy to save Kevin for some reason. The two blondes live up to their hair color stereotype when they try to use their cell phones to call for help and seem surprised that they can't connect to those buoy cell phone towers in the Pacific.

So, Kevin's dead and the kids are lost with no radio and the engine has stopped and… hey, let's toke and tell ghost stories. There are really no words that can explain how stupid and pointless this scene is, but I'll try. First, THESE STORIES HAVE NO BEARING ON THE PLOT WHATSOEVER. The ghosts in them don't manifest to haunt them later. The encounters with ghosts have not induced any character development, nor does telling the stories induce development of any sort in anything. Second, the ghost stories these idiots tell are about as haunted as this haunted boat gets, besides the Albino face that flashes almost subliminally in the scene every once in awhile. That's right. The most haunted this Haunted Boat gets is when Naïve Girl and Bitchy Blonde tell stupid stories about the one time one saw an Amish guy on a elevator and the other was hit on by the whisper of a guy that had gotten pegged by a car earlier in the day. The Australian girl tells some fucked up horror version of Snow White and Rose Red as if the story is supposed to be true. If you are going to tell Grimm fairytales, you don't have to horror-ize them to make the scary and fucked up; the guys wrote 'em like that already. Also, these stories aren't scary in any sense of the word except maybe scary bad.

After this boring detour of the main story the Australian chick decides to add some life-and-death tension by going and having a seizure. The other characters help her by failing CPR 101 by holding her down, trying to prevent her from swallowing her tongue by putting something in her mouth (swallowing your tongue cannot happen and don't put things in the person's mouth) and not turning her head after she vomits. (Choking on your own vomit would suck. Don't let this happen to a person having a seizure by turning them to the left side after the seizure ends.) . Oh, and they gave her Valium (pronounced "volume" for some reason). The Australian chick goes into a sort of coma after this, apparently because her friends know absolutely nothing about how the body works or very basic medical care.

Take Charge Guy and Master Boater decide their best option is to go out into the fog in the middle of the ocean and try to find a doctor. You know, those roving, seafaring doctors that open their practices out in the middle of the sea to help cure the Stupid Scurvy often developed by dumb teens in crappy horror movies. While the guys are drifting around in their dinghy another guy who sort of looks like the subliminal albino shows up to freak out the Blonde Bitch. He offers to help their sort of comatose Australian friend while she rants and raves about bugs on her and something in her ear.

If, at this point, you care to recall the beginning of the movie, you might remember that her fear is being eaten by bugs. Well, she doesn't really get eaten by bugs, nor is she really tortured by them. You might expect in movie that has a catch saying that each character "must face the terror of the one thing he fears most in the world, and each must answer to a fate of his own making," that there will be bugs driving her crazy the rest of the movie and subsequently kill her. Actually, the creepy albino pulls a bug out her ear and she vomits slugs Ron Weasley style and then goes back to sleep. Blonde Bitch doesn't like the creepy guy and threatens to kill him until he gets off their boat. So, he leaves. Yeah, he just leaves. That's It. The guy they've been sort of setting up to be out freaky Albino ghost killer just says, "Okay. I'm gone."

After that, Take Charge Guy and Master Boater come back but say absolutely nothing about their hunt for a seafaring doctor despite Naïve Girl's constant chattering and play-by-play of what just happened. The guys act sort of catatonic until Naïve Girl and Blonde Bitch decide to go to bed, leaving the guys sitting at a table having said absolutely nothing since they got back. I guess it's not a big deal that the guys you sent for help come back as vegetables. So, the guys disappear into a fog and leave behind the image of a melting Kabuki face.

In the morning, the Blonde Bitch goes into the bathroom and gets electrocuted by some exposed wires. This is death is rendered even more idiotic by the fact that Blond Bitch's fear was to be brutally killed by a stranger. So, how is her fear realized and her fate made by being electrocuted? Naïve Girl wakes up and freaks out until she finds a black cat in the cabin and cuddles with it all night until the real, less foggy guys show up. You read that right. The real guys show up, but then the girls disappear leaving Take Charge Guy alone. Take Charge Guy is then attacked by CGI-ish version himself. I think. His fear was to be killed by someone close to him, and there is no one closer to you than yourself! Except, he wasn't really attacked by himself because it was all a dream of Naïve Girl's.

There are several sequences in this part dreamed by several of the characters and I can't really remember the point of them or the order, but the final sequence is presumable not a dream and thus is the only one that matters. Naïve Girl wakes up the morning after their first drunken party and discovers that everything that had just happened was all a dream and her friends have died of drug overdoses. I think. They show track marks on one of the girl's arms, so I think this is the point the movie is trying to make. Naïve girl's fear is being alone, so she promptly freaks out and hangs herself off the side of the boat. Luckily some guys spot her and save her.

And, here comes the clincher! She was alone on the boat the WHOLE TIME! Everything was dream and a fantasy! The whole thing! The harbor master says in a voice over that he told her not to take the boat alone! Wow! What a twist, huh? And, for an even better twist, Naïve Girl goes to the harbor, sees her nonexistent friends taking the boat out and goes with them where they disappear into the horizon. Wow. That's better than all the M. Night Shyamalan twists put together. The whole, "haunted by their own fears" thing was all just a dream of Naïve Girl's and thus the whole movie is rendered moot. I think it's pretty damn amazing to invalidate your whole movie by trying to be too clever with your twists.

Luckily, my viewing of Haunted Boat was just a dream, so I suffer no ill effects from its lack of coherent plot and baffling dialogue, directing and acting. Though, when I woke up this morning I had a desire to smoke some doobage… doh!

Bonus: Most Idiotic Moment

The Naive Girl spots a very dead canary that Master Boater had been looking at on deck. She says in the most insipid voice. "Oh! What a pretty bird! Is it sick?" And, Master Boater says flatly, "It's dead." And she looks surprised. Well, as surprised as the actress can look.

Hot Boyz

2009-08-21T16:12:00.000-05:00

This movie started out as a piece about racial injustice and corruption in the American criminal justice system. It seemed a noble effort to highlight a serious topic while utilizing an "urban" tone by casting rap artists. And, by noble effort, I mean a piece of poorly written, confusing, and nonsensical dreck. The only reason I watched this is because I was on a C. Thomas Howell kick. You may remember him as Ponyboy in movie The Outsiders. However, the movie barely features him at all.

I think the director/writer wanted to make a movie about rappers shooting up clubs and murdering countless innocent bystanders, banging chicks and swimming in bling Scrooge McDuck style. But, then, the producer said, "You know, we need a sad story to give your main character motivation to turn into an awesome gangster. People will love him if they know he has a heart wrenching past behind his murderous and asinine antics." That's where you get the first half and a bit of this awful film.

Stupidly named Kool is hooked up with a hot high school grad with a promising future. (Did you know Kool is Silkk the Shocker? Bet you didn't, not the way they plastered it all over the credits.) He's painfully uncool despite his recent ascension to a black belt in some vague martial art that comes in handy about one time in the film. Having him be a black belt in this movie is like giving the Terminator awesome flower arranging skills and having terrible scenes with his flower arranging mentor. Kool being a black belt has no bearing on the plot.

LaShawna’s, Kool’s girlfriend, mother hates him because he’s a want-to-be rapper and he hangs out with Snoop Dogg… or something. Despite this, LaShawna makes sweet love to Kool and then he lets her walk home in the ghetto at night. What a great boyfriend! Why does her mom hate him? On her walk of shame home, LaShawna comes across a man being shot and attempts to help him. The man is a cop and is being shot by another cop for some reason. I think it’s just because he has to play victim to the white devil corrupt cops, but I’m not sure. LaShawna panics when the police arrive and she runs home. She is promptly arrested and booked for murder despite the fact that she is the least likely candidate to have committed the murder other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So, now, for some reason, Kool must hook up with the King of Insanity, Gary Busey, and through corrupt means catch a slightly menacing neighborhood Mack Daddy to clear LaShawna. I liked how this was such a black-and-white case. LaShawna was there so they charged her right away even though the lead detective knew pretty well she wasn’t involved at all. There’s really no evidence that she did anything. Her incarceration is just a plot convenience to get Kool angry so he can be a cool gangster later.

Kool goes to a club to meet Mack Daddy. Here he uses his martial arts skills here to impress Mack Daddy and eventually tricks him into being arrested. However, the other corrupt white devil detective gets access to LaShawna and beats the fetus out her. Oh, I didn’t mention she was pregnant!?! She doesn’t mention this to her baby daddy either until she’s on her death bed. Excuse me while I stifle a sardonic giggle. Why no one wondered why she was practically dead after talking to Detective White Devil still puzzles me. And on the day she was supposed to get out of jail too! What a tragedy.

Detective White Devil decides that killing a girl who knew absolutely nothing about his vague crime was not enough, so he decides to perform a drive-by AT HER FUNERAL and shoot up her family and friends. At her funeral! I mean, there are bad cops, and then there are BAD cops. Kool steals a hearse and a boring chase scene ensues ending with a crispy Detective White Devil when his van explodes. (What? No making bacon jokes? A goofy joke like that might have saved this movie. Maybe.)

End of movie, right? WRONG! Now we are treated to Kool and his gang of Hot Boyz (the z makes it edgy, you know) getting his revenge on the world by shooting up casino goers and stealing stuff.( I’m almost convinced that the club/casino shooting scene is ripped straight from another C. Thomas Howell paycheck called “The Sweeper.”) He and his gang also break into Gary Busey's house and steal his weapons. This a great scene because of Gary Busey's queer little "Heey!" before he answers the door. See the scene here.

Everyone is looking for the gang, yet, no wonders why Kool can suddenly afford a mansion with basketball court. ‘Cause, you know, black people looooove basketball. Anyway, his gang gets cornered and they all die in an epic (read: boring) shootout. And Kool crashes his car into the water and escapes with his life. He is convicted and sentenced for his mayhem and murder, but is released after five years on a technicality. I guess you are supposed to feel triumphant for him because he stuck it to the man and did not have to do any time for his egregious transgressions. But, really, five years!?!

This was an awful movie with no direction, little or no acting, and a poor story. You’d be better off putting your balls in a vice rather than watch this. At least putting your balls in a vice wouldn’t be as painful.