Ice Cream Man

Last time we watched the killing spree of The Fisherman, this week it's the Ice Cream Man's turn! It's a film with a surprisingly strong cast, so it might actually turn out to be pretty entertaining. Get ready, because we have a half gallon of SPOILERS to get through!

As the movie begins, we get a very abrupt opening shot of a black-and-white suburban setting. An ice cream truck is parked, and the vendor is happily handing out treats to the local children. Then a black sedan drives up, and a pair of hoodlums shoot the ice cream man to death, before they speed away. Um, okay. Is the movie 30 seconds long this week?

Apparently not. A young boy named Gregory was a witness to the execution, and he approaches the body to pick up a frozen treat that landed on the ice cream man's back. As Greg is sitting on the curb and staring off into space, his mother runs to him to see if he's all right. I'm going to go ahead and predict that he's not...especially now that i can see that some of the blood from the dead man is now dripping down poor little Gregory's face...

The movie then becomes more colorful, and we get to see the world of the mid-1990's. A curly-haired tot is playing a video game in a near-catatonic stupor, and only comes out of it when he hears the music of an ice cream truck approaching. The boy, named Roger, then takes money out of his mother's purse, and runs outside. This movie has only been playing for about a minute or so, and I'm already rooting for the killer. Hey, it beats rooting for the video-game zombie who steals from his mom to feed his gradual decline into diabetes!

As Roger runs to the ice cream truck, a warning on the back of the vehicle ominously declares, "Watch Out Children!" Cute touch. Roger asks for something called an orange push-up, and the demented-looking vendor holds it out to him, but keeps snatching it back at the last second. When Roger demands an explanation, the ice cream man tells him that he needs to say "please" to get the dessert. A kid behind him in line tells him to comply so that they can all get a turn.

When Roger finally moves on, we meet our main protagonists: there's Tuna, the large boy(who actually is just a thin kid who was forced to wear a fat suit, for some reason..); Johnny, a whiny kid who pisses off the vendor; Heather, the token female of the group; and a frail, bookworm-type nicknamed Small Paul. They call their group The Rocketeers. Yeesh.

Anyway, The Dorketeers(minus Small Paul, who is waiting at the park) pool their money together, and buy several frozen treats from crazy Greg, the Ice Cream Man. Then they run to a nearby park to play together. Whee! Oh, and before they arrive, Small Paul is reading The Pied Piper of Hamelin, while an elderly man is creeping up behind him, probably to show the boy his own pied pipe.

But just then, The  Dorketeers save the day. The old man hobbles away to  a safe distance, but still stares at the kids. Shouldn't somebody from Dateline be there to question him soon? Or just hire a background kid to distract him, so we can continue our movie?

Let's try to ignore the pedophile, and go back to the kids. Tuna has somehow dropped his ice cream into the sandbox, and he picks it up. He tries to wipe the sand off, then, to the horror of his friends, he decides to keep eating it anyway. Does this make Tuna a badass, or just a dumbass? I can't quite decide.

The kids come down off of the sugar high, and lie down on a carousel ride. As they spin around, they talk about the good and bad points of the legend of the Pied Piper, and the biggest sticking point appears to be the question of what he did with the kids after he captured them.

The creepy old man, who is revealed as the person spinning them, believes that the captured kids were eaten. Okay, so this town is like Ground Zero for doomed kids to meet psychopathic adults. Can we wall off the borders at least?

Gregory then sees Roger lining up for for ice cream, despite the fact that it's dark out now. The scene ends before anything happens, and we get more of the Dorketeers as they return to their homes.  Heather's house is the first one they arrive at, and we find out that her father, a minister, tries too hard to shelter her from the outside world. There's more kooky stuff going on inside that house, but let's leave that little revelation for later...

Gregory drives his truck home, and hauls something heavy out of it. In the middle of his effort, a loud dog rushes up, and is barking its annoying little head off. The ice cream man approaches the animal with a frozen dessert held out, then the scene cuts off. It's probably a DVD glitch...I seem to have problems when pausing then playing the movie again.

Anyway, the next scene shows Greg's neighbor, Ms. Wharton, sitting alone in her home. She hears a dog yelp, and worries that it might be hers, so she peeks out the window. Gregory pops up and scares her, and claims not to have heard her dog when she asks him about the sound. She even sees some blood on his face, but the kooky killer tastes it, and claims that it's just some ice cream flavoring from when he was putting things into storage. As soon as he leaves her, Gregory mangles and destroys the poor dog.

That sequence segues into dinner at Johnny's house. He rushes through the front door, and his sister's boyfriend, Jake, begins to pick on him for his choice of friends. Oh, and the sister is Janet, so we're going with a "J" theme in this family, I guess. Yay.

The phone disrupts Jake's insults, and we find out that that little runty Roger kid never went home that night. Johnny's mother forbids him from playing in the park anymore. And that's about it.

That night, Gregory has a nightmare about being back in the insane asylum. His doctor is dressed up as a circus clown, and both he and Nurse Wharton are offering Gregoryt ice cream. Yeah, that seems perfectly normal. When he wakes up, he's in Nurse Wharton's garden, surrounded by open ice cream containers. He quickly brushes himself off and leaves.

Jake strands the kids in the business district,then tells them to lie and tell their parents that he brought them to a movie. Instead they decide to head over to the office where Tuna's dad works. We discover that he gets some pretty nice ass when he's not working, then he kicks them out. Probably to return the call from his hot mistress.

2 detectives, Maldwyn and Gifford, approach the ice cream truck, and ask Gregory if he might have seen Roger, the missing boy. Then Maldwyn orders a cone of Rocky Road, and we see Gregory shove an eyeball into the ice cream as he prepares the cone. The cop eats it, completely oblivious, and we see the eye peeking out of his mouth while he chews. Remind me not to buy any Rocky Road in the forseeable future!

A huge line forms at the ice cream truck, and Wanda, the hot home-wrecker who was on the phone with Tuna's dad, pushes her way to the front of it. She asks Gregory to deliver some of his "hard pack" to her home, then repeats the address twice. Johnny and his friends order next, but keep changing their minds. Eventually, after annoying Gregory, they get their treats and leave...but not before we see a face buried under the ice cream in the truck. Who the heck was that?

At the end of the day, Gregory stops in front of Wanda's house. Then he has another flashback, and decides that it's not such a "happy day" after all. As Wanda watches, he starts his truck again and speeds away. She looks utterly baffled, even from a distance.

Heather gets into her house, and finds her mother in the middle of an exorcism. Literally, her mom is barking and writhing. Heather runs to her bedroom, even after her father begs her to stay and help him. Uhhh, did we just step into a completely different movie all of a sudden?

The other Dorketeers walk home as well, but the distant sound of the ice cream truck's song  gets Small Paul excited. He runs off, and leaves his friends far behind. When Small Paul finds the truck, he sees the ice cream man doing a weird dance to the song, and watches him for a brief moment.

Gregory realizes that he has an audience, and stops dancing. His demeanor frightens Small Paul, so he attempts to win the kid over by guessing his favorite ice cream flavor. When he succeeds, he admits that the flavor("Butter Brickle') is also his favorite. Great. Mine is Chocolate Marshmallow...can we get on with this now???

Gregory alludes to his time in the psych ward, by stating simply that he was "sick" when he was a child. Small Paul admits that he was too, which accounts for his runty appearance and the nickname. Gregory takes pity on the kid, and shows him the inside of the truck, but then a bloody instrument falls to the ground, and they both just gape at each other.

Some undetermined time after that,Tuna sees the truck. He hides in the bushes, but the ice cream man spots him. Gregory tells Tuna not to be afraid, because he's taking Small Paul to the hospital, but Tuna runs away. Gregory yells after him that he knows where the boy lives, and will get him.

While running in the woods, Tuna happens to find Roger hiding there as well. He was apparently afraid to return home, because of what the ice cream man might do to him and his family. Tuna offers to escort Roger to his house, but the younger boy is afraid to leave the woods.

Tuna arrives at his house, and finds his parents fighting. He does his best to tell them about Roger and the ice cream man, but neither one wants to stop the spat long enough to listen to him. He goes to his bedroom, and sees the ice cream man watching his house. In the morning, he finds an ice cream mess at the front door, along with his trashed sneakers, and a copy of The Pied Piper.

Tuna goes grocery shopping with his mother, and finds himself face to-face with Gregory at the frozen dairy aisle. They stare at each other, and the ice cream man almost seems to shrug him off, until he sees the clean shoes that the boy is wearing. At that point, they decide to have a chase scene in the store.

Tuna spots his mother by the suit she has on, and approaches her, but it's a different woman. Tuna then hides under a produce table, and climbs into the undercarriage of a shopping cart to get away. Gregory gets distracted by a woman asking him about which lipstick she should purchase, then loses track of his prey for a short bit.

Tuna seizes the opportunity to roll out from under his hiding spot, and the ice cream man sees him crawling away. The boy hides in the meat freezer, where a kindly butcher offers him assistance. Tuna's mother is brought to the meat department to retrieve her son. He breaks down and tells her everything.

The police are called, and they pay a visit to Gregory at the ice cream shop he operates out of. He's handed the search warrant by Maldwyn and Gifford, who question him outside while a couple of uniformed officers search inside the building. Maldwyn even comments that he hopes Gregory can make his business a success. And then, the vandalism begins.

After hearing glass breaking and other loud noises, Gregory rushes inside. He sees the 2 nameless cops trashing every square inch of his business, and breaking everything that they can. When they admit to finding no evidence of foul play, the 4 cops attempt to leave without saying another word to the distraught ice cream vendor.

Then Nurse Wharton shows up, and provides Gregory with an alibi. That doesn't seem to faze the detectives much, so Gregory threatens to seek legal action against the police department. Then they really do leave, and discuss looking deeper into Gregory's personal background for clues.

The ice cream man waits until he's alone, then reveals a trapdoor beneath the freezer. He pulls Small Paul out of the room there, and sits him next to a multi-bladed contraption designed to chop nuts. (Excuse me, while I cross my legs...) He hands Small Paul a dripping cone of Butter Brickle, and tells the boy that not every day can be a happy day. No kidding!

At church that Sunday, Heather's father delivers a sermon that bores the congregation to tears. After Mass, the Dorketeers see Roger and welcome him back home. One of them even offers him Small Paul's spot in their club, but he'll be grounded 'til he's 40, for the vanishing act he pulled.

The remaining Dorketeers go out on their bicycles that night, and follow Gregory to a graveyard. There, they watch as he approaches the headstone of the ice cream man who was killed in the first scene. Now, if I'm interpreting this scene correctly, that was Gregory's father, which is why he was so traumatized by the event, and why he became an ice cream man himself. It might also explain how a nurse became his legal guardian.

Anyway, He makes a massive ice cream cone, and has a "heated discussion" with the various ghosts around him, who only seem to exist in his head. Then he leaves, and we see that he has placed a variety of ice cream scoops around the grave, with the cone on the headstone. The Dorketeers barely manage to escape unseen when he makes his exit.

They hurry back to examine the ice cream grave closer. Then we see the ice cream man make another stop, and Heather and Johnny catch up to him once more. The bad news is, they have no idea where Tuna went, so they assume he couldn't keep up. Johnny goes back to find him, while Heather agrees to keep an eye on the truck.

When the ice cream man fails to reappear after a minute or so, Heather realizes that she might get a chance to find evidence pertaining to the recent disappearances in the ice cream truck. Armed with a camera, she opens up the back doors to climb in, and starts snapping pictures. I'm shocked that the cops never came up with a plan like this.

Tuna is found, and the boys ride quickly back to Heather's spot. She's opening up the freezer containing the hard pack ice cream, at about the same time that the boys are charging to the rescue. One of them sets off the rocket they packed, and it nearly makes the detectives doing surveillance work crap their pants.

The kids get shoved into the back of the police car, and attempt to present their case against the ice cream man. To calm them down, the detectives go to Heather's house to see if she really is missing. The minister checks her bed, and assumes that the shape under the blanket is her. It's some other kid, but at this point I'm giving up on any of the plot making sense.

Heather appears the next day at a camera shop, and asks the clerk to develop the pictures she took in the ice cream truck. He seems to be fairly inept, so she'll probably get the wrong pictures back. Heather and the remaining Dorketeers meet up at Johnny's house to try to scrounge up enough money to pay for the developed photographs.

When Jake arrives, he flips out that they used his camera without his permission. He takes the camera back, then also grabs the receipt for the pictures. Well kids, good luck with ever seeing what was on the camera! Jake doesn't come across as the charitable or gracious type.

Gregory is busy watching Wanda and Tuna's father getting kinky together, as he peers at them through a fence. Wanda spots him and gives the maniac a "come hither" look. That rattles Gregory, who suddenly ducks out of view. When Tuna's dad is heading back to his car, he sees Gregory's truck, and goes in for a closer view. Gregory lunges at him with a waffle iron, and mangles his face and body with burns.

The crazy vendor goes after Wanda next. He knocks at her front door, stands in her front hall, and promises a delivery. Wanda turns to have a look, and sees her lover's severed head on a gigantic waffle cone. She shrieks like a banshee, so Gregory slashes at her until she stops.

While the detectives make a plan to visit the asylum, Jake and Janet visit the camera shop to pick up the developed roll of film. They see some of the photos being displayed, and get very weirded out by the disturbing images.

Then we travel back to the ice cream shop, where Gregory shows Small Paul how he mixes and creates the various flavors.While he puts the boy in charge of mixing a vat of chocolate, the killer moves to a different barrel. Using a bowl as a sifter, he finds several items that belonged to his victims: jewelry, fillings, and other random items. He piles them together to examine later.

While our Dorketeers wait for Jake to return with the pictures, the detectives pay an evening visit to the mental hospital. They meet Mr. "Happy, Happy, Happy Days" himself, and he offers them a tour of the place. You guys might want to call in the National Guard first. Oh wait, I forgot how dumb these guys are, eating eyeballs and all.

So anyway, the "doctor" vanishes through a door, and they follow him. Beyond that threshold, there are apparently no rules: patients roam the halls in large groups, no staff members are around, and the detectives definitely lose their cool. Oh, and most of the hallways are dimly lit, making them hard to navigate, even without crazed mental patients shuffling around.

The crazy, zombie-like patients follow and surround he cops as they try to exit the facility. They get split up in the dark, and both draw their guns. Heck, Detective Gifford even fires his several times! Detective Maldwyn eventually just starts punching his way through the crazies. He meets back up with Detective Gifford at the car, and they quickly radio in for reinforcements to re-take the hospital, before they speed away themselves.

Back to the 3 Dorketeers. As they ride their bikes home, Gregory tries to run them down. Most of them speed away, but Tuna gets snatched right off of his bike, then shoved into a cooler in the back of the truck.Yum, frozen fish!

The last of our Dorketeers, Johnny and Heather, seek help from Jacob and Janet. Since Jacob is a violent police cadet with a gun fetish, it's inevitable that they agree to rescue the world's least tasty Tuna.The plan is for Janet and the kids to wait in the car, while Johnny goes into vigilante mode on the ice cream man. Or would that be "vigilante a la mode"?

Small Paul, meanwhile, is busy being brainwashed by Gregory. I guess that explains how Jacob was able to drive into Gregory's lair without being noticed. When Gregory does hear Jacob, he has Small Paul hide in the compartment beneath the freezer. Then he goes after the cop-in-training, watching Jacob from the shadows.

Outside in the car, Janet and the kids fret over the fact that Jacob hasn't returned yet. Then he comes out to the car, only to reveal that he's actually the ice cream man, wearing Jacob's clothes. Gregory stabs Janet under her chin and cracks a joke about "brain freeze", but the violence is so heavily cut, I can't even be sure of the weapon that was used. Anyway, the kids escape, and there's the 100th chase scene. Small Paul watches from a tiny window, and seems to be rooting for the killer.

Johnny and Heather find a police car in front of Nurse Wharton's home, but neither of the anonymous cops are around, so the children quickly hide in the yard. Then Gregory holds up both of the officers' severed heads on sticks, and does a "puppet show", just to frighten the kids even more than they already were. They run away again, and Gregory stops to chat with his puppets, until they annoy him.

While Gregory stalk his prey, Nurse Wharton opens her door, demanding to know why there's so much screaming. He tells her that he and some of the neighborhood children are involved in a game of hide and seek. Despite his blood-soaked uniform, the crazy retired nurse buys his story. Yeah, of course she does. Ever get the feeling that, if the characters in slasher movies did things that made sense, each movie would last about 30 minutes?

Soon after, the kids arrive at her door, begging for help. She lets them in, but snickers as she closes the door.  Our intrepid detectives, Maldwyn and Gifford, hear a report on the police band about missing children, and decide to pay the ice cream man another visit. As Gregory threatens to harm Tuna, the detectives arrive, with guns drawn. Gregory closes the ice cream truck, and the cops watch as he shoves scoops of ice cream down Tuna's throat.

When Gregory and his hostage vanish from the window, the detectives demand proof tha6 Tuna is safe. Gregory opens the door to shove the boy out of the truck, then uses the distraction to climb onto the roof of the vehicle. Armed with 2 large scoops, he leaps behind the detectives, knocking them both out with the metal scoops.

As Small Paul sets up a trap to save his friends, Nurse Wharton hands the other 2 children over to Gregory. Then Gregory is lured into the ice cream shop by Small Paul, who is shining a flashlight on a picture of the original ice cream man. Gregory is brought to the chopping machine, as more psycho ward flashbacks are shown, and he eventually is pushed into the blades and chopped up. Then the kids are rescued, and Nurse Wharton wants to know if the cops ever found her dog.

At some later point, Tuna, Johnny and Heather make Roger a Dorketeer in their club. When Roger asks them where Small Paul is, they say that he's in therapy. The final scene depicts Small Paul in a dark room, mixing ice cream. Then he turns to the camera and smiles. THE END

PHEW! Sorry about posting this one a week late, it's been a stressful time. I just had another surgery, and I haven't had the time to watch this one until today. Anyway, it's here, so I can hopefully get back into a regular routine again. This one was pretty wacky, so it gets 3.5 killer trees out of 5 from me.

And what did I learn from this week's movie?

-Eyeballs taste like ice cream!

-Jan Michael Vincent has 1 expression.

-Severed heads are fun toys!

My next film to watch is Doom Asylum...Sorry this one is so late, but I had surgery, and have been sleeping a lot more than I'm used to. I hope I can get some "me time" again, so I can keep up with these movies better. Until then, I'm sorry about the delays. See you soon.

I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer

I'm not entirely sure why, but slasher flicks almost never have a third entry that fits well with the rest...I mean, look at Halloween III: Season of the Witch. They strayed from the idea of Michael Myers being an unstoppable killing machine, then introduced mind control, killer masks, and human-looking robot assassins! Or look at Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors. Suddenly, the Freddy franchise has magical elements, dream powers, and 2 sequels so similar, they might have been better off combining them into a single story.

Anyway, that was what I was thinking as I decided to watch I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, an inferior sequel to what was already a much-criticized franchise. Anyway, I'm watching it this week, lucky me(and you, if you watch along with my "play-by-play" of the movie's story). Get ready to be both disappointed and SPOILED!

Full disclosure, right off the bat! Remember Ray, Julie and Brenda from the second film? Yeah, well, they aren't in this one. And seriously, it's not like any of them are too busy to conclude a trilogy, so that just bugs me right off the bat. Also, the movie doesn't seem to know where it wants to take place. The first several credits are shown over images of an empty ski resort, then the remaining credits look like they were superimposed over a crowd visiting Coney Island.

We're not even past the friggin' credits, and I want to shut this stupid movie off. Not a good sign.

Anyway, as the credits finally grind to a halt, we see a group of teens having fun, and looking right at the camera at various intervals. Nice. One of the teens, a blond girl named Amber, decides to tell the others about an urban legend, The Fisherman. They've dumbed down his origin story, so that he's now just some generic guy in a raincoat who stalks teens who "have secrets", and he appears around the same time every year. Yeesh.

Colby, Amber's boyfriend--and a dead ringer in some shots for Jake Busey--backs her up on the story, but their friend Zoe doesn't buy into it. Then they take some photos of each other, and decide to try one of those carnival games where you win a prize if you hit some milk bottles.

Then they suddenly start puking up exposition and plot points. They live in Colorado; Colby is going to college when summer ends, but Amber and her friends have a year left before they graduate; Amber is "organizing a field trip" in the fall, which I'm sure we needed to know for some reason; oh, and the kid running the bottle game is attracted to Amber.

Then the sheriff's son, PJ, shows up, announcing that he's decided to enlist. Everyone oohs and ahhs over him. Then the sheriff and a deputy move on, and more group pictures bare taken. Behind Amber is a red curtain, and there's a certain Fisherman-shaped silhouette lurking back there. Hmmm, it's probably nothing.

Gosh, the curtain just got slashed down the middle by the hook The Fisherman was holding. What a shocking development, huh? And I might be wrong here, but isn't he supposed to arrive AFTER they all try to cover up a crime that's murder-related? (well, okay, they're killing the script with weak acting, but still...)

Everyone freaks out(except 1 or 2 who didn't realize they were in the shot and look like they're laughing), and The Fisherman slashes Colby in the arm before he can get away. As they all run like ninnies, no one in the background has any reaction whatsoever. I guess screaming teenagers, bleeding arms, and psychotic killers in raincoats are an everyday occurrence in Colorado. Sounds like a hoot to live there.

Anyway, as they all continue to scream about a killer chasing them, people just generally ignore them and enjoy the boardwalk. PJ decides to break away from the others, and starts skating his way to the top of a parking garage. The others finally spot him at the top, and see that The Fisherman has him cornered. Oh no!

As The Fisherman is slowly cornering him, PJ's dad and the deputy show up.  They run to try to reach the top level before the killer can strike, but it doesn't seem likely to happen that way, given how close the killer is to his first potential victim. Perhaps they heard me, because PJ puts the skateboard on the concrete wall, and starts to skate away from the killer. When the cops arrive, both the killer and PJ have disappeared.

Colby, Amber and Zoe take off again, and run into a dark alleyway. The Fisherman shows up as they catch their breath, and it turns out to be their friend Roger. He claims to have bought the actual hook Ben Willis and his son Will(Remember him from the 2nd movie's dumbest clue ever? Will Benson? Ben's son? There, did I just  piss you off all over again over the stupidity of that scene? HA!!!) used in the killing sprees from the first 2 films, and shows it off. As Baby Darth Vader said in The Phantom Menace, "Yippee!!" (Heh, if you paid to see that in a theatre, I'll bet I just pissed you off again...I'm on a roll!)

Oh, and PJ was in on it as well, but he hasn't joined the rest of the group yet. Gee, where could he be? The others all go back to the boardwalk, and find a pile of mattresses that PJ was supposed to land on have been moved. Instead, PJ landed on a forklift, which is definitely not a stack of mattresses. His friends watch the cops and paramedics examine the body, and all have sad, horrified expressions on their faces...except for Roger, whose face is so over the top, he looks like he just passed a bowling ball in a Port-a-Potty.

The foursome walk out to the middle of nowhere, and I'm sure you know what happens next: they squabble, blame each other, decide to keep their prank a secret, burn the evidence blah blah blah. Hell, it was handled better in the first Scary Movie, and that was a spoof! There are 2 variations in this scene, though...First, Colby uses the hook to give himself a cut, to match what witnesses saw during the "attack"; and instead of "We take this to our graves", the pact becomes "The secret dies with us".

The scene fades out, and now we're in a cemetery. A helpful caption informs us that it's now July 1, one year after the previous events. Amber is there to put flowers on PJ's grave, then she decides that 10 seconds is enough time to mourn, so she whips out a camera. An sudden wind kicks up, then a bird swoops past her, scaring the crap out of the girl. Serves her right for goofing around with her camera, when she should be mourning her friend.

The movie then switches over to a farm. Exciting stuff, I know. A bunch of teens are partying near a silo or three, including Lance(the teen who was running that bottle game the night of the accident. He spots Amber walking by, and intercepts her, because he apparently still has a hopeless crush on her. Just tell her that you'll wait for her to get out of prison for killing PJ....she'll find it romantic!

Lance sees the camera, and Amber reveals that she's now really into photography. Yeah, we could tell because of the subtle camera you're lugging around. If she decided to go to med school, she'd probably be wearing surgical gloves and holding a scalpel. Don't you appreciate it when a movie dumbs it way down for ya?

Anyway, Lance has been doing maintenance and groundskeeping at a local ski resort, which finally gives the movie a reason to show those random ski lift shots during the opening credits. Further discussion reveals that Amber is waiting for Colby to arrive, which crushes poor Lance. Then Amber's friends drag her a few feet away, so that they can talk about Colby, just close enough for Lance to hear them.

When her friends ask her why she kept faithful to Colby for the entire year, she implies that it makes it all the more special when he finally comes back home. the other girls tell her to look to the side, and she sees that Colby already arrived, and she never knew about it. Uh oh, looks like Lance's opportunity to woo her may have finally arrived...

Amber marches over to Colby, and asks for a private chat. He tells her that his internship plans didn't pan out, and that he's been back for some time. When she asks why he never called her, Colby blames it on the pact they made to cover up their role in PJ's death. Translation: I wanted to date around, and I was hoping that you'd neve3r find out.

Colby then just meanders away, leaving Amber to get upset alone. She decides to leave the totally bitchin' silo party, and Lance offers to take her home on his motorcycle. She responds that she brought her truck, After some magical enchantments are performed offscreen, Amber ends up driving home in a jeep, not a truck. Whatever. Maybe The Fisherman will suddenly become The Equestrian using the same sort of magic.

Amber drives up behind what looks like the HOLLYWOOD sign, and leans against it while staring down at the town. Deputy Hafner(Yay! Another character gets a name!) finds her there while out on patrol, and offers her a shoulder to cry on, if she ever needs somebody to confide in. Yeah, right!

Upon returning home, Amber mopes around in her bedroom, staring at all of the photographs of her friends. An ominous-looking envelope is on her bed, with her name written on it, in a font very familiar to anyone who has seen the first 2 movies. It's just a note from her folks though, telling her that they've gone out, and not to throw any wild parties.

Um, okay. So why did that require an envelope? Don't most people on Planet Earth just write a not and leave it on a table, or stuck to a door or the fridge, or, I don't know, a countertop? I mean, seriously, it's a simple note! "Honey, we can't leave for the dinner party until I find an envelope for this quick message I wrote to our daughter. Yeas, I know we're running late, but this message NEEDS to be sealed up, in case the family dog decides to see what we're up to!

During the night, Amber hears a scary sound and wakes up. She wanders through her bedroom in the dark, and gets a text message. Want to guess what it says? I'll give you a hint...The words "summer", "know", "last", "did", "I", "you" and "what" are in the message. It's a stumper, I know.

Amber pays a visit to Zoe. Zoe is pretty resentful that Amber has been avoiding her until now, but she has also been getting the anonymous message. When Amber asks her for help, Zoe wants to know why she didn't just go to Colby instead. Despite her anger issues, Zoe agrees to let Amber stay with her for the night.

The next day, the pair go to the closed ski resort, to see if Roger is around. He scares them by arriving in a welder's mask, and carrying a small welding torch. They show him the text messages, and he claims that he hasn't received any messages at all. Roger proposes going to the cops, but no one else seems to like that idea. They even make him pledge to keep the secret again. Then Amber and Zoe leave, and let Roger get back to being creepy. My money is on him being involved somehow. Maybe Ben Willis had another son that we never knew about...

"Roger...Benson?!?"

Seriously, if any variation of that line is spoken, drinks are on me!

Okay, okay, back to the movie...Where were we? Oh right, Amber and Zoe just finished spending time with Roger, taking him away from his precious human head collection(...or so I imagine...). The girls sit outside for awhile, and eventually start cracking jokes with each other until they're friends again. Awwwww, that's touching.

The sheriff then pops up from out of nowhere, and scares them shitless. He says things to them that could imply that he knows something about what happened that night, or it could just be misleading innuendo. My vote is for the latter, since he would have made some arrests if he really knew what happened that night. Still, maybe he bears watching as well...

With nothing better to do, Zoe goes to a public pool, where Colby is the lifeguard. He doesn't believe that the threats are real, and accuses Zoe and Amber of making it up to get him to  come back to Amber. Zoe reverses his defense, saying that he could just as easily have sent the text messages as a childish prank.

That causes Colby to lose his temper, and he goes on a break to continue the conversation somewhere a little more private. He tells Zoe that it's not his problem anymore, and stomps away. When he returns to his post, he sees that somebody wrote a message on the concrete with water: I KNOW WHAT  blah blah blah. As Colby stares at the message, it begins to evaporate.

Amber, by the way, does what any young woman would do if her life was being threatened:  She takes a bike, and decides to head up into the hills by herself to look around. She's a genius! Some thunder alarms her, so she rides her bike over to the closed ski resort, so that she can snoop around in the dark, menacing buildings. I'd say it's safe to assume that Amber has a deathwish.

She wanders through the structure3 where the ski lift is housed, and a shadowy figure looms ahead of her, holding something that looks like a weapon in his hand.  It turns out that he's one of the maintenance guys, and Amber tells him that she had trouble with her bike. He offers to turn on the ski lift to get her back into town, and tells her that a storm is heading their way soon.

Amber takes him up on his offer, but rides the lift alone. She then gets all panicked when she sees The Fisherman waiting for her down below. She screams, the storm arrives, and the chair lift begins to rock back and forth. The Fisherman somehow teleports to right above her, and he uses his hook to smash a window. Amber screams some more, backs away from the window, then arrives safely at her destination. They should have called this I Know What You Did Last Summer, But I'm Not Going To Do Anything About It.

She realizes that the flash on her camera went off during the encounter, which means that she might have proof that The Fisherman came after her. She develops the film, then presents the pictures to Colby and Zoe. Colby claims to see nothing definitive in any of them, and he and Amber have a short spat. Then, when Amber asks why Roger didn't come to the meeting, Colby claims that Roger has apparently dropped off of the radar. Hmmm...the creepy-acting character suddenly vanishes? Let's keep an eye on this plotline...

Well now the movie is just busting my balls, because Roger is in the very next scene. He's been drinking and popping pills, and looks like a wreck. He writes what looks like a suicide note, then prepares a wrapped package to be mailed out. Roger picks up a hook(maybe even "the" hook, for all I know), and stabs himself in the wrist with it.

A noise distracts him from finishing the job, and he looks around to pinpoint the source of his distraction. As he wanders back and forth to investigate every corner and shadow, The shadow of The Fisherman looms before him. Roger starts running, but not before the killer gets in a quick slash at his midsection..

Roger creeps around in the semi-dark, trying to blend into the shadows, and for a few seconds it looks like he's more or less hiding from nothing. But then The Fisherman reappears, and Roger grabs a circular saw as a quick weapon. They duel, and The Fisherman nearly decapitates Roger with a deep cut to the throat. Well, so much for my detective skills!

Roger's friends find him soon after, and search the warehouse he was apparently living in for the killer. They find his evidence package instead, as well as the note.  Then, for some reason, Deputy Hafner arrives on the scene, gun drawn and looking intense. They show him the note, and he seems to buy their story that they just happened to find Roger dead.

After the corpse is carted away, Hafner tells them some things about Roger that they never knew: That he was failing his college courses; he was getting into fights;  he was hooked on anti-depressants...yeah, Roger was coming unhinged pretty damn fast. After Zoe and Colby leave, the deputy tries to wrap up his interview of Amber by flirting with her. Excuse me while i go gag.

Zoe and Colby must have hung around, because they drive Amber home. Inside, they all find a trail of litter, consisting of cut-up photographs that Amber took. The trail leads up to her bedroom, where the killer has left a collage on her wall that spells out a warning: SOON.

They all drop in on Lance, who us cutting up lumber with a chainsaw. Colby starts to threaten him, so Lance swings around the chainsaw, threatening him right back. For some kooky reason that defies any logic that I'm aware of, the encounter convinces the trio that Lance isn't the mystery stalker. Boy, they're even worse at investigating than I am!

The next suspect on their list is Sheriff Davis. They figure that the death of PJ pushed him over the edge, and this is his way of getting back at them. Heck, why not add Deputy Hafner to the list? His interest in Amber is waaaay over the top. He gives me the heebie-jeebies. Colby tests out the theory by leaving a threatening note on his car, then watching his reaction when he reads it.

Zoe is next on the killer's list. The Fisherman finds her taking a nap, and waits for Zoe to wake up. Then he surprises her as she walks around in her studio apartment, and jumps out of the dark at her. He reveals his face, and he looks like character actor Clint Howard. Zoe screams, wakes up, is killed with a hook, then wakes up again.

 I wish that last sentence was a joke, but this actually happened. Ugh. On a mildly interesting side note, when Zoe wakes up for real, the sofa is torn apart, and her guitar is wrecked. Uh, so now The Fisherman needs depth perception???

That same evening, Amber decides to go out by herself again. I'm telling ya, deathwish. She finds Lance lurking in her driveway, and he declares, "I know what you did last summer!" Gosh, where have I heard that line before?

It turns out that he's not threatening Amber...the phrase was scratched into his motorcycle. He thinks that Colby might have done it, but Amber warns him to be careful. Heh, nice way to pad the movie's running time, by adding extra victims to the list. Touche, awful movie.

Now the film wants us to catch up with Colby, who is night swimming. Man, all of the intelligent members of society are in this movie! He stops swimming to look for someone named Harry. Either that, or he's asking us if we think he's hairy. Either way, there's no answer to his query.

Just as he decides to go back to swimming, the lights in the pool itself begin to flicker. Colby leans on the edge of the pool, and The Fisherman shows up to pierce him through the ankle with his hook. Colby swims to the opposite ed of the pool, then gingerly hoists himself out of the water to examine his wounded foot. The scene ends there, which is rather odd.

He, Amber, Zoe, and now Lance, have a meeting of the minds. Lance refuses to believe that his uncle, the sheriff, would be capable of doing these things. Colby proposes that they tell the deputy, so that he can protect them. Anyone else think that's a bad idea?

They visit Deputy Hafner, but he's got a bunch of friends visiting, so they can't just blurt out the story right then and there. As they try to figure out a way to speak to him privately, Sheriff Davis stumbles out of his home, drunk and carrying more beers to pass around. Apparently, the meeting at Hafner's house is a "drown your misery in beer on the 1-year anniversary of the death of PJ" party. I'll bet they had a doozy of a time fitting all of that on the party invitations!

Whoops, I got sidetracked yet again!  They move away from the watchful eye of the sheriff, and decide that it might be time to leave town. In the morning, as they all meet up, Zoe announces that she can't leave just yet. It turns out that there's a talent show that evening(nice way to rip off the first film!), and Zoe seems to think that Hollywood talent agents will be in the audience. Yeah, dream on...

Okay, so they need a new plan. They're all going to the talent show, Zoe can play her song or whatever, and then they can flee from danger. Sheesh. The next scene shows Zoe rehearsing. All I can say is: She should've just left town.

Amber sits down with Lance, and vomits up more exposition, in the form of newspaper clippings about Ben Willis and his 2 murder sprees. She used the stories as the basis for her prank the previous year. Then we get treated to more blaring music.

Okay, so let's pause the movie here for a sec...Now, in the film, Ben Willis and his killings happened before the events of this film, right? And in both previous movies, the motive for the murders was personal revenge. So...why would he be involved with these schmucks? He's not Bloody Mary, where he just gets summoned by dumb teens doing dumb things to each other. And, as far as we know, there's no family connection to him in this entry.

So, why would they even bother with his story? Make Amber Julie's long-lost cousin, or have Brandy do a cameo. But don't just say it's Ben Willis, unless there's an actual REASON for him to show up! I mean, geez, they're not even in the same state that the first movie's accident was set in. What, did Ben Willis book a flight to Colorado, drag his mangled self across the country, check into a nice hotel, then went on a new killing rampage? See, crap like THAT is why I do this...because these movies need some healthy mocking!

Anyway....back to the movie. Enjoy!

Reading about  couple of murder sprees must be a turn-on, because Laznce and Amber get all hot and bothered after reading the articles. Thankfully, the movie then shifts to a parade scene(another "tribute" to the first movie?), and Colby approaches Lance and Amber. Colby's drunk, and he lets them know how he feels about seeing them together all of the time. To Amber's credit, she dishes his crap right back at him.

Then they file in to watch the talent show. Early on, Colby takes off by himself to get smashed again, even after Amber tries to stop him. Then we see Zoe by herself, trying to remain calm.  A figure approaches her, but it's just a stagehand, who tells her that her band is up next.

While they perform, the sheriff and deputy both linger near the stage. Colby, meanwhile, has found his way to a deserted bar, and he decides to celebrate his good fortune by drinking it up. The song ends, then we see Zoe sitting backstage by herself again. Amber and Lance show up to congratulate her on the performance, and Zoe reveals that an agent did, indeed, ask her for her contact information.

They're happy for her, but they also want to get going. Zoe scoffs that nothing's going to happen to them "in the next 2 minutes", which is obviously the cue for The Fisherman to burst into the room. He chases them out of the dressing room like a lame Scooby-Doo monster, and off they go! Jinkies!

They end up in a room full of metal lockers, and try to sneak past the killer. Every single time, he somehow ends up in front of them. Then Lance and Amber suddenly realize that Zoe has inexplicably been separated from them. She screams out their names and tries to escape through a set of doors, but her escape route is chained shut, and her cries go unheard.

Then You-Know-Who shows up.  Zoe sees his face and screams again, and he plunges his hook through her chest and midsection. Amber and Lance arrive just in time to see her cough up some blood, then get thrown to the ground like a rag doll. Amber approaches the body and cries over her.

Someone can be heard arriving, so Lance and Amber back up into the shadows to see who it might be. It's Sheriff Davis, and he calls for back-up. Then he finds the couple in the room, and assumes that they committed the murder. He draws his gun and prepares to arrest them.

At that very moment, The Fisherman impales the sheriff with the hook, then drags him backwards into the darkness. Amber and Lance take off running for the umpteenth time, and find time to call Colby and fill him in on everything that just happened.

As Amber is giving him the gory details, The Fisherman suddenly pops into the bar. Colby runs into the kitchen, and grabs a butcher knife as a weapon. He lets the killer get close, then plunges the knife into The Fisherman's back. The wound doesn't even slow him down. Colby runs further into the kitchen and freezer area, and The Fisherman winds up behind him. Colby is ambushed and killed, and his friends find him moments later.

Then Amber and Lance find Deputy Hafner, and try to get him to assist them. Instead, he draws a weapon on them, claiming that Roger told him about the prank and the aftermath. Then they see Zoe's bloody body in his car, and assume that he's the one behind all of the killings. Wow, did I finally make the right guess? I'm shocked!

So is the deputy. As he tries to figure out if they set him up, The Fisherman approaches him from behind. Deputy Hafner turns around in time, and quickly fires 2 shotgun shells into the killer. Neither blast stops him. The Fisherman lifts the deputy into the air, then pushes his body into a forklift. Ouch. He lets the body dangle off the ground, and admires his work.

Lance and Amber get into a car, and ram the vehicle into The Fisherman. His body flies into the air from the impact, and they stop to see if he gets up again. Why do they always wait? If there's an explanation for this that makes any sense, I'd love to hear it.

As you probably expected,The Fisherman stands up again. His hooded hat has fallen off, revealing that he's a rotting zombie. Okay, so I guess that he is supposed to be Ben Willis. And now he's a zombie. And probably a cyborg vampire from 1775, for all I know. This thing just committed the worst crime imaginable: it made the first 2 movies in the franchise look classy.

So, yeah. Zombie Ben Willis. His eyes glow red, and now the getaway car won't start. He teleports to the window and attacks them again, but Amber retaliates by stabbing him with the hook they bought on Ebay. Dark, oily goo pours out of the wound that the hook creates, and ZomBen vanishes.

Amber and Lance get out of the car, and Amber decides that she's going to hunt for the killer, and use the hook to finish him off. Yeah, right...let us know where you want to be buried, dumbass.

They run off into the night, and eventually find some kind of auto garage. They manage to get inside and close the entrance seconds before ZomBen catches them, and they dart around to look for a good hiding place.

They find themselves at a repair bay, and Lance gets the brilliant idea to connect the hook to an overhanging chain. He gives Amber the end of the chain, and tells her to release it when he gives the command. Then ZomBen comes in, and begins his latest attack.

Lance tells Amber to release the chain, and the hook cuts into ZomBen a second time, releasing more of the gooey stuff. Then Lance and Amber dive down into a repair bay in the ground, and ZomBen tries to slash at them from above. Then more running. Always with the running.

They sprint over to another building, and lock the entrance behind them. Lance stops in his tracks to tell Amber that they must continue moving. Wow. My mind has officially been boggled. Next, maybe he'll wake her up to tell her that she needs some rest.

They lock the entrance behind them, and use another door to get outside again. While Amber gets behind the wheel of a thresher, ZomBen tries to disembowel Lance, but cuts him across the chest instead. And yet, Lance lives! Amber turns the farming vehicle on, and ZomBen rips the door off of the hinges to snatch her up. He throws her to the ground, and Lance fires a gun at him to draw him away from Amber.

As ZomBen shambles toward Lance again, Amber gets her hands on the hook, and plants it right between ZomBen's shoulder blades. Then she says, "The secret...dies...with you!", and roundhouse-kicks the undead killer into the blades of the thresher, where he becomes Shredded Ben. Part of this balanced breakfast!

Amber approaches Lance, and calls 911. The police get a statement from the both of them in the ambulance, and they both boldly declare that the ordeal is over. I think we all know exactly what that means, right?

Yup, we get a final scene showing Amber driving in Nevada, on her way to see Lance. They're chatting via speakerphone, and Amber gets distracted when one of her tires  appears to get punctured. She pulls over, and gets out of the jeep to examine the damage. Then the call gets cut off, and a strange breeze kicks up. as amber spins around to survey the terrain, ZomBen suddenly appears behind her. THE END

Well, I guess it could have been worse. Wasn't too thrilled about the zombie crap or the blatant cribbing of specific sequences from the first movie, but at least no one in this film screamed at the sky, "What do you want, huh? Come and get me!"

It was still terrible though. 2 out of 5 killer trees for IAKWYDLS. And what useful nuggets of knowledge did this thing leave me with?

-People in Colorado are pretty casual when they see teens being terrorized by killers.

-Hollywood agents like to show up at random talent shows, to discover college dropouts who can sing.

-Stuff you buy off if the Internet is probably cursed.

Next up is a strange-looking movie called Ice Cream Man. Yum!

Body Parts

This week's movie was supposed to be last week's movie, but the DVD was cracked. Anyway, it's called Body Parts, and stars Jeff Fahey. I saw it when it first came out, but remember very little about the specifics, so we'll have to see if it's as good as I don't remember it.  SPOILER zone up ahead!

The movie begins by showing criminal psychiatrist Bill having a session with a violent inmate named Ray. It seems that Ray attacked another inmate that week, and is in prison for murdering his signifcant other. When Bill asks him why he attacked them, Ray bluntly admits that he simply likes killing people. Gosh, I hope he's the hero...

Bill goes home at the end of the day, to a young, hot Kim Delaney. Hubba. She plays his wife, Karen, and their first scene together involves them having a melodramatic chat about whether or not he's any good as a shrink. Yeesh.

The next morning, Bill is stuck in traffic, talking on a huge phone(Early 1990's gadgets, aren't they a hoot?) about all of the activities on his schedue. While distracted, he nearly gets wiped out by another vehicle, only to have a truck plow into his car, hurtling it around the road like a pinball. Imagine what would've happened if texting had been invented by then!

At the the hospital, Karen  anxiously wait to hear any news about his condition. She meets his surgeon, Dr. Webb, and learns that Bill's arm had to be amputated, all the way up to the shoulder. While Karen reels in shock, Webb also informs her that she can replace his arm with a donor arm, but that the surgery must be done immediately for the best chance of success. Karen hesitates, but eventually signs the conent forms.

Bill is brought into an operating room, and appears to be having the best trip-out since Woodstock. He sees the donor on an operating table across the room, surrounded by armed police officers wearing scrubs, gloves and surgical masks. Dr. Webb comes over to reassure Bill that beverything will work out, then she goes to the other stretcher to begin sawing off the donor's arm. As Bill is given anesthesia and begins to nod off, he sees that Dr. Webb didn't start by taking the arm, but that she decapitated the patient instead. If Bill wakes up with one arm and 2 heads, I'm giving this movie an automatic 10 out of 10 and turning it off right then and there!

Bill wakes up with just his one head, alas. His new arm is being elevated by some kind of sling and pulley. Both Karen and Webb are there when he wakes up, but he doesn't seem to really acknowledge either one of them. Besides, he has a breathing tube taped over his mouth, so he can't exactly respond to them even if he wanted to.

Later, looking more like himself again, Bill gets his first good look at the arm with all of the bandages off. it's pretty cringe-worthy. Then the surgeon asks him if he can move his new arm at all, and he manages to makes it twitch up and down for a few seconds. Webb seems impressed.

At physical therapy, Bill tries to lift a small weight. He manages to bend his arm up twice, then needs a rest. While he's just standing there, the arm suddenly shoots forward with the weight, then down again. The physical therapist looks impressed, but Bill just looks frightened. After that incident, his new arm seems to get much stronger, and soon, Bill is exercising on every machine like a powerhouse.

When the day comes for him to finally check out and go home, he thanks Webb for performing the miraculous surgery. As Bill and his family leave the hospital, a throng of reporters are waiting outside to ask him about the procedure. He humbly suggests that they should focus their microphones and cameras on Dr. Webb, since she was the surgeon who gave him the new arm.

When he gets home, Bill sits the kids down, and fills them in(sort of) on what happened. He then shows them his new arm, in all of its' Frankenstein-y glory. After that awkward moment passes, they all go outside to play in the front yard.

Later that night, Bill watches his hand as it caresses Karen, and they wind up having their Best Sex Ever. It must have been historic, because the next morning finds them making out as he heads out to his car. The kids just laugh like rabid chipmunks on an acid trip.

It's revealed that Bill now teaches instead of meeting dangerous lunatics in prison. Or maybe he does both these days. His class is packed, and the lecture is about what motivates a criminal to perform acts of violence. Twice during his lecture, Bill has brief visions of injuries and violence, and many students notice these lapses.

At home he cuts himself shaving, and swears up a storm in front of his wife and daughter. Then he has another session with Ray, the unapologetic killer. Ray mentions seeing the news about Bill on television, and observes that he looks disturbed and tired.

Bill tells Ray to trust him, and extends his new arm out to the convict. Ray sees a tattoo on the donor arm, freaks out, and tells the shrink that the specific tattoo he has is only worn by prisoners on death row. Then he just yells and screams for help until the guards come back to escort him to his cell.

Bill leaves the prison to pay a visit to the police department, where he heads to the Criminal Records division. He has a friend there run a fingerprint scan on his donor arm, only to discover that it once belonged to Charles Fletcher, a criminal who committed multiple murders, larceny, you name it. The day he was executed matches up with the day a "donor arm"became available.

Bill lies awake in bed that night, having more and more visions of violence. His wife finds him the next morning sitting up in bed, smoking and nervous. She tries to get him to talk about it, and they decide that he needs to see Dr. Webb again.

Dr. Webb tells Bill that it's silly to think that the arm is controlled by anyone else but him, and she suggests that he should talk to a fellow shrink. He discreetly tails her to the Physical Therapy area, and finds a file listing all of the patients who were given implants from the executed criminal.

He visits the apartment of Remo, an artist who was given the killer's other arm. Remo sees the visions too, and paints them on his canvases for a tidy profit. He tells Bill that the violent pictures have made his career flourish, and that his paintings are selling almost faster than he can paint them. When Bill insists that the killer's influence on his work is dangerous, Remo kicks him out.

Bill returns home, and starts writing down everything in his study. Karen walks in to remind him that they're going to a party for one of his colleagues, and scares the ever-lovin' crap out of her husband. As he yells at her, she retorts that he's benn Hell to live with lately, and she walks away.  They should've called this Body Parts: Waiting for Something to Happen.

Bill visits the cop who arrested Fletcher, and learns that Dr. Webb's transplants were very experimental and hush-hush. She even bribed people to get the prisoner into the OR faster than normal. Also, it turns out that the cop was one of the armed men Bill saw surrounding the other stretcher before his procedure.

A very weary and frightened Bill heads home, where his son surprises him by leaping on him from out of nowhere. They wrestle on the floor for awhile, until the son climbs onto the couch and body-slams his dad right in the new arm. Bill violently flings thge boy across the room, and Karen sees the whole thing. As Bill continues to writhe around on the floor, his wife tells him never to lay a hand on the children again.

Bill does more investigating in the morning, and finds another body part recipient, a young jock named Mark. Mark was given a new leg,and suddenly, his basketball skills are amazing.  maybe it's just me, but everyone else besides Bill seems to be enjoying success with the new transplants. Maybe his arm got all the crazy in it?

Bill follows Mark from his car, and sees the young man suddenly begin to drive in an erratic manner in a crowded intersection, So, it appears that the leg also has a will of its own. Nice of the movie to tell me that right after I speculated that the posession angle was a dud.

Anyway, Mark pulls his car over to calm himself down, and Bill approaches him. They discuss the transplants, and Mark admits that he doesn't always seem to be in contol of his new legs. Bill hands Mark his business card, then drives home for the night.

As they sleep in bed together, Bill's hand starts to touch Karen while Bill sleeps. When the fingers squeeze around her neck, Karen wakes up and screams. Bill is forced to move out, and he tells the kids that he'll return when he's no longer a danger to them. He checks himself into a seedy motel, and begins to hang out with the other transplant patients at a local bar.

As the 3 drunk men talk about whether or not the limbs could contain evil DNA, another patron tries to eavesdrop on them. He demands that Bill show him the hand, and a bar fight breaks out. It's pure chaos. And still, no body count.

After the fight ends, Mark Draper buys a bag of groceries and goes straight to his apartment. His new legs seem unusually week, and he barely makes it inside. He places a call to Bill, but is attacked early into the chat. Bill arrives too late to save the young athlete, and finds the body violently torn up, with the lower half torn off in pieces. Meaty, chunky pieces.

Bill calls the cops, and the lead detective is the same one who apprehended Fletcher. He finds it extremely odd that Bill would be at th scene of such a gory crime, and tells him that he'll need to come in for questioning. I imagine that Bill says yes, because the scene abruptly ends there.

We next see red smears flying onto a plastic sheet. Oh, it's just Remo, getting his Jackson Pollock vibe going on strong. As he admires his latest gory masterpiece, Remo senses that someone may be in the apartment with him. He does a search, but finds no one.

As Remo returns to painting, a figure leaps out at him, and pushes him out of the nearest window. Remo clings to the window, but the killer tears his new arm right out its' socket, sending Remo falling to the street below. In slo-mo, of course. Damn, I was hoping that Brad Dourif would have more to do.

A squad car pulls up to the building as Remo is plummeting to his death, and his body crashes through the windsahield. On the bright saide, that pretty much clears Bill of the murder, as he was with the cops at the other crime scene. That probably doesn't help Remo, though.

The detective tells Bill that he plans to be his personal bodyguard until the killer is caught. Bill doesn't seem to be very confident, but goes along with the idea anyway. Oh, and they're being tailed by Dr. Webb and one of her colleagues. I need a scorecard or some kind of chart just to untangle  this  mess of a plot...

Bill and his "bodyguard" pull up to a stoplight, and neither one sees a car approaching theirs. It pulls up next to them, and the driver is FLETCHER??? Well, I guess that somebody got a head transplant after all, as stupid as that sounds. Fletcher slap a handcuff onto Bill's wrist, and they're forced to speed along with the killer so that Bill's new arm isn't wrenched out of its' socket.

They drive like maniacs, struggling to avoid concrete barriers, orange construction barriers, other vehicles...Hell, at one point Bill even climbs through the car window to fight with the psychopath. In the end, Bill just grabs the detective's gun, and shoots the chain that links the handcuffs together.

They watch the killer speed off, and Bill decides to steal the police car and chase the killer down, leaving the detective looking befuddled by the side of the road. The killer pulls his car over when he hears the police siren in the distance, and begins gathering up the various limbs he's collected so far. At this point, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be scared or laughing, but I'm going with laughter. This movie's so ridiculous, I can't help myself.

As soon as the killer escapes with the limbs, the car he crashed explodes. Somehow Dr. Webb finds him, and she seems to want to reattach all of the limbs to one body again. I'm willing to bet that this movie is epic when you're high. I'm still laughing, though.

Bill takes a time-out to write a farewell letter to Karen. In it, he tries to apologize for his recent erratic behaviour, and lets her know that he still loves her and the kids. Then he mails it, and walks the rest of the way to the hospital.

In the operating room, Bill sees all of the various body parts in a tank, and some are moving and twitching. Dr. Webb arrives, and asks him to give the arm back. When Bill refuses, she makes a silly speech about how easy it is to do transplants now, even human heads. Bill still says no, so Fletcher sneaks up behind him, and knocks Bill out. Why the heck would Dr. Webb side with the killer?

When he wakes up, he's on the operating table, and Webb is just about ready to sever the arm again. Bill sits up and screams, right before delivering a knockout punch to the surgeon. Fletcher enters the room as Bill struggles with the anesthesiologist, and the killer accidentally fires his shotgun at the wrong person, blowing the medical professional's head off his shoulders.

Then Bill and Fletcher fight over the shotgun, and Bill nearly gets shot in the face during the struggle. He finally gets the, uh, upper hand, and manages to snap Fletcher's neck. The killer crumples to a heap on the floor, and Bill uses the hospital phone to call the police. He tells his detective friend that he killed Fletcher, only to have Fletcher raise the gun one last time, to shoot Dr. Webb. Bill kills him yet again.

Bill writes in his journal that, after Fletcher died, the arm never had any weird impulswes again, and the visions stopped. He and his wife sit under a tree in a park while the credits roll. THE END

What a mixed bag! Great gore, good actors...but the silliest plot and dialogue I've seen in a long time. Ande why so few victims? No wonder I couldn't remember the details from seeing it before--it was a goofball movie! Oh, and let me know if anyone ever watches it while high...I have a strong feeling that it gets much better if you do. Middle of the road this week: 3 killer trees out of 5.

And what did I learn after watching Body Parts?

-Transplants are a piece of cake! Even head transplants.

-When playing with your kids, throwing them into walls across the room is a no-no.

-The best way to tell if something is wrong with your new arm transplant? It makes love to your wife better than you do.

Later this week, I'll be torturing my eyeballs with I'll Always Know What You Did 
Last Summer. I hope the movie is shorter than the title! See ya then...