Slaughterhouse

This week's SAW is a classic example of late-'80's slasher fun...I hope. I saw it back when it went to video, and really only remember bits and pieces of the film. Hopefully, it has some interesting kills to keep me watching. Oh yeah, and this is my usual SPOILER warning, in case you didn't know that you were reading a blog where some guy writes down everything as it happens onscreen. That being said, let's watch Slaughterhouse!

Okay, so the movie begins with a couple in a car, looking for a good make-out spot. Their names are Dave and Sally: he's a deputy, and she's his girlfriend. Dave has driven her to a prime location for necking, only to find a couple of vehicles have arrived before them. According to Deputy Dave, the jeep belongs to a guy named Skip, and there's a Mustang that belongs to another teen named Kevin.

Sally wants to get right down to business, but Dave is suspicious about the 2 cars being unoccupied, and declares that he'd rather check them out first. He pulls the car up to the vehicles, and almost immediately, he and Sally can see and hear a couple of teens running and screaming in the distance. When another guy sprawls out over the windshield, it turns out to be a prank. 6 "teens" emerge from the dark, claiming that they're rehearsing for some kind of amateur horror film. School's out, so they're using the free time to apparently frighten local lawmen.

There's Liz, a frizzy-haired brunette, who also happens to be the budding filmmaker of the group; Kevin, who sort of resembles a bargain-basement Doug Flutie; Skip, a very goofy, laid-back dude; Annie, another brunette who is cuter than the square-jawed Liz; and others, who apparently weren't named yet in the script. (Okay, I cheated and found out that the 3rd guy is named Buzz. Whoopie.)

Anyway, Kevin(or maybe Skip?) and his girlfriend, Annie(?), decide to stay behind at the old, abandoned-looking pig farm(I wish I were joking...), while the others drive away. They play the world's shortest game of hide 'n' seek(and he keeps saying "Bobo!" over and over again(maybe he was a fan of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 during its run on SyFy), then they find an enclosure filled with squealing pigs.

John Doe gets his hands on a shovel, and decides that it would be fun to agitate the pigs by striking the chain-link fence with the shovel. The sound not only gets the pigs upset, it also catches the attention of an unseen stalker.

The person uses a meat cleaver to cut a slice out of John Doe's face, then goes after Jane Doe. She climbs aboard an abandoned-looking bus, and then we get our first look at the killer...he's a beefy guy in overalls, with a beard and long, greasy hair. Oh, and he can't speak, so he makes grunts and squeals, like a pig. Yeesh. Villain, I dub thee "Porky". Live with it. Even if I find out his name, he's Porky.

Anyway, the bus. Porky starts to swing his weapon around at random, breaking windows and shit. Then Jane Doe backs herself into a corner, where Porky finally puts her out of my misery. Off-screen. Yup, all we get is some blood splashing one of the windows.

Then the opening credits start up, over footage of pigs being raised and slaughtered. Oh, and the title theme sounds like a cheesy Vegas magician's theme. Movie, you have bamboozled me.

After this bizarre credit sequence, a food/health inspector makes his way around numerous dead pigs, then speaks to the man in charge. Oops, no...the "inspector" was just a supervisor-type named Tom, who moved up in rank to become the company lawyer. He meets up with his boss, Harold, and they discuss buying a pig farm off of a crazy farmer and his son, with the highly improbable surname of Bacon. Yeesh. Who's the hero, HAM Solo?

The sheriff is introduced, after nearly crashing into Skip's jeep. He goes joyriding with his girlfriend, then almost kills an old fogey. For a movie this cheesy, I think that's as close as we're going to get to an "action" scene. Feel my pain, people!

Tom and Harold are also driving around, heading to the Bacon property. They're hoping that the old coot will accept an offer for his property, even though he's been resistant to the idea every other time they've spoken to him. They meet up with the sheriff on the way.

When they arrive, the farm already looks deserted. They find a wind chime made out of pig bones, and find animal carcasses everywhere. Oh, and the address of the property? Slaughterhouse Road. Yeah, that sounds like a safe neighborhood.

The 3 men knock at Lester Bacon's front door, and are greeted by the son, who is squealing at the window. As expected, Papa Bacon refuses to sell his property, so the sheriff forecloses on his land, and tells Lester that he has 30 days to leave. Porky just watches the proceedings and oinks from his perch at a window.

After the sheriff posts the eviction notice, we learn a few new details about the Bacon clan. First, that their pig farm used to be massive, and not in the decrepit state it's in now. Also, that Porky is not the only son Lester had. No one seems to know what became of the other son, though...I think I smell a sequel! Or maybe that's just all the pigshit.

Liz and Skip are pulled over by Deputy Dave, who is the worst actor in movie history. He delivers some gibberish about having a family and being responsible, then lets the couple off with just a warning. Every time he speaks, a piece of my soul withers and dies.

Back at the Bacon farm, we get a brief scene where Porky is hugging a pig like his own personal puppy. Then we get another short scene where Liz and her remaining friends plans to get costumes and props for a party that night. None of them mention, nor even notice, that 2 members of their group have mysteriously vanished. Nice friends.

Porky shows his father the 2 teens he killed, and Lester freaks out. After scolding his son, the old farmer decides to send him after the 3 men who visited earlier. Finally, something resembling a plot is actually happening! Yay!

After a pointless scene where Liz and her pals buy Halloween costumes, they decide to party up at the closed slaughterhouse. Rut roh! At the same time, Harold gets a call from Lester, luring him to the farm. While they're chatting, Bubba is busy sharpening his blade. It's about time.

Back to the teens again. They drive up to the slaughterhouse, and start setting it up for their party. At the same time, Deputy Dave gets a call from the dispatcher about the 2 missing teens. Then back to the Scooby gang, where we get another lame montage as they film some lame scenes for their lame movie. They eventually drive away again, as Porky watches from a nearby window. Deja vu...

As the sheriff arrives back at his office, Deputy Dipshit enters the old slaughterhouse. He walks through the dusty, cobweb-filled factory, and something makes him decide to draw his gun. He finds a pool of blood on the floor, and sees a dead animal suspended by a meathook overhead. Then he starts to investigate a heavy freezer door, only to get it slammed on his arm. As he struggles to get loose, Porky cuts off his hand at the wrist.

Porky emerges from the freezer, and watches the deputy die. He shows the corpse to his father, who tells him to bring the body back to where the others are. Then Lester hurries out front to greet Harold. The 2 men chat, as Lester lures his former friend into the slaughterhouse.

Lester taunts Harold while the lights are out, then gets behind him. He lets Harold see the other dead bodies, then Porky swings a blade on a rope over Harold's head. It doesn't hit him, but it gets closer with every swing. Uh, someone needs to inform Harold of this new-fangled thing, called "stepping back".
As Lester laughs like a loon, his son grabs Harold's head and squeezes it like a grape.Ouch.

Liz and her boyfriend have another useless scene together, where they discuss how terrific their friends are. *yawn* After watching Porky freak out over a dead animal, the movie decides to go back to the sheriff. He bitches and moans about all of the missing people, then goes to the local bar to get smashed. That's your tax dollars at work, folks. It's kind of difficult to figure out who we're supposed to be rooting for...they're all kind of dicks.

Anyway, at the bar, the sheriff starts asking around about his missing deputy. At first, only the bartender and some wino respond, but then Sally speaks up. She tells the sheriff that she saw Dave early that morning, but not since then.

Up next, we get Porky dressed up in the deputy's clothes. He walks up to the police car, gets in, and goes for a joyride on the dirt roads around the Bacon property. Then he hears the CB radio go off, and squeals into it, confusing the dispatcher.

Sally sees the car going flying past her, and flags him down. Assuming that it's Dave behind the wheel, she walks up to the car, only to scream in terror when she sees Porky. She gets chased back to her car, where, instead of driving away, she ducks down and lets the killer smash her windshield until he can reach into the car. A rocket scientist, she ain't.

Sally escapes through the passenger side, and climbs into a metal cylinder, where Porky taunts her. He starts to use his knife to take a few wild stabs at her, and she screams some more. Then the scene ends, so I guess we're to assume that he got her.

Liz helps her mom prepare some food for the party, and asks her why the other kids call Liz a hermaphrodite. Okay, not really, but DAMN this chick is weird-looking! Is this what passed for cute in the 1980's? She looks like one of the weird puppets from Labrynth. The sheriff breaks in and raids the fridge, so I guess Liz is his daughter. Then Liz's boyfriend walks in, pisses off her father, and another random scene comes to a close.

Back at the abandoned slaughterhouse, Tom shows up looking for Harold. He tries to reason with Lester again, but the old coot won't listen. Instead, he has his son lift Tom off the ground, then feed him into a meat grinder, feet-first. Pretty nasty stuff.At the big dance, everyone is pretending to enjoy a song that would make Boy George turn heterosexual. We also get a bunch of clips of "fun" activities that include throwing hay, and eating hot dogs. Boy, these guys are really hardcore! Even the dancing is filmed poorly, showing a bunch of jump-cuts to simulate dancing, I guess.

The remaining 4 teens decide to go to the slaughterhouse that night. In a stroke of redneck genius, the guys are going to leave the girls there, to win a bet. Whatever. Just die already. While the girls are busy making shadow puppets on a wall, their boyfriends are sneaking back onto the property to scare them.

The sheriff finds the vehicle belonging to Sally, and calls for backup. Then Liz tells her friend to wait inside, while she goes out to scare their boyfriends. The guys have a similar plan. Then Skip climbs to the window where Annie is watching, only to get killed by Porky from behind.

The next one to die is Buzz, who goes looking for Skip. He gets whacked in the side of his head by Porky, and crumples to the floor like a rag doll. Liz, now completely alone, wanders around the building for several minutes, calling out random names. She then discovers the corpses in the freezer, and comes face-to-face with Lester.

After he uses the corpses to play "This Little Piggy", Lester threatens her, and she runs away, right toward his son. As Porky holds her down on a table, Liz has to endure Lester describing what all of his different blades are for. He delivers a speech about how much skill it takes to cut meat, then tells the frightened girl that the finger tip is the most sensitive part of the body. He proves it by slicing one of her fingers at the tip. If he's hoping to bleed her to death, this could take weeks.

After the demonstration, Lester tells her to watch while he carves up one of her friends. She retaliates by kicking him, and he gets a meat hook in his back. While Lester struggles to get the hook out, he orders his son to chase Liz down. After the briefest of chases, her dad comes to the rescue, leads her outside, then asks her about her friends.

Before Liz can reply, Lester stabs the sheriff in the back. Liz gets him into his car, finds the keys, and barely manages to get away. As Lester watches, she runs over Porky again, then speeds away. She gets the radio working, but a figure pops out of the back seat...it's Porky's twin brother I guess, since we saw Porky outside of the car already. Way to confuse your already apathetic asudience, movie. THE END

.Eh. It could have been worse, considering how much of it was a rip-off of the Texas Chainsaw movies. If anyone ever decides to remake this, they need to flesh out the characters better, and give the kills a lot more variety. But it was okay, for a cheesy B-movie. I give it 3.5 killer trees out of 5.

And what lessons did Slaughterhouse teach me?

-Well, if I ever want to terrorize someone, all I need to do it deliver a small cut to the tip of their finger. Good to know.

-Hollywood was much more forgiving about beauty 20 years ago. Either that, or they had a female horse that was also one heck of an actress.

-When making a horror film where there are siblings who kill together, it's always best to confuse your audience by using 1 actor for both roles. Screw you, lazy Slaughterhouse casting director!

Next up is either Sleepaway Camp or He Knows You're Alone. I have to go back into the archives first, to see if I did either of them already. These things all blend together after awhile. I also caught the ending of one called Killer Movie, which I also need to look up. What can I say? My middle-aged memory sucks. See y'all next week!

The Traveler

So, the good news is, this DVD, The Traveler, seems to work well. The bad news? It's a Val Kilmer film. Geez, what happened to this guy? How did he go from Top Gunto MacGruber? Well, keep your expectations low, and remember: SPOILERS will be in abundance from this point onward.

The movie begins with a girl using a jumprope, as her cat looks on. For some unfathomable reason, the girl decided to name her cat "Shining". How much you wanna bet her dog is Cujo, her canary is Creepshow, and her goldfish is 'salem's Lot?Anyway, the girl is grabbed by someone in a long black coat, then the opening credits start rolling. She calls out for her father several times, including a few times when her mouth was covered or closed. Neat trick.

After this, we see a handful of police vehicles driving around in a heavy downpour. A desk cop named Gulloy is apparently doing arts and crafts(no joke), when 2 other cops walk in, looking like drowned rats. Gulloy chastises one of them, Hawkins, for making a mess all over the floor. The 2 continue lobbing insults at each other, until the 3rd officer, whose name hasn't been said yet, orders them both to shut up.

Next up, we see a female officer, Janey, about to kiss her partner, when Hawkins and his partner walk in. As they all exchange some friendly banter, we meet ANOTHER cop, Detective Alex Black. He was apparently the father of the young girl who was abducted during the credits. He's listening to a voicemail message from his wife, who wants him to know that she's taking the kids out of town for awhile. Hey can I cheat off of someone's test to get all the names right?

Alex picks up a photo of his daughter, and starts reliving the day that she was taken. I hate these scenes in movies, mostly because they never make sense. I mean, he wasn't there when she was taken, so why do his flashbacks recycle stuff from the opening scene? Is it really that difficult to film a few extra scenes with the family in happier times or something?

Anyway, that scene goes nowhere, so now we're looking at a generic motel. It even says, simply, MOTEL. Pure genius. Oh, and nothing happened at the MOTEL, so now we're back at the police station.

Val Kilmer walks in from the rain, and he looks like a cross between Fabio and Stifler's Mom. It ain't pretty. Anyone besides me remember the last time they saw a Val Kilmer film in a movie theatre, instead of a DVD store? (In my case, it was MacGruberas I think I mentioned above, but anyone could have played that role, so it doesn't really count.)

Gulloy looks up from his desk, and Kilmer's character, Mr. Nobody, confesses to murder. He starts acting weird, so Gulloy draws his gun and yells for assistance, and Hawkins joins him to see what has him so worked up. Alex leaves his office to chat with the other cops, and a third cop leaves to find Gulloy. Then Alex does the same.

When he hears Gulloy explaining that Mr. Nobody confessed to murder, Alex tries to question the suspect, but Mr. Nobody seems to act catatonic. When Alex asks him to put his hands on his head and the suspect refuses, Alex orders the others to bring him to an interrogation room.

While Alex is demanding to know why Gulloy drew his firearm, yet another person walks into the precinct....2, actually, and they're state troopers. They announce that the rain is forcing them to close the nearest roads, then leave. So,yeah. That happened. *yawn*

In the interrogation room, 2 cops are asking Mr. Nobody for specific details about his confession, and Mr. Nobody tells one cop that his eyes are "full of fear", whatever that means. He also promises to reveal his murders before the night ends. Fed up with the cryptic nature of the suspect, they decide to simply check his fingerprints with the online database. Before being taken to a cell, Mr. Nobody tells Alex something about a pen his dead child had given him, then tells him that as many as 6 people are dead.

In the next scene, Janey and her fellow cop/boyfriend are making out under the mistletoe. As things get pretty hot and heavy, Janey sees Mr. Nobody watching them from the doorway, and she lets out a small shriek.When they both look, Mr. Nobody is no longer there. Janey still feels nervous, so she leaves.

The cop taking Mr. Nobody's mugshots, Jack, also feels on edge in his presence. The feeling increases when he sees the suspect covered in blood through the camera lens. The blood vanishes as he looks again, and the other cop tries to fingerprint him. That would be fine, if not for the fact that Mr. Nobody has smooth skin where his fingerprints should be.

Now that both cops are scared, they order Gulloy to deliver Mr. Nobody to his holding cell.On the way to the cell, Mr. Nobody comments on the fact that all of the lightbulbs at the front desk blew out, as the ones in the holding area are flickering. When Gulloy locks him in, Nobody suggests that the lights could be a warning, but he won't be more specific than that.

As Gulloy starts to leave, the lights flicker again, and he hears a cell door click open. He slowly approaches the cell, only to find Mr. Nobody sitting right where he had been left, whistling away. Gulloy run away like a little girl.

Alex is told about the fingerprints, and the 3 cops toss around a few ideas. It can't be acid or burning, because the prints would come back when the skin healed over. Alex promises to get more answers after a second round of questioning, but he looks pretty doubtful.

The cop who took Mr. Nobody's pictures tells Janey and her lover about the fingerprint mystery, then leaves to enter the mugshots into the records. As he's about to start, though, he sees that every photo shows only the clothing and the ID plate...Mr. Nobody doesn't have a face, or even a head, in any of the pictures. Then he hears the whistling too.

When he speaks to Nobody, he just gets more of the riddles and cryptic nonsense. Then Nobody reveals that his weird whistle is from Macbeth. The cop walks away when Nobody resumes whistling his little song.

Alex calls his wife, and the chat is anything but friendly. He eventually asks to speak with the kids, and has yet another "I-remember-like-it-was-yesterday-even-though-I-wasn't-there" flashback about his daughter. This is the Groundhog Day of horror films, given how many scenes they insist on repeating.

Alex asks the cops to bring Nobody back to the interrogation room, and Gulloy reveals that the scissors on his desk have gone missing. Foreshadowing much? The cops find Nobody in the wrong cell, along with a stolen deck of cards that one of the cops was using earlier, and they drag him upstairs.

Outside in the rasin, Hawkins has a flashback to a different interrogation, the night Alex lost his daughter. He and the other cops more or less tortured a guy for information, even though he insisted that he was innocent. They even threatened to cut off his tongue, but it's not clear how far they went.

Janey is partnered up with a cop named Sherwood, given that Hawkins is still on a smoke break. Hawkins reveals to Pine(I think...I eventually gave up trying to remember who was who, and looked up the cast list online) that Nobody strongly resembles the guy they tortured when Alex lost his daughter. He even points out that only the officers who were involved in the beating are working that very night. Creepy.

Back in interrogation, Nobody acts like he's in a trance. He talks about a red dress, blue hair, and long legs. As he describes a murder, Hawkins decides to examine the holding area by himself. He shines a flashlight into every cell, until one behind him opens, and he is dragged inside. The lights in the cell go out, and the cop is tied up and beaten to death, exactly as Val describes it. But before he dies, his tongue is removed. It's revealed that the woman Nobody described is a tattoo on Hawkins.

After the body is discovered, Alex tells one of the officers in the interrogation room to handcuff Nobody. As the 3 officers leave him in there and lock the door, Alex tells the other two that Hawkins was murdered. Gulloy and another cop go outside to check for any obvious signs of an assailant, and Gulloy is almost immediately struck by something falling from the roof. As the other cop helps him to his feet, they realize that the object is Shining, the cat that was with Mary Black the day she disappeared.

As Alex is giving everyone police rifles, Gulloy and the other cop report what happened. No one believes their story, until they show Alex the cat's nametag. Pine then tells them about the conversation he had with Hawkins right before he was killed.

Another flashback shows that Alex ordered the drifter that they tortured to be strung up by the other cops. They beath him with batons, belts, their fists...then they placed a plastic bag over his head and hit him several times in the face. Alex had the others leave the room, then he showed the drifter the pen his daughter gave him. He used the pen to stab the stranger, and the flashback ends there.

Gulloy becomes an info-dump, telling us that Mary was found dead, and the killer was also found holding Mary's locket, and killed during the apprehension. The drifter they tortured was an innocent stranger. Oh, and he's still alive, in a coma. Hmmmm....

Mister Nobody hears the conversation. Then the lights flicker out again. They check on Nobody, and he's sitting right where they left him. He describes how he killed his second victim, just as Gulloy is being killed out on the roof. Gulloy is being suffocated from behind, and a noose is placed around his neck while he struggles. The killer then throws Gulloy off the roof, and his corpse is seen dangling right outside the interrogation room window.

They decide to move Nobody again, and he tells them that he likes the Bible, especially, the Old Testament, because God was wrathful. Nobody believes in vengeance. Nice.

After leaving Nobody in his NEW new cell, the remaining cops debate what's happening. On one hand, some think that Mr. Nobody is working with the drifter, who may have come out of his coma. On the other hand, Mr. Nobody might have an accomplice unrelated to what happened to the detective's daughter a year ago.

Frustrated by the mystery, Pine decides to call the hospital and see if the drifter is still in a coma. Duh! That should've been the first idea. They discover that not only did the drifter die that evening, but he died exactly at the time that Nobody walked into the station. As they try to formulate a plan, Nobody can hear them.

Janey and Sherwood are driving to where the road was closed, hoping to get some sort of back-up from the Feds. As they drive up to the barricade, the remaining cops at the station decide to keep an eye on Nobody. He freaks them out by throwing his voice, which confuses and disorients them.

When they finally locate Nobody, he asks them questions about the drifter. Then he tells them that he wants to make another confession, this time about murdering a couple. Pine rushes upstairs to try to warn the pair on their radio.

He manages to contact Janey, just as Nobody starts to set the murders in motion. Sherwood, meanwhile, finds another broadast coming from a different car, in which someone describes finding Alex's daughter dead. Sherwood freaks out and begins waving his gun in every direction.

At the breaking point, Alex walks up to the prisoner and fires several rounds at him. Then Sherwood is attacked from behind, and Mr. Nobody pops up in his cell, still very much alive. Janey tries to help Sherwood, but has trouble finding him in the forest.

He's busy, as the killer is beating and stabbing him with a shovel. There's even a helpful flashback, showing Sherwood hitting the drifter with a shovel as the others looked on. After a minute or so of searching, Janey finds him with his innards shoveled onto the ground. She screams and runs back in the direction she came from.

Janey gets back in her car and speeds down the road, only stopping when she plows into a parked car next to the police station. She tells Alex and Pine(?) that Sherwood is dead, and Alex tells her to get back in her car, so they can move it away from the crash site.

The motor won't turn over, so Janey pops the hood for them. As their view of her is obstructed, Janey is attacked from the back seat. The killer covers her face in clear plastic and suffocates Janey, as Nobody describes the scene while alone in his cell. The flashback reveals that Janey was ordered to do something similar to the drifter.

They try smashing and shooting the window, but nothing works. To add insult to injury, the killer then decapitates Janey, and dumps her head outside of the car. Pine runs back to the precinct, intent on killing Nobody. The lights are out again, so Pine mounts a flashlight on top of his rifle, and starts blasting ammo into the holding cell. Alex stops at the weapon cabinet, and picks up a rifle for himself. These guys are big on rifles, huh?

Pine enters the cell, to ensure that he didn't miss Nobody. He uses the flashlight, and sees the deck of cards he had earlier, arranged in a "dead man's hand". As Pine realizes that he's the dead man, Nobody leaps at him from behind. As he beats and kicks Pine, another flashback shows--yup, you guessed it--Pine doing the same thing to the drifter.

Then Nobody makes the same threat about taking Pine's eye that Pine made to the unlucky drifter. He plucks it out of Pine's skull, then sees Alex approaching him. The detective examines his friend's corpse, and sees several teeth were also removed. Blood is everywhere, and Alex goes bananas.

Alex stumbles outside, convinced that Nobody is on his trail. He staggers into a bar, only to find himself back at the precinct. Mister Nobody appears out of thin air, and Alex tries to confess his part in attacking the drifter, but Nobody doesn't want to hear it.

No, instead, he drops a bombshell: he wasn't innocent. He did indeed take the daughter, after chasing her through the woods. When Alex mentions that the state troopers shot the killer, Nobody admits that he threw away the locket, and the man who was killed must have found it.

So, when Alex asks him why he killed the cops, it all came down to vengeance. While he was in a coma, Nobody dreamt of nothing else but getting revenge. As he starts to tell Alex how he's going to die,the detective reaches into his suit for the engraved pen. Alex apologizes, then shoves the pen deep into his own ears.

While Nobody continues to talk about killing the cops who hurt him, Alex crawls into another room and hides beneath a desk. Next to him under the desk is his dead daughter. She apologizes for not coming sooner, then tells him that he can defeat Nobody, just by saying his name. As Nobody arrives at his office and starts searching for Alex, the daughter tells him the name.

In the most misguided attempt to create a badass moment ever, Alex leaps to his feet, grabs yet another rifle, and says, "Stanley Harpenden!" Um....wow, I guess?

Stan makes a face like he has gas, then Alex shoots him, and Stan goes flying out the window.In the morning, Alex has one more conversation with his daughter. She thanks him for defeating Stanley, then goes to Heaven or whatever. THE END

Yeesh. An obese ghost goes on a murder spree, just because the cops had him pegged as the killer that he was? As revenge plots go, that one was pretty slim. Plus, how would the detective explain that everyone EXCEPT him was murdered by a ghost? None of this thing made any sense. 1 killer tree out of 5, mostly as a pity vote for Val Kilmer's career.

And what did The Traveler teach me this week?

-That Val should have retired after The Doors.

-That ghosts operate on the same level as Rumplestiltskin. Say their name, and game over, man.

-Oh, and I l.earned what the love-child of Kathy Bates and Chazz Bono would look like. Eeeeewwwwww.

My next movie is called Slaughterhouse. It's about a pig farm, so there's a decent chance that Val Kilmer will be in it. Later, dudes!

Venom

When I first saw Venom, I had no idea that someday I'd be mocking it, and movies like it. But now that I'm doing this blog, I figured it was time to revisit the movie in all of its underwhelming mediocrity. Remember, I'm watching while writing, so SPOILERS will be plentiful...

Not a good sign...the DVD has 6 minutes' worth of ads to sit through. Yeesh. Remember when the trailers were optional? No? Well I do.

So anyway, this thing takes place in Louisiana. The opening scene shows an elderly black woman digging around in a graveyard. She unearths a tiny box, presumably holding the remains of Billy Barty.(See, he was a comedian who happened to be a little person, so the small box would....ahhh, never mind.) The box has a lock that is shaped like the head of a snake, and the woman has a vision about a murder when she touches it.

The woman lights a candle, then puts a red hankie over her head. While uttering some kind of chant, she also puts the snake-lock/pendant around her neck. Well, I'm glad THAT made perfect sense, because the scene comes to an abrupt halt at that point.

The next scene shows a diner right out of "Happy Days". 2 teen guys, Eric and Shawn, are sitting at a table drinking sodas, and one can't stop staring at a somewhat pretty waitress named Eden. As the starer asks what's wrong with their small town, some kid named Ricky joins them. As of yet, none of the dweebs have any memorable traits or personality. Great.

Shawn tries to convince Eric to give up on a reconciliation with his soulmate Eden, who has apparently given them both the stink eye. Or maybe that's just her usual face. Yikes. This movie already scares me, and nothing has happened yet.

A tow truck pulls in, driven by a greaseball named Ray. He and Shawn exchange a glance, then Ray picks up his order to go, and leaves. We return to crazy voodoo lady(I feel like I'm playing a Monkey Island video game!), who is dragging her luggage through the rain, presumably to a Motel 6. Nope, she dragged it to her car and put it in the back seat. My mistake.

Everything switches back to the diner, where a blond guy is checking out the rack of a girl named Tammy. Tammy sees Ray sitting stiff as a statue in his truck, and decides that it would be fun to show off her goods to the unstable-looking trucker. Ray doesn't look too Happy about being teased by jailbait.

After the diner closes for the night, Eden bids farewell to Rachel, another waitress, then rides a bicycle home. Crazy voodoo lady is also driving home, but apparently her home is in London, because where she is, there's a wall of fog. On one of her car seats is the suitcase full o' snakes. Back in the bayou country, Eden bikes past Ray's garage, and he just gives her his thousand-yard stare again.

Full moon in the sky, more biking, yadda yadda yadda. A car comes up behind Eden, but it's only Eric, giving her more of his sad-puppy face as he passes her. He stops his vehicle ahead of her to try to have a chat, but she keeps going for a few more feet before stopping. Great! Maybe now we can find out what interesting, spellbinding incident led to their break-up.

Eh. They're going to different colleges in the fall, and Eric can't get a grip. Been there, dude. Let her go. There are other fish in the sea, and most of them don't have wide, staring fish-eyes like this one.

As they continue to argue, Ray pulls up in his massive truck. He asks Eden if she's okay, then tells Eric that he shouldn't'[t park his car on the bridge, before he takes off in his Truckosaurus Wrecks. Not even 15 seconds later, Ray nearly collides with the voodoo lady's vehicle, which is left dangling precariously off the bridge halfway.

As the car teeters and totters, Eric sees that the voodoo lady, who is related to one of their friends named "CeCe", is still alive. Ray pushes Eric away from the car, and tells him to get ready to catch the old lady when Ray snatches her out of her seat.

Ray crawls slowly into the passenger side of the car, and Voodoo Granny wakes up. She begs Ray to get the snake-filled suitcase, but he rescues her first. As Eric and Eden try to calm the crazy woman down, Ray goes back in for the suitcase. Unfortunately, his attempt to grab it results in the baggage falling open, and Ray is attacked by a multitude of snakes. Oh, and the car falls into the water below the bridge. As the car starts to sink, the snakes REALLY go after Ray, and he starts to scream.

The state troopers show up, but they say that the car can't be hauled up until the water level lowers again. They recovered Ray's body, but he's a mess. Oh, and they have the suitcase, too, but of course, it's empty. Of the 2 troopers, only the older one knows that drawings inside the suitcase are part of some type of Creole magic.

Eric feels responsible for what happened, and Eden tries to make him feel better. Then the DVD died. The sound began stuttering first, then the image began to skip frames. I've spent most of the past week trying to watch the movie since, with no luck. So...THE END, at least for now.

What did I learn from Venom? HA! That's a good one...

-Netflix has some really shitty DVD's in their collection.
-It's not fun, wasting a week trying to get a movie to play.
-I need a better genre.

This week, I have a choice between a Val Kilmer movie called The Traveler, or a late-'80's slasher called Slaughterhouse. I hop;e one of them breaks me out of this rut!

Urban Legends: Final Cut

My last movie was a bland, forgettable film with some eye-candy and nothing else. This week's movie, the much-maligned second film in the Urban Legends franchise, HAS to better. It HAS to be. Right? Well, I guess we're about to find out, because here comes my SPOILER-heavy experience watching it.

The movie begins with a lot of thunder and lightning. Oh, and apparently, we're on a plane filled with partying college kids.. Cool. A young woman is nervously watching the rough weather, while a whiny-voiced nerd next to her is helpfully recreating the "gremlin on the plane's wing" moment from The Twilight Zone. Nice guy.

Another girl, who was in the slasher Valentine, goes off with her boyfriend to join The Mile High Club. Along the way, an elderly woman gives them the stink eye. Oh, and in the most awesome spoiled surprise ever, you can clearly see the message YOU'RE GOING DOWN written on the bathroom mirror, waaaay before you're supposed to. Nice.

Anyway, Nerd Boy sees a creepy male flight attendant staring at the rowdy students, and they make eye contact. That's when the Mile High Girl, whose boyfriend is, ummm, munching Down Under, finally sees the message on the wall. When she reads it out loud, her boyfriend happily agrees. Heh. She yanks her boyfriend's(Rob's) head up so that he can see the message, and they both quickly decide to get out of the bathroom as they feel the plane rapidly descending.

As they're still figuring out how to exit the toilet, the rest of the passengers get freaked out when breathing masks drop from the ceiling. Mile High Girl exits the restroom first, and sees all of the passengers slumped over. She assumes that they all just passed out, until the old lady she saw earlier slumps over in her seat, revealing a knife wedged in her back. Guess she's not sleeping.

The killer emerges with another bloodstained knife, and he and Mile High Girl face off for a moment or two. Fate intervenes, and the killer is knocked over by a runaway drink cart that comes sliding down the aisle. Rob finally emerges from the bathroom, and asks his girlfriend what's going on, then they both start running up the aisle.

In the small area the flight attendants use to prepare the snacks, they find Nerd Boy dead. The killer pops up again, so the couple decide to run to the front of the plane. Along the way, they discover a couple of female flight attendants strapped into their seats, brutally slaughtered. Ignoring reality, the couple easily slip into the cockpit and shut the door on the killer, locking it also.

The crew is dead as well. When the hell did this guy have time to commit all of these freakin' murders? As the killer attempts to bust open the door, Mile High Girl dumps the pilot out of his seat and decides to try to contact someone on the ground. She should just wait a second, she's heading right for them...

She puts on a headset, and just starts saying, "Mayday!" over and over again into the microphone. At the very same time, the killer gets in, so she screams even louder into the headset. Then a guy in sunglasses appears in the windshield, clinging to the rain-soaked glass. Mile High Girl shrieks, and he yells "Cut!"

Yeah. It was all just a movie set.

While the director continues screaming at the crew, the "rain" stops, and the plane stops shaking. Then he scolds the actress, Sandra, telling her that her character isn't supposed to be flying the plane. He also scolds a crew member named Vanessa(played by the lovely Eva Mendes), because she let a boom mike drop into one of the shots. As Vanessa commiserates with fellow crew member Amy , the director kisses up to the actor playing the killer, because he seems to have a stick up his ass. Oh, and Joey Lawrence is another crew member, "Graham", working with a scruffy guy referred to as "Scrote".

Using a megaphone, the director then threatens to kill Sandra if she doesn't do the scene right. He then has them set up to try another take. Hmmm. Is this an early hint about the killer? Probably not.

The heroine of our story, Amy, is next seen jogging. She's apparently the world's least-athletic runner, because the season changes from winter to spring in front of the campus as she's running toward the main building. As the movie resumes, the chairman of the film department is welcoming film students for the spring semester. See, I told you she ran slow! Thought I was kidding, didn't you?

Anyway, he delivers some grandiose, self-serving speech, then introduces a douchebag named Mr. Solomon to the students. The kids make fun of the staff as each teacher is introduced by Mr. Solomon, due to the fact that they're all a group of sad-sack has-beens. Then it's revealed that Amy is one of the small minority of film students who have yet to submit a "thesis film", a finished production that shows her skill as a film-maker put to the test. Heck, she hasn't even submitted an idea yet! She better hurry up, because at the end of each year, one lucky student wins a $15,000 prize known as The Hitchcock Award. The award more or less guarantees the recipient a future in Hollywood. From the rafters, Scrote is reading Solomon's speech into a microphone, and Solomon is repeating it word-for-word. Douche.

Um, it's winter again. WTF, man? Oh wait, Amy is walking across the campus...that explains it. By the time this movie ends, it could be decades later. Pray for my sanity, folks.

Amy gets frightened by a group of mother-flockin' birds that totally flock her up, then she gets a beam of light aimed right at her eyes. The light belongs to Reese, a member of the campus security staff. Reese! She was in the previous movie too, so I guess her character's presence is the connective tissue between both films. Awesome...I loved her goofy character in the first movie.

Okay, so Reese offers to give Amy a lift. She's probably seen how slow Amy walks. During the short drive across the campus, the women bond over a mutual love of Pam Grier movies. Then Reese suggests the events of the first UL film as Amy's thesis. Cute. She reveals that the murders at Pendleton were covered up, and she was fired for not agreeing to go along with the deception.

Amy enters the film library building, and walks into Solomon's office, where he is being slowly bored to death ny a lecture by one of the "legends" on the faculty. Amy gives Solomon her thesis, which is a slasher flick based on urban legends.Uhhhh....kind of "on the nose", isn't it?

Solomon likes it, but agrees with Amy's assessment that it needs to be given a definitive style. He suggests that it would work best as either a gore-heavy slasher flick, or as a more tension-filled psychological thriller, and she declares that it would have a bit of both. Solomon then compliments her on the idea, saying that it's "great". Wow, the writer sure had a healthy ego, huh?

That night, Travis(a hopeful director, as well as a friend of Amy) is on a date with a cute gal named Lisa. He orders drinks, and we see the killer spiking one of the drinks at the bar. Travis soon leaves, and Lisa unwittingly sips on the drink that was tampered with. She spurns the advances of a rather intense-looking stalker-type, and tries to leave, because she has a flight to take the next day. Of course, that's pretty much when the roofies kick in.

Lisa gets as far as the coat-check area, and then her eyes start to blur. Unable to properly see the number on her ticket, Lisa gropes around the coats--and that's when the killer leaps out of hiding and smothers her in a plastic sheet. Sounds dumb, I know, but it's a pretty decent jump-scare.

When Lisa wakes up, she's in a bathtub filled with ice. She sees a fresh-looking kidney in a dish next to a pair of bloody scissors, and finds a ragged, bleeding scar in her side. Lisa realizes that she's been made part of one of the most infamous urban legends ever told, and sees her abductor in another room, with his back to the frightened young woman.

Though she's really trying, Lisa can't quite make a quiet escape. She slips on the bloodstained floor, but still manages to shut the door and put a few obstacles in the way, to buy herself the time she needs to escape. Pretty smart thinking.

Or not. Lisa sees her purse on the floor, dumps the contents on the floor, and dials 911. While that also seems smart, she screws up big time by telling them about the kidney heist. The dispatcher informs her that he knows the urban legend, and hangs up. Lisa spies a window that could be a good escape route, but a dog outside convinces her to think otherwise.

She sees a different window, and decides to use that one for her exit. 2 things happen then: the killer gets into the bathroom, and the dog finds her hanging halfway out of the window. The killer reaches Lisa first, and tears open her surgical wound. She tries to hang onto some barbed wire, but that works out about as well as you'd figure it would. Making one last attempt to defend herself, Lisa tries to hit the killer with her hands, and breaks the glass in the window instead. The killer brings the jagged shards down on her neck, decapitating poor Lisa. As the dog contemplates how to eat a human head, the window opens one more time, and the killer lets the stray dog have her kidney too. Yum!

In the next scene, we go back to film school. Amy meets up with Sandra for lunch in the dining hall. There, she tells Sandra another urban legend, one I haven't heard before. Supposedly, before taking their finals, a group of students got together and had a midnight scream session, to alleviate tension.( Yeah, I'm sure the rest of the school appreciated that!) The story goes, that as the students screamed, the noise covered the sound of the screams of an actual murder victim.

As Amy reveals that the story is an urban legend, Sandra starts relating several stories involving bugs and other gross things found in food. Really? During lunch? Anyway, when Sandra asks for a role in the movie, Amy invites her to a late-night recording session for authentic-sounding screams. Gosh, I honestly have no idea what will happen next.

Amy is next seen walking past several recording/editing studios.The asswipe director from the great opening sequence is watching painful clips of Sandra trying to scream in a way that sounds terrified. She can't do it. In the next editing bay, Travis is watching a clip that sounds like a feminine hygiene ad. Behind Amy, someone walks into the corridor wearing the same snowjacket the killer from the first UL movie wore. Uh oh....is crazy Brenda back? Nope, it's just the 2 slackers who provided the "special effects" in the opening sequence.

Travis hears the commotion, and comes out to chat with Amy. When she asks how his film is coming along, Travis clams up a bit. Amy asks him to look at her script, and they make a date for Tuesday night. Fascinating. Considering that the only 2 films we've seen these students make so far are slasher movies, I'm betting that Travis isn't directing something based on a Jane Austen novel.

The the story switches gears to bring us to show us a hot-but-not-yet-famous Eva Mendes(Vanessa), and a not-famous-and-perhaps-never-will-be Joey Lawrence as Graham. Was Joey the one who always said "Whoa!" on that sitcom, or was that his brother Matthew? Wow, I sure do get easily distracted! Anyway, Vanessa is annoyed that Graham is always on his phone, so she brings up the urban legend that cell phones give you brain cancer. It turns out that they're at a storyboard/script meeting to discuss Amy's urban legend movie. Also there are Scrote(whose real name I'm still not sure about), Sandra, and the 2 effects/prop guys. Graham pompously tells Scrote to wash his car, and the poor guy does it.

Amy then shows the group another urban legend, involving a girl who has a fear of the dark. She sleeps with her dog in the room,and he licks her hand when she lets her arm hang off the side of the bed. The next morning, the woman finds her dog's corpse hanging on a shower rod, and a message written on the wall: HUMANS CAN LICK TOO.

As they continue to sit and chat, there's a pointless discussion over which is better, practical effects or digital effects, followed by a verbal attack on Amy by Toby, the student directing the airplane slasher seen at the start of the film. He thinks that she stole his genre, even though she tries to tell him how her film is different.

Back at one of the housing buildings, Amy finds Travis drunk and despondent. His film only earned a C minus, and Amy tells him that he deserved better. When he brings up the Hitchcock Award, Amy tells him that he's too talented to fail in Hollywood. Then, seeing Travis at his lowest, she asks him to help her find a new director of photography, since Toby abandoned the position 1 scene ago. He gives her a tip about a guy named Simon. Before she leaves, Amy tells Travis that everything will be okay. Yeah, right!

That evening, Amy is ready to shoot her first movie scene as a director. As she is greeted by a few cast and crew members, there's an accident on the set...Sandra is hit by a fallen light. Amy examines the wound on her scalp, then Sandra opens her eyes and says, "Gotcha!" Yeesh.

Amongst the giggling crew, Sandra tells Amy that Graham's father got her an audition for an episode of ER. Then they start setting up for the scene with the dead dog and the girl's hand getting licked by a killer. The dead dog prop is pretty realistic-looking, which just makes me wish even more that the movie scenes within the movie were an actual movie. How many times in 1 paragraph can I say "movie"? Movie. Movie, movie.

Anyway, an ominous man in black walks onto the set, just as they start filming. He introduces himself as Schorm, and says that Travis asked him to assist her with her film. Ah, okay, this is "Simon", the director of photography that Travis promised to get for Amy's horror movie. He then tries to seduce Vanessa, but it turns out that she's into women. Cool! So am I!

After that, the parking lot is deserted, but not for long. Sandra staggers outside, struggling to carry a dress and some other stuff to her car. Unfortunately, it appears that she may have locked herself out of the car.

Sandra trudges back to the set, and fumbles around for the interior lights. She finds herself on a set dressed up for a crime scene, complete with a strobing police light. As Sandra looks around for her keys, a shape under a red blanket begins moving. The killer eventually stands up, and attaches a microphone to a camera, which he then picks up to begin filming Sandra's murder.

Sandra is, of course, unable to see a tall figure dressed in a bright red blanket suddenly standing up. I know, I know, the killer's behind her...but wouldn't she still see or hear a sudden movement like that? Oh, and can we dispense with the whole "our victim looks in one direction long enough for the killer to move to a different position in the background" scene in every single frickin' horror movie too? That one never ceases to annoy me.

Anyway, the killer sneaks behind Sandra, and slashes her with a razor just as she finds her stupid keys. Then we see the rest of the small cast and crew watching the scenes they have of Sandra so far, giving the worst screams in the history of cinema. Simon even suggests that maybe they should make it a horror-comedy. They watch Sandra's character find her "cat" several times, and each take gets more and more horrible. I'll bet she took lesson's from the Jon Lovitz character Master Thespian.

As even Amy can't help laughing at the footage, the lights go out. After a few seconds, the projector starts up again, this time showing Sandra's murder. The murder is shown through the killer's camera, and everyone starts to wonder who filmed it, and why it's so realistic. Boy, these students are SMART!! Amy even runs up to the projection room to examine the film reel, but the killer has already taken it. Scrote, whose real name, I'm pretty sure is "PA Kevin", denies having seen anyone.

Dirk and Stan try to assure Amy that, as special effects guys, they know it's fake. Then there's another death, one that just happened: Travis just killed himself. Professor Solomon gathers the entire film class together, to give them the details of Travis' suicide. He supposedly blew his head off on a building rooftop. Amy looks to the side, and sees a mysterious figure slipping away from the crowd.

There's a small memorial for Travis, mostly attended by young women. One of the old has-beens gives Amy his condolences, then Graham approaches her. Being Graham, he tries hitting on her, even going so far as to tell her that if she plays along with him, his father will fund her movie entirely with his wealth. Graham calls Amy a hypocrite, and reveals that he knows that her father made movies as well. He also tells her that the only reason she's trying to be a filmmaker is because she needs to "save face". Then he walks away. Whoa!

As she walks by the campus tower, Amy briefly sees a light go off on one of the upper floors. Amy crosses under the police tape and finds the front entrance unlocked, so she enters. The lower floor is filled with statues covered in plastic. A figure runs past Amy, and she needs a fresh change of underwear. Oh wait, no, that was me. Good think I wore my brown trousers.

Amy, being a complete tool, remains rooted to her spot on the floor as the figure walks slowly in her direction. When he emerges from the plastic draped from the ceiling, the mystery figure is revealed to be....Travis!?!

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN!

Oops, it's his never-mentioned "twin", Trevor. Was this movie written by folks who worked on daytime soaps? I'm willing to bet that it was. Either that, or it actually is Travis, and he's the killer. Either way, this twist is pathetic. Trevor asks Amy some questions about his brother, then starts to walk away when he doesn't like her answers.

Amy stops him, and discovers that Trevor thinks that Travis was murdered. Shocker. He begs her not to tell anyone that she saw him, then walks away again. If he isn't Travis, he's a dumbass, because he walks right past two students, running the risk of being identified. Considering that he claims not to know who were or weren't friends of his brother, that seems pretty damned stupid.

The movie brings us back to the set of Amy's movie. 2 actors are doing the "midnight scream" scene, and the filming has gone late. Exhausted, Amy tells everyone how great they're doing, and to go home until tomorrow. Vanessa pulls her aside, and asks Amy if anything is wrong. Amy doesn't mention the whole "Travis had a twin brother" thing, but mentions that she needs volunteers to record a loud group scream to loop into the scene they just shot. Vanessa begs off, claiming that she's too tired. Graham and Simon also decline to stay.

As Simon walks away, PA Kevin admires his camera, but Simon warns him not to touch it. Simon steps outside, and it looks like the entire campus teleported to London. Simon trudges down the sidewalk, unaware that the killer is following him at a pretty close distance.

There's a sequence now that's alternating between Simon and Amy. While he's walking, unaware that the killer is right behind him, she's getting a group together to record an epic scream in a sound booth. As the screamers start to get obnoxiously loud, Simon pauses outside the building to smoke, and you can even hear the scream faintly from where he is.

The killer whacks Simon in the face, then uses the camera as a weapon. The screams continue to drown out Simon's cries for help, and the killer uses his own camera to bash Simon's skull in. The screams stop, and Amy catches some of the murder in her sensitively-tuned boom mike. She drops all of her equipment, and rushes outside to see if she can save her director of photography. She misses seeing some bloody evidence in the snow, but does notice a handful of security cams in that location. I guess it's time to revisit Reese.

Reese, naturally, is a terrible security guard, so it should come as no surprise when I tell you that she's using the security monitors to watch one of her favorite movies, something featuring the character Foxy Brown. Amy convinces Reese to let her take a look at the timeframe showing the campus while the recording session was taking place. Reese warns her, though, to bring the tapes back immediately if she finds something suspicious.

Amy gets some time in an editting booth, and sees Simon get killed exactly when the scream session was taking place. She gathers up her stuff to find Reese, then hears an odd noise. She turns on the lights outside the booth, and nearly has a heart attack when she sees the killer wearing a freaky mask shaped like a crescent moon.

She assumes at first that it's Stan, one of the effects guys. But when he creepily tries to get to the door at the same time that she does, Amy locks it. Mzoonface then ducks past the door, drawing her forward to try to keep an eye on him. When she leans forward, the killer smashes the soundproof glass, and is now wearing his familiar fencing outfit. Amy tries to open the other exit, but it's jammed, so she instead kills the power with an emergency hatchet. When the killer steps into the sound booth, Amy ducks behind a table, runs past him, and quickly scurries away.

Amy watches from another hiding place as the killer walks around the booth, looking for her. He sees that he's standing next to a large piano, and tests each key, one note at a time. Want to guess what object Amy's hiding under?

She throws an object at some chimes, and makes her escape when the sudden sound and movement distracts the killer. Amy manages to get outside, but theb killer chases her out of the building, and follows close behind. She gets down to the lake or pond used by the rowing team, trips, and falls into the icy water. As Amy swims over to the side of a nearby building, the killer picks up his pace to see if he can spot her in the water before she gets away.

Amy, now hiding beneath a grating, hears the killer moving around looking for her. When gets to a point directly over the grating, he and Amy stare at each other.Then the killerlifts open the grating, and the chase resumes under the campus. Oops, no I guess the killer is trying to outrun her to the exit from above. My bad.

Amy gets to the end of the first corridor, and nearly gets knocked off of her feet by Reese, who saw her running and came to get her. Unfortunately, Reese never saw her attacker, and the killer apparently took the security tapes.. Reese feels bad for Amy, but tells her that without solid proof, no one would ever start an investigation.

Once home, Amy calls Trevor and asks him to meet again with her. The following day, Amy tells Trevor that she now believes that Sandra's murder was real, and that Travis was murdered too. When Amy mentions calling the cops, but Trevor once again advises against it. He tells Amy that he's had trouble with the law in the past, but is now tryig to change his ways. When Amy opens up for the umpteenth time about her dad's suicide, she decides that perhaps the killer is one of the students competing for the Hitchcock Award. Wow, she finally realized what most of us likely figured out when the award was first mentioned. Someone give her a cookie!

Trevor asks Amy where her next scene is being filmed, and she mentions a closed-up theme park on the edge of town. He tells her that he will try to hide there, in order to try to ambush the killer when he tries to strike again. When she hesitates, Trevor asks her to trust him.

Amy is next seen going for a jog, as the murders and the list of suspects weigh heavy on her mind. As the fencing mask is shown, each person's face is superimposed over it, usually saying something inane. The scene goes nowhere, and the next time we see Amy, she and Vanessa are doing a storyboard for the sequence they're going to film at the amusement park. Solomon admires the artwork, and asks them to tell him the urban legend.

It's another one I've never heard of, but it sounds interesting. It's about a carnival in town, but it's not like others. It has a version of the usual Tunnel of Love ride that is littered with body parts. The next morning, the carnival has left, and several local children are missing, to replenish the decorations at the Tunnel ride.

Vanessa makes light of the fact that the ride they're filming in doesn't look scary in the least, and then Dirk and Stan, the effects guys, arrive with props. They declare that the silly ride can be made scary in 3 hours, and are told that they only have one. As Amy watches them walk into the tunnel, one of them does some eerie whistling.

Inside, Stan yells down to Derek for a status report. Derek has been hard at work getting the electricity working for several mannequins, while Stan is above him on another level, happily dressing the set with morbid props. Outside, Amy gets pissed when Graham reveals that he asked more people to join the crew, without asking her first.

Stan and Derek horse around with various body part props, then Trevor shows up and lets Amy know he's there. To get some alone time with him, Amy tells everyone to take an hour to go grab a meal. The cast and crew gratefully leave. Trevor starts to move from his hiding position.

Stan and Derek haven't heard about the lunch break, so they're still testing the equipment. Amy calls them on a walkie-talkie, and they offer to show her their work so far. Amy agrees, but looks worried. They tell Amy how to start up the ride, and she hops into a mining car after following their instructions.

Stan tells Derek that Amy's on the way, and hurries to adjust some of the props. He fails to notice one of the miners slightly moving. It turns its head, revealing the fencing mask to the audience. Stan fiddles around with more props, and the killer gets behind him, and taps his shoulder. When Stan turns and sees him, the killer strikes his noggin with his pickaxe. Then he waits for Stan to grab a metal bar for support, and electrocutes him by sending charges through the bar.

Derek climbs the ladder up to Stan's level, and comes face-to-mask with the killer, who bashes a couple of his fingers pretty badly...he won't be playing piano for awhile, let's put it that way. Derek attempts to go back down the enclosed ladder, and the killer follows. Amy is completely unaware of the killer up ahead, of course, and admires the gruesome decorations that Derek and Stan have lined the tunnel with.

She comes to the end of the ride at roughly the same time that Derek gets off of the ladder. Inagony because of his wounded fingers, Derek weakly crawls away from the killer, but it's too late to escape. The killer corners Derek, then pushes him into a fusebox, and his corpse dances like a cockroach on a hot frying pan.

The power goes out, stranding Amy on the track. She assumes that it's a joke at first, but exits the cart after nothing turns back on. She calls down to the effects guys, then descends the enclosed ladder herself.

It doesn't take long to find a flashlight, then Derek's corpse. Amy runs back to the ladder, but narrowly escapes being spotted by the killer. In a clever and suspenseful bit, Amy hides behind the ladder enclosure, putting her mere inches from the killer's back. As soon as he's lower than her, Amy slides around to the inside of the cage again, and swiftly ascends the ladder. Of course, the killer hears the commotion, and starts to climb up after her again.

Amy decides to run back through the tunnel, and the killer stops for a moment to watch her retreat, before heading behind the scenery to try to get to her. When Amy descends some stairs, the killer grabs her ankle from behind the stairs and sends her sailing to the floor. She manages to get back on her feet and running again, and finally gets outside.

She sprints down the street--in fog, no less--then does something only a bonehead would do: Amy stops in her tracks, and turns around. Reese then makes her jump by getting in front of her. That leads to Reese calling in the cops, who take the corpses and tape off the crime scene. 2 cops behave like complete dickheads toward her and Reese, and Amy cuts their questions short.

Back at her place, Amy has a confrontation with Trevor over his so-called "protection", which apparently consisted of letting the killer have at her. Trevor claims that he was following Graham, and didn't get back to the set until after the police had arrived. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I think we may have our killer. Heck, he may even be Travis, faking his death to claim victims easier.

Amy must have been dropped as a baby, because she buys his alibi and fills him in on what happened in the tunnel ride. She relaxes when she decides it wasn't Graham, but then Trevor tells her that Graham slipped away somehow. Uh-huh.

Suddenly, Amy has a possible revelation. She remembers that Stan and Dirk were only sophomores. Going with that logic, she decides that it wouldn't make sense for the killer to target them. Uh, Queen Dumbass, they were crew members on your movie, which makes them just as much targets as ANY cast and crew working on Hitchcock Award-eligible movies.

Anyway, Amy decides that her dumb suspicions over the choice of victims is worth looking into, but Trevor convinces her to get some sleep first. He gets her to relax on the bed, then spoons up behind her to get some cute-girl booty acti...uh, I mean he spoons her to also get some well-deserved rest.

Heh, it turns out my sarcastic comment was right on the nose! They decide to do the ol' horizontal bop. Sadly, we see more of his ass than hers. Man, I need to watch more "old school" slashers...these post-Scream slashers are waaaaaay too politically correct. Well, whatever...as they make love, Trevor takes a knife out from a hiding place, then plunges it into a pretty gosh-darned surprised Amy.

Aw, it was just a dream sequence. Amy sits up in the bed. It's morning, and Trevor has left, probably to post all of the pics and videos he took of her on Facebook. Oh, wait...she slept in her clothes. So even THAT didn't happen. It's like watching a movie produced by The Vatican.

Hmmmm, I guess it's not morning, because when Amy looks out of her window, it's darkout. Also, there's a light that goes on in the building where Travis killed himself. Amy runs to the tower, because apparently, she just never learns. By the time she reaches the top floor, Amy is out of breath and limping. I know the feeling--I get the same way after watching these things.

She assumes that it's Trevor waiting for her, but it's not. It's Vanessa, the hot lesbian. Giggity!

Vanessa claims that Amy sent her a note, asking for a rendezvous. When Amy tells her that someone else sent the note, Vanessa gets upset and Amy starts looking for the killer to emerge. It doesn't take long: a corpse falls from somewhere above them. It happens pretty fast, and even rewinding the damn thing, I'm not sure who it is. Oh, and as all of this is happening, Reese is just getting back to her security monitors as the killer begins the next chase.

As Amy tries to get herself and Vanessa to safety, Vanessa demands an explanation. Instead of answering her friend, Amy sees how close the killer is, and off they go again. The way Amy runs, I expect the killer to catch up in about 3 seconds.

Reese finally sees the alarm flashing, just as the girls arrive at the top of the tower. They find what appears to be a closet, and hide inside. Of course, it only works as a hiding place if they don't call attention to themselves. So they decide to get chatty.

As expected, the killer finds them and snatches Vanessa away, before slamming the door shut, and jamming the lock with a screwdriver. Screaming, Amy accidentally pulls a switch for the lights in the closet, and sees a pile of body parts in there to keep her company. To be more specific, she finds Simon and Sandra, with some assembly required.

Amy manages to force the door open, but finds Vanessa hanging from a rope tied to the giant bell in the tower. She runs back outside, just as Reese arrives. And Trevor. Would anyone else like to just randomly pop up? Anyone?

Trevor apologizes for leaving Amy unguarded, but tells her he found a clue. Jinkies! He tells Amy that, pnce he removed her name from the cast and crew, he found a common link between the rest of the group: All of them worked on the thesis film Travis created. They find the film and watch it, for more clues.

It's a stinker. But Amy DOES find a clue. The movie was spliced onto the credits Travis created. That implies that somebody else threw together a bunch of outtakes. At least that explains his low grade. But who sabotaged his movie?

They assume it was Toby, just to be an ass-hat. Then Toby is seen driving drunk, putting lyris to the theme music from Gone With the Wind. He brakes suddenly for a car in the middle of the road, but it's the killer....say WHAAAAT?!?

It's actually Amy, but she has a gun. Wow, I am more confused than a blonde trying to decide which sock goes on her left foot, and which goes on her right. Oh,wait...Travis is also there, holding a flare. They kidnap Toby.

The take Toby somewhere isolated, and handcuff him to a chair. Before they can question Toby, Professor Solomon walks in on the makeshift interrogation. As he does a double-take upon seeing Travis, Graham also pops up, albeit in a hiding spot.

Solomon asks Amy about the gun, and she admits that it's only a prop. Then Travis, pretending to be Trevor, tells the professor that Toby stole "his" movie. Unfortunately, Travis slips up by saying that Toby mixed "his" sound, and Toby clarifies that Travis preferred to do all of his own sound edits by himself. Toby even says that Travis only gave him a film credit to given him enough points to graduate.

Toby asks Solomon for help, and the teacher shoots him, send the chair and Toby soaring onto a movie set. Solomon confesses to blowing Travis' head off, and demands to know who Trevor actually is. Graham's phone goes off, and Trevor uses the distraction to wrestle with Solomon over the gun.

Sadly, Solomon keeps the gun. Amy tries hiding on another set, and Graham almost leaves, but decides to try and rescue Amy. Whoa! Solomon makes Trevor walk in front of him, and Amy sees Graham signal her to stay put. She, of course, stands up. When she gets Solomon talking, we finally get to hear what the motive was for the killings.

Solomon ended up losing the Hitchcock back when he was a student, to some dude named Chip. The deciding vote was cast against Solomon, by none other than Amy's father. Trapped in a mediocre teaching job, Solomon decided to steal the film Travis made, and replace it with the crap Amy and Trevor watched. He then began kiling everyone on Amy's set, merely to distract everyone from what he was doing.

Speaking of distractions, Graham uses Solomon's confession to sneak up behind him and bash him with a folding chair. Being a movie prop, it has almost no effect, so Solomon shoots Graham while he and Trevor grapple for control of the gun. It gets dropped and slides across the set, and the 2 men fight using whatever props happen to be nearby. Ay yi yi.

Thank the heavens, Reese comes to the rescue. Quickly assessing his chances, Solomon decides to try to convince Reese that Amy and Trevor were trying to murder him. Reese tells Amy to drop her gun, and she complies. Then Reese tells everyone to get off the set. Feeling pretty confident, Solomon blames Amy for the murders, and tells the security guard that it was Amy she saw one night lurking around.

Oops. It turns out that Reese had kept that to herself. Caught in his lie, Solomon kicks Reese's gun out of her hand, then punches her as she reaches for the gun with the gold trim. A bunch of prop guns also end up on the floor, and everyone goes looking for any of the real guns.

Amy gets the gold gun, and Solomon and she exchange taunts. When Solomon tries to get Amy to fire at him, she hesitates, so he lunges at her. The gun goes off, and it turns out that Amy fired it into Soloomon at close range. Then Toby and Graham turn up alive and begging for medical help, and Reese delivers a corny line from one of her favorite blaxploitation flicks. Sheesh.

In the following scene, Trevor accepts the Hitchcock on behalf of his brother. Scrote, watching from the rafters, pulls out a rifle with a telescopic sight, and aims at Trevor. Reese spots Scrote before he pulls the trigger, and takes him down with several shots., he falls, not to his death, but onto an inflated stunt pad.

Everyone who survived is there: Graham is Amy's agent; Scrote, as we saw, is an actor; and Toby, who was such an ass, is now doing Scrote's old job of being a lackey. Oh, and Amy is a big-time director, with Trevor at her side. Everyone lives happily ever after...

Well, with one exception. Solomon is seen in a hospital for the criminally disturbed. As he sits in his wheelchair looking catatonic, a nurse starts to push him down the corridor, telling him that they have a lot in common, and much to discuss. The nurse turns out to be Brenda, the killer from the first UL movie. As the credits roll, she wheels Solomon down the longest hallway in movie history. THE END


Whew! I know, I know, I'm 2 weeks late. Last week, I was hit hard by an infection, and spent most of it in bed. Literally, I slept something like 3 days straight. This past week, I had a lot to catch up on, not just this blog. I'm trying to double up on my movies, to make up for that week, so we'll see how that goes. The next slasher is something called Venom, so hopefully it's good.

Oh, and what has Urban Legends: Final Cut taught me?

-That I can get tons of mileage from jokes about Joey Lawrence. Whoa!

-Killers are often caught because their plans are waaaay too complicated.

-Taking a tragedy that killed many of your friends, and using it as a stepping-stone to fame, is never in bad taste.

See ya!