Club Dread

Well, Tourist Trap had a nervous breakdown in my laptop, so I'm going with the other slasher flick Netflix mailed out this week, Club Dread. Maybe a working copy of Tourist Trap will get to me, but I'm not going to hold my breath--heck, one of the reviewers on Netflix claimed that they sent him 3 bad discs! How does that happen 3 times in a row? But it doesn't matter. So sit back, relax, and drink a pina colada while I SPOIL the crap out of Club Dread!

The movie takes place in Costa Rica, on the oddly-named Pleasure Island. There's a lot of screaming as the camera gets closer, but it's a couple looking for a secluded make-out spot. Rolo, the male, is busy mocking Putman. one of the resort's employees, while his girlfriend, Stacy, takes off her top. I like this one already...

Rolo shows Stacy a bag of weed(which he calls Costa Rica Freaka), and lights up. As the pair start making out, Stacy sees an ominous figure wandering nearby. Rolo just wants her to twiddle his nipples(I shit you not...), but he agrees to take Stacy to a different area that is even more secluded.

Rolo's more secluded area turns out to be a graveyard. Even Stacy has enough common sense to question the decency of what they're about to do, but her objections are halted by the reappearance of the wandering stalker from before. Before Stacy can stop him, Rolo decides to confront the guy. He grabs a heavy tree branch, walks up to the dark figure, and realizes that it's a tiki statue. Rolo knocks the head off, and is surprised by a tiny primate that leaps up from out of nowhere.

As the monkey wanders away, an attractive blonde pops up to scare the couple next. She's holding a tray of tropical drinks though, so I tend to doubt that she's a killer. The horny trio decide to duck into a mausoleum for their sexcapades. The interior looks lived in, with newspaper clippings, a machete, lanterns....seriously, these 3 are dumber than a sack of doorknobs if they stay. Hilariously, one of the girls finds a well-endowed idol, and tells Rolo that they no longer need him. The girls begin to kiss each other, and the chamber is plunged into complete, utter darkness.

They quickly get the door open, start to remove their clothes, and pleasure one another. The blonde hears the machete sliding over stone and sees a figure moving behind Rolo. As she and Stacy back away, an oblivious Rolo gets his shoulder severed by the sharp blade.

The girls run through the jungle screaming, and split up when there's a fork in the path. The blonde runs until she nearly falls over a cliff. She reaches behind her for a branch or rock to grab onto, and cuts a nasty cut when her fingers clench the killer's machete. She gasps at the pain, then slips over the cliff into the ocean. Hey, maybe she survived....but probably not.

Stacy hears her screams, and finds a footbridge that leads to the resort's pool. She sees a number of guests in the distance and relaxes slightly, giving the killer time to behead her. As her body falls to the ground and convulses, the titles zooms onto her dying torso. Cool.

Then the movie takes us back to, as the screen says, ONE HOUR EARLIER. A ship called Princess Yelapa is pulling up to Pleasure Island. The island and resort are owned by Coconut Pete(played by Bill Paxton), a sort of poor man's version of Jimmy Buffet. His musical claim to fame is a ditty called "Pina Coladaburg".

Anyway, this scene introduces us to our many, many victims. There's Jenny, the cute-as-Hell aerobics instructor; Juan, in charge of watersports(and probably the funniest character in the film; Putman, a prissy British tennis pro; Dave the Deejay(and drug supplier); Sam, the Fun Police; Yu, a pretty Asian employee; Kelly, a somewhat cute waitress; and Lars Brunckhorst, a portly Zen and massage expert who has been trying to tell the others that he's an employee, not a guest. Oh, and Penelope, a guest who Jenny finds wandering around lost in the jungle.

As the guests are enjoying free drinks by the pool, Stacy shows up, only to be murdered. Really? That short introduction and the drinks at the pool were a full 2 hours? Okay movie, if you say so. Anyway, there's a short, funny bit with 2 guys checking out all of the hot chicks by the pool. Through them, we learn that Jenny is a minor celebrity: she stars on an early-morning aerobics show, where an odd series of deaths helped her to get promoted. Hmmmm....

Lars shows up to meet Jenny and Penelope, and we learn just how good a masseuse he really is. He places his hands on their shoulders, and gives both women instant orgasms. Then Sam grabs Jenny for a "human Limbo" stick, and she asks Lars to meet up with her later. As everyone parties the day away, we get a final look at Stacy's corpse, not that far away.

That evening, the resort throws the mother of all parties. Coconut Pete meets Lars, who we discover is pretty obsessed with every aspect of Pete's life. Oh, and we meet yet another character: Hank, who is Pete's bodyguard. While he distracts Lars, Juan ushers Pete away to meet a female fan. After Juan feeds Pete some specific info about a concert she attended, Pete pretends to remember her from said concert. Smooth operator, that Coconut Pete.

Putman tries to woo Jenny, who looks pretty damn bored. Luckily, Putman is cock-blocked by a short, annoying loudmouth, giving Jenny time to slip away unnoticed. Then we get my favorite couple in the movie, Penelope and Juan. Sam hooks them up, and Juan introduces himself as a "dive master". Then he sees her name tag, and decides that it's pronounced "Pee-Nah-Lope". I love this friggin' movie...I don't know why, but I just do. Anyway, she tells him that she attends Oral Roberts, and he mistakes the college for a sexual position, like Dirty Sanchez.

The movie decides to go outside for a bit, where we catch up with a guy named Carlos taking a smoke break. He approaches an activity board, where a contest is prominently on display. The contest asks the guests to guess which Coconut Pete song a series of lyrics are from. The lyrics, which seem extremely ominous, are as follows:

"3 amigos took an undersea trip/And never were seen again"

Weird, huh?

So Carlos reads the board, then hears a strange noise. He chalks it up to monkeys, and does what every 1-scene victim does in every slasher flick--he takes a walk in the dark jungle, instead of staying in a well-lit, occupied, active area. As he crouches down on the ground next to some garbage cans, someone approaches from behind, holding a large butcher knife...

Oh, it's only Yu. She asks him when he's going to wash all of the dirty dishes and utensils, and Carlos promises to get to it all in the morning. Yu leaves, and Carlos starts to follow, but one of the trash bins begins to shake. As Carlos goes back to examine it, the killer looms behind him and kills Carlos off-screen.

Coconut Pete and Lars have both grabbed guitars, and they lead a group of partygoers in a singalong around a campfire. A drunk chick yells out a request for "Margaritaville", and proceeds to get Pete pretty pissed off. Pete tells her that his claim to fame was the song "Pina Coladaburg", but she keeps insisting that he play the Jimmy Buffet song instead. Pete goes off on a rant, claiming that his song was written and released more than 7 years before the other song was even conceived. As he starts swearing and mumbling, Hank shows up to escort Pete back to the resort.

Lars sees Jenny at the bar, and briefly touches her shoulder to get her attention, which causes her jaw muscles to loosen up. She drools her drink all over herself, and Lars apologizes, explaining that he thought she looked "tight". When she responds that she's tight in all the right places, Lars does a spit-take all over himself and her. He mentions her starring role on the aerobics show, and Jenny reveals that the gig will give her the income she needs to quit working at Pleasure Island. She picks up a tray of crab meat appetizers, does a sexy little shimmy, and walks away.

Back to the campfire. Dave has taken it upon himself to tell the guests a scary story about the island's very own urban legend, The Machete Maniac. According to Dave, a guy named Phil worked at the resort 15 years ago. One night, Phil was propositioned by an attractive woman, who asked him to go with her to a quiet, deserted spot on the island. The further away from the resort that they get, the woman asks Phil questions that get progressively stranger: Do you believe in voodoo? Do you believe in zombies?

Phil shrugs off the weird questions, and they start to have sex, but Phil gets a strange vibe. A flash of lightning reveals that Phil has been lured out to an ancient burial ground, that the other resort guests have been watching him, and that he's been having sex with a corpse that was dug up from one of the graves.

Anyway, Phil allegedly walked back to the resort, and made his way to the groundskeerper's shack. Once he was inside, Phil picked up a machete, then went back to find the staff members, and murdered them all. Then the legend states that Phil used the machete to cut off his own penis, before running into the jungle, where he supposedly still lurks. And thus, Machete Phil became a legend.

At the conclusion of the tale, Dave claims that Machete Phil can often be heard searching for his penis.(that part seems kind of stupid, given that he cut it off himself, but I guess I'll just go with it...) When Dave finishes the story, Putman stands up, drops his pants, and reveals that he tucked his penis between his legs, to give the group a quick scare and a cheap laugh. After the group leaves, Dave stands up, revealing that he wanted to be the one with the tucked-in penis.

Later that night, Coconut Pete meets up with the staff. He mentions that Rolo, Stacy and Kelly have vanished, and asks if anyone else can run the next evening's luau-themed party. Dave volunteers to do it, but Pete asks Sam to take care of it instead.

The next day, we get a montage of typical resort activities...cliff diving, tennis lessons, beach aerobics, and some kind of game that involves guys having balloons stuck to their butts, so that their female partners can pop them with their vaginae. Uhhh, wouldn't that be more fun the other way ar....never mind. I'll let that one go, too.

The final activity they show is a drinking game similar to Pac-Man. The players run through a maze, looking for bowls fill with tropical drinks, allowing them to chase bikini-clad women through the maze, and staff members dressed up in giant fruit costumes. The guy playing as Pac-Man grabs one of the girls, then sees Putman dressed as a banana, and tackles him to the ground.

Juan, dressed up as the pretzel is summoned to the maze, but is a no-show. Dave goes investigating, and finds Juan screwing a chick dressed as a watermelon. Dave tells him to get out to the maze, then shuts the door again. Lucky for Dave, a guy in a pear costume(and eating a pear...) shows up, so Dave tells him that he needs to go in the maze next.

The pear, who was on his break, isn't too happy to be in the maze. As he's trudging around, Machete Phil grabs the pineapple costume, and slips it on. The pear has a collision with one of the girls in the maze, then sees Machete Phil watching him. Pear also notices the machete, and realizes that the pineapple isn't an employee.

Pear walks in the other direction, but the killer gets ahead of him. Actually afraid now, Pear starts running through the maze. He comes to a dead end, and Machete Phil throws a pear at him, which Pear was seen eating before he entered the maze. The killer waits for Pear to turn around, then slices a deep gash into his stomach. The camera gives us an overhead view of the maze, which shows that Machete Phil and his victim are one wall away from the players, who remain oblivious to what has just transpired.

Near the beach, Jenny is taking a walk and watching someone who has gone para sailing. She hears something that sounds like a blade being unsheathed, and nearly gets her face sliced off by Lars, who is doing some martial arts exercises with a sword in each hand. They start chatting, only to be interrupted by a girl riding piggyback on a blindfolded guy. Lars briefly touches the nape of the girl's neck, and she passes out. The blindfolded guy is also briefly touched, and wets himself. Alone again, Lars makes Jenny orgasm again my touching her mouth. Then the person para sailing crashes down in front of them.

It turns out that the killer hooked Carlos up to the sail after killing him the previous night, and also carved NAUGHTY CARLOS onto his chest. As they ponder what it means, they watch the boat speed away from the island, unmanned.

Back in the maze, Juan tells Dave that he had never heard of Pac-Man in Nicaragua. Putman, dressed as a banana, interrupts their conversation, and they follow him to Pear's corpse, which is being examined by Fun Policeman Sam. His name turns out to be Cliff, which I deduced after seeing NAUGHTY CLIFF carved into his chest. As they wonder if he's dead, the loudspeaker plays the sound effect for when Pac-Man loses a life.

The employees and Pete have a meeting about the killings...right in front of the not-too-swift guests at the pool. Juan offers up the theory that the killer is Machete Phil, but the others shoot down the idea as ridiculous. Sam rushes over to announce that the killer has struck again....but not in the way you think.

The killer altered Sam's activity board, so that it now keeps track of which people have been murdered. Also, in the box where the "guess the song" contest had been, the killer has left them a message: DO YOUR JOBS AND LIVE. TELL THE GUESTS AND DIE. 'CAUSE EVERYBODY'S LOOKING TO FIND THEIR OWN PARADISE...

Frightened more than ever, they decide to evacuate the resort, and get themselves and the guests back to civilization. It's not as easy as it sounds though: Machete Phil has set the boats loose, stranding everyone at the resort. He also destroyed the phones and radio communication.

Coconut Pete holds another meeting, this time at the indoor bar/nightclub. He tells his staff that they have no choice but to pretend that nothing's wrong in front of the tourists, just as the message on the scoreboard implied. They all demand a better plan of action from Pete, but he defers to his bodyguard, Hank. Hank, it turns out, is actually a retired FBI agent, with a specialty in tracking down serial killers.

At first, no one wants to trust Hank, mostly because he has a history of heavy drinking and seems like a bumbling idiot under pressure. It turns out that it was all an act, meant to put people at ease around him. He tells them to continue acting as normal as possible around the guests, so that he can try to set a trap for the killer. He promises them that his expertise is the best weapon they have at the moment.

Later that night, the staff get several bonfires started on the beach, spelling out SOS. A pinata is also set up, so that Hank can watch how each person attacks the target, and also to see which guests are left-handed, as one of the stab wounds was made with the killer holding his machete in his left hand. As the guests party on the beach, Lars and Jenny search their rooms for any incriminating clues in regards to the identity of the killer. Lars tells Jenny that the lyrics on the activity board reminded him of something, but he's not exactly sure what it might be.

Juan is mingling with the guests when Penelope pops up looking for him. She gives a leaf-hat that she made, and asks him to go to a secluded, dark area of the beach, so that they can make out. Juan pretends to agree, then escapes from her clutches to rejoin the crowded beach party.

Hank gets an update about the search from Jenny and Lars, who found nothing in any of the guest rooms. Other than one guest's wooden bible, nothing seemed weird about any of the guests. Hank asks Jenny to talk with Yu, because she's getting agitated. He also assigns Lars guard duty at the bonfire, so that Hank can get away to search the island in a more thorough manner.

At the deejay table, Putman noses around the albums, and finds a mysterious message on one of Coconut Pete's album covers: "Dave, So sorry about your parents. Wish I could've done more. Uncle Pete" Inside the album there's a newspaper clipping about Dave's parents.

So Dave not only works for Coconut Pete, but is also his nephew!

Before we get any in-depth details about this curious development, the movie switches us over to Jenny and Yu. Yu wants to tell the guests about the killer, but Jenny advises her to do as the killer suggested, and act like nothing's wrong. Yu stomps away, and finds 2 stoned guys in the jungle. She asks them to go back to the bonfire, and takes off again.

Yu hears a twig snap behind her, and finds herself facing Machete Phil. She screams and runs the opposite way, getting further away from the bonfire with every step. Yu turns to see if the killer is close, and collides with Hank, who was apparently expecting the killer on that path. Hank holds a large tree branch like a club and taunts the killer. As he's busy yelling at Machete Phil, the killer simply raises his blade and kills Hank in one stroke.

Yu screams again, and runs away. She spots a golf kart nearby, and decides to use it as her getaway vehicle. In one of the film's best sight gags, the kart goes about a mile an hour, allowing the killer to casually stroll next to it. Yu screams, and that's the last we see of her.

Jenny catches a few seconds of herself on the aerobics show, then hears a boat out on the water. She starts to head out to investigate further, but another sound closer to her room convinces Jenny to stay inside and lock her doors.

The next morning, Dave leads a group of guests in what I can only describe as "Craberobics". Jenny tells Sam and Pete about hearing the boat, and they all agree that finding it is a priority. Then Lars arrives to tell them that he knows why the lyrics on the board were so familiar to him....they were from one of Coconut Pete's songs. Uh.....duh? The contest was to identify the Coconut Pete song by knowing the lyric. So what? Oh, okay. The song was called "Naughty Cal", which is similar to what was carved in the chests of the victims.

Okay, so they all decide to find the album and listen to it for clues. The scene is more or less nonsense, but if you pause the screen as they look at the album, you'll laugh your ass off at some of the crazy song titles...my personal favorites were "I'd Tell Ya, But Then I'd Have Tequila", and "High Balls and Low Blows". I'd totally buy this album.

Well, it turns out that the song does seem connected to the murders. One lyric is about a character flying and then crashing, like Carlos. Another lyric seems very specific about Cliff, since it mentions being lost in a maze. In another inspired bit, Dave tries playing the next part backwards, which would be great if the next part wasn't "La la la la la". I'm tellin' ya, this movie's a hoot.

After listening to the song, Pete is told by Juan, "Yu and Hank are dead," which of course sounds like a threat. After a few more misunderstandings, Juan just gives up and tells them to follow him to the latest corpses. Amusingly, the message carved into Hank's chest is DON'T LET THIS BE YU.

To distract the guests, the staff holds a fashion show. As Lars models a poncho for the crowd, Sam and Putman remark that there were no killings until Lars was hired. That gets Jenny mad, and she quickly defends Lars. Of course, as each person steps onto the stage, they all fall under scrutiny.

After the fashion show, it's decided that someone should search for the boats. When it looks like Jenny is a part of the search party, Putman volunteers, but he gets stuck with Lars instead. They head out to explore, as Jenny, Sam and Juan watch. Coconut Pete is briefly shown, teaching his cooking staff how to make coconut paella.

Pete starts getting angry again, asd Jenny and Juan observe him from a distance, only to be interrupted by Penelope. She stuffs a huge portion of calamari into Juan's mouth, and he freaks out because of the octopus reference in the song. When Penelope wanders away, Juan and Jenny decide that there's only 1 way to be sure that she's not the killer: Juan must sleep with her.

Dave, Jenny and Sam are hiding in Juan's closet, ready to jump out if he's in any sort of danger. He looks pretty terrified, as Penelope straddles him. She removes her top and does several somersaults, before landing on top of Juan again. And that's when Penelope reveals the secret she alluded to earlier: she's a world-class gymnast, and she wants to shed her innocent, pristine image, so she can sow some wild oats. Juan and Penelope then proceed to have a sexathon, forcing the trio in the closet to sit through the entire experience. When she goes to the bathroom, Juan even opens the closet door to announce that he's ready for more when she returns.

On the beach, Lars is being given the 3rd degree from a very jealous Putman. Putman frightens him with a large plastic bundle, but it turns out to be a hairnet for Putman's enormous hairdo. Lars breathes a sigh olf relief, and both he and Putman get to sleep. Before Putman falls asleep, though, he examines a news article he found, one that reveals that Lars lost his parents at one of Pete's concerts.

Sam and Dave go through the stuff Lars brought with him, including his swords. They also find a shrine to Coconut Pete that indicates that Lars is obsessed with Pete. Yikes! Is there anyone in this film who isn't crazy?

That's actually a pretty good segue back to the beach. Putman wakes up in the middle of the night and finds both the campfire extinguished and Lars missing. He hears a sword being unsheathed, and sees Machete Phil coming his way. Putman tries to run, but his stupid hairnet gets caught on several plants and trees. The killer catches him, and the mask comes off, revealing Dave as the killer. Then HE gets stabbed from behind by the real killer. The killer removeshis mask, revealing the killer as...Putman? He moves in to kiss...himself, I guess, and it's all revealed as a dream. Lars is trying to wake him up, and a disoriented Putman scurries away into the jungle.

The next morning, Lars brings back one of the missing boats. He shows them the propeller hanging from his neck, and explains that the motor was sabotaged. Sam notes that Lars returned without Putman, and accuses him of being the killer. As Lars continues to deny being the killer, the rest of the employees decide to lock him up.

Jenny finds a group of stoned swimmers in the pool, and decides that it's safe to go for a quick dip. As soon as she dives underwater, a naked dude runs past the pool, [proclaiming free drinks for anyone who catches him. The tipsy swimmers leave the pool, and pursue him.

Jenny surfaces, and gets scared when she finds herself alone in the pool. There's a splash behind her, and Jenny tries to swim to the edge of the pool, but is pulled under the water. After a short struggle, she sees that the other swimmer is the young annoying guy who's been pissing off Putman. As he tries yet again to woo Jenny, a hand grabs him underwater, and yanks him below the surface. It turns out to be a crude joke, but Jenny actually sees the killer behind him, preparing to throw a television into the water. Playing on the screen is an episode of Amy Aerobics.

Jenny gets out of the pool in time, but the young asshole isn't as lucky. He fries like an egg on the sidewalk in August. Sadly, that also knocks out the power around the resort. Jenny sees the killer approaching her again, and starts running.

The good news is that Jenny finds another survivor. The bad news? It's Putman. He creeps out Jenny by asking how badly the kid(whose name, mentioned in this scene, is Dirk) died. Then Sam shows up to break the tension. He leads them to the drunk tank, which is apparently where Lars was confined. When they unlock the door, they find an empty room.

Down the hall, though, a door is rattling. The nervous trio walk toward it, and Juan comes out of hiding to join them. As they reach the door and fling it open, they find Dave on the other side, dancing and weaving a flashlight all over the place.

As they try to figure out where to hide from Lars(even though they still can't be sure that he's the killer), Sam finds a letter stating that Juan has spent time in prison. They gang up on Juan, and he stumbles into a chair that has a cord tied to it. As the cord unravels, the chairs spins wildly, and Coconut Pete's corpse falls into the room, the victim of hanging.

As everyone starts to accuse Juan of the murders, he decides to tell them why he was in prison. He screwed a goat. Yup. Moving on...

Dave is the next guy to be fingered as the killer. His motive? Well, it turns out that Dave's parents were trampled to death at one of Pete's concerts(seen briefly in a newspaper clipping earlier), so maybe he had a grudge. It turns out that everyone already knew about Dave's parents, but not everyone knew that Dave already owned the island. Pete gave it to him because he was going back on tour.

Then Lars appears. When he sees Pete's corpse he starts to cry, and Sam tells him he doesn't buy it. As everyone fights and shouts, Jenny proves to be the voice of reason. She proposes that they gather the guests, wait in one of the main buildings for the rescue ship to arrive in the morning, and leave as a group. That lasts about 1 scene, then they all argue and start to go off in different directions again.

Dave locks himself in the dance area, and proceeds to "get down" with the stereo system. Lars and Jenny head to Lars' room, and find his swords gone. As Jenny complains about the killer always beimng a step ahead of them, Lars shushes her. Annoyed at first, Jenny finally figures out what point Lars was making: if the power went out, how is Dave able to play his music so loud?

They hurry to the club, and Jenny discovers Dave's severed head spinning on the turntable. Lars and Jenny hurry back to her bungalow, and spot the killer heading in their direction. As they try to find a good place to hide, Lars convinces Jenny to hide under the bed. Then he lies down on the floor and begins this goofy chant. As the person outside gets closer, the chant gets faster, until the muscles in Lars' stomach contract, allowing him to get under the bed with Jenny.

Just in time, too...the mystery figure enters the room right after they hide. They watch his feet move around the room, then Lars uses a pair of handcuffs he found under the bed to keep the mystery person attached to the bed. They emerge from under the bed, and find that they've captured Putman. He was stealing a pair of her panties.

Sadly for Putman, the actual killer is outside, and they can't locate the key for the handcuffs. Also, the door can't be locked, because the lock is broken. Putman asks for his racquet and balls, and uses them to hit the killer with as Lars and Jenny make their escape. One tennis ball hits the killer's crotch with a metallic sound, leading them to believe that it is, indeed, Machete Phil. When Putman runs out of projectiles, the killer throws his machete at him, impaling Putman.

Jenny and Lars hide in the bathroom, and listen to Putman's murder. He almost names the killer, but not quite. The killer then enters the bathroom to clean himself up. While Lars uses pantomime to try to give Jenny a plan to fight the killer, a towel covered in blood flies over the shower curtain and smacks him in the face. Jenny gently removes the towel from his face, and Lars requests the soap.

They hurry back to the guest area, where everyone who's left is partying. The killer planned on this, and a quick look around the room reveals most of the corpses have been used to decorate the rafters. The crowd forms a frightened mob, and they all rush outside.

Jenny sees Penelope and asks about Juan, but the other girl has no idea where he could be. Juan appears a moment later, but is covered in blood and gripping a machete. Lars asks him about his appearance and the weapon, but Jenny stops the questioning to point out Sam banging on a window and screaming. As a group, they run over to rescue him.

The small hut Sam was in turns out to be a mud bath area. Worried that the killerv might be hiding in one of the mud beds, Lars plunges his hands into the first one. Nope, it's empty. He puts his hands into the second one, and pulls Sam's lifeless body to the surface. That leaves only one mud bath to search.

Lars gets the machete from Juan, and plunges it swiftly into the mud. As he softly instructs the others to exit the building, Sam's eyes snap open. He leaps out of the mud and attacks Lars, pulling the machete up to the massage expert's throat. He then cackles and brags about how long he can hold his breath.

When asked about his motive, Sam tells them about how, at the start of the film, Rolo wouldn't share his weed. Then he reconsiders, and decides that his real motive was that he was pissed when Pete gave Dave the resort. Before he can say much more, Lars grabs his wrist, sending am into an instant, paralytic orgasm. Then Lars tells them to escape, because he can only keep Sam in that state of mind for so long.

The group manages to escape, and decide to hide in the club, because it's incredibly secure(because it's where the booze is stored....). On their way past screaming guests, a guy grabs Penelope and throws her over his shoulder, then runs away. Also, they see Sam approaching, and he looks pretty pissed off.

After Juan and Jenny lock themselves into the nightclub, Jenny screams. Somehow Sam has trapped Penelope in the fish tank, and she's drowning right in front of them while Sam watches thnem to see what they do. Juan finds a fire axe, and smashes the tank to save Jenny.

Jenny gets Penelope off the wet floor, and urges Juan to hurry as well, before Sam recovers. Sam gets up first, though, and grabs the axe. As he prepares to resume his killing spree, a knife emerges from Sam's chest. It's one of the swords that Lars owns, and he is very much alive. He and the other 3 open the gate, and leave the club.

As they wander past the chaotic partygoers, they see Sam lurching in their direction again. Juan tells the others that he can lose sam in the jungle, so they follow his lead. He leads them to a cliff that faces the ocean, and encourages them all to jump. Also, he advises them to clench their butt cheeks together, because the impact of the water going up their asses can pulverize their intestines.

Penelope dives first, and shows off her skill as a gymnast. Then Juan dives, followed by Jenny and Lars. As they all resurface, Jenny complains about her asshole hurting. Lars tells the others that he saw the second boat on the ocean floor. Juan volunteers to get the engine from that boat, so that they can attach it to the boat Sam didn't sink. While he's doing that, the rest will swim to the intact boat, and keep an eye out for Sam.

Alas, Sam dives into the water behind Juan while he's distracted by his work on the intact propeller. Lars, Jenny and Penelope climb into the boat, and worry when Juan doesn't show up. Juan pops up next to the boat a moment later, holding up the intact propeller. As Lars dives in to attach the new propeller, Juan reveals that Sam gave him a severe wound across his torso. Before he dies, he tells Penelope how much he loves her...and that he'd love to see Jenny and Penelope kiss before he dies.

Seconds after Juan disappears beneath the surface, Sam bursts out of the ocean, and climbs aboard the small boat. He knocks out Jenny and begins to strangle Penelope, only to be nterrupted by Lars. They scuffle, and Sam gets entangled in the rope used to moor the boat to the dock.

Steering the boat around in wide arcs, Lars manages to bind Sam to the dock, pulling the rope ever tighter around his waist. When Sam tries to leap at them, Lars pilots the boat away, cutting Sam in half.Sam's top half sees his bottom half sink into the ocean, and he collapses into the water.

Then, in true slasher movie fashion, Sam's top half leaps into the boat and attacks Penelope. Lars comes to her rescue, swings Sam around several times, then throws him like a frisbee out into the ocean. After Lars and Jenny kiss, they ask Penelope to start driving, and the boat takes off. Behind them, Sam's legs are trying to swim and follow the boat. THE END

I love the Broken Lizard movies, and Club Dread especially. It works well, not just as a stoner comedy, but also as an impressively bloody slasher flick. It gets 4-and-a-half killer trees out of 5. I hope they get another theatrical release someday, considering that their stuff nowadays seems be direct-to-DVD fare.

And what did Club Dread teach me?

-Everything is better with topless chicks.
-Jimmy Buffet has competition.
-I find endless amusement in hearing "Penelope" pronounced "Pee Nah Lope". I'm easily amused...

Next up: Something called Sam's Lake. I hope it's good. TTFN!

Another revision....

For the umpteenth time, Netflix has screwed me up. They sent me a copy of this week's movie, but it was damaged. Until I get the replacement disc, I'll be watching Club Dread as my movie for the week. I also stumbled upon a terrific little database listing hundreds of slasher films, so I'm going to start filling my queue with titles from that list, as well as the ones I've already put on there. Fun!

The Hole

Okay, so last week's slasher was a fun, silly romp. This week, we have a somewhat grim movie,The Hole, about 4 teens trapped underground for a month. Did I dig it? Was it the pits? Read this SPOILER-filled breakdown to find out!

The movie opens on a young woman(played by Thora Birch) wandering down a deserted street. For some reason, the street and the bushes that flank both sides of it are littered with paper. A partial close-up of one of the sheets reveals that they are posters concerning 4 missing students. Gee, I wonder if it's the 4 kids I told you about in the previous paragraph?

The girl begins to run faster when she sees her school up ahead, and another poster confirms that she is indeed one of the teens. She manages to get inside the school, limps down several corridors, and spies a payphone. When she dials for assistance and a person on the other end offers help, the girl screams. The girl then collapses, after saying "help" a few times.

The credits start up, as we see an ambulance and other emergency workers and law enforcement officers arrive. In addition to Thora Birch, the cast includes Desmond Harrington(Wrong Turn, Ghost Ship), Keira Knightley(from the Pirates movies), and Embeth Davidtz(13 Ghosts, Army of Darkness).

The girl, Lizzie, is treated to by doctors(including them using a rape kit to determine if she was assaulted), then meets a shrink, Dr. Horwood. The doc tries to engage Lizzie in some friendly banter, but fails. Then she tries out a breathing exercise, and the flashbacks begin...

Lizzie begins by introducing us to everyone who was involved in the disappearance: First up is Martin, a nerdish guy who tries to manipulate the other more popular students by preying on their vanity; Mike Steel, an athlete who has a rock star for a parent(and whom Lizzie secretly has a crush on; Geoffrey, Mike's closest friend; and Frankie, a supermodel-hot classmate that Liz seems to get along with, despite having nothing in common with her.

Liz dyes her hair blonde to attract Mike, but gets paranoid delusions that the other students are laughing at her, so she dyes it back to the original color. Then Liz decides to show up in Martin's room to bitch and moan. Desperate to win her love, Martin tells her that he can help her. He approaches Mike, Geoff and Frankie with an offer of a place to party for school vacation...if they bring Liz along. Then Martin hacks into school computers to make it look as if the group would be on a class trip.

He brings the quartet out to the woods, teases them a bit about their destination, then reveals that they're stand right over the entrance. It's a hatch, where a tunnel leads to an old bunker from World War II. After Frankie reveals some issues with claustrophobia, Geoff offers to enter the hatch first. He's followed by Mike, who only goes in because he doesn't want to wimp out in front of the girls. Frankie finally decides to go next, and Liz goes last, after thanking Martin for arranging the party.

Once they're all inside, Martin shuts the hatch and walks away. Frankie panics in the dark, until the guys fumble around and get the electricity running. Once lit up, the place looks huge. They all start to set up their stuff and party their asses off, except for Liz, who just stands back and watches Mike with googly, starstruck eyes. Yeesh.

When they start to get hungry, Geoff offers to cook some noodles that he brought along. Mike apparently "forgot" to bring enough food for the 3-day weekend, and Liz jumps at the chance to share some of hers. Frankie decides to be the odd woman out, explaining that she's on a diet.

During the meal, the brainiacs decide to scare each other with stories. Geoff proposes that the scariest thing would be that something happens to Martin, and they never get out of the hatch. The 2 guys laugh, but Frankie decides that if something DOES happen to Martin, it will be because Geoff jinxed him.

At that point, Horwood interrupts to ask Liz what happened at the end of the weekend, when Martin was supposed to return to the hatch. The flashback reveals that the quartet were all packed and ready to go back to the school, but Martin never returned. They decide to see if they can get cell phone reception right under the hatch, and Geoff volunteers to climb up the ladder to try one out.

When that plan goes bust, the group gets kind of frantic, and they try just shouting for help. After that, tempers flare, and we get a montage of different ways they all crack under pressure. That night, as the others sleep, Liz spies a strange phenomenon in the window of the hatch. The light coming through the window seems to be blocked every so often, as if someone outside was walking over the hatch. She takes her flashlight and aims the beam of light at the small window, and now I have this whole movie figured out!

They're on Lost, living in Desmond's hatch. The light is Hurley and Locke, out looking for Jack, or a polar bear, or a Smoke Monster or some other bullshit. And after several years, none of it will matter or make sense.

No? Okay then, instead Liz decides to briefly shine her light on Mike. After she switches her flashlight off again, Mike opens his eyes, revealing that he was awake the entire time. Creepy.

The next day, they decide to formulate a plan to survive until help arrives. The working theory is that Martin is either holding them in the hatch for money, or that he might have been injured, and unable to come back. To make things worse, they realize that the search could lead rescuers anywhere in the world, since the airport is so close by.

At that point, Liz describes Martin as jealous of his wealthier classmates, and the doctor leaves to have the investigators put out an APB for his arrest. Horwood even gives them a psychological profile to work with, based mostly on what Liz has told her.

Liz is told about the manhunt for Martin, and Liz wishes out loud that they would put him a small, dark cell, to show him how it feels. Then she gives Horwood a creepy smile. Yeesh, remind me to never piss this girl off!

A video camera is set up, and Liz resumes her narrative once more. It's nighttime again, and Liz shines her light on the others while they sleep. She finds Mike sitting up and staring directly at her, so they decide to talk. Mike crosses the room, then crawls under the blanket next to Liz.

She tells Mike that she thinks that Martin is somehow monitoring their actions. Liz mentions seeing someone moving around above them, then says that Martin is doing it to humiliate her in front of Mike, because of her crush. Instead of comforting her, Mike gets kind of pissed off, and blames Liz for their confinement.

After Mike calms down, he takes another look at their surroundings. He finds a speaker on the wall, then several more. He and Liz wake up the others, and they stage an argument for Martin to hear. Holding up cue cards, Liz choreographs the fake fight, and it's as bad as it sounds here. And Martin never shows up, so it's easily the dumbest scene in the movie.

Then Liz changes her story, saying that the door to the hatch was mysteriously open again on the following morning. As they all emerged from captivity, Mike hugged Liz and proclaimed, "You saved us. You saved us."

Of course, none of that happened. Liz is several apples shy of an orchard, so Doc Horwood gathers up her stuff and leaves Looney Liz alone. Horwood waits until she gets outside the building to call the lead investigator. She tells him that Liz is unreliable as a witness, and he promises to get the truth out of Martin, who has been arrested.

Martin is pretty smug, even while being questioned. He tells them that they have no DNA evidence, no fingerprints, no images of him on security cams, and no witnesses that saw him locking the teens inside the hole. Martin even gives the authorities a breakdown of his entire schedule on the day the others first disappeared.

Then the female cop questioning Martin lowers the boom...she tells him that Liz has been found alive, and that her story differs from his. He responds that he was framed by Liz, because she hates him. While this is going on, Dr. Horwood is driving Liz home, but the movies returns to the interrogation room before anything really happens.

Anyway, Martin's version is verrrrrry different from the tale that Liz told. He claims that Frankie and Liz are best friends, and that Liz hangs out with all of the popular girls. In his story, Liz and Frankie knew about the hatch beforehand, and made him go along with the underground weekend party idea. Frankie supposedly had the hots for Geoff, so he was invited as her date, and Liz could get comfy with Mike. Oh, and Frankie delivered the "invitation" by walking into the boy's locker room and asking Geoff to go along with it as he was standing in front of her naked. Geoff finds Mike later that day, and uses Mike's vanity against him, making him agree to tag along.

Martin denies locking them in, however, so it's still his testimony against Frankie's. The male cop in charge of the investigation calls Dr. Horwood, and demands instant access to Liz. Horwood refuses, and promises better results from the therapy sessions.

The next time they meet, the shrink accidentally tells Liz that Martin is getting released from police custody. Liz pitches a fit and runs away. Somebody wake me up if someone dies. Especially if it's me. Liz walks down a dark corridor at what looks like her school, and sees Mike walk by. It's not really him though, it's only a vision. That doesn't stop Liz from hiding around the corner, though, breathing heavy and looking jittery and frightened.

Liz goes back home, where she smokes a cigarette and flips through a magazine. This leads into another flashback, in which Martin and Liz plan the weekend party together while examining the hatch. This leads into another montage showing the quartet partying again. Once everyone is either drunk or stoned(or both), things start to get kinky.

Mike tries to lure Frankie into having sex with him, Frankie refuses, then drunkenly stumbles over to Geoff, who has been watching Mike fail to win over Frankie with his charms. Before long, they're making out, and Liz is watching. As Liz looks on, Frankie, Geoff and Mike decide to have a little 3-way action. They more or less forget about Liz, so she just stands there, feeling like the proverbial third wheel.

She eventually decides to walk away, but not before she pulls out some of Mike's hair. He starts to insult Liz and swear at her, so Frankie and Geoff also taunt her. After Liz leaves the room, Frankie announces that the menage a trois is over. She leaves the main area as well, then flashes her tits at the boys. Mike saw the show, but Geoff missed it. It was good Geoff. It was good.

Liz gets busy smoking and being pouty. Soon after that, everyone goes to bed. Geoff tiptoes over to Frankie's spot, and tries to get into her pants again. They get so loud that Mike starts to complain, leading Liz to tell them all to shut up. She and Mike exchange glances, and Liz pulls her sleeping bag open, to offer him some sex as well. He just gives Liz a look of disgust, then rolls over and tells her to get some sleep too.

Back in the present, Liz trashes her magazines. The theory among the cops is that Liz somehow picked the lock to make her escape. Uh, say WHAT?? A teenaged girl who quivers over a dumb jock has the skill needed to pick a lock that's also a deadbolt. Bull. Shit. You. Stupid. Movie.

And by the way, this is a blog about slasher flicks. Does anyone ever die in this thing? I'm having my doubts. Someone had better die soon, or I'll find the film crew and start my own slasher. Nah, I'm just kidding...or AM I????

In the following scene, Doc Horwood watches as a smug-looking Martin gets into a car and waves at her. She asks a female cop(who conducted some of the interrogations to go down into the underground bunker to look for clues to clarify the events that occurred during the weeks that Liz and the others were down there.

In the next flashback, Mike is angrily packing his stuff and determined to find another exit. Liz decides that's what she wants to do as well. Then Frankie also votes to leave. Uh, this is all well and good, but you won't be going anywhere until you actually find another escape hatch. Dunbasses.

As Mike starts to climb back up to the hatch(???), he informs Liz that he intends to patch things up with Amber, the girl he broke up with at the start of the film. He starts to climb the ladder, then Geoff reminds him that he left a bag of weed behind. Geoff and Frankie beg him to stay, while Liz tries to sneak up to the hatch by herself.

Rocket scientists that they are, Liz and Mike find the hatch sealed up tight. Uhhhh, didn't we go over that already? Anyway, Liz climbs back down, so that Geoff can try it for himself. Then everyone starts to blame Liz, because they sort-of, maybe, kinda remember that she was the last person to get in, and that she slammed the hatch shut. While Liz decides to hide from the others, they find the door to an escape tunnel they were informed of earlier in the movie. Sadly, that door also won't budge.

At the crime scene around the hatch, the foresic team is having a hard time gathering useful evidence. There's a ton of DNA left in the hole--so much so, that it'll take the investigators months to sift through all of it. Where's Gil Grissom or Horatio Cane when you need them?

Alone at home, Liz tries to find something to eat, and picks up a cookie jar. Martin suddenly appears at the front door, and boy is he pissed off! Liz run out through the back door, after dropping the cookie jar, and Martin chases her through the wooded area behind her house.

They square off on a bridge overlooking a reservoir or dam, and Martin grabs Liz by her upper arms, forcing her to face him. He tells Liz that she ruined his life by naming him as the perpetrator, and she replies that he should have kept his mouth shut. The plot thickens...which is a good analogy, because this monstrosity is a slasher flick as much as I'm Batman...and it's thick like sludge.

So, back to London Bridge. *YAWN* While Martin is busy shouting at Liz, the shrink drives up to the house. Horwood finds the broken container on the floor, and Liz upstairs crying her eyes out. Liz is rocking back and forth on her bed, and she hugs the doctor when she sees her. After some more hysterics and begging, the shrink agrees to help Liz find a safer place to live. Uh, where the heck is Martin?

When Horwood tells Liz that she wants to hear the entire truth, Liz claims that there are still gaps in her memory, and that she's been getting confusing flashes of the events that transpired during the month of confinement. She tearfully begs the shrink to let her go back to the hole, to see if it jogs her repressed memories.

As Liz leads Doc Horwood past the crime scene tap and into the hatch, the other investigators get a phone call about Martin. They all rush out of the office, hop into their cars, and speed off to parts unknown. Did he go on a killing spree? Was he jaywalking? Do I care?

The flashback resumes, right at the point where Mike stepped off of the ladder to grab his weed stash. Liz climbs up, just as she did in the previous flashback, only this time, there's an actual plot twist: she has a key to the hatch!

Liz steps back down after locking the hatch, then stands back to watch the others freak out. When she's positive that none of them are watching her, Liz hides the key in her shoe. Then they discover that the water pipes are no longer giving them anything. They gather their entire water supply, then Geoff gives them a lesson in dehydration, and how it could kill them if they run out of their meager supply. When they do run out, they have 3-4 days left to live. Fun!

Liz starts to shed some crocodile tears, and they all rush over to console her. What follows that is yet another montage, in which we see them try to survive on small rations of water as the days and weeks pass. As Liz watches Mike while he sleeps, she hears someone moving around above them. He wakes up too, but doesn't hear the noise.

As Liz confesses doing all of this to the others, there's anothner flashback. Mike approaches Liz and kisses her, and then they start to get into some serious making out. Geoff wanders in, sees them, and interrupts to tell them that Frankie is very sick all of a sudden.

Liz finds Frankie puking into the toilet, and goes on and on about what a great kisser Mike is. Right about now would be a great time to hear the song "Crazy Bitch". When she finally notices that Frankie is gagging and puking her guts out, she offers Frankie a few feeble words of encouragement.

That evening, Liz and Mike screw like bunnies while Geoff tries to get some sleep. Later that same night, Liz decides to walk around. She calls Frankie's name, but there's no response. When Liz finds Frankie, she screams.

Geoff and Mike wake up and come running over to Liz. They see Frankie's body on the floor, with blood caked around her mouth. Geoff accuses Liz of killing her, then tries to perform CPR on the corpse. When that fails, he sobs and hugs her body close to his.

They wrap the body in plastic and drag her to a small room off to the side. After confessing to murder, Liz tells the shrink not to look at her in such a judgemental way. The autopsy of young, naked Keira Knightley's body...uh....um...

Wait, I seem to have lost my train of thought. What was I doing?

Oh, right. Autopsy. The medical examiner determines that the cause of death was heart failure. Back in the past, Geoff again blames Liz for Frankie's death, because the weekend getaway was her idea in the first place. Mike comes to her defense and assures Liz that she had nothing to do with Frankie's death(HA!), and Geoff eventually apologizes to her.

In the very next scene, Liz almost tells Mike about her key. What stops her? Well, it turns out that Geoff has been hiding extra food, and they both hear him open a can of either beer or soda. Mike tackles him to the ground, then bashes his head against the floor until he's dead. 2 down...

After he realizes what he's done, Mike breaks down. Unlike Frankie, they don't bother to cover Geoff or drag him out of the main chamber. As Mike takes big swigs from one of Geoff's stashed beverages, Liz proposes that they make a suicide pact before the dehydration gets into the later stages, but Mike argues that Geoff's supplies can hold them for a few more days. As she prepares to slit her wrist, Mike tells her that he loves her. Liz drops the knife and tells him the same.

Manipulative bitch that she is, Liz waits for Mike to fall asleep, then climbs up to the hatch for the final time. She takes a breath of fresh air, then Mike wakes up and confronts her. She admits that her plan was to make him love her, and he flies off the proverbial handle.

He tries to climb the ladder to get to Liz, but the chain ladder breaks. Mike falls to the ground, and gets impaled by the metal post the ladder was attached to. Liz watches him die, and begins to sob. She tells Dr. Horwood that it's better that Mike died, because now he can be youthful and perfect forever.

After her confession, Liz is told that she needs to tell her story again, to the investigators, but Liz refuses. When Horwood mentions that Martin could testify against her, there's another flashback of the scene where Martin confronted Liz on the bridge. He yelled at Liz about all of the lies she told, then dropped to his knees on the edge of the bridge. When he let go of the railing, Liz pushed him into the water.

After making THIS confession, the cops arrive. Liz rushes over to the police, and immediately concocts a story about how Dr. Horwood lured her into the hole with intent to harm her. Martin's body is fished out of the water, and they find a key to the hatch in his pocket.

As Horwood realizes that the cops believe Martin's death is a suicide, she stands by herself and watches Liz interact with several officers. Liz turns to look back at her, and smiles. The smile vanishes, and she goes back to pretending to be a victim. THE END.

Eh. I've seen worse, but I've also seen MUCH better films. Despite how scary it sounded on Netflix, it was about as far from a slasher as you could get. Even the four deaths were pretty poor...I'm still not entirely sure why Frankie's mouth was drenched in blood when they found her corpse, or how Liz was planning to get away with 4 murders without anyone from forensics uncovering her DNA all over the bodies(of Martin and Frankie, at least). Plus how would she explain to them how she got out??? I'm sorry, but picking the lock is a stupid explanation. 2 out of 5 killer trees for The Hole, and one of those points is purely for Keira Knightley's topless scenes.

And what did I learn after watching this one?

-Keira Knightley pretty. Me like.

-It's common practice to get someone to confess to murder, and forget to record it or have witnesses hear it too.

-Teen girls with mood swings are always believed more than psychiatrists who have a solid, professional reputation.

My next movie by mail is Tourist Trap, a freaky '80's slasher that seemed to be a major influence on the Paris Hilton remake of House of Wax. Not sure when I'll get to it, because I'm having surgery tomorrow, but I'll get to it as soon as possible. Have a good week!

April Fool's Day

Well, better late than never, I guess. Netflix, after sending me movies for my niece and nephews, movies to watch with Dad, and pretty much everything under the sun in my queue EXCEPT for my next slasher flick, finally decided to mail April Fool's Day to me. Not a remake, nor an unrelated slasher flick that shares the same name, but the actual 1986 horror-comedy. Alas, it's a DVD that has no extras, so I'll have to sum up the alternate ending after I finish watching. Ready? SPOILERS in 3....2....

All right, so AFD begins with some vacation videos, which is never entertaining. But it allows the movie to introduce us to the victims, uh I mean, characters. First up is an Irish-Catholic gal with the improbable name of Mary O'Reilly O'Toole O'Shea. Oh, bite me. Two seconds in, and I'm already starting to roll my eyes. The good news is that Mary nicely sums up the premise for us: Her friend Muffy just inherited an island with a mansion on it, and Muffy's invited her closest college friends to stay there during Spring Break.

She mentions "convent school"(is that actually the name for it? It doesn't sound right...), and mentions that she wants to work with "handicapped children". I'm going to pause the movie for a sec to go off on a rant...I hate the word "handicapped". See, it originated around the time of the Great Depression, referring to bums who would fake a disability, then hold out a cap for bystanders to put money into. A "handy cap" eventually became a "handicap". Nice. It's the disabled person's equivalent to being called the N-word...

Isn't learning fun, kids?

Anyway, Mary wants to work with disabled kids. Oh, and she reveals that she's a nymphomaniac named Nikki... Who's up next?

Ah, an alumni from the Friday the 13th franchise is up next. She plays Kit here, and her character in the Friday film she did get dressed up as Jason's mother at the end. So that one was, what, the second movie? The third one, maybe. I think it was the second one. Hey, gimme a break! I watch at least one of these a week! After awhile, they all start to blend together...

Well after all of that, Kit declines to say anything for the video. Next in line are Skip and Arch, the film's goofy comic relief characters. Arch, by the way, is portrayed by the same actor who played Biff in the Back to the Future films. Wow, so some of the cast are people who actually had movie careers. Nice. Skip is Muffy's cousin, and he seems to despise her side of the family because of their wealth. Let's keep an eye on him....Oh, and the guy behind the video camera is Chazz, a scruffy-looking slacker.

The movie briefly shifts the action to the island itself, where Muffy is hauling around some creepy props. An older woman named Clara is helping her, but looks concerned. Before Clara leaves to take a ferry to the mainland, Muffy says something rather ominous about the weekend with her friends being "bloody unforgettable".

After Clara departs, Muffy finds something from her disturbing childhood: a Jack-in-the-box toy. In a flashback, Muffy remembers the toy as a birthday gift. A sibling played a prank on her, by replacing Jack's head with a weird lizard-monster action figure head.

At the pier, we meet a few more characters. First up is Nan, a conservative student who is a more recent friend to Muffy. They met in the school's Drama department, which apparently is boring to Muffy's other friends. As a final brush-off, Arch picks up her luggage, makes a face, then drops the bags again. Kind of a dickish move, bro.

The ferry pulls in, and Chaz tells one of the dockworkers that his fly is open. When the guy checks, Chaz plants a loud kiss on him. Uhhhhh...all-righty, then. The captain of the ferry, a grizzled old man, urges them to hurry, because their group is the last one of the day. Kit tries to get him to wait a little longer for a few more people who are late, but he refuses. Luckily, the last couple of people drive up at that exact moment. They're Rob(Kit's boyfriend) and Harvey "Hal" Edison(he is in Muffy's Economics class). After the usual meet-and-greet, the ferry starts the journey to the Isle of Muff--which I do, by the way...

Skip lets his negative feelings bubble to the surface again, telling the others that if he wasn't geographically close, Muffy wouldn't have bothered to invite him on the weekend getaway. Bitter much? Chaz tries to pull the zipper prank on him, but Skip just tells him to "eat it". Then he pulls out a switchblade and challenges Arch to a game of "stretch", whatever that is. Oh, and Chaz gets a chuckle when he turns the camera on Rob, whose fly IS open.

Okay, so apparently "stretch" involves throwing a switchblade at the floor, then making your opponent "stretch" to grab it without falling. Sounds like a Redneck Olympic event. The captain of the ferry watches the "game" for a second or two, then turns his attention to Nikki, who appears to be undressing. Hubba, this chick is pretty attractive. A ferry-mate(that doesn't look or sound right, but I'll be damned if I can think of the correct term for him...) is watching the show, as is Hal, the preppy douchebag.

Hal decides to strike up a one-sided conversation with Nikki while she catches some rays in her bathing suit. His idea of an ice-breaker is to start making silly sex jokes about Muffy's name. Smooth, Don Juan. Chazz isn't having much better luck flirting with Nan. He pretends to sneeze on her, then mocks her when she attempts to tell him about the book that she's reading, Paradise Lost. He then shows her what he's been reading. I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with "shplornography". Then we get a montage of all of our couples boring each other to death with silly dialogue.

As the ferry pulls up to Muff Island *juvenile giggle*, Skip and Arch get into an argument about Stretch. Arch angrily informs Skip that he doesn't want to play anymore, then whips the knife at Skip. It lands in Skip's stomach, and he staggers backwards into the water. Nan's horrified scream gets the attention of the deckhand(HA! I thought of the word!), who dives into the cold water to rescue Skip. Then Rob jumps in as well. As they search under water for the body, Skip himself pops up, revealing that the switchblade was a fake.

As Skip and Arch celebrate their cleverness, Buck(the young deckhand) gets into trouble. He elects to moor the boat to the dock while in the water, because he was having trouble reaching the post from the deck of the ferry. As Buck continues to miss roping his target, he also misses seeing how close the ferry is getting to him. Oh, and the sheriff just happens to be nearby, in another, smaller boat.

Faster than you can say "massive head trauma", Buck gets dragged under the ferry, and becomes Harvey Dent, losing half of his face. The sheriff's boat pulls up, and a thrashing, screaming Buck is last seen speeding away toward the mainland, screaming "They did it! They did it!"

At that same instant, Muffy arrives to greet her guests. The sheriff watches the ferryman disappear in the distance, then asks Muffy if he can borrow her boat to get back to the mainland himself. Before he fetches the keys, he warns the group to stay on the island, in case he needs to question them or press charges. On the way to the mansion, Skip bitterly tells Rob and Kit that nothing bad ever happens to Muffy. Not true, Skip....you showed up!

In the entry hall, Muffy tells the group that the property won't belong to her until she turns 21. The invitees waste no time settling in, making cracks about Muffy's money, her decorating style, and so on. Nice friends.

In the kitchen, the girls prepare hot dogs, and take a sex quiz. Arch and Chazz decide to film the garden, while mocking Nikki. Hal finds a library or study, and wastes no time stealing cigars from a nearby desk.

As night falls, a very drunk Skip again whines that being poor sucks.Nan tries to talk him down from his depression, but he just sinks deeper. Inside, the rest of the group get the dining room ready for dinner. As everyone takes a seat, Nan discovers that her seat has a whoopie cushion on it, and everyone cracks up. Arch then leans back, and the legs of his chair collapse, sending him rolling onto the floor. As the group laughs even harder, Skip remains outside, drinking and howling.

Inside, Muffy's friends speculate about Buck's condition, then they talk about what they'll all be doing after graduation(short answer: not much.). Muffy makes a toast to her friends, and everyone finds that their glasses are dribble-glasses, another prank. Yay.

After the meal, Hal lights one of he cigars, and starts to rehearse the best way to ask Muffy for money. In the bedrrom next door, Arch and Chazz discover some S&M gear, and start playing with it. Hal discovers several newspaper clippings about mysterious accidents and tragedies on the island, and Chazz walks in on him reading one. After Chazz leaves, the cigar in Hal's mouth explodes.

Arch starts putting stuff away in the bathroom, and finds a buttload of drug paraphenalia in his medicine cabinet. As Nikki discovers more kinky gear, Arch pulls the doorknob off of his bedroom door, effectively trapping himself in the room. Oh, and Kit and Rob find a painting in their room has eyes that move. They remove the picture from the wall, and discover a cat-clock underneath, which explains the moving eyes. Rob puts the painting in the hall, and swiftly closes the door. In Nan's room, she hears a baby crying. It turns out to be a tape recorder playing the sound, but she looks pretty upset. Muffy is briefly seen downstairs, turning out lights and getting ready for bed.

Rob and Kit get undressed for bed, and Kit turns out to have a very curvaceous figure. Rob is angry because it turns out that his plans after college have blown up in his face, and he doesn't know what to do about it. He shuts off the light by the bed, and a lamp across the room turns on. Turning off that light turns a third one on, and so on. While Kit giggles, Rob finally resorts to unscrewing the lightbulb in the lamp by the bed, and they go to sleep.

Arch tries to seduce Muffy in the hallway and fails, then tries opening random bedroom doors. He hears moaning behind one, finds the second one either stuck or locked, then walks into the third one and sees Chazz and Nikki screwing like bunnies. He eventually settles for reading porn. I swear, this movie has a 1-track mind.

Skip is still outside and still drunk, staggering around the dock. He finds a plant that he believes to be marijuana, and uses his knife to cut off a few leaves. He heads toward the boathouse, happily sniffing at his new treasure. Okay, so the movie has a 2-track mind. I stand corrected.

In the dark boathouse, Skip does the typical slasher "Hello? Anyone in here?" routine, so his fate is pretty much sealed. Another slasher film cliche, a cat, leaps onto Skip's face from out of nowhere. (Incidentally, I saw the film Horrible Bosses this weekend, and it featured a really funny running gag about this...go see it, the movie's funny as Hell) Skip recovers from his fright, flicks open a lighter, then is snatched into the darkness by an unseen assailant. Bye, Skip.

The following morning, Hal gets a quick peek at Nikki with her shirt open. Muffy is found in the kitchen looking like she had a fight with a rabid squirrel, and she flees upstairs to get dressed. Right away, Arch notices that Skip is missing, but no one else seems concerned. As the others horse around with a soccer ball on the lawn, Nan opts to watch from the porch. I guess she's still upset by the tape recorder she found.

Nan spots Muffy heading toward a small house(looks like it was built for children to play in), and decides to confront her. The movie then decides to follow Kit and Rob instead. Geez, if I jingle my keys, d'ya think the camera crew will start filming me?

Kit and Rob enter the boathouse, and start to make out. As Rob gets Kit to the floor, Kit turns her head and sees Skip's corpse float by, underneath the boathouse. Rob runs outside and starts to yell at Skip, assuming that it's yet another prank. Here's my question: How would the killer know exactly when to release the body, if Rob and Kit spontaneously decided on that specific spot for their romantic private time? And if the killer didn't position the body to float by at that exact moment, what are the odds that a body that was killed ther previous evening would just remain in that area until someone happened upon that exact spot at that exact time???

So, Rob and Kit get back to the mansion, and tell the others about what they saw. When, as a group they realize that Skip hasn't been seen by anyone since last night, they conduct a search of the island. Chazz almost immediately finds the switchblade, which is broken, and shows it to Rob and Arch. They come up with the idea that Buck may have done something to Skip, out of a desire for revenge.

Back in the kitchen, Muffy has a run-in with Nan. Nan tearfully confronts Muffy about the tape, and Muffy denies any knowledge of it. From a stairway nearby, Hal hears the entire conversation.

Arch has somehow wandered into the woods by himself. He doesn't realize it yet, but a pretty aggressive-looking snake is lingering near his feet, waiting to pounce. As he moves around slowly, Arch steps into a trap, and is yanked off of his feet. While he swings around upside-down, the snake raises itself up to strike. Then a mystery figure walks up to Arch, kicks the snake away, and Arch suddenly looks very afraid.

Nan has also wandered off by herself, and found a stone bench to sit on. She starts crying again, and a strong wind comes out of nowhere. Hey, maybe Nan's like Carrie, and can summon, um, air to, uh....I'm just going to shut up now. Sorry.

As the searchers compare notes, they realize that Arch is now also missing. Kit and Nikki decide that it's time to call the police, and a spaced-out Muffy gives them the sheriff's extension. Unfortunately, the phones on the island seem to be malfunctioning. Surprise, surprise.

Muffy is fixated on making tea, and brings Kit every flavor she could find. Kit busies herself with the tea. hoping to snap Muffy out of her weird phase, and discovers that there's a problem with the water not flowing through the pipes. Muffy explains that when the pipes aren't working, they use a well on the property.

Hal and Nikki go off to look for the well, and find it soon enough. Hal tries to flirt with Nikki again, but she blocks him every time. He gets so flustered that he loses the water bucket. Nikki has a flashlight, but that also ends up falling into the well. When she notices small metal rungs on the interior wall of the well, Mary suggests that Hal should climb down to retrieve their stuff. After a short debate, Hal turns out to be a wimp, so Mary climbs into the well.

After descending several rungs, Nikki slips. She regains her balance before falling, but then the rung snaps off in her hand, and Nikki drops into the water. Hal starts freaking out and calling her name, but she seems fine...until Arch's severed head bobs up next to her in the water. Hal tries to rescue her by climbing into the well with Nikki, who finds another body, a female. Hmmm, I don't remember any of the women disappearing yet. Strange...

So, where was I? Oh yeah, so Nikki and Hal are now in the well. Hal reaches toward Nikki, and she grabs his hand, but then the movie goes abruptly back to the mansion. Hal and Nikki were magically transported inside, where Kit tries to convince Nikki that it's safe because they're inside the house. Oh, and Muffy freaks out Nan by bringing her a glass of water. When Muffy is asked where the guns are stored, she replies that there aren't any. Great. Maybe they can defeat the killer with joy buzzers and whoopie cushions!

The phone starts working again, and it's the cops! Rob tells the Constable(sorry, I thought earlier that they called him "Sheriff") about the dead bodies, and I guess the female one was Nan. Over the phone, Rob is informed that Buck is still hospitalized, and then says something about Muffy. Rob hangs up, and plays dumb. He tells them that the police will arrive in the morning, and that they should all stay together until he arrives. That leads into the Lock Every Door and Window Montage. This movie has more filler than the meat at Taco Bell.

In the study, Kit finds a picture of 2 children who seem to be twins. Muffy enters the room quietly, and creeps her out with a thousand-yard stare. As Kit discreetly returns the photo to its place on the table, Muffy tells her that people seem to get lost at sea on a pretty regular basis. After that, there's a brief moment where we see Hal removing a gun from his luggage. Hmmm....

Everyone except Rob and Muffy decide to wait in the living room. While sitting around, Nikki suddenly wonders out loud why Muffy is always wearing the kind of shoes a nurse would wear. Then Hal mentions the argument between Muffy and Nan.

That leads into a new discussion, where they each talk about the strange items they've been finding in their bedrooms. After Hal tells them about Nan finding items implying that she had an abortion, Nikki shows the group the kinky sex gear that was in her room. Chazz lies and says that he found nothing. Then Hal admits that he found newspaper clippings about car accidents in his room--but he also denies that it means anything to him.

As they all start to get angry with each other, Kit reminds them that Muffy is a close friend. Muffy walks in, glares at them, and announces that she's going up to her room. After she leaves, everyone else more or less agrees to do the same, figuring that they'll be safe as long as they stay put in their rooms. When only Hal, Kit and Rob remain, Rob says that he plans to find a way into the attic, to watch for the constable. Hal promises to watch the stairs.

When Muffy gets to her room, she sits on her bed and begins wringing her hands. Hal, true to his word, climbs about a third of the way up the staircase, then sits down to begin his guard duty. Chazz tries to sweet-talk Nikki into staying in his room, but she's packing her belongings at a furious pace. Her plan is to walk down to the pier and wait there for rescue, but Chazz hates the idea of her being out there alone. He resorts to donning different S&M masks to lighten the mood, and it actually does make Nikki smile and giggle. She still walks out of the room, leaving Chazz mumbling on the bed in the mask.

Hal looks up when Nikki walks by, then goes back to reading a newspaper. When Nikki walks back into the bedroom to get more stuff, she finds Chazz not moving, holding his hands over his crotch. As she makes fun of him, Chazz continues to stay in that position, so Nikki tries slapping his arm. That causes his hand to move, revealing a large bloodstain on his crotch. Ow!

As Nikki slowly backs away from the body, the closet door opens behind her. She sees the killer emerge, then the screen goes black briefly. Let me guess: we'll see her body later, instead of getting to see the actual murder.

Kit and Rob are pulling a "Scooby Doo", investigating the mansion, room by room, to turn up clues. In the dark, dusty attic Rob finally tells Kit about his phone conversation with the Constable. He was told to keep everyone together, and not to let them go off by themselves, or go anywhere with Muffy alone...

As the attic search continues, Kit sees something weird. It's the display of dolls from the dinner table, except that the "dead" ones are now in a pile away from the rest. Before they can do any more investigating, Rob hears the Constable's boat arrive. They leave the attic to round up the rest of the group.

Kit finds Nikki's door locked, so she goes to Hal's room next. The door shuts behind her, and the knob does the falling-off trick again, so Kit creeps around in the dark until she finds another door. On the other side, she meets up with Rob again.

After they compare notes and realize that everyone else has vanished, Rob decides to enter Nikki's room. Kit tells him that the door is locked up tight, but the door opens easily for him. Inside, there's blood everywhere. They run out, but Kit insists on checking on Muffy first. She feels something pushing against the door and forces it open, only to find Hal dangling by a noose right in front of the door.

They run out of the house toward the dock, but Constable Potter is nowhere in sight. Rob calls his name a few times, before deciding to look in the boathouse. Kit gets the willies, and begs him not to go in, so they check out the boat instead. The key is missing, but Kit finds a letter from a mental hospital. According to the hospital, someone with Muffy's last name recently escaped from the facility, and is a dangerous, psychotic individual.

Kit points out that Muffy has been at college, not in a hospital, for the last 3-4 years. Rob then mentions that Muffy mentioned a spare key for the boat, but it's back in the mansion. They sneak back to the house, crouching and trying to be a silent as possible. They find a basement window that's open, and get back in that way.

Right away, they find a trail of blood. The trail ends at the furnace, where they discover Muffy's clothes. Then they find a series of scrawled words on the wall--a record of height. Except that Muufy's name isn't the only one written on the wall...next to it, on the other side of the height line, is the name "Buffy". Kit remembers the picture in the study, and realizes that the letter from the psychiatric facility was about Buffy, not Muffy.

As she puts it all together for poor, dumb Rob, he seems to be distracted by something behind Kit. She spins around, and sees the painting with the eyes cut out staring at them. Rob grabs a metal bar to use as a weapon, then instructs Kit to move the painting. Behind it, they find that the eyes belong to Muffy's severed head, which rolls toward the screaming pair.

Outside, Buffy closes the basement window. They can see that she's holding a hammer, which she uses to nail the window shut. Rob and Kit jog up to the kitchen, where they see Buffy staring at them from a window. As they scurry around to look for the spare boat key, Buffy uses her knife to force the door latch to unlock.

Rob gets himself locked in a pantry, just as Buffy gets into the kitchen. She slowly approaches Kit, who backs away into the dining room. As Rob screams at Kit to run away, Kit begs Buffy to leave her alone. Buffy eventually climbs over the dining room table and corners Kit, raising the blade to deliver a fatal stab. Unable to do anything else, Kit gets the door behind her open, and runs into the next room.

She sees all of her friends, in different poses, all around the room. At first glance, no one's moving, so my first thought was that Buffy pulled a Happy Birthday To Me-style ending, or that perhaps Kit was hallucinating. But then Kit turns to stare at Buffy, turns back again, and Chazz is building a house of cards, Skip and Arch are shooting the shit, and Nan is reading a book, so...yeah, they're alive.

Kit faces Muffy/Buffy once again, and her friend demonstrates that the knife has a retractable blade. Kit screams in anger, and everyone begins laughing. April Fool's! From the pantry, Rob tearfully yells out to Kit how much he loves her, and a hand grabs him. It's Buck, still mangled up! He says, "I love you too, babe," and Rob punches him in the half-face. Then Buck kisses him on the cheek, pulls off the fake gore attached to half of his face, and sticks it to Rob's face.

Buck unlocks the pantry door, and Rob runs screaming into the library with the others. They see the fake gore hanging off of his cheek, and everyone starts laughing again. Then Muffy tells her friends how much she loves them, and reveals why she set up such an elaborate plan in the first place...

See, Muffy inherits the property on her next birthday, but the place is pretty expensive to keep up. Muffy, after doing some research, came up with the idea of opening up the mansion as a bed and breakfast, with a roleplaying/murder theme. As each person was "killed", they were told what was happening, and even helped Muffy plant clues and scare the others. Oh, and Buck is a makeup artist and the Constable is Uncle Frank, but the old man running the ferry is just a guy who runs people to and from the mainland.(Oh, and we also find out that it was the ferryman who saved Arch from the snake...and that Arch shit his pants. TMI...)

It's also revealed that Skip is actually Muffy's twin brother, and that Muffy didn't anticipate anyone bringing a gun along or having a bad reaction to her props(like Nan and the tape recorder). Then they party. A lot. Arch and Skip make the fake Arch head drink, Chazz makes the fake Muffy head go down on him, and Kit makes sure that everyone hoses Muffy down with champagne bottles. Heck, even Nan gets wasted, and finds out that the ferryman is her soulmate.

But wait! There's more! As the party winds down, a very tipsy Muffy stumbles off to bed. She passes by the noose that was used earlier, and finds a wrapped present on her bed. It's the Jack-in-the-box that was used to scare her in the first scene. She walks up to it, and sloooooooooooooowly begins to turn the crank. When a tiny harlequin pops up, Muffy sighs with relief--then a hand comes up and slits her throat, from ear to ear!

Muffy gasps and clutches her neck, only to discover that there's no wound. Nan pops up behind her, hugs her, then whispers, "April Fools" in her ear. She looks into the camera and smiles, then the little clown hanging out of the toy winks. THE END.

Except that it's not the original ending. In the original script, which the novelization was based on, Skip and a few others go back to the island after the others have left. He wants to kill Muffy becase of her wealth, but he gets killed in the ensuing fight. It makes a good surprise ending, but the other ending fits the themes of friendship and togetherness a bit better. Eh, either way I'm giving April Fool's Day 3.75 killer trees out of 5. If it had shown a little more of the attacks or the gore, I'd have given it at least a 4 out of 5, for the nostalgia.

And what have I learned from this week's slasher?

-I like the 1980's.
-A book can be gorier than a film. Go figure.
-A guy can go underwater, apply latex to his face, then emerge from the water and act his ass off. Wow!

I've heard that one of the direct-to-DVD films bearing the same name is a remake, but I haven't heard too much about its' quality. Anybody seen it? If so, comment on the remake, and let me know if I should see it or not. My next film came in early(for once...), so the next movie will be a British thriller called The Hole. See you on the other side!

Final Destination

2 weeks ago-ish, I compared the Urban Legend franchise to the Final Destination films, because, really, there are quite a few similarities between them. Both have a fun, scary first film, which is followed by sequels that gradually become less and less effective as they come out; both try(with varying degrees of success) to tie the original to the sequels; and both franchises waste their potential by recycling material over and over again. But this is the first Final Destination, so it's a pretty cool movie. Watch along with me as many deaths(and SPOILERS!!!) follow...

Okay, so let's have a little background on these films first. Each movie in the series opens with a huge disaster, resulting in many, many deaths...so far, there have been 2 disasters involving automobiles, a plane crash, a rollercoaster malfunction, and a suspension bridge collapsing in the next one. So, a main character always "sees" the tragedy before it actually happens, and they convince others to escape before the accident can claim their lives. Got it? Good, then let's get started...

Okay, so as the film opens, we meet Alex, our protagonist. He's your typical teenager, about to embark on an adventure with his French class, a trip to Paris. Sweet! After the opening credits, Alex is in his bedroom packing for the trip, and his parents walk in to help. As his mother starts to rip an old airline tag from Alex's bag, he tries to stop her, citing that he thinks it's bad luck to remove the tag(some nonsense about the last flight the bag was on landing safely, so the tag would be lucky). She shrugs off his superstition, and rips the tag off anyway. Then Alex's father tells him to live it up on his trip to Paris, and Alex gets a look on his face. It seems to imply either that he's worried about the trip, or massively constipated. My money is on the latter.

That night, a strange breeze moves through his bedroom. I guess that even Death can have bad gas. A voice calling his name wakes Alex up, but he rolls over and continues to sleep. A weird glitch on his clock-radio turns the time, 1:00, briefly into 180, the flight number of the plane he's going to be aboard.

The next morning, the class arrives at the airport, and this gives us an opportunity to meet our victims...There's Tod, Alex's best friend; George, Tod's older brother; Carter, the stereotypical wiseass jock of the group; Billy Hitchcock, played by Stifler himself, as a clueless dweeby kid; Clear Rivers, a damned hot artist/free spirit type; Terry, Carter's girlfriend; and Valerie Lewton, one of 3 French teachers chaperoning the group. Oh, there are many, many others, but this is our main group.

Alex checks in his luggage, and is told that the flight information is the same as his birthday. After that, Clear drops a book, which opens on a picture of a crash. Weird. Then Alex is convinced by Tod that they should go to the bathroom together. Hey, I thought only chicks did that! While taking a dump, Alex realizes that the PA system is playing a John Denver song...not a good omen, given that Denver died in a plane crash.

Anyway, it's finally time to board the plane. On his way into the plane, Alex starts to notice more weird omens: he sees the plane from a window, as lightning flares up in the background; signs of rust and deterioration on the outer door frame; and the plastic handle holding his seat tray up snaps off in his hand. As Alex starts to get worried, the plane pulls away from the gate. Tod tries to arrange for a seat next to a lovely teen fox, but Alex screws it up for him, by agreeing to change his seat so that the girl can sit next to her equally attractive friend. Christa and Blake, are their names, I think.

Then it happens. Turbulence shakes the plane at first, giving everyone a not-so-nice jolt. The jolt settles down, then becomes a plane-quake! As people get jostled and luggage goes flying, the safety-breathing masks fall from the ceiling....it's a great movie to watch if you're about to take your first flight.

Everyone is screaming and going nuts, and that's when one of the ceiling panels starts showering electrical sparks over everyone, and a wall on one side of the plane explodes outward. People on that side of the plane literally get sucked out of the aisle, seat and all. As the plane starts a sharp descent, a ball of flame travels down the length of the plane, enveloping Alex and the rest of the passengers in a fiery ball. The flesh melts from their faces, and--

Alex wakes up, still waiting for the plane to take off. Blake and Christa are again asking Alex if he could change his seat. Alex rushes past them to where Tod is seated, and pulls off the tray handle, all the while sweating bullets. While the rest of the passengers watch, Alex loudly announces that the plane will explode.

Naturally, this declaration isn't exactly welcome news. Tod grabs Alex to try to calm him down, and while a male flight attendant tries to get him to sit again, Carter steps up to try to take a swing at Alex. As he two boys are pulled apart, a group of passengers also exit the flight:Tod, Billy, Clear, Valerie Lewton, and Terry join Carter and Alex in the exodus from Flight 180.

The other French teacher, Larry, also joins the group, and that causes a bit of a problem for the flight as well...with only 1 teacher on board, who's going to chaperone the remaining students? After reasoning with airline personnel, Val convinces Larry to get back to the flight. She reasons that she and the remaining students can always catch the next one. As the plane starts to pull away from the terminal, she sits with Alex and asks him to tell her what happened. Alex describes his vision, and Carter drags Terry over to openly mock him.

Alex decides that enough is enough, so he leaps up and attacks Carter. As security personnel try to seperate the boys again, Billy stands at the window, shakes his head, and watches as the plane blows up in mid-air. The explosion causes the airport's windows to shatter, and everyone stares at the aftermath in shock, Alex included. Then the survivors all turn to stare at Alex.

In the aftermath of the explosion, Alex and the others who walked off of Flight 180 are brought to a holding area for questioning. The others continue to stare at Alex, so he tells them that he didn't cause the crash. When Val Lewton asks him if there are any other survivors, he replies that he doesn't know. At that point, a grief counselor comes in, accompanied by Federal agents Weine and Schreck. They announce that, one by one, they want to get all of the varying accounts of what happened, and how.

Naturally, they start by questioning Alex. He tells them about his dream, but they try at first to accuse him of being on drugs. When that goes nowhere, they accuse him of doing something to the plane beforehand, but they have no proof.

What follows is a montage of all of the surviving group answering to the Feds. Each one talks about the guilt they feel about leaving loved ones behind. Clear, who had no friends among the survivors, admits that she followed the others simply because she had an instinct that Alex was telling the truth. After the interrogations end, the families of the survivors are allowed to see them. Everyone has a tearful reunion except for Clear, who is left standing alone. Alex and his parents offer her a ride home, which she accepts. She doesn't say much on the journey, and gets out of the car almost as silently, walking to her home through a path flanked by trees.

Once he's back in his own home again, Alex finally breaks down and mourns his classmates. Long after his parents fall asleep, Alex finds himself glued to the television, watching as searchers try to find other survivors or clues about what caused the explosion. Alex starts to get upset again, but a storm outside distracts him. He sees a massive bolt of lightning hit the street near his home.

The story then catches up with the survivors, 39 days after the explosion. I have to chuckle at that because none of the sequels ever attempted to give their characters that kind of time to resume their lives; in most of the sequels, the survivors start dying almost immediately. I seriously doubt we'll ever see that kind of restraint in any future installments either.

Anyway, the students of the school, their families, and the families of the deceased are attending the unveiling of a memorial statue dedicated to the tragedy, a gigantic eagle taking flight, and an area for the names of the deceased. Ugh. As Alex turns around to spot his fellow death-cheaters, he spies the 2 FBI guys watching the ceremony from behind the audience.

The ceremony winds up, and the survivors all form a line, for each to place a rose in front of the memorial. Carter and Alex have a brief conflict, followed by StifleBilly asking Alex to predict his death-date. Then Alex freaks out Miss Lewton, before sharing a nice moment with his best buddy, Tod. To top it off, Clear approaches Alex, tells him that she owes him her life, and they get caught together by a newspaper photographer.

Tod reads a little speech about how unpredictable life is(Thanks, Captain Obvious!), and it seems to worry Alex. Then we get to watch a scene that night, in which Tod pops zits and plucks out nasal hairs. Hey, remember when I complimented the movie for not jumping right into the death scenes? Well, I changed my mind. Kill Tod, movie...kill him before he reaches his anal warts!

Death enters the bathroom through a window. Funny, because I always thought Death was either Adam Carolla or Norm McDonald, but he's a breeze. Maybe Death blew a fart into the room.

Tod feels the sudden chill and turns around, but sees nothing out of the ordinary. As he shuts the window, Death's flatulence moves through the room, finally settling on closing the bathroom door. Tod, of course, hears and sees nothing, but does take a crap. Why is this movie so obsessed with crapping? Anyway, Death decides to loosen up the back of the toilet, enough for a small amount of blue water to begin leaking onto the floor.

While Tod is waiting to die, Alex is turning his own bedroom into Plane Crash HQ, with books, maps ans documents spread out everywhere. He picks up a newspaper to read about the memorial ceremony he was just attending(I guess his short-term memory is worse than my own!), then switches to a skin mag. Hey, perhaps Death will give him a masturbation-related kill-scene! Has that ever happened in a slasher flick before?

Tod prepares to shave, despite his utter lack of facial hair, and Death switches from wind form to toilet water. Ooooh, scary blue water!! It moves toward Tod's feet, and he insists on shaving. As he nicks a spot under his chin, an ominous shadow moves past the window, catching his eye.

As he faces the mirror again, The Toilet Water of Death creeps ever closer. Tod decides to shove some tweezers up his nose(a smart move in this franchise...), and then plugs in a small boombox next to the sink. When the music playing turns out to be ANOTHER John Denver song, Tod unplugs it and walks away.

Just to mock me, the movie decides to return to Alex and his porn collection. He's drooling over an "article" featuring a naked blond, and a caption reading "Tymme Has Come Today", but an owl startles him. He throws the porn mag at the owl to scare it, and his oscillating fan shreds the page he was on, flinging a small scrap of paper onto his knee. It reads "Tod"...Uh Ohhhhh...

Tod decides to take a shower, but his mother's underwear is hanging up. As he starts the task of moving the clothing aside, the Death Water makes a beeline for him, causing Tod to slip and fall forward. The clothesline wraps around his neck several times, and he accidentally turns the faucet in the tub on. Tod kicks and struggles with the tight cord around his neck, to no avail, and blood vessels in his eyes burst. Downstairs, his father is drunk and asleep, oblivious to Tod's struggle.

Tod spots a small pair of scissors just out of his reach, but tries to get them anyway. He fails, and his last few seconds of life are spent having death spasms. After Tod dies, the Blue Water of Death retreats back into the toilet again. I know they just ran the film backwards, but it's still a neat effect.

Alex is outside, trying to get to Tod's house. He sees the emergency vehicles and flashing lights from a distance, and runs to the house. He asks 2 EMT's what happened, then notices that agents Schreck and Weine are watching him very closely. He also spots Clear behind a tree, and she indicates that he should leave very fast! Before he can do that, Alex is stopped dead in his tracks by the sight of Tod's body being brought out on a stretcher. Tod's father sees him and accuses him of causing Tod's death by filling his head with guilt and remorse. Um, and who was drunk and asleep while Tod was being killed?

After watching the ambulance take the corpse of his best friend away, Alex takes a long walk and has a Forrest Gump moment with a leaf. Life is like a plane of corpses! When he looks around, Alex realizes that he's standing in front of Clear's home. Her dog approaches him, and Alex and Clear have a discussion about the events of the previous evening. She tells him that the reason she left the plane was because she had a "feeling" that he knew the plane was in danger, so she went with that instinct.

Alex puts forth the theory that Tod's death might be the first in a series, then wishes that he could see Tod one last time. Clear responds by suggesting that they break into the funeral home, which they end up doing. They do some searching, and when they discover Tod's corpse on a slab, it jumps and scares the holy crap out of them(and me!),

We then meet the coolest character in the FD franchise: Bludworth. He's a mortician who is in every FD movie except one, so far. Anyway, he tells them that Tod's body jumped because it was injected with swomething called a "vascular flush". Bludworth also informs them that Tod's death wasn't an accident, because there are no accidents.Nope, Death has a design, and everyone's a part of it. Deep, dude.

Bludworth also tells them something that you'll hear a variation of in every movie: Death's design can be changed, but Death will work on claiming any lives that were missed the first time around, by making a new design. The rules vary from movie to movie, but that's the basic gist of it.

After letting the mortician freak them out, Alex and Clear grab a coffee at an outdoor cafe. They discuss recognizing the omens and signs of their impending deaths, and Alex shows her the scrap of paper that had Tod's name on it. While Clear tells him that she doesn't think "signs" are anything but bullshit, Alex sees another one, a large bus or truck reflected in the cafe's window, but not on the actual street.

While this is going on, Carter and Terry drive by, see Alex and Clear talking, and Carter swerves to pull up to the cafe. In the process of making his illegal turn, Carter comes very close to killing Billy, who is out riding his bike. Oh, and Val steps out of the cafe to see the commotion Carter's erratic driving has caused. Hail! Hail! The gang's all here!

Alex tries to explain to the entire group the theory about Death's design, but no one--including Clear-- wants to accept the concept. In fact, Terry informs the rest of the Flight 180 survivors that as a young teen woman, she's not going to die, and certainly not any time soon. Everyone looks sort of ashamed for listening to Alex as he ranted and raved.

And then a bus kills her as she backs herself into the street. Awesome.

Alex goes home, sits on the couch, and calmly sips a glass of cold water while watching television. Clear calls him, but even though his father urges him to take the call, Alex refuses. Then the news report he's watching has an update about the explosion's cause: faulty wiring and combustible fluids may have made a "trail" through the cabin, under certain seats. Anyone wanna guess which seats were outlined in the news diagram?

Alex traces the path, then holds his trace over the seating chart he saved from earlier. Just as he expected, the key areas of the explosion were all seats that were supposed to be occupied by the survivors. Not only that, but the survivors are now dying in the same order they would have been killed on the plane. Now that he's cracked Death's new design, Alex follows the chart with his finger to discover who is next on the list: Val Lewton, the hot teacher.

Val's at home, packing her house up. She tells someone on the phone that she doesn't feel comfortable going back to teaching at the high school, and everywhere she goes in town brings her bad memories. She looks out at her front yard, and sees Alex standing there like a stalker. She says goodbye to her caller, then dials the police.

Alex drops lower to the ground, then approaches her car and examines the tires. As he's testing out how sturdy they are, Shreck and Weine drive up, and question Alex about his actions. Val watches as Alex gets in their car and is driven away. Though the window's closed, Death still makes his presence known, by moving past the curtain.

In an interrogation room, Alex shares his idea about the order in which the Flight 180 survivors will die. Neither Weine nor Shreck believe the idea(DUH!), and they start to mock him a bit. While they keep Alex squirming, Val is still getting her shit packed, and boiling water while listening to a John Denver record. Why John Denver? Why not Buddy Holly, or Richie Valens? How about Elvis, or maybe John Lennon? I mean, we already saw how Denver tied into the plane crash as an omen, but unless a plane falls on Val while she's eating, it really doesn't work....

Oh yeah. I was watching this. So Val fills a kettle with water, and sees the shadow of Death pass by. When she looks behind her, nothing's there of course, so she tries to wipe the reflective surface of the kettle to calm her nerves. She puts the kettle on the stove, lights the stove with a match, and waits to die. There's a brief scene with the investigators again, but they let Alex leave, because they can't prove that he had any involvement in the deaths of either Tod or Terry.

And now, at last, we get to watch Val die. She freaks out over a coffee mug and pulls a bottle of alcohol out of the fridge. As she drops some ice cubes into it, a cracks appears at the base of the mug, and alcohol starts to pour out. She puts her drink down to resume packing, oblivious to the fact that there is liquid now dripping into her computer, which is starting to smoke.

She finally sees the smoke and approaches the PC, only to get her throat slit when the computer starts to explode a bit. On her way to the kitchen to try to stop the bleeding, she bumps into her record player, and John Denver starts singing again.

On his way home, Alex sees an old man burning leaves, and gets another premonition. At about the same time, Val staggers into her kitchen, unaware that her spilled drink has started a fire behind her. The alcohol trail on the floor soon turns the kitchen into a fireball too, just as Alex arrives.

While Alex tries to come up with a plan to save his teacher, Val spots a dish towel hanging over her knife rack. She tries to grab it from the floor, and succeeds int getting a huge knife imbedded in her chest. Alex gets into the house and follows the trail of blood to the kitchen, but before he can attempt to remove the huge blade from his teacher, a chair is knocked over, hammering the knife all way into Val's body.

Alex removes the knife anyway, and seems shocked when it doesn't magically bring her back from the dead. Maybe he thought she was a vampire?? With his fingerprints now all over the knife, Alex runs outside again, where Billy sees him. The house explodes, sending both boys flying to the ground. Alex runs away, leaving Billy to wonder what happened.

Shreck and Weine pay a visit to Clear, to ask her what she thinks of Alex and his theories regarding Death. While she's evading their questions, Billy is trying not to get run over by Carter. Using a pocketknife, Carter tries to add Terry's name to the Flight 180 memorial. Clear meets up with Billy and Carter, and they decide to look for Alex, because he knows which one of them will die next.

In Carter's car, he shuts Billy up by telling him that he's next on the list. They decide to look for Alex at the beach(???), and Clear does find him, sitting on the sand and staring up at the stars. He wonders out loud if Flight 180 might have survived in some alternate universe. This prompts Clear to tell Alex that she used to be afraid that her parents would die....and they did. Well, her dad anyway, while disrupting a robbery at a convenience store. The mother remarried, and that sent Clear packing.

In the car, they all ask Alex what he knows about the order in which Death will claim them. Carter somehow gets the idea in his head that he'll be next, so he freaks out. After a brief conversation about fate, Carter decides to floor the gas pedal. As the car goes through red lights and speeds past stop signs, Alex tries to reason with Carter. Alex gets a brief premonition about a speeding train, then Carter stops the car on some train tracks.

Everyone gets out of the vehicle except Carter, who tries to play it cool. That works out great, until he realizes that the car won't start, his seatbelt is jammed, and the doors refuse to unlock. Oops. With the help of Alex, Carter finally exits through the window, just as the car is torn to pieces by the train. Oh, and Billy gets decapitated.

As the final 3 survivors argue about what happened, Alex realizes that his intervention is what saved Carter, which made Billy next in line to die. Police sirens can be heard in the distance, so Carter urges Clear and Alex to find a place to hide.

The hideout is a small house in the woods, which Alex tries to set up to be safer. Sharp objects get taped up, most things objects get put away, then Alex eats something that looks dog food. A breeze starts a chain reaction in the room, and Alex narrowly misses getting stabbed by something that gets stuck in a door that he shuts. He finds hooks all over the floor, then yells at Death like the lunatic that he is.

After a short scene between Clear and the investigators, Alex reads an article about Flight 180, and realizes that he's not next on the list. Since he never changed seats with the girls in his premonition, his life wasn't meant to be the next to end, Clear's was.

Clear looks out her bedroom window, just as some freak lightning hits a telephone pole. The phone gets knocked out, as does the power to the house. As Clear realizes her predicament, Alex escapes from the cops in a canoe.

Clear lights a candle, and makes her way through the dark house. her dog barks as another chain reaction is about to get underway, then the movies shifts back to Alex. He reaches the other side of the lake/pond/river/God-made bathtub, starts running again, and is nearly caught when the cops drive right up to him. He jogs through the forest, nearly gets his head ripped open by a jagged branch, the knocks himself out and falls into a puddle, face-first.

Clear isn't having much better luck. She sees the chain reaction that Death is about to set in motion, but stops long enough to try to save her dog from being killed. A flimsy pool bursts, sending water everywhere, then the live power lines snake around, getting dangerously close to the water. Clear climbs a fence just as the power line finds the water. Death's Shadow passes by once more, so Clear climbs to her house's roof, and tries to get herself to a part of the yard that isn't electrified.

Clear breaks an upstairs window, just as Death finds her. She runs through the house, and Death keeps barely missing her with the electrocution. Boy, that Death sure is one clumsy fellow! As Clear climbs her way to the roof, the power line seems to be searching for her on the ground. She jumps back down to dry ground in front of the house, and climbs into the car. Of course Death follows her, and there's a LOT of electrical action going on outside of the vehicle.

Alex finds her, and tells her not to touch anything inside the car. He sees that the cable has landed on the hood of her car, and tries to knock it away with a shovel. It goes flying, but also lands in the garage, where a gas can is knocked to the floor, so now the trail of spilled gasoline sets the area around the car on fire. Geez, Death is a pretty poor sport, huh?

Alex realizes that if he wants to save her, he has to sacrifice himself, and he tells Clear as much. Then, as Clear watches in horror, Alex grabs the snaking power cable and removes it from the hood of her car, where it's resumed its attempt to fry Clear. The amount of voltage sends Alex flying off his feet, and into the garage. Clear rushes over to Alex, and finds his body smoking, and his hands pretty wrecked with burns. Shreck and Weine just stand back and watch, like the useless boobs that they are.

The screen fades to white, the voices become softer, and it's THE E--

Nope, false ending. There's a creepy shot of an airport terminal, and the movie tells us that it's SIX MONTHS LATER...okay, thanks movie, try a whisper next time. Alex, Clear and Carter finally took their trip to Paris after all. Tres bien!

At an outdoor cafe, they discuss how they earned a second chance. They make a toast to their dead friends, then Alex drags out the seating chart, because he's worried that Death might have simply gone back to the top of the list again.

Carter mocks him, but Alex suddenly sees a number of bad omens. A guitarist is playing a John Denver song at a nearby table, a street lamp catches fire briefly, and some red wine spills on the seating chart, right on their names. Alex freaks out, and that's when the chain reaction begins.

Alex decides to leave, so that they'll be spared, and Clear sees a phantom bus in the cafe window. She screams at Alex, and he narrowly avoids a bus killing him. It crashes into a fruit stand instead, and causes a pole-like display to spin. The pole catches a neon sign and rips it in half, sending the number 180 flying around.

As the gigantic 180 swings toward Alex, Carter springs into action, knocking Alex safely to the ground. Carter teases him about being next, but Alex points out that he was skipped yet again, when Carter intervened. As Carter stands over Alex and asks who is next, the large 180 swings back down. The screen goes black as the sound of breaking metal and glass is heard. THE END.

Wow. First off, I have to apologize for the lateness of this one. In the week-and-a-half since I watched Urban Legend, my Comcast service here in the new apartment has crashed several times. I hear from a friend that he's had the same experience, so that sucks. Anyway, any week where I don't post....now you know why. Okay, so let's sum this one up...

It's a really fun horror film, with all of the creative deaths, and a great premise. While each sequel varies in quality and deja vu(counting the next one,the franchise now has 3 opening sequences that involves car wrecks), it's still fun to see how elaborate or crazy they're willing to go. Plus, it's funny to watch how far they stretch credibility to tie the sequels to the first one. I give the first Final Destination 5 killer trees out of 5.

And here's what I learned from watching Final Destination:

-Death is like that one guy you knew who liked to pull practical jokes incessantly on his friends.

-John Denver's music kills people.

-You can never put too many toilet scenes in your movie.


It looks like my next slasher is April Fool's Day, which is a lot of silly fun. I hope my internet connection stays up this week!