The Silent Scream

Hey hey! Nope, I'm not dead, just been bombarded with appointments, Thanksgiving, and day-to-day hassles. It's probably just as well that The Silent Scream got pushed until after Thanksgiving...one turkey per week is plenty! Anyway, on with the show, my fellow masochists! Oh, yeah, I almost forgot...blah blah blah, SPOILERS!, blah blah blah.

The credits begin by informing us that Rebecca's Balding. Now, either that's the name of the lead actress, or these are the bitchiest credits in movie history. Somebody send Becky some Rogaine, on the double!

Anyway, after the cast credits wrap up, the title splatters itself in our faces, complete with some comical, over-sized drips of blood. In the background, a police car is seen, along with another car driving close behind. In dramatic slo-mo. Yeesh!

Everybody from both cars arrive at a house that looks like it would be occupied by Holly Hobby, if she were a cannibal. They knock, then bust in and discover bodies and blood upstairs. And then they go bye-bye, with no further explanation of what we just saw. Genius.

The next scene opens on some of the butt-ugliest women of the 1970's interrogating students during a college admission/orientation day. Seriously, there was an outbreak of the fuglies when this sequence was shot! It's not all bad, though: this scene also introduces us to our lead character, a cute coed with the improbable name of Scotty Parker. Hey, even with the weird first name, I'll take her!

Scotty is told that there is no on-campus housing available, so she goes around the city to see if she can afford an apartment. After a montage of dead-ends and rejections, Scotty drives out to the beach, to look for a room at the house we saw in the opening scene. Run away, Scotty, run away!!

As she drives toward the house, Scotty nearly runs over a young man who has the same hairdo as her. Gotta love that decade! Scotty keeps taking her eyes off of the road to gawk at the house, and thankfully, no one dies. Yet...When she parks her convertible, she climbs the porch to the front door in massive, exaggerated steps, like an astronaut hopping around on the moon. Is ANYTHING in this movie normal?

No one answers the door, so she starts to leave. Someone coming up from the beach calls out to her, and we're introduced to Doris, who already has a room at the house. She looks kind of like the "Pat" character from SNL, but she seems nice enough. Oh, and Scotty also discovers that the kid on the bike that she nearly ran over is Mason, the teen son of the homeowner, Mrs. Engels.

After learning all of this, Scotty sees another car pull into the driveway. It's driven by a male student by the name of Peter, also looking for a room. They prepare to fight over it, until Mason reveals that there are enough rooms for everyone. Oh, and there's also a tenant named Jack, but we haven't met him yet.

Oh, and as Scotty looks at her new room, someone is seen peering in at her through a small vent above the bed. Jack? An intruder? Leatherface? Oh, I hope it's Leatherface! And, before I forget, Mason tells Scotty that the room used to belong to his sister. Maybe her ghost is still there...

Mason goes to his room, and removes his shoes before sitting up on his bed. He turns his television on and finds a violent crime drama to watch, then looks like he's ready to have an orgasm. HBO would give this guy a fatal heart attack.

Scotty finishes unpacking her stuff, then knocks on Mason's door to ask if there's somewhere she can put her empty suitcases. He suggests the basement, but Scotty complains that her luggage might get damp. Boo-friggin'-hoo! Mason tells her that she can put them in the attic, as long as she doesn't disturb his mother. Geez, maybe his name should be Norman...

Scotty enters the attic, which is like Ground Zero for creepy shit, and admires the view of the beach from one of the windows. She puts her luggage away on top of some boxes, and then meets Mrs. Engels, a stern-faced woman who just stares her down until she goes back downstairs. Creepy, but at least she's real!

Peter and Doris make small talk outside while waiting for Scotty to get ready for dinner, and a long-haired blond dude pulls up on a motorcycle. This is the elusive Jack, and he introduces himself to Peter. Mason watches them from the shadows, and he looks pretty angry. Then, when all 4 of the tenants leave for dinner, we get an unguided tour of the house, revealing secret tunnels behind the walls. At the end of the passageway, a hand is seen frantically trying to make an opening in the wall...and it finally succeeds. Uhhh, I'm going to predict that this is probably a bad development for our main characters.

At a local hangout, the foursome get drunk and goofy. Doris tells a funny story about how several of the girls at her high school got nosejobs from the same surgeon, who gave them identical noses. That stinks, huh? (Oh, stop rolling your eyes...I know some of you at least giggled a little, right?)

Back home, Doris and Peter have a drunken squabble on the beach, over whether or not they're going to have sex. Jack escorts Scotty to her door, and they share a kiss while Mason watches them. In a moment that has to be seen to be believed, Mason's not just peering at them through a crack in the door; no, his ENTIRE HEAD is visible when the camera reveals him. And the best part? He's making a face like the "sneaky snake" office character from MadTV. This movie is cinematic gold, my friends.

Doris and Peter realize that the tide has come in fairly quickly, meaning that they'll have to get their feet wet to get home. Doris swiftly removes her shoes and starts walking, only to realize that he's not following. She returns to the spot where he sat down to take off his shoes, but only his jacket remains.

Scared, Doris decides to make a run for the house, only to have Peter pop up and frighten her. He laughs at her, so Doris slaps him and continues to the house. Peter just laughs some more, then falls onto his back in the sand. He wakes up when the water reaches him and backs away to a dry spot, only to be stabbed in the chest several times by an unseen maniac holding a biiiig kitchen knife. The killer then hides the body beneath a large sand castle sculpture, leaving one blood-drenched arm visible.

An autopsy is performed on the body, and the 2 detectives who escorted the uniformed officers in the first scene are there to watch. The larger of the pair, Manny, looks like a portly Groucho Marx. His partner, Sandy, looks like any generic television cop from the era. They talk about the case, then Manny leaves to question the houseguests. Wait, is an announcer going to pop up and announce that this is a "Quinn Martin Production" soon?

Nope. Okay, so we return to the house. The interviews go nowhere, until Detective Sandy talks to Mason. They discuss the tenants, his mother...and his mysterious sister. Despite his creepiness, the cops leave. Then he and his mother have a very brief, tense chat. Upset, Mason opens up a chest filled with his late father's belongings, and paws through all of it.

On the college campus, Scotty bumps into Jack. They start out flirting, until Jack suggests that they go for a swim later, on the beach where Peter was slaughtered. Scotty is understandably upset by his nonchalant attitude regarding the murder, but ends up going with him. In what universe does this seem like a good idea?

On the bright side, she looks great in a bikini. Too bad Peter towels her off like he's punching a side of beef. Meanwhile, the detectives are pressured to solve the murder quickly, by the victim's father. Then Scotty and Peter make out on the beach.

Mason finds the rapiest movie on the Rape Channel to get off on, while Scotty reads before bed. After another brief cop chat about a rape, Scotty finds Doris doing some laundry. After Peter sneaks up and scares her, Marty and he decide to snuggle.

While sitting with her laundry, Doris hears a noise. She explores the rest of the basement, and hears her friends having sex via one of the air vents. Their sounds of passion cover up her murder, which makes zero sense to me. But at least we know that Jack isn't the killer!

He returns to his own bedroom after the lovemaking, and puts on some headphones bigger than his own head, to listen to music(or signals from a distant planet, if the size of them is a factor in their signal strength...) Then the crazy, not-dead daughter is shown watching her mother sleep, posing in front of a mirror, and interacting with a corpse that I think is supposed to be Doris.

Scotty goes looking for Doris, but ends up wandering throughout the creepy house in the dark. She finds the secret passage, and is assaulted by the crazy sister, which wakes up the rest of the household. Mama and Mason hold down Scotty to silence her, as Peter goes in search of the source of the earlier noise.

Peter leaves the attic to look elsewhere for Doris and Scotty, and the Engels' panic over what to do. Oh, and the sister's name is Victoria. We find out in a flashback that Victoria tried to hang herself. Oh, and that Mason is her son. Ummmm.....okay.....?

Mason freaks out, leaves the attic, and knocks out Jack. Then he grabs his grandfather's military pistol. At about the same time, our lunkheaded detectives discover the truth, and race off to rescue Scotty and Jack. This is turning into a soap opera now!

Wait. It gets better. Mason returns to the attic, but now he thinks that he's his own father/grandfather, and is dressed in the military uniform. He decides to shoot Scotty, but he and his mother struggle over possession of the pistol. Several shots are fired harmlessly around the room, but the last one hits Mason's mother.

Mason approaches the body, then his real mother stares at poor, innocent, tied-up Scotty. Crazy Mama II picks up the butcher knife she used on her other victims, and creeps toward Scotty. Then, in maybe one of the few grimly funny bits in this monstrosity, she sets her sights on Mason instead, and makes a beeline for his back.

Scotty tries to shout a warning to him through her gag("Mmmmmphnnn!"), and he turns around, but his gun is now empty. He backs away to reload it, shoots Victoria, then kills himself with a bullet to the brain.

Jack comes to, just as Scotty frees herself. Then Victoria pops up again, and tries to finish off Scotty, who just barely bars her striking knife by slamming a door between them. Victoria bursts in at the exact moment that Jack breaks into the attic, and the 3 just stare at each other for a second or two.

Then Scotty pushes her into a wall, and the knife goes into Victoria's abdomen. The cops "rescue" Scotty and Jack, and the end credits roll over an image of dead Victoria. THE END

Well. That was...a movie. Yup. Let's just give The Silent Scream a nice, average, plain 3. It was the slasher version of vanilla ice cream. I did like Scotty, though. Cute actress.

So, did The Silent Scream leave me with ANY wisdom?

-Sand castles don't cover up corpses very well.

-Horny guys will swim anywhere, even in the middle of a crime scene.

-If you want to commit a murder, wait for someone to start having sex first.

My next movie is a cheeseball movie from 1986, called Chopping Mall. Or sometimes Killbots. Whatever. It's goofy by any name. Later!

Five Across the Eyes

Remember your high school's senior class play? I do, it was Sweet Charity. The one the year before was Guys and Dolls. For the five chicks in this film, it was Five Across the Eyes. SPOILERS TIME!!!!

This is seriously low-budget, even by slasher-flick standards. It looks like the whole thing was shot on camcorders, or possibly even a call phone camera. We're talking pretty godawful grainy images here. Oh, and despite the attempt to make it look like they were just taping the proceedings themselves(I guess...I can't think of any other reason to film it the way they did it), the angle keeps changing to another camera, breaking the illusion completely. Look at The Last Exorcism or The Blair Witch Project, for example: part of the reason those movies work so well is that they don't break the convention that it was all shot by them. Same deal with Quarantine and REC. But here, the lousy-to-begin-with picture keeps switching to another hard-to-see angle of another character every few seconds. Geez.

Oh, and the title itself is given very little relevance. It's supposed to refer to the fact that "the locals" call the area they drive through The Eyes, but it really has no impact on anything at all. They could have called it 5 Whiny Hosebags Who Do Dumb Stuff In A Van, and it would change nothing in the story at all.

We get 5 girls, all on a trip home after some kind of sporting event. The driver, Bella, has a learner's permit, and is freaking out because they took a back road home and are hopelessly lost. The other girls are Stephanie, Melanie, Caroline and Jamie. Whatever, they're all interchangeable and generic. And lost.

The road seems to end at a small convenience store/gas station, so the girls decide to ask for directions. When Bella, Caroline, Steph and Jami get back into the van, the other 3 girls convince Bella to pretend to drive off, to scare the last girl, Melanie. For some reason, they all dislike Mel, and enjoy tormenting her. Maybe she's got acting talent. While horsing around, they hit another parked vehicle head-on. Their van has no damage, but the other car has a busted front-end headlight so they leave the scene. Of course.

From here, the film starts sucking donkeys. And that's putting it nicely. They start careening back down the road, and soon spot another car coming up fast behind them...a car with 1 working headlight. Gee, wonder who that could be? Eventually, the girls run out of road, and the other car forces them to stop. A woman holding a gun emerges, and makes them all get out, while ranting and raving about what they "saw" at the store. She refuses to buy their story that they have no clue what she's talking about and demands that they remove their clothes. Wow, it's like my junior prom all over again! Major flashbacks, man!

Anyway, for the most part they strip down to their underwear(only 2-3 of the girls actually do strip, and nothing is shown), and the crazy woman demands that they throw the clothes into a pile and piss on them. Again, it's just like my junior prom. Then, in a bizarre moment, the woman checks her watch, mumbles about being late to pick up someone, and just gets back in her car and leaves. Uh, think they'll stay in touch? More importantly, where's my orgy scene???

Sobbing and generally overacting the shit outta this scene, the girls get dressed again in their piss-drenched clothes and get back in the car. At first they freak out when they realize the woman took the car key, but they remember having a spare. Yay. They start the car and high-tail it out of there. A few feet down the road, they see the woman's car, parked. Bella puts the petal to the metal, and tries to just scoot on by, but the car follows her. (Bored yet? I was!)

Bella tries going faster, but the other vehicle keeps up with them. They hatch a brilliant plan: they will open the door, and start pelting the other car with whatever objects they can scrounge up to hit the car with. They throw crowbars, wrenches, textbooks from the Drama 101 course they all flunked, the script--you name it, they throw it. One girl even takes a dump and throws her own feces at the windshield of CrazyBitch's car. Remind me not to shake HER hand!

Stephanie, the girl who is sitting up front with Bella, starts getting nauseous over the smell of shit in the car. Being complete ditzes devoid of human intelligence, none of these girls can figure out how to crack open a window, so instead they find some hand-wipes. The girl who threw the feces cleans off her hands, but then gives the dirty wipes to Steph, who does indeed vomit. Nice.

This is only 28 minutes into this waste of time, by the way. They should send this piece-of-crap movie to Guantanamo Bay as a torture device. (Wait, is this thing still on? Oh. Damn.) Well, Bella hits a bump or something, because Steph's hands go flying, sending the vomit all over her shirt and the passenger-side window and door. The reason Bella had to stop so suddenly? There's a bunch of debris from a downed tree in the road. Scurrying as fast as the legs of a Nitwit Squad can scurry, the girls get out and start clearing the road, while Steph removes her shirt, washes off her door and hands, and puts on another shirt. Well, at least they can dress themselves, so their pea-brains aren't a TOTAL loss. Maybe they can find work over at FOX News.

This distraction gives CrazyBitch time to catch up to them, of course. She starts trying to ram their van with her car, sending them all back into it to try to take off. They swerve, they turn, they do doughnuts...really exciting stuff. If you're Amish and have never seen a movie car-chase before. Oh, and they start to run out of gas, as a warning light helpfully informs them. At this point, I'm sorta hoping the car turns out to be sentient, and kills them while they're trapped in it. THAT would be a fun movie.

They hit CrazyBitch in the road, possibly killing her. Oh, and there's a great part where they spill Bella's dad's ashes inside the car during all the careening the van does. She even mentions that she's covered in him. Great stuff. Anyway, now that Bella has introduced her dad to all of her friends, they debate whether or not to go back. Bella wants to, to make sure she's dead, but is also upset that she possibly just killed someone(2 someone's actually Bella: My inner child hung himself about 10 minutes ago. Bitch!). As they all disembark to see if they can spot CrazyBitch's CrazyCorpse, they realize that her headlight went out. Believing that she might have returned to her car to hunt them down, the girls decide to push the van off the road to conceal it. They then waste more time concealing the van with the same branches and shit they just took off the road, and sit in the darkened van, waiting to see if CrazyBitch shows up.

While sitting in the dark and waiting, they talk about what to do next. Um, give up on your dreams of stardom to become waitresses? No? Ah well, I tried. They help Bella clean up her dad(lol), and see the CrazyBitchMobile drive right past them without stopping. Yay! Anyway, they discover that Bella's dad was made out of concrete, which is kind of cool. Maybe he was a superhero! Oh, and the movie has only been on for 36 minutes by now. If I don't make it out alive, somebody needs to warn the world about this movie. Don't let my suffering be in vain!!!!

Eh, Bella's whining again. "Oh, why me? I took a shortcut! I killed my mom's van! I found out my dad was replaced with new Folger's Crystals! Why does everything bad happen to me???" Blecch. Hey Bella, here's a razor and a full bottle of pills. I'll just wait over here for about 10 minutes or so, while you make the world a better place, mmm-kay?

Bella then decides that if they're all going to die out there(please, oh PLEASE YESSSS) that she wants to confess to one of the other girls(Melanie, maybe? I'm barely paying attention anymore) all the ways she's mistreated her. If these girls could act, and be in a real movie, I bet this scene would be really emotional and deep. Oh well. Oh, and during this scene, another girl whips out a cell phone, presumably to see if her agent found a way for her to get out of the movie. No go. Shit, if you had a cell phone the ENTIRE TIME, why the frickenfrack didn't you use it EARLIER???

They discuss the genius-level idea of going outside to see if they can find a place to get a signal for the phone(twice, actually), and the CrazyBitchMobile slooooowly pulls up. The five girls decide to run away into the dark woods, and CB chases after them. The entire time, the camera stays in the car. We see them running into the woods, we see her go, then we just sit there in the backseat of the car, asking "Are we there yet?" There's a muffled gunshot, a scream, and Jamie(I guess, I've only been paying attention sporadically since this abortion of a movie started) runs back into the van to hide. While she finds band aids to cover up some bloody scratches, there's a second gunshot. Jamie finds dead daddy's urn, and pours dad's concrete ashes out of it. She then siphons some gas out of the CrazyBitchMobile(I wonder if CrazyBitch and Robin ever yell out "To the CrazyBitchCave!" when they end their nightly patrol of Gotham City?) and pours in into the urn. Ooh, I think somebody has a plaaaan.....

Yup. She uses the gas from the other car to refill Bella's, and pulls up next to the other car, to steal more gas. But she hears CrazyBitch coming back and has to hide, so she quickly ducks into the backseat. She hears one of her friends, Caroline, screaming, and CrazyBitch tells Caroline that she has to pay for what she's done. As Jamie watches and listens, she sees a hand(belonging to CrazyBitch) open up a toolbox on the floor of the backseat, and CrazyBitch's hand takes out a wrench, some pliers, Season One of Home Improvement...

Another girl shows up, tries to stop the torture(not mine, though), and is attacked. She gets dragged, kicking and screaming, into the other car. CrazyBitch drives off with her latest victim, and Caroline crawls out of the car, her clothes covered in blood. Bella comes back, sees Caroline on the ground, and tells Jamie to help get her into the van. Jamie tearfully explains that Steph was abducted and that they need to find her. Along the way they pick up Mel, the girl they all had made fun of earlier in the film. She's bleeding quite a bit, and one of the others tries to treat her wounds with a first aid kit. They find a screwdriver shoved up Mel's vagina, and that just reminds me of the nasty bowling pin scene in Gutterballs. Geez, thanks for the reminder, movie.

Anyway, they eventually catch up to the CrazyBitchMobile, and follow it down a side road. They can see Stephanie inside, trying to escape, but lose the car as they drive around in the dark. They start to fight over which direction to turn, they blame each other for the evening's events, and in general just embrace their inner bitchitudes.

Oh, and they also find the car. But now it appears empty. They open up the back of the car, and find at least two OTHER corpses in the back. As they examine them closer, they discover that it's actually an entire family, including a small boy. Being brilliant strategists, the girls decide to let the air out of CrazyBitch's tires. They hear more gunshots, and debate whether Stephanie is even still alive, and the gunshots get closer. This leads to one of the only smiles I cracked: as they yell at each other about abandoning Steph to her fate, one girl says that she probably ran far enough away. Another girl says, "We don't know that!", and the response is, "Well, PRETEND!" LMAO

They all eventually do get back in the vehicle. As they start to drive off, they open a back door and yell out Stephanie's name, hoping that she can hear them and get back to the van. When that plan fails miserably, they turn around to go back. CrazyBitch attacks their car as they pull up to hers, and they manage to slam her into a tree with their vehicle, much like Laurie Strode did with Michael in H20(I should've watched that instead...THAT movie kicks this movie's ass). Bella starts screaming about the blood in her eyes(so why is she the one driving, if she can't see???), Caroline goes into a state of catatonic shock, and Jamie steps out of the car and promptly gets shot. They ram the car again at CrazyBitch, throw some things at her, and drive off.

They try to keep Jamie talking to keep her conscious, but they don't have enough bandages to help her with her wounds. As she bleeds all over the backseat, they find Steph outside wandering, and get her into the van as well. She starts protesting that she doesn't want to go, then freaks out over Jamie's injuries. Whatever CrazyBitch did to her was bad, because she's bleeding so badly that they can't stop it.

One of the girls sees a flash of light and starts to panic that it's the return of CrazyBitch. They can't calm her down, so Bella turns around the van to show them that nothing's there. In the process, they pop a tire. They stop the van to fix the tire, which is the worst idea in the history of the worst ideas. The CrazyBitchMobile returns, and she pulls one of the girls away, dragging her along on the ground as the car takes off. The others pile back into the van and chase them, eventually catching up as CrazyBitch finally lets go of her victim to go after the rest of them.

She butts two of them in the head with the end of her shotgun, she slams one into the sliding door of the van, and she tries to shoot one girl, but is out of bullets. Oh, and one girl(not sure who at this point) has a hand keep popping up at one of the windows, doing the funkiest sign language monologue EVER!

CrazyBitch gets to the bleeding, dying girl in the backseat, and starts crying. She apologizes for what she's done, which was appropriate about 45 minutes earlier. The "dead" girl wakes up and retaliates with an attack of her own. She kicks and punches at the woman, but is hit several times with a hammer. Guess the apology's called off. She grabs Steph's arm, pulls it back behind her and ties it there with a seat belt. She then wraps a section of seat belt around Steph's neck, effectively pinning her down into her seat.

She runs back to her car to grab something. It turns out to be a tackle box, filled with hooks. She grabs a handful of them, forces them into Steph's mouth, then tapes her mouth shut. The whole time she's ranting about obedience and discipline, and following the rules as long as "you're living under MY roof!" I'm sure this film had a fascinating back story; it's a shame the writers didn't bother to share it with the audience. CrazyBitch winds the tape around Steph's head several times, taunts her, then notices the girl with the hand caught in the door. She goes after her next. CrazyBitch gets a battery out of her car, attaches it to their car battery, then tortures the pinned girl by electrocution. She then drags her over to the front of the car, and repeatedly slams the hood down on her body.

Had enough yet? CrazyBitch sure hasn't. She goes after Bella next. Yelling about how young girls shouldn't go after older men, she shoves the rifle up Bella's ass. Seriously movie. WTF??? Remember when slasher flicks used to be goofy and fun? These film-makers sure don't. Anyway, CrazyBitch severs one of Bella's fingers. The other girls use the distraction to get loose from all their traps and grab weapons. As a group, they all whale on CrazyBitch, using crowbars, fists, feet, the script again, whatever they can find to deliver some payback. This all culminates in a screwdriver in her chest, and a series of pretty intense stabbings. Everyone takes a turn at it. Better than Cats.

Then Bella goes back to the front seat and grabs the car's lighter. Another girl pours out the gasoline from the urn onto CrazyBitch, as they remind each other that CrazyBitch murdered a family, and they all watch her burn. While her corpse is consumed in the fire, they quietly shuffle back to the van, and remind each other to wear their seat belts. Ha, ha. Great time to crack a joke, movie. These guys should've written the ending for Schindler's List too.

They drive away, and end up back at the convenience store from the beginning. Going inside, they discover that CrazyBitch had killed everyone inside the store before coming after them, so they decide to get back on the road. As they pull back out onto the street, one of the girls vomits, and Bella scolds her with, "Don't mess up my mom's van." THE END

Geez, this was bad. I mean, it could have been a good film, if we had any kind of character development AT ALL. I mean, who was the woman? What events set her off? Who was her family? Why mutilate a bunch of teenage girls? And why would the girls do most of the stuff they did? If this had been re-written a few more times, I bet you'd have a fairly good "fish out of water"-type thriller, like the movie Emilio Estevez and Dennis Leary did in the '90's, Judgement Night. Same kind of premise, if you think about it. But this thing was just a bunch of action setpieces with little to no setup. Anyway, it sucked, except for a few isolated moments of gallows humor, and the crazy ending. 2 killer trees out of five, just because I'm feeling generous.

So, what has 5 Across the Eyes taught me?
-Torture porn needs to be taken out to the woodshed, and shot.
-A movie needs a script. You can't just take your school's camcorder and start filming for the heck of it.
-5 women constantly dressing and undressing can be a real drag, and not that sexy. Damn.
-A movie can be labelled under the category of slasher flick, and contain only 1 onscreen death. I've seen more kills in Charlie Chaplin's films.

Next up: Probably Bones. I saw the rest of it(FINALLY), and it was better than I expected it to be. Will probably post it later this weekend or early next week, barring any mental anguish today's movie caused me.

Don't Go In the House

Remember the double-feature movie Grindhouse? Great movie experience...you get 2 hysterically cheesy movies spoofing the kinds of crap films you'd see at a drive-in, plus several ridiculous movie trailer spoofs. Well, the reason I bring up Grindhouse is because one of the trailers, Don't..., is a direct spoof of the horror genre of "Don't" movies. You know, like Don't Look in the Basement, Don't Answer the Phone, and today's cinematic "gem", Don't Go In the House.

The story is about young, crazy Donny. He's a troubled loner who is obsessed with fire. As the movie starts, Donny is at work(some kind of factory job), and he inserts a flammable can of spray into a furnace. A co-worker opens the furnace door, and BOOM--he lights up like a Roman candle. While others come to the man's aid, Donny just stands back and watches. Later, when confronted about the "accident", a supervisor asks him directly why he didn't cover the guy in something to douse the flames, and Donny's reply is, "I did...I covered him in fire." Nice guy.

From here, we start getting into a pretty blatant Psycho rip-off: Donny hears the voice of "Mother" telling him what to do. As Donny grew up, Mother apparently punished him by burning him on their stove, usually for sex-related "crimes". (sound familiar?) When he gets home, he even offers to make her some tea. Just like Norman Bates. In one of the funniest scenes I've ever witnessed, he "finds" her dead and has a reaction that even William Shatner would call hammy acting. (I'm still not entirely convinced he didn't kill her himself)After failing to revive her, Donny hears another voice, which informs him that he is now free to do anything he wants. His first major act of freedom is to listen to shitty Disco music at full blast, smoke a cigarette, lounge around...and hear his mother's voice screaming at him. Just like Norman, his mother haunts him.

He calls in sick to work and buys himself a flame-retardant suit. Then he reels in his first victim, a young florist. He buys flowers from her just as she's closing her shop, then offers her a ride when she misses her bus. Of course, instead of driving her home or to the next bus stop, he takes her to his house. Didn't she see the title? DON'T GO IN THE HOUUUUUUSE!!!!! Well, she does. Dumbass. As she wanders around the house getting progressively more and more freaked out, Donny tries to persuade her to stay. When she resists he knocks her out, strips her naked, and chains her up inside a fireproof room. Throw in a rose ceremony, and it looks like a standard episode of The Bachelor. (nice body, btw...I guess in the 70's there were far fewer "No nudity" clauses for movie starlets...) Donny splashes her with gas and sets her on fire. As Paris Hilton would say, "That's hot!"

His next victim is a woman stranded by the side of the road. We never even get to know her name. After he picks her up, her next scene is as a burnt-up corpse. Immediately following her murder, he kidnaps a woman at a convenience store and brings her home to "meet mother" and the other victims. At least this one has a name: Linda.

Before he can finish off Linda, Donny gets a call from Bobby, a co-worker. Bobby tells him that if he keeps missing work, his ass is grass. He must have killed Linda offscreen, because we see a LOT of scenes of Donny having nightmares of his victims coming after him, hallucinations of them appearing on stairwells and in doorways, and, of course, more scenes of Mother' s corpse being all corpse-y. Feeling lost and confused(join the party, Donald!), Donny goes to church. He shows the local priest what his mother did to his arms as a child, and the priest shows genuine concern for his health, both physical and mental. He even offers to hear Donny's confession.

Feeling better than he has in a looooong time, Donny goes home and asks his mother's corpse for forgiveness. Donny calls his ol' pal Bobby. Bobby is at home and surrounded by family, so of course he proposes that Donny meet up with him later to have a group-grope with some easy chicks. OF COURSE! Donny agrees to meet them...BAD idea!!

First, Donny goes out and buys himself a 3-piece suit and new shoes. Looking like Juan Epstein(any Welcome Back, Kotter fans?), Donny shows up at the Disco to meet Bobby and their "dates". While Bobby is dancing with his, Donny is having the MACE(Most Awkward Conversation Ever!)...or he was, until his date left to go dance with another guy. Having flashbacks of what his mother did to his arms, Donny accidentally burns a woman who wants to dance with him. He flees the nightclub and picks up 2 drunk women.

He tells the 2 drunks that he was mugged by, and he beat up, 3 tough guys. He suggests the girls come back to his house, and they idiotically agree. He then lures one of the girls into his "burn room"...

Meanwhile, Bobby tracks down the priest Donny talked to earlier. He tells him about the nightclub fire, and asks the Father to go with him to Donny's house to reason with him. Worried, they both agree that it would be best to find Donny before anything else happens. DUH.

The other girl that came home with Donny begins to worry when she can't find her friend, Suzanne. She wanders through the house, calling her name, unaware that Donny is right behind her. When she finds the room with all the bodies, Donny grabs her before she can scream. *gulp*

By this time, Bobby and the priest have arrived. They knock, but of course Donny is upstairs yelling at his corpse-harem. While Donny is changing his clothes, they break down the front door and hear a woman screaming. They follow the sound and find both Suzanne and the other girl in the fire-proof room, still very much alive. The manage to untie the frightened women, and start to lead them to safety, but the priest hears a noise upstairs and decides to stay behind. Sloooowly creeping up the stairs(another scene reminiscent of Psycho), he encounters Donny, dressed in his asbestos suit. Donny introduces the poor guy to his flamethrower, and makes Chicken Fried Father.

Bobby manages to throw a blanket over the priest to try to put him out, and now Donny is like a man on a mission: he moves from room to room, flamethrower in hand, until he reaches the Smoking Room(heh, sorry, I couldn't resist). All the while, his mother is shadowing him, but he barely seems to register her ghostly presence. He instead tells all of the voices, mother and others, that he's done listening to them. Of course, he coulda realized this epiphany BEFORE he decided to start setting fire to the house, but hey, he's the expert here.

Anyway, the grand finale is completely gonzo-crackers-bananas: Mom, his victims and the "friendly" voices all rebel against him. Seriously. The corpses all rise, Mom included, and kill Donny in the most mundane way possible. The movie then gives us an "epilogue", where we see another little boy being abused by his parent. Ooh, do I smell a sequel? Nope, that's just Donny becoming a Crispy Critter. 3 trees out of 5, for the ho-hum presentation of what SHOULD HAVE been the most crazy-ass movie ever seen by human eyes.

What have I learned from Don't Go In the House?
-Not to go in the house...see? I paid attention!
-The '70's had the worst music and fashions EVER.
-You can keep multiple charred and/or decomposed bodies in your house without EVER noticing the smell. I swear, scout's honor!

Next time: something called The Sorority. Don't tell Donny!

American Psycho

If you're anything like me(you poor thing!), you've probably watched some movie franchises out of order. Such is the case with this week's excursion, American Psycho. I saw the sequel* on Netflix's Instant option a few weeks before I decided to start this blog, and it definitely makes the first one look pretty good in comparison...which is faint praise, at best.

Based on the controversial novel, American Psycho tells the story of Patrick Bateman, a 1980's Yuppie who is obsessed with his own image and success. He and his fellow pretentious co-workers are so constantly worried about one-upping each other, they barely even recognize one another when not at work. They constantly exchange business cards to show off their own affluence, and spend most nights hanging out in trendy retaurants and nightclubs.

Patrick hates most of them, enough so that he decides to murder one, a co-worker named Paul Allen(played by Jared Lehto). He invites Paul back to his apartment, puts on a Huey Lewis CD, and proceeds to hack Paul to death. He then dismembers the body, packs a suitcase of Paul's belongings, and books him on a flight to Paris.

And no one notices. After getting away with it, Bateman becomes bolder: he kills a homeless man, he beats up(and possibly murders) a couple of hookers, he even gets into a shootout with the police, and kills an animal or two, all to an authentically cheesy '80's soundtrack of Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis and Genesis. Or does he?

See, everything Patrick does in the film is ambiguous. Everything. For instance, after he kills Paul Allen, several characters claim to have seen or spoken to Paul. And the shootout is after a hallucinatory sequence where an ATM asks him to feed it a cat. While some films benefit from their confusing narratives(movies like Memento and The Machinist come to mind), it gets a little annoying after awhile. The cast is great--we have Christian Bale, Lehto, Reese Witherspoon Chloe Sevigny as the nervous secretary, the still-smoking-hot Samantha Mathis and Willem Dafoe(he plays a detective who isn't sure if Bateman killed Paul Allen or not)--so the problem isn't with the cast. It's the script. A little less of the dream-sequence-y hallucinations, and a little more of Bateman playing cat-and-mouse with those around him would have helped the film a lot.

By the end, after he terrorizes everyone from his secretary to a confused chinese laundromat worker, we're not even sure he IS Patrick Bateman. Not helping matters any, he calls his lawyer and confesses to crimes that apparently were portrayed in the novel, but not the film. It's like that scene in The Goonies where the Asian kid rambles on about the frickin' octopus, after all of the octopus scenes were taken out of the film.

And yet, I have to admit that I was entertained. Watching him dance to Huey Lewis and the News before killing Paul, seeing him and his co-workers practically wet their pants over each others' business cards, and seeing him go stark raving mad at people who never seem to react is all pretty funny stuff. It just wasn't much to make up a thriller. Much better workplace slasher films have been made, like Severance, Office Killer, and Intruder just off the top of my head. But in spite of the plotholes and lingering questions(what was the scene with the realtor about??? ), I still found myself amused by the story. Seeing him working out to Texas Chainsaw Massacre is pretty damned funny, as is the "murders and executions" line in the film. I just wish I had seen this one before all of those others. Maybe it would have seemed more original to me a decade ago, when it first came out. Another one that gets 3 killer trees outta 5.

So, what did I learn from this week's slasher film?
-Some of these movies have expiration dates.
-Christian Bale can actually act, without doing the "growly voice"(seriously, does ANYBODY understand his dialogue in the Batman films??).
-I can and will watch Samantha Mathis in anything, at any time....hubba.



*I may decide to talk about the sequel as well, at some later date, but it was pretty generic. And the connection to this film is practically non-existent, so it's kind of a ripoff to watch it thinking it's a sequel. Hey, buyer beware right?