So, I was in a discussion not long ago, about how, in the late '80s/early '90s, there were a crapload of Alien knockoffs...and most of them took place underwater. Deepstar Six was one of 2 of these things that I paid to see in a theatre(the other was nLeviathan), and it's today's SAW. Big, drippy, slippery SPOILERS follow...
According to the opening credits, this movie involved the producers of Total Recall, and the guy who created the Friday the 13th franchise. Weird. Oh, and the cast is mostly made up of actors from television and bad movies, like Nia Peeples, Greg "My Two Dads" Evigan and Matt "That Guy Who WASN'T Steve Guttenberg in later Police Academy Sequels" McCoy. Neat-o.
After the saddest credits ever, we follow a shark to Deepstar Six, which is a military project located on the ocean floor. There, we meet McBride and Laidlaw, a happy couple who are just waking up to begin their work shift. McBride is commitment-shy, and he artfully evades Laidlaw when she starts to ask him why he's never settled down. Trouble in Paradise?
They join the rest of their team for the change in shift, and we find out that their "shift" is in the last week of a 6-month stint on the ocean floor. The team consists of McBride(a submarine pilot) and Joyce Collins; a marine biologist named Dr. Scarpelli; a physician named Diane Norris; 2 hotshot submarine pilots, named Osborne and Hodges; a Russian-sounding scientist named Burciaga; Dr. Van Gelder, who is the man in charge of the scientific experiments being conducted underwater; and Captain Laidlaw, the commander of the underwater station.
Burciaga and Collins are studying an area where the military is trying to place a missile site, and they discover that the cavern underneath that spot is pretty deep. They contact Van Gelder to report that they should probably look for another place to build the missile site, but he orders them to use whatever tools are necessary to blow up the cavern, then put the missiles on top of the wreckage. Collins and Burciaga want to explore the area first, but Van Gelder overrides the decision.
Snyder tells the rest of the group about the cave discovery, and Scarpelli seeks out Van Gelder to try to talk him into letting her explore the cavern first. Despite citing several important scientific discoveries made in similar caverns, he refuses to delay the demolition of the cave. She stomps away, then we get a brief scene of Snyder begging Norris to give him a medical reason to return to land.
After that random bit goes nowhere, Scarpelli talks to the captain about the preservation of the cavern. He points out that the military project is on a tight schedule, but she counter-argues that the study of the cavern would be a valuable tool in her research. The captain chooses to side with Van Gelder, and Scarpelli takes out her frustration on some exercise equipment.
After her workout, Scarpelli jumps into the shower, but abruptly loses water pressure. Richardson pops in to ogle her, and she pulls him into the shower to join her...fully clothed. Heh, bet they both die of exposure before the credits roll.
Osborne and Hodges use a robot to place the explosives, and the resulting charge causes the sea floor around the site to begin to collapse. They activate a remote camera to explore the newly-created fissure, while they watch from their module at a safe distance. What follows is a friggin' enchanted wonderland, filled with glowing seaweed and underwater lava-rocks. Tra-la-la!
They decide to record the experience, as well as taking some photographs(the nudity will be artful, I'm sure), and that's when the probe suddenly loses the transmission. Osborne and Hodges decide to pilot their vehicle into the fissure to retrieve the probe. While waiting for the camera to work again, Burciaga tells Collins that the images from the cavern could be ocean life that has existed for millions of years, undetected by humans until now.
More Disney underwater fantasy stuff, accompanied by even more wondrous music. Man, it's like Seaquest and The Little Mermaid had a love-child! They spot the probe, then something spots THEM. The object chases their vehicle, and the other sub that Burciaga and Collins are observing them from abruptly loses all contact with Osborne and Hodges. Even their mini-sub vanishes from the radar screen.
Burciaga and Collins decide to call Deepstar Six to report the incident to the captain, and Snyder leaves his post to find him. While they wait, the sub is attacked by the large creature that destroyed the first sub. As the small vehicle begins to flood, Burciaga is flung under a pile of flying equipment, and Collins is temporarily knocked out.
Snyder and the captain try to contact them, but get only silence. They ready another vehicle to go after them, then we see hat Collins has finally regained her senses. She soon discovers that the creature that attacked the tiny ship pushed it close to the edge of a ravine, where it's extremely unstable. She manages to revive Burciaga, but he's pinned under a ton of stuff, and his leg is in rough shape. He's toast.
McBride and Laidlaw move in closer to where Burciaga and Collins were transmitting, and the creature nearly collides with them as well. They avoid it, then dock with the other mini-sub. After getting the hatch between the vehicles to open up, Burciaga dies from the trauma of his injuries. Collins crawls through the hatch, as does McBride, but then the portal slams down on Captain Laidlaw's midsection, nearly cutting him in half.
Pinned in place, the captain orders the pair to save themselves, then he floods the chamber to drown himself. They try to pry him loose first, fail, then swim back into the other sub. After a short ride back to the research station, they get escorted to sick bay.
While changing into a dry outfit, McBride and Richardson talk about losing the captain. Richardson gives McBride an old photo of him and Laidlaw during a happy occasion, and McBride is thankful for the good memory. He hugs Richardson, then finishes getting dressed.
During her time with the doctor, Collins reports on the creature that seems to be attacking all of the research vessels. Scarpelli shares the theory that perhaps the creature was disturbed by a combination of both the detonation of the cavern, and the sudden influx of light provided by all of the subs and probes. Also, during the medical examination, Dr. Norris discovers that Collins is pregnant. McBride just happens to walk in as the announcement is made. As George Takei might say, "Oh myyyyy..."
Anyway, while Collins and McBride hash out their relationship issues, Dr. Norris prepares to evacuate the station early. She leaves Snyder in charge of shutting down the computers, while the others all leave to pack up equipment. When the computer asks Snyder to input the reason for the shutdown, he tries to narrow down the attacks as an aggressive threat to the base by a natural force. That starts a missile detonation sequence. Gosh, what could possibly go wrong?
While the others talk about what they plan to do back on land, Snyder fires the missiles. The impact sends a shockwave through the base, and that shockwave also pisses off the creature outside. As the structure of the base starts to buckle, everyone scurries around to make repairs to the many, many leaks that are now happening.
They've fixed things on a short-term basis, but now they're boned on several other levels...For starters, the decompression chamber is being flooded, which is dangerous for them at such a low depth in the ocean. Also, the supplies are flooded, greatly reducing their chances of survival even if they do make it back to the surface; oh, and the reactor that they're running everything off of has become unstable, so they'll die in a matter of hours in a nuclear explosion long before the air runs out.
Snyder suggests trying to get into an escape pod without going through decompression, but he's told that anyone attempting to do that would explode from pressure. They examine the layout of the base, and find a possible route to a place where they might be able to repair the decompression chamber, so they work as a team to set up a new plan of action.
Richardson gets into a diving suit, grabs a welding tool, then heads outside to begin the repairs, while they try to guide him along from a computer screen. The welding tool is bright enough to attract the monster, and we see something slowly advance upon Richardson's position. A moment later, the others hear him screaming over the microphone.
They try to pull Richardson back into the base, but the creature follows him through the airlock. Only Richardson's top half makes it, followed quickly by a wormlike behemoth. The worm-monster ducks back down into the hatch with Richardson's yummy legs to chew on, as the crew work to both shut the airlock, and escape the room.
As the room gets flooded, the worm decides to swim back in. It snatches Scarpelli, and the rest barely manage to get away and seal the hatch. While Snyder and McBride argue over whose fault this is, the others realize that the creature has suddenly gone quiet. Snyder once again proposes using an escape pod without decompressing, and is told that it would be lethal.
The doctor and Van Gelder talk about the nature of the creature, and she tries to pick his brain about ways to kill it. He doesn't know enough about it to offer anything useful, but Snyder, McBride and Collins find harpoon-like guns that fire projectiles that can cause the target to inflate like a balloon, then explode. That sounds like a fun way to die. Snyder doubts the effectiveness of the weapon, until Collins demonstrates on the cushion that Snyder is sitting on.
Armed with their kooky new weapons, they decide to sneak back through the flooded part of the base to get to the decompression chamber. While wading through chest-high water, McBride dives under to see if he can clear enough debris away to finish repairing the decompression chamber, and clear an exit for them. After a couple of dives, he reports that he believes that he achieved his goal.
Then the giant worm pops up, and everyone goes crazy. During the frenzy, Snyder accidentally shoots Van Gelder with one of the Air-rows(heh, couldn't resist that one...), and we see his heart explode out of his chest. After the creature leaves again, Snyder has a mental breakdown, so Norris injects him with a sedative.
Snyder starts to cry and act like a wounded puppy, so McBride and Collins leave him with the physician, so that they can begin the task of readying the decompression chamber, and setting up an escape pod. Snyder is left alone for a minute, while the doctor tries to gather some medical supplies. While alone, he has a vision of the recently-exploded Van Gelder, and the ghost "attacks" him with another explosive harpoon.
Norris hears his screams, and discovers Snyder climbing up into an escape pod. She tries to drag him away from the ladder, but he gets away from her, then slams the pod door shut and initiates the launch sequence. Snyder's pod launches, sending a rush of water into the room through the now-open hatch, and McBride and Collins barely manages to rescue the doctor in time from a watery demise. When McBride declares that he's going to kill Snyder for what he did, the doctor says that Snyder has already killed himself.
Then we get to watch Snyder die. It's slow, it's painful, it's bloody, and it's explosive. Fun times. It's also the best special effect in the entire danged movie. Sadly, it doesn't last very long. When I first saw it in my teens, I thought it felt like forever, heh. Things seemed much gorier in my younger days...
Back in the base, our last three survivors are waiting for the decompression chamber to finish cycling up, so that they can make their escape. McBride decides that he's going to make his way over to another computer, hijack one of the mini-subs, then pilot it remotely over to the decompression chamber so that they can use it for their escape. Oh, and he asks Collins to marry him. Awwwww!!!! I hope they don't go on a cruise for their honeymoon...
McBride swims through several flooded compartments, while Collins tries to use the power of prayer to bribe God to let her beloved live. McBride gets inside one of the mini-subs, and begins to pilot it back to the other survivors. Then, the monster knocks at the hatch, so the doctor lets it in. Seriously, that actually happens. I really wish I were joking, but we get a scene where the monster politely knocks.
The creature eats the physician while Collins works on getting herself inside the decompression chamber. As it attempts to finish the doctor off though, she grabs up a pair of defbrillator paddles, and electrocutes the beast. It eats her anyway, while Collins gets rescued by McBride. The decompression finally finishes, and they get into their escape sub.
The mini-sub surfaces, but so does the stupid worm. As our couple tries to get onto a life raft, the worm attacks, so McBride causes a fire and an explosion, using leaking fuel. The creature gets blown up, then McBride reveals that he swam a safe distance away, and Collins pulls him into the raft. THE END
Well, we had a giant sea worm, a couple of exploding victims, a sexy girl in a shower, and a relatively high body count: so why do I feel so bored by this one? It just felt slow to me, and the kills early on were incredibly dull. Plus, we didn't really get to see much of the creature design, so even those few glimpses felt like they botched it. Still, Nia Peeples had a good shower scene, and the female lead reached Sandra Bullock-levels of cuteness, so it sort of evened out. 3 out of 5 killer trees, for some good 'splosions.
And what did I learn after watching Deepstar Six?
-It wasn't very deep, and there were no stars. Discuss.
-Giant worms hate light.
-Humans make messy balloons.
Next up, a real treat. All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, starring Amber Heard. Can't wait! See you then...
Showing posts with label mutant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mutant. Show all posts
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Castle Freak
Howdy all! Apolgies for being a day late, but I've been fighting a nasty cold. This week's entry is called Castle Freak. If it's about a castle that comes to life and freaks out, I'm giving it a 10 out of 5. As always, be prepared for SPOILERS...
Things start out in the kitchen of a witchy-looking old woman. She's preparing a meal of bread and meat, then she lights a candle. As she leaves her dwelling, we see that she lives next to an imposing castle. Oh, and a cat follows her to the castle.
Once inside, she brings the candle and the food into the dungeon, where she puts everything on the ground to pick up a whip that's hanging on the wall. Kinky. After unlocking a cell in the dungeon, she begins to whip the occupant, who cowers on the floor and screams. Then the old woman feeds her prisoner, leaves the dungeon, and has a pesky ol' heart attack.
After the opening credits, we meet the Reilly family. The parents are John and Susan, and they have a blind daughter, Rebecca. The castle is some kind of inheritance, and it's in pretty poor condition, with broken stones everywhere and a rat scurrying past them as they walk through the front gate.
The Italian lawyer explains that he found the Reillys after he launched an investigation into any living heirs of the estate. He also apologizes for the condition of the castle, due to the family fortune being depleted over the years. John responds that they won't be staying very long, as he plans to liquidate the assets and sell the estate.
They are introduced to an elderly maid, and Susan requests that a third bedroom be prepared. It seems that she and her husband sleep in different beds these days, because of friction over the death of their son. John was driving drunk, and the accident was also the cause of Becky's blindness. And the winner of Father of The Year is...
Later that night, John knocks at Susan's door. He asks for a chance at a fresh start, then gets a little too grabby for her. She tells him that she can't forgive him and she sends him back to his room, where he passes out and has a nightmare about the crash. His own anguished cries in the dream manage to wake him up, and he gets rattled by the sound of a monstrous wailing that seems to be from within the castle.
John decides to do some exploring. He follows the noises to the wine cellar, where he cuts his hand. Then the maid finds him washing the blood off in the kitchen. She tells John that the elderly duchess lived alone in the castle for 42 years, and that the sound John heard was the ghost of the supposedly-dead son of the duchess, a boy named Giorgio.
The next day, John decides to take his daughter on a tour of the castle. They find a nursery, another bedroom, and several pieces of art. When John decides to snoop around for any valuable jewelry, he comes across the whip. Oh, and he also discovers a strange photo album.
Becky hears a mysterious scratching noise, so she stumbles off to check it out. John, fully engrossed by the old pictures, completely ignores his daughter. Man, this guy is a real family man, huh?
Becky finds her way back to the room full of toys, and nearly has a heart attack when she gets scared by a cat that was behind a door. She follows the sound of the cat to the cellar level, where she takes a tumble and scrapes up her leg. John finally notices that she's gone, and searches for his daughter. Better late than never, I suppose...
Becky gets back on her feet, and she inadvertently wakes Giorgio. She hears him moving around, but tries to convince herself that it's just the cat. He finds the cat after Becky leaves the area, and he decides to eat it. Becky tries to tell her folks that she heard somebody downstairs, but they don't believe her.
After snacking on the cat, Giorgio gets a surge of energy. He snaps off his own thumb with his teeth, then manages to break free from the chain that was holding him to the wall. Let's hope he doesn't have to hitch a ride anywhere. After Giorgio breaks free, he holds the chain over his head in victory. Rocky! Rocky! Rocky!
Susan scoffs at Becky's story, telling her that her imagination is just running wild. Giorgio busts open the door to the dungeon area, and then we see the Reilly clan sitting down to dinner.
Becky asks the elderly maid about the cat, and is told that the cat was probably a pet that belonged to the duchess. Then we see Giorgio discover a mirror, and he recoils when he sees his own grotesque image. The sound of the mirror being smashed brings the family out to check out the damage.
After everyone goes to bed, Giorgio decides to wander around the castle. He limps into Becky's room, where he watches her sleep, then tries to figure out how to undress her without waking her up. Becky does wake up, so Giorgio tries to hide. The sound of his chain falling to the floor makes Becky scream, and her parents somehow manage to come running in seconds after Giorgio leaves, without ever seeing him.
John rushes out of the room with a flashlight, and misses seeing Giorgio a second time. He even finds the cell that Giorgio was living in, but misses seeing the dead cat on the floor. This man is some kind of genius.
John finds the family crypt next, and looks at the various names and dates on the wall. Giorgio sneaks in behind him, just as he reads the plaque for Giorgio's death. It says that Giorgio died at the age of 5, which brings John to tears over the loss of his own son.
A cop comes by the following day, and questions the family very briefly. The officer clearly doesn't think that there was an intruder, and he notes John's injured hand. After implying that John himself broke the mirror, the officer leaves.
After getting Becky to take a nap, John tells his wife that he has something to show her. He brings her to the crypt, and the picture of Giorgio has now disappeared. John decides to kill himself, but then he chickens out. He finds the local tavern, and decides to get drunk instead. Uh, okay...
While he's getting smashed out of his gourd, John meets a prostitute. He buys her a drink, then proceeds to spill it all over her skimpy outfit. A man at the bar suggests that it's time for John to leave, so he begins waving around a wad of cash to pay for the drinks. The hooker sees the money, and decides that he suddenly looks a lot more charming.
John takes her to his wine cellar, where he manages to spill another drink on her. She makes a fuss, but he shushes her, worried that his family will discover them. They start to make out, and Giorgio sneaks in to watch.
The sight of her nudity excites Giorgio, who has decided to start wearing a white hood over his face. Where'd he get the hood from? He waits for John to finish up and pass out, and then Giorgio grabs the wine bottle. He follows the hooker to the toy room, then attacks her from behind with a white sheet over her head.
The next morning, a cop knocks at the castle door. He's the same officer that arrived the other day, and this time he's VERY interested in looking around the castle. Susan learns that her husband was seen leaving a bar with a hooker, and that makes John get a little bit defiant. Nevertheless, the cop seems to believe that he did something to the hooker.
After the cop leaves, we see that the hooker is still alive. Wow! She seems to be begging the monster to let her go, but he offers her a swig of wine instead. She decides to play along and seduce him, but then she discovers that he's missing more than a thumb, if you know what I mean. She gets her hands on the bottle, smashes it and slices a gouge into his arm, so he throws her up against a wall, then bites off her nipples.
John is really up shit creek now, because the maid has discovered the hooker's purse in the castle. When John finds out, he's told that the police will will definitely arrest him. The maid's brother agrees to keep quiet, but only if John pays him off. Then he informs John that his lineage isn't quite as royal as he was led to believe, making him a bastard of the family. Boy, he sure is having a bad day!
The maid hears a horrible scream, so she decides to go have a look around the dungeon. She finds the hooker's mutilated body, and the hooker is barely alive. She tries to warn the old woman that Giorgio is right behind her, but the monster attacks the maid, repeatedly beating her after she hits the floor.
John gets home, just in time to see his wife and daughter leaving. She tells him that it's too late to salvage what they had, but all John is worried about is how there exit will make him look even more guilty to the authorities. She refers to him as a "whipping boy", and the phrase suddenly helps him to see what the evil presence is that is living in the castle. He vows to prove his innocence. Oh, and the cops arrive, telling Susan that the entire family must remain in the castle until the investigation is completed.
John grabs a heavy shovel, and the others can hear him bashing it against something somewhere deep in the castle. Susan and a couple of the officers decide to see what John's up to, and they leave Becky with another officer. Yeah, because splitting up ALWAYS works out well in horror films!
It turns out that John was breaking into Giorgio's crypt, to see if his body was in there. He breaks open the coffin in front of Susan and the cops, confirming that there's no corpse. Then he tells them that Becky was right, and that the presence she kept hearing in the castle was Giorgio.
The officers handcuff John, even after he tells them about the whip, the mirror, and all of the noises they've been hearing. Then they stumble upon the bodies of the hooker and the maid. John is dragged away, even while screaming that he's innocent.
A couple of officers stay at the castle that night, and Susan is expected to come to the police station in the morning to give the investigators an official statement. She asks the pair to get her and Becky some fresh water. One heads to the kitchen, while the other cop remains outside the bedroom door.
The cop in the kitchen sees some dirt and soot getting kicked up, so he examines it. Giorgio ambushes him from above, as you might expect. After some kicking and screaming, the cop is dragged up into the chimney.
John begs the officers who arrested him to get his family out of the castle. He even reminds them that Giorgio's coffin was empty, but they still refuse to believe that a maniac is running loose. The cop brings out a lead pipe, and waves it at John in a threatening manner.
Susan asks the cop guarding the door why the other officer never brought back their water, and I wish he would have said, "Because we're not your servants, lady!" Alas, he just agrees to go find his buddy. Fetch your own damn water!
He finds a body wrapped up in a sheet. The first cop? Nope, it's Giorgio, who jumps up and grabs the cop by the chin. He nibbles on the poor guy's eye, and that's that. I may become a vegetarian after this one ends.
Now alone, Susan and Becky have a serious talk about the family. Becky seems to think that her folks loved her brother more than her, because all they've done since his death is fight. Susan tells her that they both love her very much, and that she and Becky have to be strong for John. Yeesh, this is turning into a soap opera!
Giorgio opens the bedroom door, and watches them both pray for their family. Then he noisily shuts it again, but the sound is masked by rumbling thunder. While Becky continues to pour her heart out to her mother, Susan decides to leave the room. That's kind of awesomely hilarious, when you think about it.
Susan is attacked and knocked out cold in the hallway. Becky is still rambling on about her feelings, and she mistakes Giorgio for her mother. She takes off her shirt, only then realizing that her mother isn't the person watching her. Is this supposed to be as funny as it is? Giorgio abducts her, just as Susan regains her senses. She begins to chase after the mutant.
Susan grabs the biggest knife she can find in the kitchen, then she sees the cop fall out of the chimney. She screams and runs away, then we see John still being interrogated. Wow, way to break up the action, movie!
The interrogator gets fed up with John, and smacks him across the face with the club. After another officer drags the interrogator out of the room, John manages to make an escape. He attacks another cop to do it, though, so he's still in some pretty serious trouble here...
Giorgio carries Becky back to his cell, and ties her up. He realizes that she's blind, even waving at her, so, yeah, now this is a wacky comedy.He babbles at her and removes his mask, and tries to kiss the girl. He's into it a lot more than she is.
Susan arrives, and she offers herself up in exchange for Becky's immediate release. Giorgio decides to get close enough to sniff her, and she attacks him with the knife. While Giorgio struggles to remove the blade, Susan works on releasing her daughter.
A short chase back up the stairs ensues, and Giorgio uses his knowledge of the castle layout to somehow get in front of them. They run down a corridor as he limps after them, and Becky costs them precious seconds by tripping past some of the furniture.
He chases them into the bedroom where he murdered the duchess, but they've seemingly vanished. They're actually hiding behind some of the covered furniture, but Giorgio is trying to literally sniff them out. He finds the whip instead, and flies into a rage as he recalls the torture that he endured over the last several decades.
He uses the whip to destroy several objects in the room, then he wanders back into the hallway to continue his search. Becky and Susan think it's safe to leave the room, but he soon discovers them. Another chase begins, this one bringing them onto the roof. Where it's raining. And the blind girl is mostly topless. Need I say more?
Giorgio corners them, but John shows up. He gets the killer to come after him instead, and the two men battle to the death on the roof. John kicks him in his man-gina, punches and beats him several times, then rejoins his wife and daughter.
After a big family hug, Giorgio pops up a final time, and uses the whip on John. As the monster goes after his family, John chains himself to Giorgio, then jumps off the roof. Both men fall to the ground below, and Susan just now decides that she still loves her husband.
They pack their belongings, and load up the coffin to return to America. Before leaving, Susan sees the cop who suspected that her husband was guilty of murder, holding a young boy's hand. The cop removes his hat, and she smiles at him. THE END
Man, what a goofy movie! I mean, the plot was really silly, the acting was over the top, and the only truly impressive thing in it was the gore. I'm giving this one 2 killer trees out of 5, only because it was marginally better than the crap I watched last week.
And what did Castle Freak teach me?
-If you inherit a castle, there's usually a catch.
-A blind girl can hear a monster several floors away, but can't tell if her mother leaves her alone.
-On a related note, blind children love it when you just abandon them at random moments.
Later this week, I'll be watching Pumpkinhead. I could have sworn I did it already, but I couldn't find it on the blog. Happy Halloween!
Things start out in the kitchen of a witchy-looking old woman. She's preparing a meal of bread and meat, then she lights a candle. As she leaves her dwelling, we see that she lives next to an imposing castle. Oh, and a cat follows her to the castle.
Once inside, she brings the candle and the food into the dungeon, where she puts everything on the ground to pick up a whip that's hanging on the wall. Kinky. After unlocking a cell in the dungeon, she begins to whip the occupant, who cowers on the floor and screams. Then the old woman feeds her prisoner, leaves the dungeon, and has a pesky ol' heart attack.
After the opening credits, we meet the Reilly family. The parents are John and Susan, and they have a blind daughter, Rebecca. The castle is some kind of inheritance, and it's in pretty poor condition, with broken stones everywhere and a rat scurrying past them as they walk through the front gate.
The Italian lawyer explains that he found the Reillys after he launched an investigation into any living heirs of the estate. He also apologizes for the condition of the castle, due to the family fortune being depleted over the years. John responds that they won't be staying very long, as he plans to liquidate the assets and sell the estate.
They are introduced to an elderly maid, and Susan requests that a third bedroom be prepared. It seems that she and her husband sleep in different beds these days, because of friction over the death of their son. John was driving drunk, and the accident was also the cause of Becky's blindness. And the winner of Father of The Year is...
Later that night, John knocks at Susan's door. He asks for a chance at a fresh start, then gets a little too grabby for her. She tells him that she can't forgive him and she sends him back to his room, where he passes out and has a nightmare about the crash. His own anguished cries in the dream manage to wake him up, and he gets rattled by the sound of a monstrous wailing that seems to be from within the castle.
John decides to do some exploring. He follows the noises to the wine cellar, where he cuts his hand. Then the maid finds him washing the blood off in the kitchen. She tells John that the elderly duchess lived alone in the castle for 42 years, and that the sound John heard was the ghost of the supposedly-dead son of the duchess, a boy named Giorgio.
The next day, John decides to take his daughter on a tour of the castle. They find a nursery, another bedroom, and several pieces of art. When John decides to snoop around for any valuable jewelry, he comes across the whip. Oh, and he also discovers a strange photo album.
Becky hears a mysterious scratching noise, so she stumbles off to check it out. John, fully engrossed by the old pictures, completely ignores his daughter. Man, this guy is a real family man, huh?
Becky finds her way back to the room full of toys, and nearly has a heart attack when she gets scared by a cat that was behind a door. She follows the sound of the cat to the cellar level, where she takes a tumble and scrapes up her leg. John finally notices that she's gone, and searches for his daughter. Better late than never, I suppose...
Becky gets back on her feet, and she inadvertently wakes Giorgio. She hears him moving around, but tries to convince herself that it's just the cat. He finds the cat after Becky leaves the area, and he decides to eat it. Becky tries to tell her folks that she heard somebody downstairs, but they don't believe her.
After snacking on the cat, Giorgio gets a surge of energy. He snaps off his own thumb with his teeth, then manages to break free from the chain that was holding him to the wall. Let's hope he doesn't have to hitch a ride anywhere. After Giorgio breaks free, he holds the chain over his head in victory. Rocky! Rocky! Rocky!
Susan scoffs at Becky's story, telling her that her imagination is just running wild. Giorgio busts open the door to the dungeon area, and then we see the Reilly clan sitting down to dinner.
Becky asks the elderly maid about the cat, and is told that the cat was probably a pet that belonged to the duchess. Then we see Giorgio discover a mirror, and he recoils when he sees his own grotesque image. The sound of the mirror being smashed brings the family out to check out the damage.
After everyone goes to bed, Giorgio decides to wander around the castle. He limps into Becky's room, where he watches her sleep, then tries to figure out how to undress her without waking her up. Becky does wake up, so Giorgio tries to hide. The sound of his chain falling to the floor makes Becky scream, and her parents somehow manage to come running in seconds after Giorgio leaves, without ever seeing him.
John rushes out of the room with a flashlight, and misses seeing Giorgio a second time. He even finds the cell that Giorgio was living in, but misses seeing the dead cat on the floor. This man is some kind of genius.
John finds the family crypt next, and looks at the various names and dates on the wall. Giorgio sneaks in behind him, just as he reads the plaque for Giorgio's death. It says that Giorgio died at the age of 5, which brings John to tears over the loss of his own son.
A cop comes by the following day, and questions the family very briefly. The officer clearly doesn't think that there was an intruder, and he notes John's injured hand. After implying that John himself broke the mirror, the officer leaves.
After getting Becky to take a nap, John tells his wife that he has something to show her. He brings her to the crypt, and the picture of Giorgio has now disappeared. John decides to kill himself, but then he chickens out. He finds the local tavern, and decides to get drunk instead. Uh, okay...
While he's getting smashed out of his gourd, John meets a prostitute. He buys her a drink, then proceeds to spill it all over her skimpy outfit. A man at the bar suggests that it's time for John to leave, so he begins waving around a wad of cash to pay for the drinks. The hooker sees the money, and decides that he suddenly looks a lot more charming.
John takes her to his wine cellar, where he manages to spill another drink on her. She makes a fuss, but he shushes her, worried that his family will discover them. They start to make out, and Giorgio sneaks in to watch.
The sight of her nudity excites Giorgio, who has decided to start wearing a white hood over his face. Where'd he get the hood from? He waits for John to finish up and pass out, and then Giorgio grabs the wine bottle. He follows the hooker to the toy room, then attacks her from behind with a white sheet over her head.
The next morning, a cop knocks at the castle door. He's the same officer that arrived the other day, and this time he's VERY interested in looking around the castle. Susan learns that her husband was seen leaving a bar with a hooker, and that makes John get a little bit defiant. Nevertheless, the cop seems to believe that he did something to the hooker.
After the cop leaves, we see that the hooker is still alive. Wow! She seems to be begging the monster to let her go, but he offers her a swig of wine instead. She decides to play along and seduce him, but then she discovers that he's missing more than a thumb, if you know what I mean. She gets her hands on the bottle, smashes it and slices a gouge into his arm, so he throws her up against a wall, then bites off her nipples.
John is really up shit creek now, because the maid has discovered the hooker's purse in the castle. When John finds out, he's told that the police will will definitely arrest him. The maid's brother agrees to keep quiet, but only if John pays him off. Then he informs John that his lineage isn't quite as royal as he was led to believe, making him a bastard of the family. Boy, he sure is having a bad day!
The maid hears a horrible scream, so she decides to go have a look around the dungeon. She finds the hooker's mutilated body, and the hooker is barely alive. She tries to warn the old woman that Giorgio is right behind her, but the monster attacks the maid, repeatedly beating her after she hits the floor.
John gets home, just in time to see his wife and daughter leaving. She tells him that it's too late to salvage what they had, but all John is worried about is how there exit will make him look even more guilty to the authorities. She refers to him as a "whipping boy", and the phrase suddenly helps him to see what the evil presence is that is living in the castle. He vows to prove his innocence. Oh, and the cops arrive, telling Susan that the entire family must remain in the castle until the investigation is completed.
John grabs a heavy shovel, and the others can hear him bashing it against something somewhere deep in the castle. Susan and a couple of the officers decide to see what John's up to, and they leave Becky with another officer. Yeah, because splitting up ALWAYS works out well in horror films!
It turns out that John was breaking into Giorgio's crypt, to see if his body was in there. He breaks open the coffin in front of Susan and the cops, confirming that there's no corpse. Then he tells them that Becky was right, and that the presence she kept hearing in the castle was Giorgio.
The officers handcuff John, even after he tells them about the whip, the mirror, and all of the noises they've been hearing. Then they stumble upon the bodies of the hooker and the maid. John is dragged away, even while screaming that he's innocent.
A couple of officers stay at the castle that night, and Susan is expected to come to the police station in the morning to give the investigators an official statement. She asks the pair to get her and Becky some fresh water. One heads to the kitchen, while the other cop remains outside the bedroom door.
The cop in the kitchen sees some dirt and soot getting kicked up, so he examines it. Giorgio ambushes him from above, as you might expect. After some kicking and screaming, the cop is dragged up into the chimney.
John begs the officers who arrested him to get his family out of the castle. He even reminds them that Giorgio's coffin was empty, but they still refuse to believe that a maniac is running loose. The cop brings out a lead pipe, and waves it at John in a threatening manner.
Susan asks the cop guarding the door why the other officer never brought back their water, and I wish he would have said, "Because we're not your servants, lady!" Alas, he just agrees to go find his buddy. Fetch your own damn water!
He finds a body wrapped up in a sheet. The first cop? Nope, it's Giorgio, who jumps up and grabs the cop by the chin. He nibbles on the poor guy's eye, and that's that. I may become a vegetarian after this one ends.
Now alone, Susan and Becky have a serious talk about the family. Becky seems to think that her folks loved her brother more than her, because all they've done since his death is fight. Susan tells her that they both love her very much, and that she and Becky have to be strong for John. Yeesh, this is turning into a soap opera!
Giorgio opens the bedroom door, and watches them both pray for their family. Then he noisily shuts it again, but the sound is masked by rumbling thunder. While Becky continues to pour her heart out to her mother, Susan decides to leave the room. That's kind of awesomely hilarious, when you think about it.
Susan is attacked and knocked out cold in the hallway. Becky is still rambling on about her feelings, and she mistakes Giorgio for her mother. She takes off her shirt, only then realizing that her mother isn't the person watching her. Is this supposed to be as funny as it is? Giorgio abducts her, just as Susan regains her senses. She begins to chase after the mutant.
Susan grabs the biggest knife she can find in the kitchen, then she sees the cop fall out of the chimney. She screams and runs away, then we see John still being interrogated. Wow, way to break up the action, movie!
The interrogator gets fed up with John, and smacks him across the face with the club. After another officer drags the interrogator out of the room, John manages to make an escape. He attacks another cop to do it, though, so he's still in some pretty serious trouble here...
Giorgio carries Becky back to his cell, and ties her up. He realizes that she's blind, even waving at her, so, yeah, now this is a wacky comedy.He babbles at her and removes his mask, and tries to kiss the girl. He's into it a lot more than she is.
Susan arrives, and she offers herself up in exchange for Becky's immediate release. Giorgio decides to get close enough to sniff her, and she attacks him with the knife. While Giorgio struggles to remove the blade, Susan works on releasing her daughter.
A short chase back up the stairs ensues, and Giorgio uses his knowledge of the castle layout to somehow get in front of them. They run down a corridor as he limps after them, and Becky costs them precious seconds by tripping past some of the furniture.
He chases them into the bedroom where he murdered the duchess, but they've seemingly vanished. They're actually hiding behind some of the covered furniture, but Giorgio is trying to literally sniff them out. He finds the whip instead, and flies into a rage as he recalls the torture that he endured over the last several decades.
He uses the whip to destroy several objects in the room, then he wanders back into the hallway to continue his search. Becky and Susan think it's safe to leave the room, but he soon discovers them. Another chase begins, this one bringing them onto the roof. Where it's raining. And the blind girl is mostly topless. Need I say more?
Giorgio corners them, but John shows up. He gets the killer to come after him instead, and the two men battle to the death on the roof. John kicks him in his man-gina, punches and beats him several times, then rejoins his wife and daughter.
After a big family hug, Giorgio pops up a final time, and uses the whip on John. As the monster goes after his family, John chains himself to Giorgio, then jumps off the roof. Both men fall to the ground below, and Susan just now decides that she still loves her husband.
They pack their belongings, and load up the coffin to return to America. Before leaving, Susan sees the cop who suspected that her husband was guilty of murder, holding a young boy's hand. The cop removes his hat, and she smiles at him. THE END
Man, what a goofy movie! I mean, the plot was really silly, the acting was over the top, and the only truly impressive thing in it was the gore. I'm giving this one 2 killer trees out of 5, only because it was marginally better than the crap I watched last week.
And what did Castle Freak teach me?
-If you inherit a castle, there's usually a catch.
-A blind girl can hear a monster several floors away, but can't tell if her mother leaves her alone.
-On a related note, blind children love it when you just abandon them at random moments.
Later this week, I'll be watching Pumpkinhead. I could have sworn I did it already, but I couldn't find it on the blog. Happy Halloween!
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Death Factory: Bloodletting
Well, I know this will be a HUGE shock, but my latest movie from Blockbuster never came in the mail, so my back-up plan is to watch another free slasher flick on YouTube. Probably not as much silly fun as Hell Night, this one is called Death Factory: Bloodletting. Prepare for disappointme--uhhh, I mean, "SPOILERS"...
Opening scene. Yay, a red bicycle and pictures of a mother and daughter. A young woman(the mother, I presume...) is setting up a video camera. She tells the camera that her name is Anna, and that, if we are watching the tape, then she must be dead. Then the title of the movie slams into the screen. Good thing I wear a seatbelt when I view this crap.
Anyway, we leave Anna's rollicking comedy tape, and head to Phoenix, Arizona, 6 months into the past. Time travel makes me thirsty! Anyone have any iced tea? No? Well, fine. I'm now officially watching this under protest.
Anyway, a radio evangelist is raving as a motorist listens, and talks back to the radio. The driver, a long-haired goon-looking type, is heading to a place called the Carter Brick Factory. Another subtitle tells us that the factory was shut down in 2005...what, is this for a pop quiz later? Just get to the point!
Anyway, Freakazoid drives his van into the closed warehouse, and walks outside to another empty-looking building, where we hear a child wailing. Freaky's flashlight reveals what looks like a community of homeless people, using the empty building as shelter. When one person starts to flee, Freaky shows him and the others that he has food for them.
After passing around the sandwiches, Freaky finds out that there are only 4 people in the group, and he sees evidence of drug use. When he confronts the group about the drugs, he stands up and starts to blow them away, Dirty Harry-style. The only one he spares is the baby.
So, what does your average nutjob do after feeding homeless junkies, killing them, and then abducting a baby? Why, he brings it back to his van of course! Freaky opens up the back doors, gives the baby a bizarre pep-talk about how the adults deserved to be shot, then plops him down on the floor of the van and backs away. Okay, that seems kindaHOLYWTF?!?!?!?! A demon-shark-woman just swooped up from the interior of the van, and ate the baby! Say WHAAAT?
More subtitles. She's Alexa, the "little sister". Freaky is Denny, the "big brother". And I'm Mark, the "constantly perplexed second cousin, once removed". Then more time travel. 6 months later, to be precise. Screw it, I'm taking notes. And I'm still calling him Freaky.
A woman wearing only black panties is chained to the floor. She's being watched by a person in a control booth,via a security camera. Freaky is there too. A loud, blaring siren goes off, and the woman wakes up. After looking around for a few seconds, her name is given as "Jane Doe: The Object". How nice.
Jane immediately tests the strength of the chain holding her, and it seems pretty strong. She stares down helplessly at her hands, and sees that someone has given her a label: when Jane puts her open hands side by side, the word "whore" is spelled out. Whoever made this film, he seems to have some major issues with women.
Then we see some kind of altar, and a television. A person on the tv is delivering a sermon about doling out justice, Hammurabi-style. He seems to be fixated on murder in that vein. As the girl cries, the crazy she-beast from the van wakes up and hears her. Uh oh...this could get bloody.
As Jane tries to tell her captor that she doesn't deserve to be treated like this, Freaky gets on an intercom, and tells her why he sees her as a whore. While Jane tries to undo the chain that confines her, the she-beast comes after her and gets a taste of her second course. Blood-spray goes everywhere, and Freak just smiles. Lather, rinse, repeat. Is the entire movie going to be like this?
Oops, now back to Anna(the woman recording her last thoughts...), who may or may not be dead as we watch her. See? I paid attention! She raids a medicene cabinet, and mixes up a concoction to get herself higher than Cheech and Chong on the moon. Then, after a shower, she decides to resume recording her message.
Apparently, she plans to attend a ritual sacrifice, called a bloodletting. She doesn't want to do this, but it's part of a secret plan that Anna has been putting together for a long time now. She apparently lost a loved one, and believes that the people attending the bloodletting may have taken part in the murder. By posing as an online fan of these rituals, she has slowly worked her way into their ranks, hoping to expose them.
She also has a name for one of these sickos, Rubber Love. Anna strongly believes that he was the one who murdered her daughter, and wants to kill him herself, should the opportunity present itself. Anna only has 1 fear...that this might be a trap. If it is, then I get to go to bed early tonight!
As Anna arrives at the meeting place, a masked man assaults her. He holds a gun on her, and asks for her name, a password, and a sub-password. Satisfied that Anna isn't a cop, he lets her up, but binds her hands and tapes her mouth shut. A pretty odd assortment of other captives stare back at her.
The guy in charge directs one of the captives to untie the others. One girl immediately looks for a spot on the floor to pee on, and the gunman threatens to kill her for not peeing before the journey. Then there's a pointless altercation between a redneck and a black guy. The gunman leaves the group, and lets them all get to know each other.
While they all just pretty much pace around and give each other dirty scowls, Freak watches from his remote location. A camera goes glitchy, and he yells at one of his workers to fix it. Booooooooooriiiiiiiiiiing.
As I nod off, the folks trapped in the warehouse decide to get acquainted , by at least revealing their internet names. The Nazi-racist guy introduces himself as White Manson, a collector of nazi items and snuff films. Next up is Black Johnson, a guy in the sex-slave trade. Who's next, Green Hornet? Blue Beetle?
Nope, now we get the best name in the movie thus far, the intellectually-stimulating Slutty Baby. She's more or less an online hooker...for a tidy sum, she lets men do whatever they want to do to her. This week, she's being paid to appear in a crap horror flick. Why didn't they just cast Paris Hilton in the part?
And now we get the movie's token shy, nerdy guy. He's The Cock Master, I shit you not. His thing is homemade bombs and killing sprees. His introduction segues into another introduction, of a dominatrix and her slave, named Gretel and Hansel. Yeesh.
Then we meet an obese guy with a chip on his shoulder, who calls himself Rubber Love. Ooooh, remember him? Anna sure does! Rubber Love openly admits that he has a fetish for abusing children. Anna shoots him a look that would kill a lesser mortal.
When it's Anna's turn, she introduces herself as Massive 9, and her online persona is known for being able to supply and distribute any materials(movies, magazines, etc.) that the others ask for. Pretty ballsy of her to create such a huge character. She better hope they believe her.
Then we see Freak in a red room, praying. He asks God to accept the people he brought to the warehouse as human sacrifices. After the prayer, Freak watches his sister chained up, and "wakes up" her inner demon-cannibal. Then he just sits back and grins. I'm glad someone's happy.
Black Johnson pours himself a drink, then whines about having to wait for the main event to happen. Rubber Love claims that one bloodletting lasted 13 hours. Then Gretel orders Hansel to ask Slutty Baby to speak with her. The 2 women chat, and it turns into a lesbian booty call. Probably as bored as I am, Anna wanders away from the group to look around the warehouse.
Anna eventually finds herself in an area that seems to be isolated from the rest of the building. She looks at her surroundings for a few more minutes, decides that she's really alone, and removes a handgun from down in her pants. Fun fact: your ass is designed to store guns in. After checking that it's loaded and that the safety us off, she conceals it again. When Anna rejoins the group, she finds Rubber Love staring at a centerfold like it's the cure for cancer.
In a bathroom that seems far too clean for an abandoned factory, Gretel and Slutty Baby get down to business while Hansel just stares up at them. I swear, he has the best role in the film, if only because he doesn't have any horrible dialogue to say. Lucky guy.
Anna decides to confront Rubber Love, albeit while still in character as Massive 9. She gets him to talk about her daughter's abduction and murder on film, and he reveals that there was another person involved. Well shoot, now she can't kill him until he reveals the identity of this mystery person. This is getting too complicated for a slasher flick. Somebody die, will ya?
Whoops, I should be careful what I wish for...Filled with rage, Anna decides to shoot Rubber Love several times. Freak, um, "freaks" and demands that his accomplice rig up some electric fence to keep everyone confined. At the same time, Gretel sends Hansel out to see what all the noise is about.
Hansel wanders down a deserted corridor, which pretty much seals his fate. Sure enough, the screen goes red, which means that the she-beast can't be far behind. She leaps out at Hansel, and chews his throat apart. Pretty ironic, considering how little he's spoken in the movie. It'd be like being in a boxing match with Helen Keller, and hearing your trainer say, "Go for the eyes! The eyes!"
Oh, and I forgot, but in all the excitement, Anna was knocked out. When she wakes up, the others have her gagged and tied to a chair. They demand to know why she killed the fat guy, which is going to be pretty hard to explain with her mouth covered. Oh, and Black Johnson panics, claiming that the guy in charge of the bloodletting will probably come in and kill the rest of them because they broke his rules. Ummmm, yeah....I don't think that's going to be a problem at this point.
Black Johnson(with that name, he really should consider going into the porn film biz) and Cock Master take it upon themselves to find a way to escape the warehouse, while White Manson hears Anna's real background story. He then reveals that he also had a tale of revenge, and that it screwed him up in major ways.
Then the she-beast kills Gretel and Slutty Baby after the world's shortest lesbian sex scene, with the world's swiftest double murder. Freak starts laughing like the loon that he is, and jibber-jabbers at the monitors. Was this script written by a sane person? I'm having serious doubts about that.
Anna tries to loosen her wrists, but the actress is so bad at conveying this, she just jiggles her torso in the chair, more or less. Or, Hell, maybe that was what the script told her to do. She finally grows a brain and gives up on that concept, because her next idea is actually not bad: Anna leans over, cranes her neck a bit, and chews through her bindings. If I thought it would do any good, I'd yell at her to stop chewing when she hits flesh.
Oh, and before she moves on, Anna stops to kick Rubber Love's corpse. As dumb as I find this movie, I'll admit that this made me laugh.
Freak and his assistant, Sid, discuss how things are going, and Freak channels his inner Bond villain. Seriously, he even rubs his hands together while they talk about their evil plans. Then Freak gives Sid a syringe, and tells him to inject She-Beast with it. Yeah, riiiight...If Sid had half a brain, he'd tell Freakazoid where to shove that needle.
Once Sid has left the room, Freak turns his attention back to the security monitors. He watches Black Johnson and Cock Master(I hate you, movie...I hate you so much. New rule: no movies unless they have characters that have actual names!) as they keep attempting to escape. Black Johnson gets frustrated and starts to throw furniture and props aroiund, causing Freak to shout at the monitor. Heh, we finally have something in common.
Cock Master spots an open door fram that only has a flimsy plastic curtain over it, so he decides to check it out. As soon as he sticks his head through the doorway, She-Beast spots him. She leaps at him, and yanks him through the doorway, giving "fast food" a brand new definition. For a skinny, demonic cannibal woman, she sure does seem to eat a lot. She-beasts must have high metabolisms.
Black Johnson turns around to discover that his companion has vanished. We see that Cock Master isn't quite dead, but is being rolled down a hallway on a bed with wheels. As the young man sees a television on that same weird evangeical show as earlier in the film, She-Beast wraps his limbs in chains. Then she crawls over him, grabs a hollow metal rod, and shoves it through his abdomen. When he dies, she uses the pole like a straw, and drinks his blood. Yum.
White Manson(wait....Charles Manson WAS white! His nickname doesn't even make any freaking SENSE!!!) steps into the restroom, where he finds the bodies of Slutty Baby and her slave. Slutty Baby appears to be (barely) alive, until White Manson snaps her neck. Then Black Johnson joins him, and accuses him of murdering the women. White Manson shows Black Johnson that his hands are blood-free, and they agree to get the Hell out of Dodge, proverbially speaking.
As She-Beast starts to eat Cock Master's face, Freak yells into the microphone that she needs to hurry up and kill the remaining survivors. He plays a sound through the intercom that immobilizes her, then orders her once more to attack and kill anyone who's left.
As White and Black work together(in perfect harmony?) to check out more possible escape routes, Freak decides to finally address them directly. He tells them that, when he was younger, he had a sister who had been mutated by an experimental drug. He chained her up, but then decided to use her as an "instrument of God", having her kill degenerates that he lured to the abandoned factory over the internet, with a particular focus on druggies.
While he's ranting and raving over his grand scheme, we see She-Beast injecting herself with a glowing substance in different parts of her body. As Black and White(an awesome computer game...at least, the first one was...) agree to work together to escape, Anna is just wandering down one random corridor after another. She arms herself with a metal bar, then removes her shirt. Don't get too excited, fellas...she has a white t-shirt on underneath.
After a few more pointless shots of people wandering around and Freak shouting into his microphone at his sister(who I think might be named Alexa...I just noticed that the name is written on a piece of tape on the mike stand), Anna hears a noise and hides behind a wall for whatever's heading her way. Black and White attack her from behind, and accuse her of killing the others.
Anna tells them about Alexa, and they all head into the restroom together to plan their next move. Black and White argue over how to survive, and Black decides to head out alone. His plan is to use some propane he saw earlier to blow a hole out of one of the walls, and leave. Eh, it's better than no plan at all.
Oh, and Anna may or may not be psychic now. When she and the others were just in the bathroom together, she had "flashes" of the scenes earlier in the bathroom. She saw the lesbians get attacked, and also saw the neck-snapping occur. I guess. So now she's weirded out by White, even though he's been relatively "nice" to her.
Anyway, I explained all of that because now White wants to know where the ammunition for the gun is. See, Anna has the clip, but Black has the empty gun. So, even though she's acting frightened around White, she gives him the bullets(which were apparenty shoved into her vagina, in a sandwich baggy. Gotta love movie logic...). Wait until she tells Black where she kept the gun...
After he puts the ammunition back into the clip, White waits for Black to return, and gets the gun back. To the surprise of no one at all, White loads the clip into the gun, shoots Black to death, then threatens Anna. This movie is about as subtle as an ace bandage lined with broken glass shards.
Then we get a slight plot twist. White reveals that he was the person who killed Anna's daughter. After he gleefully studies her reaction, he shoots her in the gut and leaves her to die. Of course, he then encounters Alexa and shoots her as well. Where was this guy an hour ago?
He enters Freak's control room area, and aims the gun at the back of the mastermind's head. Then we get yet another twist: he, Sid and Freak(who I forgot is named "Denny", although I think "Freak" suits him better, so I'm sticking with it) were all in the plot to kill the group together. Although Sid and White aren't into the religious aspect of it as much as Freak is, they're both still murder-loving nutjobs. Sheesh.
After White leaves the control room, Freak orders Sid to go give Alexa another injection. Sid wanders through the halls with the glowing syringe, but locates Anna instead of Alexa. He offers to save her life if she promises to punish White, Freak and "all bad men" for him. Yeah, sure he does. And I'm the Emperor of Ice Cream.
So he injects Anna--and by "Injects", I mean he squirts the green goop from the Re-Animator film series into a gaping hole in a fake prop stomach. Then we get a wide shot of Anna moaning and writhing around in pain as the chemical transforms her. She starts to cough up blood, and keels over. Wow. Great healing properties in that chemical.
Sid, while attempting to escape, runs into the not-quite-dead Alexa. She glares up at him from the floor, then cowers in pain as she hears that weird sound again. Sadly, Sid gets away before she recovers. On the plus side, she catches Anna's scent, and wanders away to find her. Instead of finishinbg her off, Alexa drags her away.
Back in the control room, it looks like our favorite maniacal douchebag is combing his beard. Yippee. Then we see Alexa rolling her bed down the hall, but with the still-unconscious Anna on the mattress. When Alexa stops wheeling it to sniff and nibble at some body parts on the ground, Anna opens her eyes. They now look white-grey like Alexa's eyes. Finally!
She calmly(?) feels her stomach, and discovers that the bullet wound has completely closed. Then she quietly grabs a sharp blade off of the floor and attacks Alexa with it. After a brief scuffle, Anna wins the fight and goes off in search of more victims.
She looks around, then remembers White. Anna decides to hunt him down next, unaware that Alexa is still alive. Anna goes past rows of stacked crates(isn't this building supposed to be abandoned and empty?), unaware that Alexa is now hot on her trail. Oh, and there's a brief glimpse of Sid wandering around too...why hasn't he left yet?
The 2 She-Beasts have another fight, and Anna stabs the other mutant several more times. she watches her foe have a few spasms, and only moves on after Alexa stops moving. Then, after Anna leaves, Alexa has a few more spasms. Uhhh, which part of "chemical healing properties" didn't Anna understand?
Anna climbs a ladder attached to what I'm guessing is a vat of the aforementioned methane, then she stops to watch Alexa tracking and following her. Instead of having another spat, Anna chooses to keep moving. Alexa climbs the ladder, then--Surprise!--Anna kicks her back down, where she gets impaled on a metal bar. Anna climbs down to admire her handiwork, then saws Alexa's head off to make sure she stays dead.
Driving home,White tells his wife that he'll be there soon. Oh wait, he's not driving....I guess the camera crew just can't manage to hold the equipment steadily, giving it the illusion that his van is moving. He's still parked at the factory/warehouse/whatever. As he wraps up the conversation, White hears movement on the roof of the van.
He hangs up, then decides to have a look. Anna leaps on him when he gets out and looks up. Then we see Freak trying to reach Sid on a walkie-talkie, to no avail. That's when Anna pops up behind him, and begins to squeeze the sides of his head together like a lemon. He attempts to cripple her with the sound frequency that drives his sister insane, but discovers that the device has been disabled. Whoops!
After Anna kills Freak, she chains White to the floor like Alexa was. He just laughs, and asks her why she hasn't killed him yet, and Anna replies that she plans to keep him around until she gets hungry. Then she pounces on him and begins biting chunks out of him until he either dies or passes out. My vote goes for "dies".
The movie ends with an assault on the building by a few guys that are the saddest-looking attack squad in the history of assault teams. They all fire on Anna, and we see one more shot of her videotaped confession, followed by a quick scene implying that the assault team botched her execution. THE END...?
Man, I hope so. This was just depressing to watch. Sure, on a technical level it was impressive...there was ample gore, many victims, a potentially interesting concept...but it had almost no plot, and incredibly shallow characters. And the worst part is, this is apparently a sequel! I'm almost tempted to rent the first one, just as an endurance test for my annoyance level. Almost. 1 out of 5 killer trees, with the single point awarded for the effects.
And what(ughhhh) did I learn from watching Death Factory: Bloodletting?
-Experimental drugs that glow in the dark are never good.
-Never trust a friendly Neo-Nazi.
-Being a mutant is great for your figure.
My next film will be Red Hook. It can't be as bad as this one, can it? Seriously...can it?
Opening scene. Yay, a red bicycle and pictures of a mother and daughter. A young woman(the mother, I presume...) is setting up a video camera. She tells the camera that her name is Anna, and that, if we are watching the tape, then she must be dead. Then the title of the movie slams into the screen. Good thing I wear a seatbelt when I view this crap.
Anyway, we leave Anna's rollicking comedy tape, and head to Phoenix, Arizona, 6 months into the past. Time travel makes me thirsty! Anyone have any iced tea? No? Well, fine. I'm now officially watching this under protest.
Anyway, a radio evangelist is raving as a motorist listens, and talks back to the radio. The driver, a long-haired goon-looking type, is heading to a place called the Carter Brick Factory. Another subtitle tells us that the factory was shut down in 2005...what, is this for a pop quiz later? Just get to the point!
Anyway, Freakazoid drives his van into the closed warehouse, and walks outside to another empty-looking building, where we hear a child wailing. Freaky's flashlight reveals what looks like a community of homeless people, using the empty building as shelter. When one person starts to flee, Freaky shows him and the others that he has food for them.
After passing around the sandwiches, Freaky finds out that there are only 4 people in the group, and he sees evidence of drug use. When he confronts the group about the drugs, he stands up and starts to blow them away, Dirty Harry-style. The only one he spares is the baby.
So, what does your average nutjob do after feeding homeless junkies, killing them, and then abducting a baby? Why, he brings it back to his van of course! Freaky opens up the back doors, gives the baby a bizarre pep-talk about how the adults deserved to be shot, then plops him down on the floor of the van and backs away. Okay, that seems kindaHOLYWTF?!?!?!?! A demon-shark-woman just swooped up from the interior of the van, and ate the baby! Say WHAAAT?
More subtitles. She's Alexa, the "little sister". Freaky is Denny, the "big brother". And I'm Mark, the "constantly perplexed second cousin, once removed". Then more time travel. 6 months later, to be precise. Screw it, I'm taking notes. And I'm still calling him Freaky.
A woman wearing only black panties is chained to the floor. She's being watched by a person in a control booth,via a security camera. Freaky is there too. A loud, blaring siren goes off, and the woman wakes up. After looking around for a few seconds, her name is given as "Jane Doe: The Object". How nice.
Jane immediately tests the strength of the chain holding her, and it seems pretty strong. She stares down helplessly at her hands, and sees that someone has given her a label: when Jane puts her open hands side by side, the word "whore" is spelled out. Whoever made this film, he seems to have some major issues with women.
Then we see some kind of altar, and a television. A person on the tv is delivering a sermon about doling out justice, Hammurabi-style. He seems to be fixated on murder in that vein. As the girl cries, the crazy she-beast from the van wakes up and hears her. Uh oh...this could get bloody.
As Jane tries to tell her captor that she doesn't deserve to be treated like this, Freaky gets on an intercom, and tells her why he sees her as a whore. While Jane tries to undo the chain that confines her, the she-beast comes after her and gets a taste of her second course. Blood-spray goes everywhere, and Freak just smiles. Lather, rinse, repeat. Is the entire movie going to be like this?
Oops, now back to Anna(the woman recording her last thoughts...), who may or may not be dead as we watch her. See? I paid attention! She raids a medicene cabinet, and mixes up a concoction to get herself higher than Cheech and Chong on the moon. Then, after a shower, she decides to resume recording her message.
Apparently, she plans to attend a ritual sacrifice, called a bloodletting. She doesn't want to do this, but it's part of a secret plan that Anna has been putting together for a long time now. She apparently lost a loved one, and believes that the people attending the bloodletting may have taken part in the murder. By posing as an online fan of these rituals, she has slowly worked her way into their ranks, hoping to expose them.
She also has a name for one of these sickos, Rubber Love. Anna strongly believes that he was the one who murdered her daughter, and wants to kill him herself, should the opportunity present itself. Anna only has 1 fear...that this might be a trap. If it is, then I get to go to bed early tonight!
As Anna arrives at the meeting place, a masked man assaults her. He holds a gun on her, and asks for her name, a password, and a sub-password. Satisfied that Anna isn't a cop, he lets her up, but binds her hands and tapes her mouth shut. A pretty odd assortment of other captives stare back at her.
The guy in charge directs one of the captives to untie the others. One girl immediately looks for a spot on the floor to pee on, and the gunman threatens to kill her for not peeing before the journey. Then there's a pointless altercation between a redneck and a black guy. The gunman leaves the group, and lets them all get to know each other.
While they all just pretty much pace around and give each other dirty scowls, Freak watches from his remote location. A camera goes glitchy, and he yells at one of his workers to fix it. Booooooooooriiiiiiiiiiing.
As I nod off, the folks trapped in the warehouse decide to get acquainted , by at least revealing their internet names. The Nazi-racist guy introduces himself as White Manson, a collector of nazi items and snuff films. Next up is Black Johnson, a guy in the sex-slave trade. Who's next, Green Hornet? Blue Beetle?
Nope, now we get the best name in the movie thus far, the intellectually-stimulating Slutty Baby. She's more or less an online hooker...for a tidy sum, she lets men do whatever they want to do to her. This week, she's being paid to appear in a crap horror flick. Why didn't they just cast Paris Hilton in the part?
And now we get the movie's token shy, nerdy guy. He's The Cock Master, I shit you not. His thing is homemade bombs and killing sprees. His introduction segues into another introduction, of a dominatrix and her slave, named Gretel and Hansel. Yeesh.
Then we meet an obese guy with a chip on his shoulder, who calls himself Rubber Love. Ooooh, remember him? Anna sure does! Rubber Love openly admits that he has a fetish for abusing children. Anna shoots him a look that would kill a lesser mortal.
When it's Anna's turn, she introduces herself as Massive 9, and her online persona is known for being able to supply and distribute any materials(movies, magazines, etc.) that the others ask for. Pretty ballsy of her to create such a huge character. She better hope they believe her.
Then we see Freak in a red room, praying. He asks God to accept the people he brought to the warehouse as human sacrifices. After the prayer, Freak watches his sister chained up, and "wakes up" her inner demon-cannibal. Then he just sits back and grins. I'm glad someone's happy.
Black Johnson pours himself a drink, then whines about having to wait for the main event to happen. Rubber Love claims that one bloodletting lasted 13 hours. Then Gretel orders Hansel to ask Slutty Baby to speak with her. The 2 women chat, and it turns into a lesbian booty call. Probably as bored as I am, Anna wanders away from the group to look around the warehouse.
Anna eventually finds herself in an area that seems to be isolated from the rest of the building. She looks at her surroundings for a few more minutes, decides that she's really alone, and removes a handgun from down in her pants. Fun fact: your ass is designed to store guns in. After checking that it's loaded and that the safety us off, she conceals it again. When Anna rejoins the group, she finds Rubber Love staring at a centerfold like it's the cure for cancer.
In a bathroom that seems far too clean for an abandoned factory, Gretel and Slutty Baby get down to business while Hansel just stares up at them. I swear, he has the best role in the film, if only because he doesn't have any horrible dialogue to say. Lucky guy.
Anna decides to confront Rubber Love, albeit while still in character as Massive 9. She gets him to talk about her daughter's abduction and murder on film, and he reveals that there was another person involved. Well shoot, now she can't kill him until he reveals the identity of this mystery person. This is getting too complicated for a slasher flick. Somebody die, will ya?
Whoops, I should be careful what I wish for...Filled with rage, Anna decides to shoot Rubber Love several times. Freak, um, "freaks" and demands that his accomplice rig up some electric fence to keep everyone confined. At the same time, Gretel sends Hansel out to see what all the noise is about.
Hansel wanders down a deserted corridor, which pretty much seals his fate. Sure enough, the screen goes red, which means that the she-beast can't be far behind. She leaps out at Hansel, and chews his throat apart. Pretty ironic, considering how little he's spoken in the movie. It'd be like being in a boxing match with Helen Keller, and hearing your trainer say, "Go for the eyes! The eyes!"
Oh, and I forgot, but in all the excitement, Anna was knocked out. When she wakes up, the others have her gagged and tied to a chair. They demand to know why she killed the fat guy, which is going to be pretty hard to explain with her mouth covered. Oh, and Black Johnson panics, claiming that the guy in charge of the bloodletting will probably come in and kill the rest of them because they broke his rules. Ummmm, yeah....I don't think that's going to be a problem at this point.
Black Johnson(with that name, he really should consider going into the porn film biz) and Cock Master take it upon themselves to find a way to escape the warehouse, while White Manson hears Anna's real background story. He then reveals that he also had a tale of revenge, and that it screwed him up in major ways.
Then the she-beast kills Gretel and Slutty Baby after the world's shortest lesbian sex scene, with the world's swiftest double murder. Freak starts laughing like the loon that he is, and jibber-jabbers at the monitors. Was this script written by a sane person? I'm having serious doubts about that.
Anna tries to loosen her wrists, but the actress is so bad at conveying this, she just jiggles her torso in the chair, more or less. Or, Hell, maybe that was what the script told her to do. She finally grows a brain and gives up on that concept, because her next idea is actually not bad: Anna leans over, cranes her neck a bit, and chews through her bindings. If I thought it would do any good, I'd yell at her to stop chewing when she hits flesh.
Oh, and before she moves on, Anna stops to kick Rubber Love's corpse. As dumb as I find this movie, I'll admit that this made me laugh.
Freak and his assistant, Sid, discuss how things are going, and Freak channels his inner Bond villain. Seriously, he even rubs his hands together while they talk about their evil plans. Then Freak gives Sid a syringe, and tells him to inject She-Beast with it. Yeah, riiiight...If Sid had half a brain, he'd tell Freakazoid where to shove that needle.
Once Sid has left the room, Freak turns his attention back to the security monitors. He watches Black Johnson and Cock Master(I hate you, movie...I hate you so much. New rule: no movies unless they have characters that have actual names!) as they keep attempting to escape. Black Johnson gets frustrated and starts to throw furniture and props aroiund, causing Freak to shout at the monitor. Heh, we finally have something in common.
Cock Master spots an open door fram that only has a flimsy plastic curtain over it, so he decides to check it out. As soon as he sticks his head through the doorway, She-Beast spots him. She leaps at him, and yanks him through the doorway, giving "fast food" a brand new definition. For a skinny, demonic cannibal woman, she sure does seem to eat a lot. She-beasts must have high metabolisms.
Black Johnson turns around to discover that his companion has vanished. We see that Cock Master isn't quite dead, but is being rolled down a hallway on a bed with wheels. As the young man sees a television on that same weird evangeical show as earlier in the film, She-Beast wraps his limbs in chains. Then she crawls over him, grabs a hollow metal rod, and shoves it through his abdomen. When he dies, she uses the pole like a straw, and drinks his blood. Yum.
White Manson(wait....Charles Manson WAS white! His nickname doesn't even make any freaking SENSE!!!) steps into the restroom, where he finds the bodies of Slutty Baby and her slave. Slutty Baby appears to be (barely) alive, until White Manson snaps her neck. Then Black Johnson joins him, and accuses him of murdering the women. White Manson shows Black Johnson that his hands are blood-free, and they agree to get the Hell out of Dodge, proverbially speaking.
As She-Beast starts to eat Cock Master's face, Freak yells into the microphone that she needs to hurry up and kill the remaining survivors. He plays a sound through the intercom that immobilizes her, then orders her once more to attack and kill anyone who's left.
As White and Black work together(in perfect harmony?) to check out more possible escape routes, Freak decides to finally address them directly. He tells them that, when he was younger, he had a sister who had been mutated by an experimental drug. He chained her up, but then decided to use her as an "instrument of God", having her kill degenerates that he lured to the abandoned factory over the internet, with a particular focus on druggies.
While he's ranting and raving over his grand scheme, we see She-Beast injecting herself with a glowing substance in different parts of her body. As Black and White(an awesome computer game...at least, the first one was...) agree to work together to escape, Anna is just wandering down one random corridor after another. She arms herself with a metal bar, then removes her shirt. Don't get too excited, fellas...she has a white t-shirt on underneath.
After a few more pointless shots of people wandering around and Freak shouting into his microphone at his sister(who I think might be named Alexa...I just noticed that the name is written on a piece of tape on the mike stand), Anna hears a noise and hides behind a wall for whatever's heading her way. Black and White attack her from behind, and accuse her of killing the others.
Anna tells them about Alexa, and they all head into the restroom together to plan their next move. Black and White argue over how to survive, and Black decides to head out alone. His plan is to use some propane he saw earlier to blow a hole out of one of the walls, and leave. Eh, it's better than no plan at all.
Oh, and Anna may or may not be psychic now. When she and the others were just in the bathroom together, she had "flashes" of the scenes earlier in the bathroom. She saw the lesbians get attacked, and also saw the neck-snapping occur. I guess. So now she's weirded out by White, even though he's been relatively "nice" to her.
Anyway, I explained all of that because now White wants to know where the ammunition for the gun is. See, Anna has the clip, but Black has the empty gun. So, even though she's acting frightened around White, she gives him the bullets(which were apparenty shoved into her vagina, in a sandwich baggy. Gotta love movie logic...). Wait until she tells Black where she kept the gun...
After he puts the ammunition back into the clip, White waits for Black to return, and gets the gun back. To the surprise of no one at all, White loads the clip into the gun, shoots Black to death, then threatens Anna. This movie is about as subtle as an ace bandage lined with broken glass shards.
Then we get a slight plot twist. White reveals that he was the person who killed Anna's daughter. After he gleefully studies her reaction, he shoots her in the gut and leaves her to die. Of course, he then encounters Alexa and shoots her as well. Where was this guy an hour ago?
He enters Freak's control room area, and aims the gun at the back of the mastermind's head. Then we get yet another twist: he, Sid and Freak(who I forgot is named "Denny", although I think "Freak" suits him better, so I'm sticking with it) were all in the plot to kill the group together. Although Sid and White aren't into the religious aspect of it as much as Freak is, they're both still murder-loving nutjobs. Sheesh.
After White leaves the control room, Freak orders Sid to go give Alexa another injection. Sid wanders through the halls with the glowing syringe, but locates Anna instead of Alexa. He offers to save her life if she promises to punish White, Freak and "all bad men" for him. Yeah, sure he does. And I'm the Emperor of Ice Cream.
So he injects Anna--and by "Injects", I mean he squirts the green goop from the Re-Animator film series into a gaping hole in a fake prop stomach. Then we get a wide shot of Anna moaning and writhing around in pain as the chemical transforms her. She starts to cough up blood, and keels over. Wow. Great healing properties in that chemical.
Sid, while attempting to escape, runs into the not-quite-dead Alexa. She glares up at him from the floor, then cowers in pain as she hears that weird sound again. Sadly, Sid gets away before she recovers. On the plus side, she catches Anna's scent, and wanders away to find her. Instead of finishinbg her off, Alexa drags her away.
Back in the control room, it looks like our favorite maniacal douchebag is combing his beard. Yippee. Then we see Alexa rolling her bed down the hall, but with the still-unconscious Anna on the mattress. When Alexa stops wheeling it to sniff and nibble at some body parts on the ground, Anna opens her eyes. They now look white-grey like Alexa's eyes. Finally!
She calmly(?) feels her stomach, and discovers that the bullet wound has completely closed. Then she quietly grabs a sharp blade off of the floor and attacks Alexa with it. After a brief scuffle, Anna wins the fight and goes off in search of more victims.
She looks around, then remembers White. Anna decides to hunt him down next, unaware that Alexa is still alive. Anna goes past rows of stacked crates(isn't this building supposed to be abandoned and empty?), unaware that Alexa is now hot on her trail. Oh, and there's a brief glimpse of Sid wandering around too...why hasn't he left yet?
The 2 She-Beasts have another fight, and Anna stabs the other mutant several more times. she watches her foe have a few spasms, and only moves on after Alexa stops moving. Then, after Anna leaves, Alexa has a few more spasms. Uhhh, which part of "chemical healing properties" didn't Anna understand?
Anna climbs a ladder attached to what I'm guessing is a vat of the aforementioned methane, then she stops to watch Alexa tracking and following her. Instead of having another spat, Anna chooses to keep moving. Alexa climbs the ladder, then--Surprise!--Anna kicks her back down, where she gets impaled on a metal bar. Anna climbs down to admire her handiwork, then saws Alexa's head off to make sure she stays dead.
Driving home,White tells his wife that he'll be there soon. Oh wait, he's not driving....I guess the camera crew just can't manage to hold the equipment steadily, giving it the illusion that his van is moving. He's still parked at the factory/warehouse/whatever. As he wraps up the conversation, White hears movement on the roof of the van.
He hangs up, then decides to have a look. Anna leaps on him when he gets out and looks up. Then we see Freak trying to reach Sid on a walkie-talkie, to no avail. That's when Anna pops up behind him, and begins to squeeze the sides of his head together like a lemon. He attempts to cripple her with the sound frequency that drives his sister insane, but discovers that the device has been disabled. Whoops!
After Anna kills Freak, she chains White to the floor like Alexa was. He just laughs, and asks her why she hasn't killed him yet, and Anna replies that she plans to keep him around until she gets hungry. Then she pounces on him and begins biting chunks out of him until he either dies or passes out. My vote goes for "dies".
The movie ends with an assault on the building by a few guys that are the saddest-looking attack squad in the history of assault teams. They all fire on Anna, and we see one more shot of her videotaped confession, followed by a quick scene implying that the assault team botched her execution. THE END...?
Man, I hope so. This was just depressing to watch. Sure, on a technical level it was impressive...there was ample gore, many victims, a potentially interesting concept...but it had almost no plot, and incredibly shallow characters. And the worst part is, this is apparently a sequel! I'm almost tempted to rent the first one, just as an endurance test for my annoyance level. Almost. 1 out of 5 killer trees, with the single point awarded for the effects.
And what(ughhhh) did I learn from watching Death Factory: Bloodletting?
-Experimental drugs that glow in the dark are never good.
-Never trust a friendly Neo-Nazi.
-Being a mutant is great for your figure.
My next film will be Red Hook. It can't be as bad as this one, can it? Seriously...can it?
Sunday, July 11, 2010
It's Alive!
In the 39 years I've been alive, I've seen millions of movies, and a great many have been slasher films--hey, I guess I'm just lucky enough to have great taste in cinema, right? Anyway, in that time, I've seen my share of weird slasher-flick villains: Psycho doctors? Check. Summer camp killers? Ohhhh, yeah. Killers possessing inanimate object? Yep. But you know what I never thought of? Killer Babies.
Yes, Killer Babies. I've watched It's Alive(both the original 1970's "classic", and the recent remake, both via Netflix Instant) and It Lives Again and It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive on a double-sided DVD. Oh baby!
The first film in the It's Alive franchise is about an advertising executive and his wife, Frank and Lenore. They have a son and another baby on the way. On the day the Lenore starts going into labor though, SOMETHING GOES WRONG!!!!! *gasp* It seems that there was a minor massacre in the delivery room, killing everyone except for the mother and the baby, who fled out through a window and left Mama to take the rap. Naturally, Lenore is accused of murder, and an investigation follows. Mom is allowed eventually to return home, but still under what is pretty much house arrest. And one question remains: how does a woman giving birth kill a roomful of medical personnel while strapped down to a table???
We learn fairly quickly that the answer is, "She doesn't." Her baby does. See, when Lenore first knew she was preggers she decided to abort the fetus by way of an experimental medication. Then, when she changed her mind, she went to the other extreme and tried fertility drugs. All those drugs, plus cigarettes, alcohol, recreational drugs and whatever-the-hell-else she decided to ingest, all of it mutated the baby. In the first movie you don't really see the monster baby much, but in the other films it resembles a fat version of the monsters in the Ghoulies franchise...so, pretty much like a normal baby, really.
Anyway one cop, Perkins, knows something weird is going on. He starts visiting the couple, interviewing them more and more, and doing deep background checks. By the way, Perkins is in all 3 of the It's Alive movies--although by the third film, he seems shoehorned into the plot. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but the guy's a riot...sort of like Norm on "Cheers" if they could pry him off of that barstool. (oh, and apparently the actor passed away, so forget about ever seeing him in any future killer baby films)
So the parents are kind of stuck: the baby is on the loose, killing pretty much everyone it encounters, they're being scrutinized 24-7, and the pharmaceutical company responsible for the drugs that mutated the baby in the first place have coerced the authorities into trying to hunt it down so it can be dissected/studied. Frank pretty much cracks under pressure, what with having his Baby Mama deliver a Baby Monster, so he gets his hands on a gun and decides to kill the baby himself. I mean, hey, it's not like his wife will ever want to carry HIS baby ever again, and he loses his cushy job, so what's a monster breeder to do?
Well, the baby ends up breaking into a school. While Frank is helping investigators look there for the baby, Lenore finds It first, and hides it in the basement. Dr. Spock must've loved this film's parenting advice. While It is exploring his dank, dark new home, he meets Frank and Lenore's older son, whose name completely escapes me at the moment. Let's see, he could be considered the Sibling Hero of It, right? So let's just refer to him as SHIt.
So SHIt tries reasoning with It, and it turns out that It only kills because he's frightened. Kind of like that time I rode a roller coaster at Six Flags and decapitated everyone waiting in line after I got out. Because THAT is just the most normal reaction to fear ever, right? But I digress: Frank interupts the SHItstorm, and wins Father of the Year trophies by shooting It. It escapes AGAIN(C'MON, mutant or not, it's a freakin' BABY fer Petes' sake!), and after ditching his handgun, Frank gets his hands on a shotgun. Yee-ha, it's turning into a tame episode of Jerry Springer now!
He tracks the thing to the sewers, and realizes exactly what his non-monster son realized about 2 scenes earlier: Baby It is just scared. Awwwwwwwwwwwwww. Any bets on how monstrous his diaper must be at this point? Frank picks his son up, apologizes for shooting him, and walks out of the sewer with It in his arms. Best Father's Day card EVER. Too bad the cops waiting outside weren't watching the previous 10 minutes of the film, because they open fire on It, giving him a circumcision he'll never forget. As the movie winds down, there's a call over the police radio: Another monster-baby has been born, this time in Seattle. Was he ever in a grunge band, I wonder? DUN DUN DUNNNNNN 4 killer trees, just for the batshit-craziness of it all.
So, after watching all of this nonsense, what lessons have I walked away with this week?
-Muppet Babies are hard to kill.
-I can get through an entire movie recap without even once making fun of a name like "Lenore".
-Lead actors in movies from the 1970's didn't need to look good or know how to act to get work in Hollywood.
Join me next time as I go make boom-boom in the diaper that is It's Alive 2:It Lives Again! Cootchy-coo, mofo's!
Yes, Killer Babies. I've watched It's Alive(both the original 1970's "classic", and the recent remake, both via Netflix Instant) and It Lives Again and It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive on a double-sided DVD. Oh baby!
The first film in the It's Alive franchise is about an advertising executive and his wife, Frank and Lenore. They have a son and another baby on the way. On the day the Lenore starts going into labor though, SOMETHING GOES WRONG!!!!! *gasp* It seems that there was a minor massacre in the delivery room, killing everyone except for the mother and the baby, who fled out through a window and left Mama to take the rap. Naturally, Lenore is accused of murder, and an investigation follows. Mom is allowed eventually to return home, but still under what is pretty much house arrest. And one question remains: how does a woman giving birth kill a roomful of medical personnel while strapped down to a table???
We learn fairly quickly that the answer is, "She doesn't." Her baby does. See, when Lenore first knew she was preggers she decided to abort the fetus by way of an experimental medication. Then, when she changed her mind, she went to the other extreme and tried fertility drugs. All those drugs, plus cigarettes, alcohol, recreational drugs and whatever-the-hell-else she decided to ingest, all of it mutated the baby. In the first movie you don't really see the monster baby much, but in the other films it resembles a fat version of the monsters in the Ghoulies franchise...so, pretty much like a normal baby, really.
Anyway one cop, Perkins, knows something weird is going on. He starts visiting the couple, interviewing them more and more, and doing deep background checks. By the way, Perkins is in all 3 of the It's Alive movies--although by the third film, he seems shoehorned into the plot. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but the guy's a riot...sort of like Norm on "Cheers" if they could pry him off of that barstool. (oh, and apparently the actor passed away, so forget about ever seeing him in any future killer baby films)
So the parents are kind of stuck: the baby is on the loose, killing pretty much everyone it encounters, they're being scrutinized 24-7, and the pharmaceutical company responsible for the drugs that mutated the baby in the first place have coerced the authorities into trying to hunt it down so it can be dissected/studied. Frank pretty much cracks under pressure, what with having his Baby Mama deliver a Baby Monster, so he gets his hands on a gun and decides to kill the baby himself. I mean, hey, it's not like his wife will ever want to carry HIS baby ever again, and he loses his cushy job, so what's a monster breeder to do?
Well, the baby ends up breaking into a school. While Frank is helping investigators look there for the baby, Lenore finds It first, and hides it in the basement. Dr. Spock must've loved this film's parenting advice. While It is exploring his dank, dark new home, he meets Frank and Lenore's older son, whose name completely escapes me at the moment. Let's see, he could be considered the Sibling Hero of It, right? So let's just refer to him as SHIt.
So SHIt tries reasoning with It, and it turns out that It only kills because he's frightened. Kind of like that time I rode a roller coaster at Six Flags and decapitated everyone waiting in line after I got out. Because THAT is just the most normal reaction to fear ever, right? But I digress: Frank interupts the SHItstorm, and wins Father of the Year trophies by shooting It. It escapes AGAIN(C'MON, mutant or not, it's a freakin' BABY fer Petes' sake!), and after ditching his handgun, Frank gets his hands on a shotgun. Yee-ha, it's turning into a tame episode of Jerry Springer now!
He tracks the thing to the sewers, and realizes exactly what his non-monster son realized about 2 scenes earlier: Baby It is just scared. Awwwwwwwwwwwwww. Any bets on how monstrous his diaper must be at this point? Frank picks his son up, apologizes for shooting him, and walks out of the sewer with It in his arms. Best Father's Day card EVER. Too bad the cops waiting outside weren't watching the previous 10 minutes of the film, because they open fire on It, giving him a circumcision he'll never forget. As the movie winds down, there's a call over the police radio: Another monster-baby has been born, this time in Seattle. Was he ever in a grunge band, I wonder? DUN DUN DUNNNNNN 4 killer trees, just for the batshit-craziness of it all.
So, after watching all of this nonsense, what lessons have I walked away with this week?
-Muppet Babies are hard to kill.
-I can get through an entire movie recap without even once making fun of a name like "Lenore".
-Lead actors in movies from the 1970's didn't need to look good or know how to act to get work in Hollywood.
Join me next time as I go make boom-boom in the diaper that is It's Alive 2:It Lives Again! Cootchy-coo, mofo's!
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