Don't Go In The Woods/Paintball

This week's SAW is a slasher/musical, and it's called Don't Go In The Woods...not to be confused with an early-'80's slasher that had a similar title, but with"...Alone!" added to the end. Will it be music to our ears? Will it be tone-deaf? Well, let's get down to our SPOILER-filled viewing, and find out!

The very first scene shows us those woods, and there's a young woman limping through them, covered in blood. A hand grabs her shoulder, and she screams as the title comes up. There's a brief shot of her gory remains and an axe, then she goes bye-bye. Yup, now we're in flashback territory....Seriously, why do so many movies do this?

We get an extreme closeup of a pair of eyes that are so milky-looking, this guy almost looks like a corpse. There's talk of omens, and something about a place that is apparently so fantastic, "the guys" won't want to leave. Uh-huh.

A song starts up on the radio, about a country singer who fell in love with another man. It's pretty frickin' funny, even after it turns to be a song about loving Jesus. The large group of guys in this particular van start to pass around a bag of weed, but the one driving tosses it out of his window. The others look pretty pissed, even the blind one seated next to the driver(And why would they give a blind guy the seat with the best view?).

Anyway, these guys are out in the woods to write some songs, in anticipation of a recording contract in the near future. Let's meet 'em: First up is Nick, the lead singer, and the jerk who wasted the weed(oh, and he looks like Elijah Wood); Johnny, the token minority character(though he's Asian instead of black, which is pretty novel); Robbie, the blind musician; Anton, the keyboard player(who sort of resembles Louis, the creepy lab-geek on Dexter); Ahhh, they're singing again, hold on...

*SLIGHTLY OVER AN HOUR LATER...*

Okay, new plan. about 80% or so of this monstrosity is sung instead of spoken, so I'm watching watching something more slasher-y instead: a movie called Paintball, that I found under "Free Movies" on the On Demand menu on cable. The other movie was a train wreck, and the narrative would have been near-impossible to describe, given the ratio of songs to spoken dialogue(or even plot...). Plus, every guy in the band(besides the Asian) resembled Frodo after awhile.

Okay, so let's put that ordeal behind us, and watch Paintball together...

THIS STORY begins with a funny advertisement that features a pair of Russians in military garb. The one in front is pitching a paintball wargame business called Redball Woods. The second soldier, a younger female, simply glares at the camera and fidgets. Every time the male lists a feature of the business, the other one nods her head curtly. Finally, when the male soldier fires paint pellets at the camera, the female starts to grin.

Then we meet our main characters, 8 people who have signed up with Redball Woods to play at being survivalists. All have hoods over their heads, until a recorded voice instructs them to remove the hoods. Then the voice assigns each person a role in the team First, there's David, who is assigned to lead the team into battle; Iris, who is assigned to be front infantry; John, a rifleman taking rear infantry; a wide-eyed brunette named Brenda, who is on tactical support; Eric and Anna, who are assigned as recon scouts; Claudia, who looks excited to be a sniper;    and finally, Frank, who slept through the entire recording, is tasked with being a rifleman. Maybe they can tell him when he's done snoozing...

Okay, so they all start the process of gathering up their crap. Right away, this seems pretty shady...they have pellets that have gone past their expiration dates, some of the equipment and armor seems pretty flimsy, stuff like that. The recording tells them that they have one full day to find and capture 6 flags belonging to the team they're going up against. Also, there's a box at each flag that will supposedly contain items they'll need to win.

As they get ready to play, one of the women thinks that she recognizes another one from a game held the previous year. The other woman denies it, which probably means that she's lying. We'll see, but I'm betting that it'll be a plot twist at some point, that she's a pro dropped into the group. Or something like that.

Everyone leaps out of the vehicle, and they find themselves in a grassy clearing, surrounded by a forest. As a group they run for the trees, and lethargic Frank has trouble keeping up. He looks familiar, but I'm not sure why. I think that my brain is probably fried from seeing so many of these movies.

While they wait for Frank to catch up, the others plot their strategy for capturing the first flag by consulting their map. The position is about 20 minutes away, so David orders Anna and Eric to start moving up the trail, and look for any potential threats. He then asks Claudia to protect their progress with cover fire at any potential threats. Iris and John are told to flank on each side of the group, and Frank gets pissed off about everyone being ordered around. David responds that he's the only one with enough experience to correctly plot out the map, and no one disagrees.

They find what could best be described as a "car graveyard"(Whoa! Flashbacks to Wreckage!), and the enemy team fire on them as they explore the various vehicles. The enemy has them pinned down, so one of the women(Brenda, I think, although it's hard to tell, as they all have masks and goggles on) starts to climb into a bus for shelter. Her gun wasn't firing correctly, which is yet another omen that these folks are in for trouble.

Trying to locate the first flag and the first supply box, Claudia is assigned to climb a hill, to see if she can see anything from a higher position. The rest of them look beneath the vehicles, in the trunks, inside the cars...They find nothing. Even Claudia announces that she doesn't see anything helpful.

Frank, who couldn't keep up with the others a few minutes ago, is now standing on the roof of a car and whining about how little action there is. The other team gets him back by firing a ton of pellets at his position. Heh. They seem to be flanked on all sides, so David orders the team to seek shelter on the bus.

In the middle of all of the chaos, David asks if any of them were able to find the flag or the box, and there are negative replies all around. Then, they all realize more bad news: Claudia isn't on the bus. As they talk trash about the other team, a smoke grenade is hurled into the bus. David orders them to stay on the bus, so as not to expose any of them to the sniper(s?) outside.

The other team waits them out for a few seconds, then another projectile is flung through a bus window: The box! It contains a single item, a bulletproof vest. Claudia shows up, and it turns out that it was her who tossed the box into the bus. After everyone congratulates Claudia on her find, David tells them that they need to leave the bus, so as not to get surrounded. Uh, isn't it kind of too late for that?

Anna and Eric go first, scouting the perimeter as they dodge from car to car. They give the "all clear", and Claudia moves to their position next, using her rifle's scope to search for that pesky sniper. Then David joins them, and the rest follow when he gives the signal, either alone or in pairs.

The other team begins another assault, and one of "our" guys gets shot in the foot with real ammunition. Another member of the team is then shot in the head, and they all start running. That's the smartest thing they've done so far...John, who I think was the one shot in the foot, tries to keep up, but he's limping pretty badly.

John is hit again in the leg, and goes down. As he's attempting to crawl to the trees to hide, he begs his team to return and help him out. He manages to get himself standing again, only to step into a trap, a rope that wraps around his ankle and pulls him up into the air, swinging like a pinata.

While he's twirling around, another soldier is spotted crouching next to a tree. It's David, who moves in for a closer look. John is incredibly grateful, until he realizes that David only wants the vest. Wow, nice leadership qualities.

The rest of the team find a large electrified fence preventing them from leaving. They argue back and forth, with opinions divided over whether the shooters are psychos from another team, or if it's the owners of the business hunting them for sport. Apparently, none of them have seen Hostel. Oh, and Brenda has a breakdown, right before a long-dead human body is found.

John shows up then, and the others ask him how he managed to get the vest. He changes the subject, and starts to give out orders again, probably just to distract them. As they plot a course to the next flag, one of them misfires his gun, making everyone jump.

Hey, now we have a night vision sequence! The villain(or one of them, if it's a team), sneaks up on John and throws small round items at him to wake him up. As John begs for his life, the killer finds a large rock, and props a rifle up against it, directly underneath poor John. A bayonet is attached to the rifle, and the killer walks over to the tree the rope's other end is tied around. He cuts the rope, and John's head is sliced apart like a watermelon.

The other members of the team discover the first flag, but no one wants to risk dying to run out in the open and capture it. They decide that it should be David, since he's now wearing the vest. Ha! Before David can do anything, Anna(I think) offers to retrieve the box instead, with the caveat that whatever she finds belongs to her. Without any further discussion, she darts out of the woods to get the box.

Using a nearby tractor for cover, she quickly snatches up her prize and opens it.  Inside the box, she finds a bottle of some sort(which she quickly tosses away), and a machete. Immediately after, she hears a prowler in the trees nearby, and signals for help from her teammates. Run Anna, run!

As everyone starts a-running again, the enemy fires at each of them in a pretty random fashion. In the confusion, a female character is shot, and Anna accidentally uses the machete to kill a woman who was apparently on another team, as another player shows up to scream at Anna in a foreign language. Anyone else as confused as I am here??? The angry guy blows a whistle to  reveal their location, which just seems bad, no matter who he is.

David asks Anna what the second item in the box was, and threatens her with the machete when she doesn't reply. Lucky for her, Eric arrives to stop him. David then declares that they're taking the foreign guy along as a prisoner. As they march through the grass, Frank complains to Brenda  that they should have tied the stranger to a tree and left him for his group to find, as opposed to forcing him to be their hostage.

Eric tries to ask the stranger some basic questions, but he either doesn't understand, or has decided to play dumb. Brenda then asks Frank to hide in the forest with her, until the game ends. Her theory is that everyone will forget about them, allowing them to escape to safety somehow. Now THAT is the plan of a genius....

Brenda then stumbles and falls, bringing everyone over to make sure that she's okay. In the frenzy, the prisoner vanishes as well. Oh, and even though the map indicates that the next flag and box should be in the area, none of them can find anything. They even speculate that the foreign guy may have hidden things before they captured him.

After another disagreement, David decides that they should just make their way to the fourth flag. The march off in a line, but Brenda, who's last, trips yet again. She hears noises all around her and gets scared, so maybe taking off by herself isn't the best plan. The rest of the group gets further away, and Brenda starts to panic.

In the next scene, she's being shot at, and running through the trees. Uhhh, were some key scenes removed here? When did the team lose her entirely? How do they not hear the shooting? Eh, who cares? Brenda gets hit by a stray bullet, and rolls down a slight incline. Her body ain't moving after that. Oops....

Frank is the first to notice that she's missing. He shouts at the others to stop, but they just ignore him at first. As Frank continues to insist that they stop to find Brenda, Eric finally approaches him and asks him to shut up. Iris pipes up, and tells Eric that Frank is right, and that they should work as a team to find her and do a better job of protecting each other.

All of that just gets Frank riled up even more. He yells ahead to David, asking him how he really got his hands on the vest, and why he gets the machete as well. When he adds that the foreign guy is probably nearby, picking them off one by one, David ambushes him from behind a tree. David then pushes Frank to the ground, holds the machete to his throat, and tells him to stop yelling.

After David marches ahead again, Eric and Anna help Frank to stand up. They also resume the hike, but Frank runs off to find Brenda. Iris announces that she's also going solo, if the next flag is missing. Wow, David sure has some effective leadership skills!

The killer, still wearing his night vision goggles, has decided to see if Brenda is dead or not. She wakes up, sees him, and backs away, weeping hysterically as she realizes her predicament. The killer indicates that he took the box everyone was looking for, and he kicks it in her direction. She opens it, and finds an odd-looking gun, which the killer forces her to pick up.

As they face each other, Brenda tells the killer that she doesn't know what kind of gun it is, or even how to load  the thing. She also admits that she only signed up for paintball because her shrink encouraged her to "try new things". Then Brenda turns away from the killer, and anticipates being shot in the back as she slowly creeps away. When that doesn't happen, Brenda discovers the the killer has vanished. She runs into the forest, more frightened than ever.

David, sensing a threat ahead of the team, silently indicates that they should try to surround and ambush whoever it is. Then we return to Brenda. She's leaning up against a massive stone structure, and she searches the perimeter for a hiding place. Amazingly, she finds a door carved into it, and runs inside.

She yells and shouts, then discovers that the many leaves beneath her are camouflaging a floor made out of porcelain or some other smooth, shiny material. Thinking that maybe there's a structure underground, Brenda pounds on the floor and screams for help. Yeah, I'm sure they'll rush right out.

The killer locates her, and stands at the entrance to the cave. When the movie switches to his perspective, we see that Brenda is surrounded by what look like corpses seated on the floor around her, about 4 of them. She sees the killer and backs away, crashing through a door into a second room. The killer shoots her, and she falls forward, her blood spreading out over the floor, which is clear in this room.

Back to the team. The find the foreign guy, and surround him. After shooting him with paint pellets--and Iris whacking him with her helmet, which she loses by the side of the road--they question him again. He has Brenda's armband on him, and he tells them his name, which is Yurick, but that's it. He breaks loose fast enough to punch David in the face, and David retaliates by stabbing  him with the machete. Alas, poor Yurick, we knew you not at all. David stabs him a second time, this time twisting the blade.

After more hiking, they find out that their outfits are possibly "marked", even the vest. That leads to a decision by the women to remove their camouflage tops. If you ever needed a quick definition of the word "gratuitous", this scene would fit the bill. David watches them remove their shirts, and he's getting to be creepier than the killer.

They spot a flag and a black case at the bottom of a hill, and look for signs that it might be a trap. Since David is being such a whiny baby about sharing the vest, the others tell him that he needs to fetch the items himself. The viewpoint changes to night vision, and the killer stands nearby, preparing to execute David. Someone watching the killer's progress orders him via an earpiece to let David live. Damn!

When the case is brought up the hill, they find that it contains random metal tubes and other components, but no one can figure out how they go together. There are 2 boxes left, and 2 flags. They split into 2 teams, in order to get the items quicker: Eric and Anna  are paired up, and David teams up with Iris.

We follow Iris and David first, where we discover that David spells "team" with an "i". He's going at such a brisk pace through the woods, I'm somewhat amazed that he doesn't say, "Meep-meep!" every minute or so. Iris should've just gone with the others. David does finally slow down, and both he and Iris find Frank.

Yup, Frank. Iris asks David to cover her progress as she sees if she can help Frank. Frank tells her to go away because she's walking into a trap, but she keeps coming to him. The ground beneath her foot starts to tilt, but before Iris can back off, asswipe David grabs her by the head and throws her into the hidden pit. Man, I hope his death is painful...perhaps he can be forced to watch this movie about 200 times! It's shown that Frank's arm was somehow caught in a beartrap.

His arm??? Aw, c'mon movie, how does that even make sense? His foot, sure, but he would've had to have been crawling around for that to happen to his arm. Maybe he was following a trail of M&M's, Pac-Man-style.

Some of the creeps monitoring the mayhem comment that David seems to be aware that there are cameras on him at all times. Well, DUH. Gee, do ya think they know they're being hunted too? The villains decide to kill Frank next, with an explosive mine.

Anna looks like she somehow got herself lost, as she spins around, just gawking at each and every tree. Oh okay...she and Eric have found their case, and are just being cautious. Anna points out a camera positioned above them in a tree, and tells Eric that she's seen several more.

Eric opens the case, which contains more paintballs and a flashlight, but Anna observes that the pellets seem to weigh more than a paint pellet should. Eric places one in his gun, but it shatters when he cocks the gun, splashing his face with acid. Anna tries to clean the side of his face and flush the acid with water, but Eric's injury makes The Phantom of The Opera look like Brad Pitt.

Uh oh....more night vision. The killer has found Iris and Frank, but the controllers of the game order the killer to ignore them. He kills the pair anyway, laughing like a maniac when he bashes Frank's skull in. The owner of RedBall tells the others in the viewing area that the killer going rogue merely makes the hunt more interesting. Oh, and the killer is named Dan.

While Dan is on the prowl, so is David. David sits under a wide tree to remove his outer layer of clothing, then carries it over to a large fall tree, where he crouches and plans his next move. Dan finds his position, and sneaks up on him. David leaves his jacket off, but puts his armored vest on over his shirt, and waits for the killer to reveal himself.

Dan takes some potshots at the log, and David grins. Grabbing his stuff, he stands up, and gets shot in the back. Well, either the vest was a fake, or he was shot somewhere that it didn't cover. David goes for his hunting knife, grimaces, then seems to stop breathing. When Dan gets close, David tries to slice him, but the killer stands on his arm.

As David struggles, Dan puts a knife to his throat, but doesn't finish him off. He instead waits for our favorite idiot to remove another shirt and stand up. Now that both men are armed and standing, After David takes a few wild swings at the killer, Dan delivers a slice to his neck, sending up a spray of blood. Then he falls to his knees.

Dan kicks him over onto his side, as David gags on his own blood. Then the killer removes an explosive mine from his backpack, places it under David's vest, and sets it off by stepping on his chest. Then he repeats the process. Methinks that psycho Dan isn't a "people person", under any definition.

That evening, Anna and Eric get back to the rendezvous point, and get worried when there's no sign of David and Iris. Eric's face looks worse, if that's possible.Anna lies to him, saying that it looks better. Eric gets up to pace around, and gets ambushed. Anna screams his name, but there's no response. After a moment of peace and quiet, Anna hears a woman on Dan's radio, asking for his current location.

Anna follows the sound, then tries to ask the voice for assistance. The mysterious woman calls Anna by her name, then tells her to bury herself in the dirt, explaining that Dan has the night vision googles. When Anna scoffs at the suggestion, Mystery Woman explains that the barrel of her rifle can be removed and used as a breathing tube. If Anna lives 'til morning, the voice promises to give her more assistance.

Although she hates the idea, Anna does as the voice instructs her. It works, and the next morning Anna struggles back to the open air. She puts her gun back together, then the woman calls her to bsay that there's a trap directly in front of her. She finds Iris, and the mystery voice tells her to go back to each and every checkpoint, and gather every spare part from those sites. The pieces, when assembled properly, make a gun.

Anna finds David along the way, and removes the vest from his corpse. She puts the vest on and starts to leave, but her guide tells her that there's something next to David that she needs. There's a series of sequences showing Anna finding bodies and revisiting the various box locations. Several times the voice speaks up, alerting Anna whenever Dan is near her.

As she crosses a rickety-looking footbridge, Anna nearly gets shot. She grabs an overhead rope as one side of the bridge collapses, and pulls herself to the other side. She dodges around the trees, but a stray bullet strikes her backpack. Despite her terror and pain, Anna manages to get to her feet. She limps her way to a house, and begs to be let inside.

Anna circles around to the back, unaware of being observed by the people who bet on the game. The glass is tinted black on the windows and is thick enough to almost drown her voice out, even when shouting. She fires paint pellets at the windows to vent her anger, and the voice calmly tells her that there is a door on the other side of the house.

She gets in, and finds herself in a basement/tunnel area. Another black case reveals the last machine piece, as well as a series of forged death certificates assigned to each member of her team. The voice tells her that the killer is close, and suggests that she should stand in front of one of the 2-way mirrors, because he'll confuse her for an audience member if she just stands still and watches him.

Dan decides to start firing at the observers, and Anna takes advantage of his distraction to get on the floor and assemble the gun parts. Then she leaps to her feet, pulls the trigger, and....nothing happens. That one stray bullet must've damaged some of the gun parts, because it's only making a hissing sound now.

Dan pulls his trigger, but he seems to be out of ammo. Excuse me if I giggle loudly now. He draws his hunting knife, and Anna pulls out the machete. Hell yeah! 2 duels in 1 movie! That rocks. While the random shooting is occurring, the female voice reveals to Anna that one of the windows is not bulletproof. It has a red mark drawn near it, so Anna sets about trying to trick Dan into approaching it.

She shows him the fake death certificates, and he looks for his own. Anna rushes at him, pushing Dan through the window. She then climbs into the room again, using a chain that was set into the wall to pull herself up. The RedBall people give Anna her freedom, as long as she promises never to tell anyone about what happened to her. If she breaks that rule, then they'd have to murder her.

Anna removes some of her equipment, and exits the property. A closeup of the death certificate with her name on it reveals that they had planned to make her demise look like a car crash. She finds a car with keys in the ignition, but doesn't take the bait. The final scene  shows Anna on foot, afraid of pursuit. She stops in her tracks, spins around, and screams, "WHAT!?!" into the camera. THE END

Well, it was a better film than Don't Go In The Woods, that's for sure. But while the kills were varied, the characters were way too generic to root for any of them. If you're going to rip off Hostel, then you need to try to be as over-the top and memorable as possible. This just wasn't. 2.5 killer trees out of 5 for some of the concepts and gore. Aw heck, you get an extra point for not singing when being chased by the killer. 3.5 it is.

It's taken a while to watch 2 of  these, so I'm not sure when my next movie arrives. Wait and see.....

Halloween Night

This week's SAW begins with the 3 most terrifying words you'll ever see at the start of any slasher or general horror film: 'The Asylum Presents'...Yeah, this isn't going to be a fun week. Netflix pushed back the film that I had intended to watch, Don't Go in the Woods, and sent me a "mockbuster" of Halloween, called Halloween Night.  Will it be terrible? Probably. Will I watch it right now? Yup. Will there be SPOILERS beyond this paragraph? Hmmmm....

The movie begins with the nuttiest nutbag in Nuttyville, Chris Vale, as a young boy. He's wearing a white mask and hiding under a bed, as some men rape--and then kill--his mother. After they shoot her once, young Chris somehow manages to escape unseen, and leans against the wall in the next room. His mother makes a sound, so her attackers shoot her again, and the bullet hits a pipe next to Chris, scalding his face with steam and hot water.

Then it's a decade later, and Chris is living on the funny farm. His body was apparently also scarred severely with burns and he went non-verbal, leading the authorities to assume that he killed his own mother. 2 orderlies come to his room with a plain white mask to freak him out, and he rips out the throat of the one wearing the mask. Oh, and he escapes, and sets out to return to his childhood home. Gosh, where have I heard this story before?

Anyway, after the credits reveal that they couldn't even hire a D-List celebrity to do a cameo in this clunker, we meet our cannon fodder. First up is Larry, a scrawny nerd; Todd, a shaggy guy who mumbles and grins...and has zero personality beyond that in his introductory scene; David, the host of a Halloween party that the others are all arriving for; David's clueless girlfriend Shannon; Angela, a strong-willed lesbian(did I really just type out my adolescent fantasy, or was I daydreaming?); her nervous lover Kendall; and, uh, Sleepy, Bashful and Dopey.

As the movie gets bogged down in mumbled greetings, things pick up with a little softcore make out session between Angela and Kendall. Angela removes her lover's bra, but a knock at the door ruins the mood. Kendall gets dressed, and they both leave the room to re-join their friends.

David leaves the house to pick up someone named Darryl at a bus stop. Darryl is some type of musician, and all he wants to know is how many hot women will be at the party. Before we find out anything else about this guy, we then get introduced to Todd and Jeanine, another couple heading to the party. Todd has a big box in the backseat, filled with his costume and an assortment of authentic(and dangerous!) medieval weapons. When Jeanine examines an axe, Todd warns her that it could kill her if they hit a speed bump.

They see traffic gathered at a roadblock up ahead. Todd tells his girlfriend to cover and hide the box of weapons, and a cop saunters up to their vehicle. He tells them about  Chris being on the loose, and shows them a picture. Yum. They promise to be alert, and he lets them drive away.

Then we go back to another session of D&D...David and Darryl, that is. David has his friend duck under the dashboard, and they both quietly get out of the car. David then opens the entrance into the basement, and urges Darryl to get in and pick out a hiding place.

Todd pulls into a gas station to get the car filled up, and to put on his costume. In the restroom he gets murdered by Chris, who shoves a blade through his mouth, and out of the back of his head. Then Chris wears Todd's costume, drives away with Jeanine, and stabs her multiple times with the axe she was examining earlier. After she dies, Chris sees the variety of weapons in the back seat, and it's like the serial killer version of Christmas!

There's some nonsense about answering a riddle to get into the party, then Larry reads an article online about Chris and his recent escape. Since rape and murder are such fun topics, everyone decides to get ready for the bash after Larry finishes the story. This movie deserves a special room in Hell.

The large group moves to head into the house, but "Troll"(the guy asking the riddle at the door) blocks the way. David tells Troll to let the group in, and use the riddle only on folks who arrive late. Then David gives Shannon some jewelry as a romantic gesture. Oh, and Troll gets to ask one guy his riddle, but the late guest answers correctly before he even finishes saying it. As a bonus, the guest is given the option of setting free one of the people who gave a wrong answer. The only 2 "prisoners" are a cute girl and a sad-looking dude, so the cute girl gets to enter the party.

Darryl emerges from the cellar, and some short kid starts bugging him. David intercedes, and sends the kid on a wild goose-chase for an hour or so. Mean, but kind of funny.

Outside, Chris pulls in behind the kid's car, and both step out of their vehicles. Chris shoves the axe into his forehead, then admires his handiwork. Amazingly, no one sees this happen, not even Troll. In what universe does that make any sense?

Darryl sees Kendall standing by the refreshments, and decides to try out his best pick-up lines on her. Since those lines mostly consist of "Durrrrr" and "Uhhhhh", he doesn't get far. Then Angela arrives, and the lesbians put on a little display just to frustrate poor Darryl even further. The guests hear a helicopter flying low, looking for Chris, and he also looks up from his spot outside.

David plays dumb when the lesbians ask him about Darryl being invited, and they wander away. Troll, who is slightly drunk, nearly forgets his own riddle, and a young woman who speaks Spanish inadvertently gives him the correct answer(She says "aqui", and the answer is "a key"), so he lets her in. Oh, and she lets the nerdy zombie guy go with her, by setting him free as well. The zombie gives Troll the finger as they walk away.

Unfortunately, Chris is the next person to approach Troll. He mumbles the riddle, and Chris tries to push past him, so they get into a shoving match. Chris plants a sword into his skull, spins him a few times, then rips his head apart getting the sword back. Kicking down the outer door, as Chris prepares to enter the main section of the house h`e is greeted by Shannon, who mistakes him for Todd. Chris spares her life because she resembles his dead mother, right down to the same necklace.

David also sees Chris at the party, and also greets him. When Chris tries to kill him with the axe, David makes him hide it, and tells him to stay where he is. Geez man, are they all this dumb? Are Chris and Todd even the same height? What about the blood on both the costume and the weapon?

David calls somebody named Mitch, and apparently "it's go time" for whatever prank they have planned. David then walks up to Darryl, and asks him to leave. They pretend not to know each other, and the party stops as they have a fake fight. Chris doesn't know it's a prank though, and attempts to attack Darryl with his bloodstained axe.

Darryl draws a gun, and then the shit gets real, at a rapid rate. Chris drops the axe, but sirens can be heard approaching. Darryl jumps up, and decides to use Chris as a hostage. Yeah, I'm calling it...this is still part of the prank, I'd bet money on it. It has to be.

A cop shows up, and he tries to calm Darryl down. Darryl takes his weapon as well, then also gets his keys and makes a getaway with Chris as a hostage. After several seconds, the officer gets David to give him his car keys, and announces that he's going to pursue them. Shannon hugs her boyfriend, worried about what will happen.

...and that's when a second cop pulls up. Shannon starts to tell him what went down, and David is forced to admit that it was an elaborate joke. Shannon slaps him, and the real cop shuts the party down. The majority leave immediately, and barely notice Troll's corpse, assuming it's just part of the joke.

Darryl pulls the car over, and starts to congratulate Chris on his "role" in the prank. Chris tries to shoot him with the fake gun from the cop costume, then settles on choking Darryl with a seatbelt strap instead. Chris finishes him off by dragging him out of the car, and driving the sword into his chest.

Back inside the house, Shannon and David argue about the prank. He tries to compare it to a roller coaster, but she insists that it was stupid and childish. She walks away, and David just sits there and sulks. Nope, nothing childish about that!

The fake cop finds his car, but it's locked. Chris appears, and the actor asks for his keys back, but gets a blade through the chest instead. What is it with this guy and torso wounds? Chop off a random arm or a leg...variety is the spice of life, right?

Shannon gets to her car, just as some of David's friends return and offer to stay the night, to cheer him up. Shannon sees the killer walk by, but he ignores her to go after some random couple having sex in David's basement. Chris removes his mask, and swiftly drives the axe into the young woman's back. The guy makes Chris chase him a little, then also gets stabbed in the back.

Shannon finds Chris cleaning up after his latest kills, and still thinks he's Todd. Chris attacks her, but only lets her pass out, rather than killing her. Oh, and he kind of gives her a hug. Have YOU hugged YOUR local maniac today?

Hey, look, more lesbian porn! They both go wild with the stripping, and the kissing, and the writhing. Then I fainted from the pressure of having to get my cheap thrills from a stupid Asylum movie. I am filled with shame and self-loathing now.

Shannon wakes up, and discovers herself handcuffed next to a corpse. She screams, but Chris gags her and takes the dead person somewhere else. As he decides to leave the basement, we see some random shots of a woman eating while taking a bubble bath. Well, NOW it all makes sense!

Larry is back on the computer. He reads some more articles about Chris Vale, then scares the Bubblebath Girl by walking in on her to tell her about Vale. She tells him to leave, and to close the door when he does. Faster than you can say "Larry's a goner!", Chris sneaks up on him, and plunges a knife through the top of his head. The he takes care of Bubbles after she traps herself with him, by slitting her throat.

David tries to call Shannon's cell, but she obviously can't reach it. He finds Bubbles, but at first he thinks that she and Larry are pranking him. When he sees her neck, he realizes that there's a real killer in the house, and he tries to warn Angela and Kendall that they might be in danger. They dismiss it as Halloween hijinks, until Chris actually appears.

Kendall runs away, screaming for assistance from David, while Angela fights off the attacker. Kendall and David run into each other outside, and he re-enters the house to try to save the day. Angela gives Chris quite a beating, considering that he has none of his weapons nearby. He spots a hanger, and kills Angela with it, by shoving one end into her eye repeatedly.

David grabs a handgun, and tries to rescue Shannon. Instead, he gets to be the character who discovers the bodies of his friends. When he finally succeeds at finding his girlfriend, Chris easily knocks him out from behind. Chris then blindfolds Shannon, but can't seem to bring himself to kill her. Instead, he traces the knife over her face, then has flashbacks about the night his mother was killed. The memories reveal that the mother was never found, because his father stashed her behind a secret panel he had built, right before he killed himself. Chris reunites with his Mommy, who smells funny.

After waiting for awhile, Shannon removes her blindfold, and grabs a gun on the floor. Freeing herself from captivity, she finds and shoots Chris 2 times. When the authorities arrive, Shannon sees the body on the stretcher sit up, so she shoots him a third time. Then she sees that the figure in the costume is actually David. Then Chris is seen getting away, hitching a ride with a friendly stranger.  THE END...?

Okay, so the kills were brutal, if a little bit redundant. Still, by Asylum standards, this is probably the closest they'll ever get to "good". Now, if they could just find actual actors, they could really make a bearable movie. 2 out of 5, with 1 of those points going to the effects.

And what did I learn from Halloween Night?

-When you don't have a script, just use a lot of swears instead.

-Killers hate having to be creative.

-When you can't write anything exciting or scary, just add in some quick porn.

Hopefully, my next movie will be better. It almost has to be! TTFN

Doom Asylum

Hey gang! This week(ish), I've re-discovered a slasher flick I last watched in the late '80's. Even back then, this one was seemingly made to be mocked. Called Doom Asylum, I've spent years trying to recall the specific details of the plot, and even the correct title....I thought it was called Blood Asylum for many years, which made it even more difficult to track down. But I finally found it, so "yay, me" I guess. SPOILERS ahead!

Our cheese-tastic adventure begins with a terrible cover version of "House of The Rising Sun", and a convertible speeding down a deserted-looking road. The drunk couple in the car, Mitch and Judy, are celebrating because they just won some kind of huge settlement in court. Judy even goes so far as to pour wine or champagne all over the crotch of Mitch's pants, and make out with him while he's driving.

In a mind-boggling shocker, they have a collision with another vehicle. Mitch wakes up face down in the grass, and calls out to Judy.  He locates her several feet away and crawls to her position to hold her hand, only to discover that it's no longer attached to the rest of her. She tells Mitch that she loves him, then dies. No! Somebody lend her a hand!!

A couple of medical examiners begin an autopsy on Mitch when he's brought to the morgue, but one of them sees Mitch moving. He tells his boss, but the other doctor isn't convinced until Mitch sits up on the autopsy table, calling out to Judy. Mitch then stabs them both, and decides to go ahead and kill everyone in the hospital, and live there. Well, that all made sense!

After the opening credits are shown over about 17,000 shots of the exterior and interior of the asylum(an actual closed-down hospital, according to the IMDB....), we see the same road, and the same song is playing as a convertible races toward the camera. Wait, did I rewind this thing by accident? Nope, because a helpful subtitle tells us that it's 10 years later. I never realized how bland the future looked!

This car is filled with our first batch of victims: There's Darnell, the stereotypical jive-talking black guy; Jane(played by Kristin Davis, the only person I recognize in the movie), the nerdy psych major; Kiki, who just so happens to be Judy's now teenaged daughter(and played by the same actress); Mike, Kiki's indecisive boyfriend, who seems to be the only person so far enjoying his role by hamming it up with every line; and Dennis, who hasn't had any kind of dialogue or character moment up to this point, unlike the others.

Mike pulls the car over to the spot where the car accident took place, and he and Kiki find what looks like a mirror or a picture frame from the accident. The accident from a decade earlier. Yeah. Mike offers to nurture and support Kiki, and she asks him if she can call him "Mom". WTF? Okay, either this is supposed to be a comedy, or the movie is messing with me. Nothing is ever this strange by accident.

They get back into the car, and head to the abandoned hospital next. Wow, crash sites and empty psych wards...I'm not letting this group plan MY next vacation. They drive past a handful of signs that remind them not to trespass, so they take that as an invitation. Someone appears to be watching their approach from inside. I wonder who that might be? Oh, and apparently Mitch has murdered enough trespassers over the years to have his own urban legend. These kids know him as "The Coroner".

Then the movie introduces us to a few more potential victims, in the form of an all-female punk band. The group consists of Tina, the lead "singer"; Godiva, a woman with the worst fake French accent since Steve Martin ruined Inspector Clouseau forever; and Rapunzel, their group's representative African-American character.  Wow, so Darnell is officially not the "token" minority corpse in this one. For a slasher flick from 25 years ago, that counts as a bona fide plot twist!

The first group hears the obnoxious music from the asylum, and Darnell runs ahead to unplug the punk group's equipment, which causes a small fire. The 3 performers watch the others approach the building, and decide that a little taste of revenge is in order. Well, Tina and Godiva are up for revenge...Rapunzel is too busy drooling over Darnell(complete with a cut-away daydream of them running through a field toward each other in slo-mo), to be planning any vengeance. Then she talks about how hunky Darnell is, and her bandmates scorn her with sarcastic comments and eye-rolls. As she continues to fantasize and gush, Tina and Godiva create water condom bombs filled with hot water from a coffee maker.

Dennis finally gets some dialogue, but wastes it by gushing over his baseball card collection. After Jane tries to psychoanalyze his fixation over the cards, Kiki asks "Mom" for a kiss, and Mike obliges. Weird-ass movie! Just to contribute to the random wacky bits, The Coroner approaches the group, and compares a newspaper photo of Judy to Kiki.

Then the punk chicks lob their watery weapons at the group. Mitch manages to slip away unseen during the confusion, despite being out in the open during daylight hours. How could they not notice him??? Oh, and Dennis whines about some of his precious cards being damaged. And Tina throws back her head and laughs like Ming the Merciless.

The 2 groups yell back and forth at each other, then Tina cackles again and briefly flashes her breasticles(y'know, like guys have "testicles", so women have...no? Okay then, moving on...) at the group. That sets off Mike, but Darnell calms him down and offers to confront them himself, mostly to hook up with Rapunzel. Mike picks up one of the soggy condoms to try to entice Kiki into having sex(???with a ripped, used condom???), but she refuses, claiming that sex with "Mom" would be incest.

Darnell enters the building, and hears a metallic clanking sound down the hall. He calls out to Rapunzel, but gets only more clanging. Then he decides to serenade her with an impromptu rap, and Mitch kills him from behind with some steel tongs that pierce his temples. One down...

Tina and Rapunzel pass time on the roof by playing chess, while Godiva is spray painting a wall in the background. When Tina loses the game, she throws the pieces off the board and hisses at her friend. They notice that Darnell is no longer among the group in the grass, and Rapunzel hopes that he's coming to see her. That somehow leads into a scene in the lair that The Coroner has made his home, where he apparently watches clips from random black & white movies all day long.

Godiva leaves the rooftop to find a bathroom, and we see Mitch preparing a sink filled with acid. Godiva wanders to the mens' room, and her accent becomes Australian for a few seconds. Bizarre. Mitch is in the bathroom washing his hands, but he hides in one of the stalls when he hears her about to enter. I think Godiva's accent-mangling days are numbered!

Sure enough, Mitch leaps at her when she opens his stall door. There's a scuffle, and a strange bit involving The Coroner strangling Godiva via her shoulders, but we finally get to see him shove her head into the sink filled with acid. As he lifts her fleshless face back up, he rambles some nonsense about respecting her right to free speech. Then he giggles. Whatever.

The next scene returns us to Mike's group, just sitting around on the grass. Mitch should just get a rifle, and take them all out at once. They all wonder what happened to Darnell, then Dennis gets his panties in a bunch over his soggy baseball cards again. Mike offers to look for Darnell, and the others seem eager to send him on his journey.

The Coroner wanders the dark corridors of his lair with a lantern, and heads to his "bedroom" in the basement. There he has a flashback to the day of the accident, and he remembers his beloved Judy. Awwwww, see? Underneath that scabby shell, he's just a hopeless romantic. Or, he's at least hopeless!

Mike roams around the empty facility, but finds it empty. The Coroner just sits around watching more old movies. Even the camera crew gets bored, because they return to Kiki, Dennis and Jane once more. Dennis sees his Wade Boggs card fly away on the wind, and chases after it. Oh, and every time it blows further away, the wind makes this comical "whooshing" sound. Sheesh, this is dumb. Dennis fantasizes that Wade himself is rounding the bases, and follows the card.

There's a brief glimpse of Mike finding a skeleton, then more crap with Dennis, still immersed in his fantasy about baseball. Mitch discovers Dennis crawling around on the floor, and threatens him with a drill. He bores a hole through the nerd's forehead. Home run for The Coroner! Then Mike roams the halls some more, while Mitch lights candles. After his candles are lit, he picks up the rotten hand of his dead lover, and caresses his own face with it. I bet that must smell nice.

Mike gets to the roof, and demands to know what the punks did with Darnell. He and Tina have a fight, and it mirrors a fight scene in the movie that Mitch is watching. As the brawl is going on, Rapunzel just sits at the chess game, talking to herself about Darnell. Tina kicks the crap out of Mike, to the point that she has him dangling on the edge of the roof by his fingertips.

At that point, The Coroner has a breakdown over a sad scene on the television, and Rapunzel runs into the building to find Darnell. Oh, and Kiki and Jane see "Mom" hanging off of the side of the roof, but decide that he'll probably be fine. Then, more footage of The Coroner walking around in the dark.

Now that everyone is in the abandoned hospital, it's time for Mitch to pick up his pace. Or I hope he does...Rapunzel finds Godiva's melted skull and screams, which distracts Tina long enough for Mom to get back on the roof, and run past her into the facility. Then The Coroner sneaks up behind Rapunzel, and suffocates her with a leather strap around her throat.

More scenes follow, mostly of the characters walking up and down stairways, then Mom finds Kiki and Jane. Tina looks for her friends, and starts to realize that she's all by herself....then The Coroner opens a door directly in front of Mom and the girls, and none of them manage to see it. He swiftly closes it again, as they get closer.

Jane tells her friends to remain where they are, so that she can bring Tina's group to them, just to prove that they're all still alive and well. Mom reminds her that when characters in movies go off by themnselves, they usually die soon after that. And a wolf howls, for no apparent reason.

As Jane walks away from safety, she nearly collides with Tina. They accuse each other of being responsible for the disappearances, then Jane leaves Tina to wander off alone again. For an intellectual snob, Jane sure does seem pretty dumb.

As luck would have it, she has trapped herself with Mitch. Jane tries to assure herself that he's a delusion, and asks him to vanish. Then she backs into a chair, and more or less waits there to be killed. Using a small surgical saw, The Coroner slices through Jane's cheek and jaw, and removes half of her face in the process.

Tina steps into the room, and quickly realizes that she's in deep shit. The Coroner approaches her, but makes a getaway when Mom reaches the room as well. Mom sees Jane's body, and accuses Tina of murder, which she denies. She starts to tell him about her encounter with the killer, but then Kiki screams, and Mom runs off to rescue her.

This leads into my favorite scene so far, showing him running down the same corridor about a dozen times, shouting "I'm coming!" ever damn time, all while his girlfriend screams her head off. Funny as heck, and worth a point in my rating just for making me laugh. Mom finds his girlfriend staring at a corpse in a bathtub, and he informs her that they're being hunted by a psychopath. Kiki starts slamming him into a bathroom stall door as she cries and screams, then she finally calms down long enough to ask, "What's a psychopath???"

Mitch sits around on his mangled ass watching more movies, and Tina gets lost in the halls. Then the killer falls asleep, and has a nightmare about the car crash. Tina strays into a restroom, and comes face-to-face with her dead band-mates, causing her to vomit.

While Kiki and Mom pray to find their friends, The Coroner sneaks up to them. He hears them praying, and adds a sarcastic "Amen!" when Kiki promises God sex, money or a credit card in exchange for a miraculous rescue. Then he fills a large syringe with liquid from a large bottle he's carrying in his bag.

Tina rips a large metal bar off of a radiator as a makeshift weapon, and tries to be brave again. Then the movie shows her, Mom and Kiki looking for the killer, and jumping at every shadow and sound. The Coroner finds the couple first, and he injects Mom with whatever was in the syringe. Then he abducts Kiki, and straps her down to a stretcher in the autopsy room. Satisfied that she can't escape, he decides to watch more movies. Wait...what?

After the latest movie, The Coroner finds Mom, still alive, crawling along the corridor. He brings him back to the autopsy room, where he makes Kiki watch as he straps her boyfriend to another table. He removes the guy's shoes, and proceeds to cut off the toes on one foot. Meanwhile, Tina gets closer to his location.

Mom either dies or passes out from the agony of his injuries, and that's when Tina arrives. She swings her metal bar around like a bo stick, and Mitch picks up a fire axe. They duel around the room, and when The Coroner drops his weapon, Tina batters him to the floor. After that, she finally notices Kiki.

Tina unties her, and they apologize to each other for the way they acted earlier. Then Tina accidentally slips a conveyor belt on with her foot, and is killed by a machine that compresses and mangles her body down into a messy meat-cube. Freakin' hilarious, man.

Mitch then wakes up, and begins to pursue Kiki. She runs away, while he adjusts his tie and uses some breath spray. Kiki manages to get to a large kitchen, but somehow The Coroner has beaten her to the room first. She runs away again, and finds a way outside.

Mitch wanders through the grass after her, calling her "Judy" the whole time. When he corners Kiki and tries to kiss her, she knees him in the crotch. He limps after her again, then just stops to kneel down and cry. Kiki, being a dumbass, returns to talk to Mitch.

She sees him with the newspaper clipping, and realizes that he loved her mother. Then she remembers that he and her mother were going to put her in a boarding school, so she stabs him in the eye with the mirror she found earlier. Another old movie clip is shown, and Kiki strides away. THE END

Wow, this was one odd movie. I remembered very little of it from my previous viewing, which may have been a blessing. It did, however, manage to be both funny and gory, so I kind of enjoyed it. 3.5 killer trees out of 5.

And what did I learn from Doom Asylum?

-Severed hands are romantic.

-You can murder everyone in a hospital, and there will never be an investigation. Ever.

-Indecisive boyfriends are sexy to young women. Or maybe they aren't. On the other hand...

Next up is an odd-sounding slasher/musical, called Don't Go In The Woods. It's not the first musical slasher I've seen(that dubious honor goes to Slumber Party Massacre 2), but many say it's the worst. Hooray!

Ice Cream Man

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Eyeballs taste like ice cream!

-Jan Michael Vincent has 1 expression.

-Severed heads are fun toys!

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

I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Roger...Benson?!?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Body Parts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And what did I learn after watching Body Parts?

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

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

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

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