Husk

So, BlockbustMyBalls finally sent me 2 new slashers to watch, and I decided on Husk. It's a film in the After Dark set, so I'll most likely add some more of them to my queue to watch. I've enjoyed some of their past efforts, such as Dark Ride and The Hamiltons, so it'll be fun to explore the quality of the rest. Oh, and SPOILER time!

Husk is in a genre I've always enjoyed, that of killer scarecrows on the loose. The story opens up on a group of young guys travelling past endless cornfields, having a conversation about some kind of risky jump one of them wants to take. The conversation distracts them while driving, and the vehicle slams into a bird. The impact pretty much turns the bird into a Jackson Pollock painting on their windshield.

When they pull their truck over to the side of the road, we start getting to know them all. The trio who caused the accident are Scott, Chris and Johnny. In addition to them, we also meet Natalie,who was sleeping in the backseat, and her boyfriend Brian. Wave hello, everyone!

Chris, the one in the glasses, gets out to look at the damage, while Brian checks Natalie for signs of a concussion or other injury. Brian yells over to Chris, just to confirm that he, too, is in okay shape. This is quickly turning into that scene at the end of every episode of The Waltons, where 9,000 characters have to wish each other a good night. Come on guys, don't screw this one up...I love a good killer scarecrow flick!

Chris wanders around toward one of the cornfields, trying to get reception on his phone. He learns from the others that Johnny has somehow managed to wander away, and is now missing. He continues exploring their surroundings, while Brian calms Natalie down by snuggling up to her. Yeah, because nothing says "an afternoon quickie" quite like a car accident.

Chris spots a building past the field, and urges the others to go with him to look for assistance. They all bundle up to protect their skin from getting smacked by cornstalks, then begin the journey. Well, maybe not all...Chris and Brian enter the field, leaving Natalie and Scott with the wrecked truck.

Once they actually enter the rows of corn, it proves to be rough going. Brian seems to be plowing right on through it, but Chris gets into a coughing fit trying to keep up, which slows down their progress considerably. Uh, why did you bring the chess club guy, as opposed to the OTHER fellow athlete you had with you? Smart decision.

Well, nothing happens to them. Yet. Instead, we see Scott and Natalie bond over cigarettes. When the movie switches back to Chris and Brian, they're talking about having a party with as many women as they can handle. So much for generating any suspense by splitting them up a little.

Oh, and then they discover a rusty mailbox in the field. Beyond that, they find abandoned vehicles. And then, finally, they see a scarecrow. Yay! Chris, who just minutes ago could barely walk, decides that he should climb the post that the scarecrow is resting on, to try and get a position on the house. He sees it, and climbs off of the scarecrow. And still, nothing happens...

Back at the truck, Natalie is now wandering around outside, but staying close to the vehicle. She checks on their supplies, while Scott looks like he's trying to hot-wire the truck. Natalie strolls away from the vehicle, and uncovers a sign that says "GEN HILL". Then she spots someone hiding in the corn, and chases after them. Scott hears the commotion, and quickly catches up to her.

Then, more wandering with Brian and Chris. They find the house, but it looks long-abandoned. The interior is filthy, and they both agree that no one lives in the house anymore...so, of course, they resume calling out, "Hello? Anybody here?" Genius.

Scott and Natalie discover a scarecrow as well(okay...NATALIE discovers it....), and Natalie thinks it might actually be a human corpse. She runs back to the truck, and Scott follows. After a brief debate, they agree to try to follow Chris and Brian through the cornfield. Hmmm...what if she found Johnny?

Still wandering around in the House That Crap Built, the Dork-namic Duo hear some machinery. They enter a room with a bare light bulb lit up, and see a vaguely human-ish shape working at some kind of generator pedal, presumably to keep the light on. Brian gets closer to the figure, and asks if it's Johnny...

Then more running through corn. Fun. Natalie finds the house, and calls out Brian's name. Then Brian and Chris get close enough to the figure at the generator device to see that it is, indeed, their friend Johnny. Or was. His corpse is somehow making the machine work, and when he stops, the light goes out.

Natalie is still shouting for Brian in the corn, and hears something near her. Whatever it is, the thing attacks her, and knocks the frightened girl to the ground. Despite her screams and struggling, the attacker drags her away into the field. Bye!

Everyone hears her screaming, and the remaining 3 guys reunite. Scott tells Brian that he saw a brief glimpse of the thing that took her, and points in the direction that she was dragged in. Chris, being a wus, remains at the grungy house as the sun sets.

Scott and Brian run around in the dark, and find Natalie hanging from a chain wrapped around her wrists, looking fairly dead-ish. When Brian tries to undo the chains, some unseen mechanism hoists her body higher off the ground. Brian finds another body in the corn, then hears some whispering in close proximity, and then he and Scott get Natalie's body off of the chain device.

Scott gets back to the abandoned house first, and tells Chris that they all need to leave. Brian, carrying Natalie over his shoulder, takes a break to rest. As he tries to find any signs of life in her, something rushes at them. Brian starts to run away, and is hit by a chain. He has a scuffle with 2 of the zombie scarecrows, and he stumbles out of the corn to warn Chris. Before Chris can even react, a scarecrow tries to get him too, but he breaks free. As the 2 teens catch their breath on the ground, they see a scarecrow move back into the wall of corn.

Back in the house, they tend to their wounds and look for weapons. As they argue over whether or not to escape or fight, Brian accuses Scott of letting the monsters have Natalie to save his own ass. Then they search some more.

After determining that the cars are probably useless, Chris spots another scarecorpse. He falls into Dumb Horror Movie Rookie country, and decides to have a better look at the figure, which leaps at him. Brian saves him, but the attack somehow gives Chris visions. That sounds entirely logical, huh?

Anyway, he has a vision of a farmer and his son performing a ritual sacrifice involving spilling the blood of a chicken. As the farmer praises the boy, he sees his other son standing in the corner, not getting involved in the ritual. The farmer drags his second son over to a fresh chicken, hands him the knife, and tells him to start cutting. Then the vision ends. And that, kids, is the story of how Colonel Sanders started his empire. Or How I Met Your Mother. I forget which.

Back in the present, Brian gets his shit together, at least mentally speaking. He and Scott then move some furniture around and trash the house while looking for supplies. Scott thinks that he sees someone in the next room, and decides to explore some more.

He finds a room with electricity running in it(in the form of a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling), and calls out to Brian. Then a zombie version of Natalie shambles in, and starts sewing. The door slams shut, trapping Scott with the undead girl. Luckily, his friends hurry to find something to break the door down. Unluckily, Natalie attacks Scott.

They finally get the door open, and Scott runs out of the room. He tells them that Natalie attacked him, which makes Brian go bananas looking for her. Chris runs outside and has another weird vision, in which he sees the same rebellious farmboy from before stab his brother through the back with a pitchfork.

Then something attacks Chris in the corn, and he is strung up by his feet. A scarecrow shows up, and slices his exposed stomach with Freddy Krueger-ish claws. Then his friends find him, and he tells them about his visions. Brian decides to investigate by himself, and Chris follows him back into the house. Then Chris gets the crap scared out of him when Scott shows up and grabs him.

Somehow Chris gets one of the abandoned trucks started, and flies by his shocked friends when they hear the engine. He crashes the vehicle into a scarecrow, and it eventually "wakes up"on the hood of the truck, and tries to get to him by smashing the windshield. It goes after him 2-3 times, then vanishes.

Brian gets his hands on a shotgun, which proves to be no match for one of the scarecrows. After he dies, we get another vision with Chris seeing the evil farm kid going after his father. Oh, and he hid his brother's corpse by dressing it as a scarecrow, and placingit in the middle of the field. He then finds Scott, and tells him that the killer is the ghost of the murdered brother, who jumps from scarecrow to scarecrow to claim each new victim.

Chris finds zombie Brian, and tries to speak to him. When Brian stops sewing, he appears to let Chris take his lighter and escape the room. Then Chris finds Scott, and they waste time looking for the shotgun.

Scott gets badly injured in an attack, and Chris suggests that they go in different directions. Chris then hides in the corn and waits for zombified Brian to come after him. They face off, and Brian impales him in the gut. Chris seems to defeat him, but who knows at this point?

Then Scott is dragged into the corn by one of the undead scarecrows, and he goes into melee combat mode. As they fight, he discovers that Chris has also been captured. Chris screams at him to run, and Scott does as he's told. Unfortunately, he's also attacked again, just as he sees a car coming down the road.

The film ends with Scott sprawledon the ground, whispering for help, as the motorist opening his car door to come looking for him. Between them is a killer scarecrow, trying to decide which one to kill first. THE END.

Well, not the worst killer scarecrow movie I've ever seen...which is kind of sad to contemplate. I obviously had trouble telling who was who in this film, and the "visions" served no purpose in the plot, so it seemed somewhat generic. Also, only 1 female in the cast? That was a bonehead decision: this movie needed more characters and plot. 2 killer trees out of 5.

And what did I learn from watching Husk?

-Well, obviously no one's names.

-Scarecrows love to teleport from body to body....especially if they get a chance to do some major sewing.

-Dead birds leave 1,000 gallons of blood behind when they die.

My next movie is a prequel, Wrong Turn 4. I'm praying that it's better than my last few.

Granny

Well, with my Netflix account not back up yet(long story short:I screwed something up...), and my Blockbuster account telling me that I won't get my next 2 movies for several days(PLEASE hurry, Netflix....can't stand Blockbuster!), I've decided to try watching something slasher-y on YouTube. I was debating between a few films, but I guess I'll watch something called Granny. Grab your walkers and hearing aids, we're entering SPOILER territory ya young whipper-snappers!

The credits are red and blurry. Great. And the movie stars pretty much no one. Even better. Then the first scene starts up, and the dialogue is hard to understand as well. This is not going to be one of the better slashers, I'm boldly predicting that right now. On the plus side though, it's only an hour long. My suffering will be short...

Anyway, the opening scene is at least somewhat self-explanatory: A group of young people are being told a scary story, and the storyteller is passing around various slimy, wet or mushy objects as he tells his tale. It's about his grandmother, and he tries to convince his pals that they're touching her organs. Spoiler: they're pig guts. The group breaks apart, and there's a mostly-muffled chat between 2 females. Both are cute, but the dialogue keeps getting louder then softer, making this film even harder to comprehend than The Forest. I'm sorely tempted to just turn the volume all the way down, and just make up my own plot, like I had to do for most of that movie.

The next scene reveals that all of these folks are finishing college together. Can most of them even spell "college? A guy who appears to be named Vic insults all of the females in the room by drunkenly announcing that only men have contributed anything to history. This leads(eventually) into an inane conversation about whether men or women are more manipulative in regards to sexual encounters and relatiosnships. Can you guys go back to being hard to understand? I liked you better when I couldn't hear you as well.

A new-ish girl in the group, Michele, admits that the thought of sex makes her nervous. THAT somehow gets them to discuss their worst fears(or "paranoias", as they call them, for no discernable reason), and they mostly discuss common fears....being alone, commitment, etc. Then one guy, Tom, tells the others that his "paranoia" is mind-blowing, but also complicated. Tom gets them all to leave for an hour, in order for him to decorate thye house as his "paranoia", or whatever. We're less than 20 minutes in, and I already don't give a crap about any of these people. Either say "phobia" or "fear", or buy a dictionary!

When the group returns, they find a note on The front door from Tom. It seems that he had an emergency, and had to leave. Again, who cares? They all stand around on the front porch discussing what to do, and decide to enter the house after all. Hurray for making a decision!

They all sit down in the living room again, and hear a noise from either the basement or the backyard. They even debate which area the sound is coming from. It's someone crying, and it's just as muffled as everything else so far. A dark-haired guy, John Doe #1, checks out the basement. He loudly announces that Tom is scaring him, even though he has a dopey grin plastered all over his face. As the crying gets louder, he comes face-to-face with someone in a white robe wearing an old woman mask. Wait, don't tell me: Granny?

Before WhatsHisFace can react, Granny picks up an axe, and plants it in his forehead. Then Granny lets the weapon swing by his/her side, and decides to get a closer look at the wound. Take a picture, Granny, just get this horrible movie going again.

Another character, Monica, a cute girl dressed in red, decides to re-apply her lipstick in the bathroom. It's a shame that none of these people can act...the actresses are all very cute in this one. But the quality of the film makes Fear look like Citizen Kane by comparison.

Anyway, she puts on about 7 layers of lipstick to draw the scene out. Yeesh. Then we return to the others, who grow sick of waiting for Monica to return from the bathroom. As a group, they all head into the basement. Boy, the suspense is nail-biting, huh? If anyone decides to make a sandwich, I might piss my pants.

Monica finally finishes her makeup, and then gets worried that she might not be alone. Uh, it's a bathroom, not a corn maze! And yet, her fears prove to be sound, as Granny pops up directly behind her. Unlike the guy in the basement, we don't get to see Granny do anything, as the scene ends right at that point. Booooooooo...

The others tiptoe into the basement like they're auditioning for a remake of Scooby-Doo. Rucking Roopid!! As they all try to frighten one another, we see Granny still upstairs in the bathroom, stabbing a cardboard cutout wearing Monica's shirt. Geez. After Granny stabs her shirt about 20 or so times, we see Monica on the floor covered in Heinz 57. The friends then find Monica themselves, and confirm that she is actually dead. Maybe the ketchup was spoiled, and she was poisoned by it?

They run back into the living room, where they find Tom standing around. As they all accuse him of murder, they see Granny at the top of the stairs, watching them. Well, I guess the killer isn't Tom...

Tom and ? decide to try to capture the killer themselves, and go after her. As ? opens a door to see if Granny is hiding, the killer emerges behind both men, and closes the door on ?. With Tom alone now, Granny begins to club him to death. The rest of the group hear the noise, but they all remain downstairs. Nice friends! To finish the job, Granny throws ? out of an upstairs window. Bye ?....I'm sorry I never knew your name.

A girl named Kristine makes a dash for the door, and escapes the house. Tom sees her through a window, and rushes downstairs to find out what happened. He tells the others that Kristine will most likely be killed outside, and that he blames the others for not making her stay. Um.... WHAAAAAAAT? Is Tom on crack?

Tom tells Vic to stay with Michele, as he and Nancy go searching for Kristine. Yeah, splitting up is always wise. We see Kristine just sort of roaming around in a daze, until Granny finds her. Granny wraps a rope around her neck, then binds her hands together as well. Granny makes her march a short distance, then appears to snap her neck.

Back in the house, Michele sees Granny outside the nearest window, so she runs away to find Vic. She discovers Vic in a chair with his back to her, and tells him that she saw the killer. When Vic fails to respond, she turns his chair around, and reveals that it's actually Granny that Michele found. Which lacks any kind of sense at all. What, can she teleport now?

Michele runs away, and Granny pursues her. Deja vu, anyone? Michele runs into Vic, and he tells her that he found a gun, but with only 1 bullet in the chamber. Vic tells her that he can get her to safety if she follows his every order. Then he gives her a 40-minute kiss, which gives Granny enough time to stab him in the eyes with knitting needles. Lucky bastard...I still have to watch the rest of this steaming pile.

Michele is found by Tom and Natalie, and Tom urges the girls to escape in a car. This somehow leads to Granny attacking the girls from the backseat, where she wraps Natalie's head in plastic, suffocating her to death. Michele just passes out, and revives almost immediately, so we get yet another tedious chase sequence. Even at 58 minutes, this whole thing seems bloated and overly padded.

Natalie goes back to the house, and finds Tom still alive. They're separated by glass, though, and we all know that glass is impossible to break... Before Natalie can reach him, Granny drags Tom away. Damn you, impenetrable wall of transparent, breakable material!

Michele gets the gun and goes looking for Granny. They have a reallllllly short confrontation, and Michele shoots Granny. Then she staggers to the front door, and appears to have either a heart attack or an asthma attack. Maybe a Big Mac attack. Somne kind of attack, at any rate.

In the final scene, we learn that there was no Granny. It was all a prank on Michele, and none of them knew that she had a heart condiion. At her funeral, they all start fighting over who was to blame for scaring her to death. Oh, and it turns out that Granny was actually Tom's brother the entire time, and probably Tom at some points, to account for Granny being in 2 places at the same time in some of the chase sequences.

Everyone gets upset, and then a car drives up to the graveyard. Even though it doesn't quite look like her behind the wheel, I'm going to assume that the twist here is that Michele faked them all out, and out-pranked them. Otherwise, it doesn't really make much sense...but that then begs the question, who the heck did they just bury? THE END

This monstrosity was only an hour long, but it felt like 3. The Granny costume was somewhat cool, but it was wasted on the dumbest movie ever. And I'm getting pretty sick of these "fake" slasher movies. It was okay once or twice, in movies like April Fools' Day and cry_wolf, but after the 4th or 5th time you see it, it sucks on an epic level. No killer trees for this turd.

And did Granny actually leave me with any wisdom?

-Well, I know which slasher movie plot twist I hate the most.....

-If you have a kind of cool killer, wait until you have a script that deserves to have them in it.

-Don't expect classics when you watch movies for free on YouTube. Lesson learned.

-And a bonus one: What kind of idiots bury someone without knowing who they just buried?

Assuming that they arrive sometime this century, my next 2 movies from BallBuster will be Wrong Turn 4 and Husk. Both will be better than Granny...I feel very safe in making that particular prediction. And if Netflix ever sends me movies again, I'll be watching Bad Dreams. Either way, I think it'll be a better week. I hope so...

Go to the movies!

Go to the movies and see The Cabin in the Woods...several times! It rocks!

Pieces

Pieces. Again. Finally.

Quite a while back, I had rented Pieces for that week's SAW. but I was hospitalized, or lost the DVD or something. So this week, I get to try again, because I ordered a slasher movie boxed set from Amazon. There are 10 movies in the collection, so I can always use the set to get a movie from, if I don't get a rental or watch one on TV. Anyway, on with the show, SPOILERS and all.

So, I'm going to just say right away that this one is wacky and messed up. There are even discussion threads online that have people listing their favorite funny moments. Your mileage may vary, but there are tons of laugh-out-loud moments to be had.

The first scene sets the tone pretty well: a young boy, Timmy, is putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Oh, and he looks like he's wearing makeup. The setting is Boston, and the year is 1942. Write all of this down, there'll be a quiz later.

Timmy seems to be pretty engrossed in his puzzle, because he fails to hear his mother entering the room behind him. She's smiling down at him at first, until she sees that the puzzle is a picture of a nude woman. The only 2 pieces Timmy hasn't placed on her body are the feet and the vagina. Let's hope he knows which is which.

His mother slaps him around a bit, then starts throwing items around the room and smashing picture frames. She demands that Timmy fetch her a trash bag, and then continues to throw random debris around the room. What is this, a biopic about Joan Crawford?

Timmy returns, but has an axe instead of a bag. He gives his mother several good whacks to the forehead, killing her. Then we get rushed to the next scene, where Mary Poppins is at the front door of the murder house. She rings the bell a few times, then calls their phone. Oh, and the phone is a push-button, which apparently means that Timmy is a time-traveler as well as a killer.

Speaking of Timmy, he's been busy hacking his mother's body up, and finishing his puzzle. He looks out of an upstairs window at one point, and sees the woman from before pantomiming to 2 cops about trying to enter the house. Timmy goes back to his puzzle, and eats a cookie.

The woman outside the house enters with 2 cops, so Tim decides to hide in the closet. As the cops see all of the blood in the bedroom, they hear a noise from the closet. That's Tim's cue to pretend to be frightened, and call out for his mommy. And then the opening credits begin to roll. One kind of humorous detail about the credits: they're displayed in a font that was probably supposed to resemble dripping blood, but they're yellow. So, instead of blood, the credits look like wax.

As the credits finally wheeze to a halt, the killer is seen rummaging through a box. The items in said box are revealed to be things that his mother had on her body the day he murdered her: shoes, her dress, stuff like that. At the very bottom, there is a photo of his mother(I guess?) with a big, red "X" across her face.

Then we get the first of many, many randomly weird scenes in this movie. There's a perky brunette on a skateboard, while some badly off-tune "funky" music is playing. Groovy. In a bit of foreshadowing that's as subtle as a pneumatic drill to the groin, a truck carrying large panes of glass pulls up to the sidewalk. Gosh, I just fell off of a turnip truck, and can't possibly imagine where this scene is going...

Roller Girl rolls past several people, just grinning her oblivious little ass off. As she approaches a corner, she decides it would be smart to turn her head and wave at 2 people as she passes them. She then sees the giant glass panel and decides it would be safer to scream than it would be to, oh, I don't know, TRY TO STOP HERSELF FROM MOVING?!?

The killer then takes another box and opens it to--wait, what? What about Roller Girl? What was the point of that scene? Did he somehow cause her accident? Was he a witness? Why the Hell were we watching that scene, if it had nothing to do with the rest of the movie? Un-freaking-believable.

*sigh*

The second box turned out to be the one that contained the puzzle. Whatever. I'm already getting a headache trying to find the sense in this one. I hope Cabin In the Woods is better than this...(I'm going to see it tomorrow! Yayyyyyy!!!)

Okay, so the puzzle sequence also kind of just meandered, and now there's a cute chick on her stomach in some grass, just reading a book. She gets distracted by a guy trimming hedges with a chainsaw, and demands that he go work elsewhere. She goes back to reading, and gets a chainsaw through the neck, spraying blood everywhere. Then there's a brief shot of her headless body.

A pair of investigators arrive at the school's campus, dressed like bankers. One even looks old enough to have signed the Magna Carta. They ask to speak to the dean, and after a brief debate, he emerges from his office to usher them in. Good, now maybe we'll finally learn something useful about the killer. Oh, and the dean looks like Count Dracula, on a budget.

Nope. They switch scenes on us again, and we have to listen to a bunch of potheads discussing waterbeds in the school gym, and how it feels to screw on one. Then, a student with the most improbable breasts in any film ever made(including the 3-breasted woman in Total Recall) decides to flirt with her favorite teacher, Professor Brown

Anyway, Professor Brown looks like he's about as much fun as genital warts. Maybe even slightly less so. She tries to get him to notice her breasts, but apparently he's as nearsighted as Mr. Magoo. Hell, astronauts landing on Mars could see those things, no telescope required.

Outside the dean's office, the secretary fills him in on all of the details of the investigation...after he catches her eavesdropping on them through her intercom. The cops have a theory that the killer is either a teacher or a student. Gee, that really narrows it down!

Dean No-Name buzzes the receptionist, to ask her to locate Professor Brown. Lucky him. He steps into the office, and is asked if he had the dead girl as a student in any of his courses. Which dead girl, the one on skates, or the one who was chainsawed? Chainsaw girl, I suppose, but I'd still like to know why we were shown Roller Girl's death scene.

It turns out that Brown teaches Anatomy, which makes him look better and better as a suspect. Brown denies even remembering the girl, and gets pretty pissed off when the dean volunteers him to show the detectives around the campus.

Outside of the office, the detectives question Brown about the girl, as well as his department. When Brown implies that some of their questions seem random, or unrelated to the case, the older detective uses the analogy that they're "buying clothes without labels, just trying them on for size". Uhhhhhh......huhhhhhhh....

Brown then tries to throw the investigation away from him, claiming that the dead girl had many friends and boyfriends, and was quite popular. Wow, that's pretty good, considering he wasn't even sure who she was 5 minutes ago!

Another scene, another chainsaw. This one['s being swung by Bluto himself, presumably just moments after he slaughtered Popeye with it. Seriously, though, he DID play Bluto in the movie Popeye, I wasn't just mocking his appearance. Well okay, I was, but still...

Dean Dracula spots the groundskeeper rubbing the chainsaw and chuckling((Bluto's name in this movie is "Willard"(or as the dean says it, "Will Ard"), by the way), Oh, and it turns out that his landscaping is only a temporary assignment....Drac hints that he'd like Willard to finish within a few weeks, then leave. As the dean strolls away, Willard raises the chainsaw in a vaguely menacing fashion and growls, before spotting a couple of coeds getting intimate on the grass.

Then back to the stupid jigsaw puzzle. The killer's taking his time with it, so the film teleports us to the campus library now. Plot development? What's that? Heck, let's just throw in Aunt Martha's home movies while we're at it!

A guy((I'm guessing here, because he looks like the "Pat" character from SNL) gets a note from a hot chick, then tries, and fails, to throw the note away in a waste basket. The killer, dressed entirely in black, grabs it off of the floor. You'd think that his outfit would make him stick out like a sore thumb, but these kids are completely clueless.

As she exits the library, the blond decides to have a loud, annoying chat with some friends. All 3 spot Brown walking away, and they make it obvious that he's the main topic of their discussion. Man, this one is terrible.I'd almost encourage a remake, just to make a more coherent and compelling plot out of the mess that this became.

Our pretty student exits into a poorly-lit area, and decides to become an impromptu stripper. Interesting career choice, though I'm not sure that there's much profit in improv striptease routines...especially in empty rooms.

The good news is, someone decided to be her audience. The bad news is, it's the killer. He sneaks in, waits for her to get naked, then lets her go swimming. He watches her do a lap, then uses a net to tangle her up and drag her in his direction.

He drags her out of the pool and waits for her to recover from nearly drowning--just so that he can show her the chainsaw before he hacks her to death. Does she run? Nope. Does she attempt to get away by getting back into the pool, and swimming in a different direction? Nope.

What DOES she do? Well, she sits there, and watches the killer come after her. Then she flinches and screams. And then, she just pretty much lets him kill her. This is like Slashing for Dummies.

Back in the library, the nerdy guy who got the note is still waiting for her to return. Another, even nerdier guy gives him a note as well. So apparently, "library" is code for "place where everybody hooks up for sexy party time". Oh, and the second nerd makes a melodramatic statement about leaving to commit suicide over the late delivery of the note that he just gave to the first kid. Have fun, Melvin!

Oh good, the killer's back! And he's carrying a bloodstained sack around with him. He adds it to his body part collection, then we see Bluto have a random brawl with the detectives. After that, they find the latest victim, and question Brown. Heck, then they let him tamper with the crime scene! This movie must have been written with Mad Libs....it's all just random crap!

The 2 nerds from the library are then questioned, before we get back to Dean Dracula. Most of the cast is in there as well. Y'know, if the killer set off a bomb in their, we could end the movie early....

There's an aerobics class, and the killer is enjoying the spectacle(as am I!). He waits for 1 girl to wander off by herself, and follows her. Too bad for him, she meets up with a friend, and they exit together.

After one of the male students from earlier is questioned atb the station, he meets a tennis pro named Mary. One of the detectives asks him to protect Mary, which seems like an odd request to make of a guy who may be one of your main suspects.

This, of course, means that we have to endure a tennis match. After the match, Dean Dracula flirts with Mary, probably to see where he could plant his fangs in her neck. As he promised, the kid from the previous scene is watching Mary like a hawk.

The killer puts more pieces of the puzzle together, then goes back to stalking a girl doing aerobics again. She stops doing her routine, because she senses that someone is watching her, but she doesn't see the killer. She quickly gets dressed, and then runs through the building as fast as she can move.

At an elevator, she seems to relax around the killer. Oh, and she completely misses seeing the large chainsaw he's holding behind his back. Awesome. Just like the girl in the pool, Elevator Girl pretty much just stands there and lets him murder her. This story was written by a committee of geniuses.

Our intrepid investigators arrive on the scene,and find both the professor and the young guy there already. The body is taken away, and one of the detectives tries to figure out if it might be worthwhile to get suspicious about one of the 2 suspects, just to have something to do. By the time they solve the case, the campus will be empty! Oh, and Dean Drac arrives, just as a flash of lightning strikes. I can't wait to see him transform into a bat! And Bluto is on the scene as well!

Frantic to solve the case, the detectives decide to have full background checks done on everyone on the college staff. Wait, they just decided that NOW??? Wouldn't that have been a smart move about 3 murders ago?

That night, a naked couple has a chat in their bedroom, just as the pretty tennis pro decides to take a late stroll. This being the most random film ever, the tennis player is attacked by a martial artist, then she hears a chainsaw. Nothing happens to her, because that young guy is still watching over her.

Then the movie decides to switch her out for a different girl, also walking around the dark campus. This girl decides to stroll past some trees, then she enters an unlit house. As she continues to walk around in the dark, the killer leaps out at her, brandishing a huge butcher knife.

She runs around screaming, and falls into what looks like the waterbed mentioned earlier. The killer lets her turn onto her stomach, then he shoves the knife into her head, so that the blade emerges from her mouth. Ouch.

The young guy heads home, where he gets scared by some random nerd in a rubber mask. Then we see the killer put more pieces into the jigsaw puzzle. Aren't movies fun when they don't have an editor? Nope.

An attractive brunette takes a shower after tennis practice, while some marching music plays. After her shower, the killer finds her in the locker room, and a chase sequence begins. Wow, so 1 girl has the common sense to run! Good for her.

She gets to an exit, but the door is jammed. The killer just casually strolls over, and the girl runs into the restroom, where she locks herself into a toilet stall. The killer saws through the flimsy door, then hacks her up. While she's being killed, the tennis pro is talking to both Bluto and her "protector", so I guess we can rule those 2 out as suspects now.

The tennis pro, Mary, claims that she can hear someone screaming, and asks Bluto where the control panel is for the loudspeaker. As they go together to turn off the band music, the young guy suspiciously ducks into the locker building.

Bluto silences the music, then they realize that the "bodyguard" is no longer with them. It turns out that his name is "Kendall", by the way. He comes out of the locker room crying, and tells the others that he found the latest victim of the maniac.

Mary decides to see the body for herself, and pukes. Then she pulls the same kind of "shouting" scene that Jen Love Hewitt did in the first 2 "Last Summer" slashers. Then there's a pointless scene where one of the investigators asks someone else to do his job for him. Wow...is there anyone in the movie who isn'T lazy???

Back on campus, Mary walks to class with Professor Brown. He tells her off when she asks about his private life, and storms away in anger. Then Mary nearly gets flattened when she literally bumps into Kendall. He watches her walk away, then helps one of the cops weed through student files for clues.

Mary visits Dean Dracula at his home, and he steps into the kitchen to make her a hot beverage. She takes a few sips, and tells him that the detectives will be getting search warrants to look through every building at the school, even resident buildings. DracuDean brings her drink back into the kitchen to freshen it up, and possibly spikes it with something...

Kendall and the detective discover that Dean Dracula was the boy from the first scene. Kendall then remembers that Mary was going to his home, and they rush off to rescue her. Yeesh. These guys couldn't catch a cold with a fishing net.

Mary starts to feel he drug paralyzing her, and Drac makes his move. As the heroes drive as fast as they can, Mary watches the dean fetch a large knife from a nearby drawer. He raises the weapon just as the detectives and Kendall get to his home. They find Mary, but no sign of the dean.

The cops leave to put out an APB, and Kendall stays behind to help Mary get out of the house. From behind a curtain, the dean emerges to attack the young couple. As the dean gets into position to stab Kendall, the cops(and, for some reason, the professor) come back in and shoot the maniac in the forehead.

The older cop finds the jigsaw puzzle and shows it to Kendall, and a false bookshelf swings open. The woman the dean was building out of body parts falls out of the secret compartment, and all 3 of the witnesses scream. In the final scene, Kendall stands over the body, and it raises a hand to claw his penis off through his jeans. I shit you not. THE END

Well, sorry it took so long to watch this, but it was a pretty busy week. Bizarre movie. There must have been some epic weed in the writing of this script. I can only imagine. 4 ot of 5 killer trees, simply for not boring me half to tears...for most of it, anyway. And what the heck was that roller skating scene about?

And what did I take out of watching Pieces?

-Well, some women find it impolite to try to run away from their murderer.

-Jigsaw puzzles make you completely batshit crazy.

-Roller skates are deathtraps.

No idea what my next movie will be, or when it will arrive. I'm going on a small vacation in a few days, so I may just have to wait until next week to watch another slasher. We'll see....

The Initiation

This week's SAW is another 1980's slasher, The Initiation. It stars Daphne Zuniga(Spaceballs) in her first lead role in a movie, so it might actually be interesting. Let's cross our fingers! Get your SPOILER goggles on, and follow me....

Right off the bat, it has some B-movie cred going for it, in the form of actors Clu Gulager, Vera Miles and James Read. Vera Miles, of course, was in the first 2 Psycho movies(ie, the GOOD ones!); Clu Gulager has a long history in genre movies, appearing in everything from Nightmare on Elm Street 2 to Feast; and James Read has been a familiar TV actor for years....he's probably most recognizable to current audiences as the dad on Charmed. So again, this one's looking up a bit.

It starts out on the usual "dark and stormy night", in a child's bedroom. There are dolls everywhere...baby dolls, teddy bears, wild animal dolls, clown dolls. You get the idea.(Note to self: Add the movie Dolls to my list of horror movies...for some reason, I have them on the brain now) Then we see a little girl in the Valley of the Dolls, fast asleep.

The girl eventually wakes up, possibly because she remembered that this movie had started filming. Offscreen, the director was probably screaming, "WAAAAAAAAAKE UUUUUUP!" Or not. Anyway, she looks at a doll in her bed that appears to be headless, then decides to go exploring.

She leaves her room, and follows the sound of ghostly whispering to her parents bedroom. Seeing them having sex, the little girl backs away toward the hallway, then she reappears next to the bed, and starts stabbing her father with a very large knife. Then her mother leaps out of the bed, as another man enters the room, and her father is seen putting his clothes on like nothing had happened to him. You know, like getting his leg stabbed or something.

Both men start brawling, so I'm guessing that the second one is the girl's father, and the guy stabbed in the leg was some dude her mother was banging. A bottle of wine is poured all over the girl's father by the man-whore of her dreams, and Dad gets engulfed in flames when he stumbles too close to the fireplace. This would make a great PSA for playing with matches!

So, after her Daddy is oven-roasted to perfection, the girl becomes about a decade or so older, and wakes up a second time. This time, she's surrounded by a bunch of scantily-clad sorority babes who are holding candles and chanting something that sounds like "Delta Ro Kai will never die", or words to that effect.

How did we get from a murder to a cheesy porno? And what magic phrase must I utter to make that happen with every movie I watch? Delta Ro Kai must never die, Delta Burke's thigh would feed a family of 5....did it work?

One of the women tells our lead character that a vote is going down, and she leads the girls away in a single file line. As they exit, they all smile and continue chanting. The one they woke up follows the line. Maybe this is a live action version of the video game Lemmings!

The girl and her fellow pledges are brought before their sorority leader, Big Red Riding Hood. Our main girl is named Kelly, and the other pledges are Beth, Marcia and Allison. The pledges take a pledge(heh heh), and swear to be obedient servants for a week, at the beck and call of the other sisters. After that week, it is ON!

The leader, Maggie also anounces that the following week will involve parties, activities, and Hell Night. When Maggie presses another sister for details about the traditional Hell Night prank, we get to listen in on the dumbest plan since Danny Ocean's crew carried off a heist in 5 minutes, then wasted 2 hours tricking the audience into watching a fake caper go on.

Okay, so here's the prank: Kelly's father just happens to own a mall that has a dress shop that apparently has some nice items in it. She has to steal his keys, let the sorority in to throw a party...oh, and get the night watchman to give them his uniform. I've seen blocks of Swiss cheese with less holes than this plot!

Back in the bedroom that they share, the pledges moan and gripe about the stupid prank. Mostly, they're worried about getting caught, arrested, and expelled. Wow, this group may be smarter than the usual human targets in slasher flicks!

As the 4 pledges keep yammering, they discuss how the pledging process began with 15 girls, and they're the only ones left. Hey, no fair! You guys are supposed to film the SLASHER stuff, not the aftermath! Man...why do I have to think of everything?

As they get ready to sleep, Kelly tells Marcia that her recurring nightmare has returned. Uh, yeah Kelly, that's kind of the point of "recurring" nightmares. Buy a dictionary, dumbass, it may just save your life.

The following morning, the movie takes us on a field trip to a looney bin. A bitchy nurse admonishes various patients for different infractions, then sees someone out on the lawn that she can yell at. It turns out to be the dude who was baked goods in the dream sequence. I assumed before that he was Kelly's father, but I guess not, since we were just told that her dad owns a mall. So this guy must be the one that was having sex with her mother. I'm starting to see why Daphne Zuniga was on Melrose Place...her life in this movie was a soap opera.

Anyway, the nurse screams at him to stop digging up the garden, then she storms away. The guy reveals a pretty lethal(or at least "painful") looking digging tool in his hand, which he continues to plunge into the ground. On an interesting side note, as the nurse stomps off, she brushes past a female patient who has her back to the camera. This mystery woman is pounding her fist against her leg, timing the punches to the tool being plunged into the dirt outside. Kelly's mom, perhaps?

Well, before we can clear up that mystery, the nurse makes an announcement: It seems that some of the patients were refusing their meds at the meals. As she threatens to keep their food from them if they don't start to comply, both the men and women in the different sides of the ward begin banging loudly on the chain-link that separates them from the hallway where the staff walk freely. On an ominous note, the mystery woman is also banging her fist to the rhyhmn of their banging as well.

That evening, still at the mental hospital, we see someone roaming the halls. Nurse Bitchenmoan is then seen walking out of the building after her shift, and heading into the parking lot. She suddenly gets a weird vibe, and turns to see if anything is out of place.

Oh good, it's only the patients. Someone let them out of the ward, and they've decided to play a game of Ring Around The Nursey. She orders them to get back to their beds, but they just keep singing instead. In a tizzy, the nurse runs to her car, quickly gets in, and locks the doors.

As she starts the engine, a hand grabs her from the back seat, pulling her head back. The person then uses their other hand to reach around to stab the nurse, who bleeds profusely as the escaped patients all watch her die. She is stabbed a few more times, but only a single lunatic decides to stay and watch the rest of the show.

The morning after the attack, an elderly couple receive a gift. As they discuss opening it, they refer to Kelly living at college, and how getting away from her family might be good for her. Then the phone rings, and the old man grabs it. He refers to a "Dr. Howe", and the scene just ends right there. Nice, keep us confused.

Kelly drives over to visit these fogeys, and they turn out to be her parents. Wait, really?!? They're not her grandparents maybe? Or some elderly couple whose home she randomly broke into, for the sole purpose of pouting on their couch? Man, she must have been a horrible kid, to make them age like this in a decade or so.

She apologizes for not calling them, and her mom admonishes her. After all of the pouting and nagging, her mother says something nice to her about her complexion. Then dad pops a champagne cork like it's a cannonball, and wishes her a happy birthday.

Back on campus, Kelly and Marcia are walking and talking together. They start with Marcia's lovelife(or lack thereof), then switch to what they want to write for their term papers in Psych class. Marcia wants to write about the disturbed mind of one of the bitchy sorority sisters, while Kelly wants to do her paper on the interpretation of nightmares. Gee, I wonder why?

A guy named Andy runs up to the girls, and Marcia makes a hasty exit. Andy tells Kelly about a dumb costume party that's coming up, and invites her to attend. Then we get this bizarrely hilarious exchange, wherein both Andy and Kelly decide to shout their dialogue back and forth to each other. It's random, and I just couldn't stop rewinding the scene to watch this part over and over again.

When talking to her Psych professor, he more or less accuses Kelly of using her topic to suck up, because he's doing a thesis on dream research. When Kelly angily denies it, Mr. Adams asks her for some details. She tells him about her dream, and he sounds somewhat interested. He then offers to show her "the dream factory", which sounds like a bad pick-up line.

Mr. Adams asks her when the dream started, andc Kelly tells him some bull about a treehouse. Supposedly, when Kelly fell from the treehouse, she had a huge memory wipe of everything that happened before the accident. To make matters worse, she was never allowed to see anyone who could help her with her recovery of those memories.

After she tells Mr. Adams all of this, a girl named Heidi literally pops up. She and Adams explain that they hook willing subjects up to some equipment that can help them to recover and extract images from the human mind. So we've gone from Freedy Krueger territory to Dennis Quaid in Dreamscapes. Weird.

When Professor Adams finishes his sales pitch, Kelly catches a glimpse of herself in a mirror. She freezes up, and her entire demeanor changes. She tells the professor that she needs to think about it first, then leaves Heidi and Adams to ponder what just happened. Maybe she saw Heather Locklear in her future.

When Kelly walks down the hallway, the lights begin to flicker and dim around her. She picks up the pace(I wish the movie would...), and soon reaches a lit corridor with other students hanging out. She goes into a restroom to freshen up, and sees an image of herself as a little girl, with her blouse covered in blood. Of course, when she glances back to see the girl, nothing is behind her.

That evening, someone is lurking outside her house. The folks are inside, having a conversation that even David Lynch would find perplexing. There's a reference made by her mother to "living a lie" and some kind of attempt to fool Kelly about something. Then a noise outside distracts them. Do I need a decoder ring to watch this crap?

In the front hall, Dad draws a gun. He opens the front door and sees some Halloween decoration down the street, but decides not to shoot it. Then Mom also goes outside, but appears not to see what he saw, so they return to the house. Does anyone have crib notes for this thing?

On campus the following day, a guy in a striped shirt strolls past the camera. I bet he3's the key to the whole plot! Tell us your secrets Stripe Man!

In the lab, Kelly is calling out "Daddy!" in her sleep. I'll be her daddy....oops, am I still typing? So, yeah, they show a highlight reel from THE NIGHTMARE: bedroom, blood, burning. The 3 Blahs. Kelly wakes up screaming, and Professor Adams asks her to lie back and tell him what she remembers.

They skip over that, and show the teacher explaining some of the dream symbolism to Kelly. As they go over it, Heidi interrupts to tell them both that Kelly's brainwaves indicated very little dreaming, if any, at all. Adams chalks it up to a malfunction in the technology. A class bell rings, and Kelly gets mesmerized when she looks into a mirror. Again. The professorv makes a cryptic comment about her parents and mirrors, and the scene ends, just to confuse us further.

At dinner that night, Dad bores the family with business talk. When he gets up to make a phone call, Kelly tells her mother about her professor's dream research, and keeps calling him "Peter" instead of "Professor Adams". Someone's hot for teacher!

The chat becomes a heated discussion soon enough, as Kelly gets tired of having to bow to her mother's wishes concerning her romantic life. She leaves the dining room, only to catch a snippet of the conversation her father is having on the phone. It sounds like he's calling someone "babe", and making plans to meet them that night. Oops!

Someone is seen lurking outside again, and an owl tries to give a warning hoot. Seriously, this actually happens. The stalker moves in closer as Dad turns away, then stabs him in the neck with the very same(or similar) digging tool that Butterface was using at the asylum. Well, at least that narrows down the suspect list to only a couple of possibilities. Plus we finally started the slasher portion of this accursed film! Yay!

As Dad gets stabbed several more times, Mom gets drunk. The lush. She gets tired of drinking alone, and goes to the front door to see what's taking so long, only to see his car driving away. She then makes a snarky joke about how he'd lose his head if it wasn't attached, which would be awesome if we had seen him beheaded. But we didn't. If he was, it was removed from the version I watched.

Next, the killer approaches the sorority house. They're all in various states of undress, which is unusual for these kinds of films. There's even a full frontal scene, featuring a young Hunter Tylo. Maybe they figured if the slasher stuff didn't pan out, they could do a college comedy instead.

As Kelly leaves the shower room to get dressed, she notices that a window has been left wide open. She shuts it, then dresses as someone watches her from a hiding place in the closet. She shuts the closet door as well, and out pops Andy, I believe. Frankly, I had forgotten about him almost entirely after his early scene in the film. Oh, and for some reason, he's dressed like a singer from Oingo Boingo, and his date is Maggie, the Ice Queen of the sorority. That should be a fun date.

The "party" is like watching bad outtake footage from American Bandstand. People are aimlessly moving their arms and legs around when the camera is on them, but none of them seem capable of anything resembling human dance movements. I've seen zombies dance better, and I'm not even referring to Thriller.

Kelly and Professor Adams find a place to talk, and tease each other about their costumes. Then we see a guy dressed as a gigantic penis, next to his mortified date. I'll bet it took balls to put that costume on.

What follows next I'm not even going to bother fully describing. It's a stupid-ass montage, showing various characters trying to pick each other up. It's like the portion of the show HeeHaw where they all just stand around in a fake cornfield telling jokes, minus about a zillion IQ points, if that's even possible.

Marcia's date, "Ralph", asks her to confirm some rumor, but the DVD glitched out the portion about the rumor. It picks up with her leaving him alone. Confusion reigns supreme in this stupid movie!

Back in Adams' office, Kelly reveals what she remembers about her past. They kiss, and night turns to day. Kelly is hypnotized, and she's describing what happened at the treehouse. Her dolls were all broken, but not by her. Meanwhile, her mother is seen arriving at the school, but she can't locate Kelly. She finally asks a student where the Psychology Department is, and is pointed in the right direction.

As she walks in on the dream study, Professor Adams is unable to get Kelly to wake up from her session. Counting doesn'tv work, his soothing voice fails to calm her, even saying her name. Her mother gives them a different surname for Kelly, and that does the trick. Sure it does.

Kelly reluctantly leaves the room, so that her mother and teacher can speak in private. They have a shouting match, and Mom threatens to sue the school if the instructor continues to try to experiment with Kelly's memories. Adams demands to know why Kelly has a different last name, and that makes Mom leave his office.

Alone again, Professor Adams and Heidi realize that Kelly isn't having a nightmare, but a repressed memory. He also theorizes that she has a split personality, and that the mother might have one as well.

The night of the mall prank has arrived! The guard sees a light on his security panel go off, and leaves his station to investigate. He strolls through the mall, stopping in a room with red, flashing lights. Using a key, the guard goes outside to the loading dock, where a tin can rolls in his direction. He crushes it under his shoe, then heads back in.

As he starts to backtrack to his desk, he hears his radio get turned off. He picks up the pace, and discovers evidence that someone may have messed with his control panel. He does some more looking around, and stops to admire a rack of sunglasses, but detects a presence close to his location.

He calls out and returns to the main lobby area, where he backs up into the killer. He gets stabbed by the same gardening tool in the chest, and several dolls and mannequins watch his murder. I'll bet they make lousy witnesses.

There's a silly scene where we see Megan "bless" the pledges, minus Kelly. Megan tells the others that Kelly doesn't ever need to be told about the blessing, and will never get one. Bitch of the Year goes to....

As the pledges arrive at the mall, one girl has a hissy fit. She refuses to go in, even after Maggie threatens to kick her out. They should have done a sequel, where this girl gets stuck in a different slasher scenario, and is the first one killed. That would have been mildly amusing, at the very least. More than this snoozefest, at any rate.

After she exits the realm of slasher movie history forever, we see a trio of frat boys sitting drunk in a car. Then Maggie catches up with the pledges, and takes the keys that Kelly absconded from Dad. She locks the pledges inside the mall, and the plot finally kicks into gear.

The trapped girls sneak over to the night watchman's desk, then worry when they can't find him. Kelly reassures the others that he's most likely making his rounds. She devises a plan, and asks Allison to create some type of distraction, while Marcia will remain at the desk, in case he comes back, so that she can explain that Kelly needs him to be discreet and give them his uniform.

They ask Kelly what her part in the plan is, and she tells them that she's heading to the employee lounge, because the guards keep spare uniform in there. That's actually somewhat clever. What couild go wrong? I mean, besides the whole "splitting up and getting slaughtered individually" thing...

Well, Maggie could screw it up for them. She gathers the trio of guys we saw earlier in that red room. and tells them that they'll split into pairs: her and Andy, and the remaining 2 guys. They have 2 goals, to be sneaky, and to scare the pledges when they are spotted.

While strolling through the mall and looking for Todd, Alison(I think....this cast is pretty bland) is seen trying on tight clothes, then puts on a pair of roller skates(???). Also, Kellly ransacks a closet for a uniform, and the killer briefly checks out the knife selection in a hunting/camping equipment store.

Marcia gets bored at her hiding spot. As she decides to leave the guard station, Alison skates out of the store in her tank top and short-shorts. She skates past the hunting goods shop, never noticing that it's been broken into, and that the display case has been tampered with. She explores the mall, and meets up with Marcia. Both women then realize that they haven't seen Kelly since they all split up. Marcia spots someone on another floor above them, but Alison convinces her that she's just "spooked".

Literally 2 seconds later they bump into Kelly, and she has the uniform. As they wander the mall a bit, a phantom bowling ball frightens one of the girls so much, she almost literally chews the scenery. The girls taunt the person who rolled it, and it turns out to be 2 of the srat boys who were instructed to scare the pledges, Chad and Ralph.

The pledges decide to leave the mall, only to discover that Megan has used the keys to lock them in. They reluctantly decide to go back into the mall, and wait for someone to show up. Good thinking...without them, there'd be no film!

Outside the mall, a motorcycle cop sees one of their cars in the mall parking lot, and decides to check it out. He whips out a flashlight, and examines the interior as he circles the vehicle. Then he sees a Texas license plate, and that just clears all of the confusion right up. Not.

Megan decides to ditch her boy toy Andy, and he chases her, even though he's half-naked. Andy sees lights on various floors flickering on and off, then hears her voice, and follows the sound of it. He slows down near a Christmas sisplay, then runs in the diresction of the elevator. The elevator door opens, and Andy gets a forehead full of aze. And we're not talking about body spray!

Megan/Maggie/Whocarespeople? then appears, saying that she was just joking around. Before anything happens to her, we return to Marcia and Alison. They decide that either the night watchman is pranking them, or that maybe he was paid to leave early. They decide to out-prank the pranksters, and split up to hide.

Still looking for Andy, Megan/?Jane Doe heads to a shadowy satairwell. She then wanders through a lamp shop, and gets rattled as entire sections of lamps begin to switch on around her. She runs away, and the killer fires an arrow into her chest.

Kelly reunites with Marcia, and they start to look for the other various characters running around in the mall. Chad and Ralph put on rubber masks and wield rubber knives, and leap out at the pledges from inside a curtained booth. They all realize that Alison, Andy and Megan/Jane Doe are missing, and the guys tell the girls that they're spooked.

Back on campus, Professor Adams is interrupted in his very serious coffee ritual by Heidi. She has a ton of papers and folders in her arms, and she shows Adams a newspaper article from a Texas newspaper. Dated a decade earlier, the article is about an act of arson, in which a man was severely burnt. It turns out that the man in Kelly's memory was her father, and that the "father" she was living with was her mother's lover. The man Kelly thought of as her father was actually the chairman of the board at some department store.

After showing Professor Adams a second article, about Kelly's mother marrying her lover a short time after the fire, she drops a piece of info: Kelly's real father was ome of the patients who had escaped the asylum the previous week. Adams tries to call Kelly in her room at the sorority to warn her, but he doesn't know that she's out at the mall....

When no one picks up, the professor tries to call the house where Kelly's "parents" live. Someone picks up the receiver, but places it on the table next to the phone. Adams calls a second time, gets a busy signal, then rushes out of his office to find Kelly. Heidi is left behind, and she bitches and moans after he leaves.

In the mall, the remaining group get drunk together. Then Marcia is teased by Alison about being a virgin, so she tells a story about a teacher who molested her when she was a child. Awkwaaaaaard. The group disbands, and Alison is ditched by her boyfriend so he can take a leak. The lights in the restroom turn off suddenly, but the scene just ends there.

Alison sees a wedding display and tries on a veil, while Kelly announces over the loudspeaker that she wants Megan and Andy to meet them at the entrance and unlock the doors....or else! Boy, there's a huge threat, huh? Oh, and Alison finds a dead body, then another.

She runs back to Kelly, who wants to see the bodies for herself, but Alison is too frightened to return, so Kelly tells her to hide at the security desk. Alison scampers off, leaving Kelly to investigate the area by herself.

She finds Chad, and starts to break down. Then she hurries away, and we see Megan and her main squeeze boinking. Then the killer rises up from out of nowhere, and stabs them both several times, as Megan screams. Kelly arrives just in time to witness the bloody aftermath.

Professor Adams meets up with Mrs. Fairchild, and she tells him that her husband is dead. Adams calls the soroity house, and a girl named Becky informs him that the rest of them are at the Fairchild Mall, pulling a prank. He hangs up on poor Becky, then yells into Mrs. Fairchild's face, asking if she has KEYS! I NEED KEYS! to the mother-flunking mall.

She gives him a set of keys, and he tells her to CALL...THE...POLICE! When he takes off, we see Marcia and her boyfriend Ralph getting dressed after sex. Seriously? After she literally just revealed that she was molested? Dude, choose your moments better! He reveals that he only jokes to cover his inner pain, then his outer pain is revealed with a swift arrow in the back.

As Marcia realizes that he's not joking, another arrow sails past her head. Kelly hears her screams, and rushes to rescue her. When they find each other, both are screaming into each others' faces. This would make a great screwball comedy.

They huddle together in a freight elevator. Marcia's cries waver between donkey brays and mouse squeaks. The scene ends with her making this bizarre open-mouthed face that has to be witnessed, as it truly is beyond words to describe. This movie is so horrible that nit's awesome.

We see the professor speeding to the mall, then we see the girls still hiding. Just as Kelly gets Marcia to calm down a little, the freight elevator is plunged into darkness. Both girls are now screaming, and then we get the best moment in this movie, thus far. Both sides of the elevator open up, and Kelly ditches Marcia the first chance she gets! She then turns back, only to witness Marcia being dragged back into the freight elevator by the killer, right before the door shuts again. That's what friends are for....if you're an asshole.

Professor Adams is STILL driving, which could make his arrival at the mall a post-credits sequence at this point. Kelly is seen walking around in the loading/unloading area of the mall, and spots the killer dragging a body around a corner. Then she spots her father, the Krispy Kritter, and he tries to approach her.

After another split-second of the longest car ride ever filmed, we see Kelly attempting to escape from her father via a ladder. He follows, but why not just say something like, "Hey Kelly, who's your Daddy?ME!" That would work....maybe....okay, probably not.

They both climb up into a dark, shadowy area, and he DOES try to talk to her. Man, I called that one! Kelly hides from him, and she pushes him off of the roof. Then she cries and whines because she has second thoughts. Your timing sucks, Kelly.

And that's when Professor Adams finally arrives. He finds the dad's body, then enters the mall. As he and Kelly embrace, she stabs him in the side, and ANOTHER Kelly arrives on the scene. Ah, okay. The killer was her twin sister. That was why she seemed to be in 2 places in her flashback scenes, and why they had to hide the face of the woman in the mental hospital. Kinda clever.

The sister smiles at Kelly, taunts her, then they run around in the mall. Kelly begs for her life, but the sister hates her for being free while she was locked up. After another short chase, she reveals that the scarred man was their real father, and that she plans to kill Kelly, then assume her identity.

Just as Kelly is about to get stabbed, a shot rings out. It turns out that their mother showed up at the mall, armed with a small handgun. Then we see that the professor survived, and he, Kelly and Mom watch the bodies get carted away. Then some soft jazz starts playing. THE END

Boy, this movie was all over the place....part soap opera, part comedy, part horror....and mostly crap. The effects were good, though. They just needed a good movie to be featured in. Since this was a pretty average film, I'm giving it an average score: 3 killer trees out of 5.

And what did The Initiation teach me?

-Telling your boyfriend about that time you were molested doesn't make him any less horny.

-When you reunite with a parent you haven't seen in a decade, it's customary to throw that person off of a rooftop.

-Walking away from an obvious slasher scenario is actually an option! Why has no one tried that before?

My next movie will probably be either Pranks or Pieces, depending mostly upon which one arrives first. Oh, and next Saturday is my birthday, so if you see me that weekend, offer to dry my big, pathetic, middle-aged tears! It'll take a beach towel.