I had a feeling that Mountaintop Motel Massacre was going to be a fun one...the trailer for the film has a montage of people just saying character names. So you get, like, 3 minutes of "Bobby?...Cindy?...Mr. Crenshaw?...Cujo?" Comedy gold, I tell ya. Plus, the Netflix sleeve describes it as a "drive-in gem". Works for me! Anyway, here it is: my recap of Mountaintop Motel Massacre. As always, SPOILERS ahoy, matey!
Right up front, I was pretty jazzed--we get a logo for New World Pictures. They were like the go-to guys for fun horror movies on home video in the '80's. Pin, House, Piranha(can't WAIT to see the remake!!!), CHUD, Dead Heat, Warlock...it was B-movie Heaven! They even had some pretty impressive cult classics under their belt, like Heathers and the first couple of Hellraiser films! Neat.
As usual, the credits are a "Who's Who?" of obscure nobodies. Best actor name award goes to "Major Brock". He's right up there with Private Embarassment, Colonel O'Corn, and General Disaster. They couldn't even do a Mindhunters and hire someone famous to do a glorified cameo. Dang.
The movie introduces us to its main character, Evelyn Chambers, right off the bat. A brief blurb of text tells us that she was committed to a mental hospital in 1978, but released 3 years later. Based on the genre, I'm a-gonna guess that was a bad decision. In the opening scene Evelyn is tending to a small garden, next to a weird, gruesome scarecrow. She freaks out when one of her daughter's pets gets into the garden, and kills it. The thing sprays more blood than Orson Welles' autopsy.
Lorrie, the daughter is every bit as nutty as her mother. As Mama is killing her pets, Lorrie is having a tea party with her dead daddy and her remaining pets, telling him that she thinks Evelyn needs to go back to the asylum. Evelyn catches her trying to summon her dead father via witchcraft and goes bonkers, destroying both the basement and her daughter in the process with a scythe.
She is horrified by what she's done, and drags her daughter upstairs to wrap her corpse up in a rug. Then she drops it off in the kitchen, makes it look like a suicide, and calls 911. A sheriff, 2 paramedics, and a local preacher(he apparently lives at the motel) all arrive at the scene. Everyone except the sheriff buys Evelyn's remorseful act. He waits until the day of Lorrie's funeral service to sneak around the motel and house, looking for signs of foul play. He doesn't find anything definitive, and decides to go get smashed.
We then meet our cast of oddball victims, all brought to the motel under weird circumstances: the preacher who was introduced in the previous scene befriends a handyman who needs a room for the night; a nervous young couple who eloped stop at the motel; and 2 teenaged girls who had car trouble are picked up by a sleazy smooth-talker(who looks like the love-child of Harry Anderson and "Gopher" from The Love Boat) on his way to the motel after the road is blocked by a fallen tree. I know NONE of their names, though I'm pretty sure they were all mentioned in that dumb scene in the trailer.
Using a series of trapdoors and underground tunnels, Evelyn brings each guest her own brand of "room service". In the eloped couple's room, for example, she leaves a sack containing a poisonous snake; in the room shared by the preacher and the black handyman, she delivers a swarm of insects; and in the room shared by the "record producer" and the 2 girls, she simply emerges through the trapdoor into their bathroom, where she stabs one of the girls to death and then drags away the body.
When she fails to join the planned 3-way, her friend and Gopher(who admits he just wanted a 3-way, to the shock and surprise of NOBODY) enter the bathroom and find that she has decided to re-decorate the room with her own blood. No sign of her, though.
At the same time, the newlyweds are planning their own night of debauchery, interrupted by the husband getting bitten by that gosh-darn snake. As his cheek starts swelling the size of a rhino, the wife panics and runs out to get help. She finds the menage a duh couple, and they all agree that this movie would be a great double feature with Motel Hell.
That brings us back to the 2 old guys. First, the preacher. He's passed out, drunk on his own brand of "holy water"(I never knew "Johnny Walker" was the 13th apostle...) when Evelyn comes up through the floor. With maniacal glee, she releases a small army of rats into the room, before ducking back down into her tunnel. The preacher is pretty oblivious, until one of the rats gives him a small nip. He wakes up, freaks out, then does the most awesome thing yet in this movie--he kills the rats by bashing them with his bible. Fan-friggin'-tastic.
The handyman is then subjected to Evelyn's NEXT gross-out: bugs. The guy wakes up after they begin crawling all over his body and face. He freaks the hell out, and meets everyone else. The sleazy non-producer of music, meanwhile, reaches Evelyn's office and searches for her. He finds the place empty, of course, but is creeped out by the feeling that he has walked into the wrong porno. Smart guy. If he plays his cards right, maybe Evelyn can help him out with his 3-way.
While Gopher's playing detective, the preacher is attacked by Evelyn. She basically was hiding in his room, waiting for the handyman and Gopher to leave them alone. She stabs him through the chest, but seems remorseful. Weird.
Gopher goes back to Menage a Duh, and tries to make her feel better by revealing that he's in advertising, not showbiz. Big shock. While he's baring his soul, the newlyweds discover that the snake bite is getting worse: his vision's going downhill, and he's not very clear-headed. I'd say that makes him an excellent candidate for re-writing the script.
The handyman decides to get outta Dodge, but not before taking a massive dump. As he's sitting there trying to squeeze a loaf out, he sees one of Evelyn's trapdoors start to open. Thinking quickly, he slams it shut and uses his tools to nail it shut. FINALLY, someone has a good idea!
He pays a visit to the reverend's room, but finds only a blood-stained rat in there. Next, he knocks on Gopher's door, to show him the trapdoors. They decide that the best course of action would be to find and nail down the ones in all the other units., which freaks Menage a Duh out. She agrees to lock the door and wait for them to return, though, so she can't be THAT freaked out.
The guys go to Evelyn's office to take a look around, and find that, like most of the motel units, the walls are a shrine to the dead daughter, Lorrie. They also find all of the cages and jars the creepy critters have come from. After nailing most of the trapdoors shut, the Einstein brothers decide that they should leave one open, so that they can go in after her. Yeah. Whatever. They check back in with the newlyweds to make sure he hasn't died yet, then leave to re-open one of the trapdoors.
The NANOSECOND they leave, Evelyn pops up in the honeymoon suite. She stabs her scythe through the bride's face, then yanks it out of her to attack the husband. He tries to fight back, but is no match for her in his weak state. She plunges her blade through his heart and sneaks away before the Clue Crew can return. (that's pretty funny, by the way: when the 2 guys burst back in, Gopher makes this goofy-as-heck face and starts waving his flashlight around at random. I almost want to assume it's from some blooper reel, and someone just added it in by mistake)
The Dorknamic Duo agree that their best plan is to go down into the tunnels after Evelyn. Gopher goes back to his room first, to put on his bulletproof sweater and tell Menage a Duh to lock herself in his car, the car with the World's Bulkiest Phone. Feeling safer with his lucky sweater on, Gopher descends into the tunnel. The plan is simple: He goes in on his side of the tunnel, the handyman goes in on his side, and they try to trap Evelyn between them. For a 3-way. Excuse me, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.
While Menage a Duh hides out in the car, Gopher and the handyman start out on their mission. The black guy, in a long-standing slasher tradition, is the next to die. Don't ask why, it's just how it's done, dagnabbit! Anyway, Evelyn chops off the black guy's hand. This reveals the first major plot twist: the black guy was a ZOMBIE! How else do you explain the fact tht his severed hand is GREY?
The sheriff finds the girl in the car and "rescues" her, by which I mean he removes her from the relative safety of the car and forces her to lead him back to her room. She shows him the hatch in her floor, and down he goes. In under 2 minutes he manages to crack the case, finding the room with all of the bodies. Excellent work, Columbo. Interestingly, there are also numerous pictures of evil pig-heads, making me wonder once again about the similarities between this and Motel Hell.
Trying to avoid capture, Evelyn hides behind a wall in a secret room. The room is filled with her daughter's "art", and Lorrie's ghost even shows up for a visit. Unfortunately the sheriff breaks up the reunion, and Evelyn tries to kill him. In the process, she gets her blade stuck in a ceiling plank. Taking advantage of her distraction, the sheriff tries to grab her arms but she fights back, and during their fight, she slams into a wall. This loosens up the wooden beams, and she winds up getting slashed across the throat by her own weapon. Evelyn dies, but not before a final "jump" scare.
The movie ends with an odd final scene: After rejoining the young couple, the sheriff needlessly upsets Menage a Duh by telling them that they are the only survivors of the MOUNTAINTOP MOTEL MASSACRE!!! As they all get into the police car, we see someone running through the woods, just an unknown pair of feet. It turns out to be Lorrie's ghost. She shows up before they drive off, and seems to make the car get stuck in a muddy pothole...but they get unstuck and drive off anyway. Effective use of ghost-powers, Lorrie!
Anyway, as they drive past the motel, the "Vacancy" sign turns on. For some reason, this got me snickering. I mean, the sheriff didn't exactly call for back-up or rope off the crime scene. Can you imagine what the reaction's going to be for the next tired motorist who decides to stop there??? Plus, who the heck is left to check anyone in, Lorrie's ghost? She can't even stop the previous 3 dingbats from leaving!
So, there you have it: a strange ending to a strange movie, and my sanity (mostly) remains intact! 4 killer trees out of 5, just for the weirdness. Mountaintop Motel Massacre taught me:
-That I can watch a movie 2x, and STILL barely recall anyone's names afterwards! Guess I should've paid more attention to the trailer, huh?
-Ghosts just want to fulfill their dreams of being small-business owners.
-Gopher and Harry Anderson had a love child!
-I need to see Motel Hell again, and soon! Hell yeah!
Next up: A slasher movie set in a bowling alley. Gutterballs, here I come!
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
The Watcher
There are some actors who should never, ever do horror films: Keanu Reeves is one of those. Consider the sampling of his work in horror...in Dracula he was silly and his accent kept wavering between "Englishman" and "Surfer Dude"; in River's Edge he was bland and bored-looking; and in this week's disaster, he just looks like he walked into the wrong audition. The disaster is called The Watcher.
We have James Spader as the hero, a washed-up profiler who is obsessed with catching Reeves, the killer. Spader's sometimes pretty good in this one, as it was made before his eyes started falling out of their sockets on The Practice. The dude has NOT aged well, is all I'm saying. Anyway, Reeves likes to observe and study his victims meticulously before the kill, even to the point of befriending them. He then sends pictures of them to Spader's character, just to yank his chain.
Right off the bat, this movie doesn't scare me. The first time we see Ted "Theodore" Logan--errr, I mean "Keanu", he's dancing around, prancing and shimmying in a way that made me double-check the Netflix sleeve, to verify that it wasn't a comedy. Thanks to this scene, I will now never be able to enjoy the song "Dragula". Thanks, Keanu. He's just not scary. Whenever he's onscreen, I expect Alex Winter to show up, so they can toss around a few "Excellent!"'s. I haven't found him scary since he tried Shakespeare. Geez.
And Spader's good, when he's subtle. But in some scenes, the guy is so busy chewing the scenery, I can see the bite-marks on the walls. As the profiler, he's certainly no William Petersen in Manhunter. Heck, he's not even up to par with LL Cool J in Mindhunters. Oh, and to round out the cast, we have Ernie "I was the black guy in Ghostbusters" Hudson as Spader's boss, and Marissa Tomei(an actress I usually find appealing, but she looks sickly in the early scenes in this role...maybe she WAS sick?) as Spader's shrink. See, Spader sees a shrink because the killer just keeps following him from city to city, sending him pictures and messages designed to keep him on the case. Spader's girlfriend/wife/whatever-who-cares was one of Keanu's victims, and it left Spader deeply troubled.
Reeves' first victim(in the film, at least) is a young clerk in an electronics store. He takes several pictures of her, which he then sends to Spader as clues. I wish every killer could be so thoughtful! Of course, by the time Spader sees the pictures, the girl is already captured by Keanu and murdered. He even calls Spader's 500-ton-looking cell phone when Spader examines the crime scene.
Oh, and that's the other thing: He's in constant contact with Spader. Always calls him to chat, follows him everywhere he goes--heck, they even nearly capture him at a Chinese restaurant, because Spader "senses" that he's outside watching.
The script is as generic as they get: we see scenes where Spader "views" the killer in visions; we get the obligatory "we know Spader is single and a workaholic, because his fridge has one vegetable, a can of beer, and a box of Arm & Hammer in it" scene(seriously, I'm a single guy, and I never have a problem remembering to buy basic groceries...Hollywood, can we PLEASE retire this dumb cliche?); there's even a scene where the cop inadvertantly comes face to face with his prey without ever realizing it. Not even 45 minutes in, I feel like I've seen this movie about a million times before!
*deep breath* So Keanu begins stalking his next victim, a homeless chick whom he charms by "waltzing" with her on the sidewalk. Um yeah, nothing abnormal about THAT. She seems to buy his act as a nice guy, and he sends several pics of her to Spader to re-motivate him. But the night of the planned murder, she decks Keanu and makes a run for safety. While she's trying not to get killed by Neo, Spader is canvassing the streets with her picture, asking for help in locating her.
Spader finally finds a guy who knows the girl, but he apparently wants her to die, because he runs away when he recognizes her in the photo. After a generic foot chase, Spader makes the guy take him to her "spot", the place she sleeps at nght. Of course, she's been running all this time, so she wouldn't necessarily still be RIGHT where he left her, but eh, whatever. Keanu has found her in her hiding place and strangled her with piano wire(another serial killer cliche...piano players must be the most dangerous guys alive), so it's a pretty moot point.
Spader and Reeves then engage in the most tedious foot- and car-chase in the history of films. They climb stairs, they run across rooftops, they ride around in stolen cars---when did this become Grand Theft Auto??? Someday I hope somebody takes this chase scene and sets it to "Yakkety Sax", that song used in "The Benny Hill Show". Get on that, YouTube!
This all culminates in an explosion at a gas station. Reeves escapes, but Spader goes home and suffers from one of his crippling migraines or something, because his boss finds him passed out in front of his neglected fridge. He's rushed into the hospital, where Marisa visits him, and we discover that Keanu has planted a hidden microphone on her. He listens to the recording of the hospital visit and decides to plan his endgame.
He abducts Marisa and the kidnapping is featured on the news. Spader then realizes how much she resembles the woman who was burnt to death previously. Checking himself out of the hospital, Spader goes to the cemetary the woman was buried at, and meets Keanu there. They discuss their past, and Keanu agrees to take Spader to see his damsel in distress.
He has her tied up in a warehouse, surrounded by fuel and explosives. Spader sits through the usual, long-winded exposition scene, then wounds Keanu. Of course this sets off a chain reaction of fire, sparks and the usual fireworks show, and as Keanu burns alive, Spader and Tomei escape by breaking a window and jumping. All 3 fall into the harbor these factories are always built near(in movies, at least), and as our heroes are fished out of the water, Keanu's corpse also is fetched, depriving me of even a half-assed attempt at a final scare. BOO! HISS!
Despite the simplistic approach, The Watcherwasn't as awful as most of the crap I watch. There was at least 1 cute victim(Jessie, the homeless chick), some good actors(Tomei and Hudson, mostly), and an average-ish body count(around 5, that we actually see--Keanu included--though supposedly Keanu killed many more as he moved from city to city). Not the best by far, but there are many that could be worse. 3 killer trees out of 5.
What has The Watcher left me with?
-Keanu should be a serial killer...he's so hard to take seriously, he'd probably get more victims than Jason and Freddy combined.\
-Marisa Tomei is like the girl in that one Seinfeld episode, the one where she looked super hot in some lighting, and a crone the rest of the time.
-Both Reeves and Spader went to the Shatner School of Dramatic Emoting. Ugh.
-Some homeless chicks are majorly HOT!
Next movie up is Mountaintop Motel Massacre, sometime in the middle of the week. Stay tuned!
We have James Spader as the hero, a washed-up profiler who is obsessed with catching Reeves, the killer. Spader's sometimes pretty good in this one, as it was made before his eyes started falling out of their sockets on The Practice. The dude has NOT aged well, is all I'm saying. Anyway, Reeves likes to observe and study his victims meticulously before the kill, even to the point of befriending them. He then sends pictures of them to Spader's character, just to yank his chain.
Right off the bat, this movie doesn't scare me. The first time we see Ted "Theodore" Logan--errr, I mean "Keanu", he's dancing around, prancing and shimmying in a way that made me double-check the Netflix sleeve, to verify that it wasn't a comedy. Thanks to this scene, I will now never be able to enjoy the song "Dragula". Thanks, Keanu. He's just not scary. Whenever he's onscreen, I expect Alex Winter to show up, so they can toss around a few "Excellent!"'s. I haven't found him scary since he tried Shakespeare. Geez.
And Spader's good, when he's subtle. But in some scenes, the guy is so busy chewing the scenery, I can see the bite-marks on the walls. As the profiler, he's certainly no William Petersen in Manhunter. Heck, he's not even up to par with LL Cool J in Mindhunters. Oh, and to round out the cast, we have Ernie "I was the black guy in Ghostbusters" Hudson as Spader's boss, and Marissa Tomei(an actress I usually find appealing, but she looks sickly in the early scenes in this role...maybe she WAS sick?) as Spader's shrink. See, Spader sees a shrink because the killer just keeps following him from city to city, sending him pictures and messages designed to keep him on the case. Spader's girlfriend/wife/whatever-who-cares was one of Keanu's victims, and it left Spader deeply troubled.
Reeves' first victim(in the film, at least) is a young clerk in an electronics store. He takes several pictures of her, which he then sends to Spader as clues. I wish every killer could be so thoughtful! Of course, by the time Spader sees the pictures, the girl is already captured by Keanu and murdered. He even calls Spader's 500-ton-looking cell phone when Spader examines the crime scene.
Oh, and that's the other thing: He's in constant contact with Spader. Always calls him to chat, follows him everywhere he goes--heck, they even nearly capture him at a Chinese restaurant, because Spader "senses" that he's outside watching.
The script is as generic as they get: we see scenes where Spader "views" the killer in visions; we get the obligatory "we know Spader is single and a workaholic, because his fridge has one vegetable, a can of beer, and a box of Arm & Hammer in it" scene(seriously, I'm a single guy, and I never have a problem remembering to buy basic groceries...Hollywood, can we PLEASE retire this dumb cliche?); there's even a scene where the cop inadvertantly comes face to face with his prey without ever realizing it. Not even 45 minutes in, I feel like I've seen this movie about a million times before!
*deep breath* So Keanu begins stalking his next victim, a homeless chick whom he charms by "waltzing" with her on the sidewalk. Um yeah, nothing abnormal about THAT. She seems to buy his act as a nice guy, and he sends several pics of her to Spader to re-motivate him. But the night of the planned murder, she decks Keanu and makes a run for safety. While she's trying not to get killed by Neo, Spader is canvassing the streets with her picture, asking for help in locating her.
Spader finally finds a guy who knows the girl, but he apparently wants her to die, because he runs away when he recognizes her in the photo. After a generic foot chase, Spader makes the guy take him to her "spot", the place she sleeps at nght. Of course, she's been running all this time, so she wouldn't necessarily still be RIGHT where he left her, but eh, whatever. Keanu has found her in her hiding place and strangled her with piano wire(another serial killer cliche...piano players must be the most dangerous guys alive), so it's a pretty moot point.
Spader and Reeves then engage in the most tedious foot- and car-chase in the history of films. They climb stairs, they run across rooftops, they ride around in stolen cars---when did this become Grand Theft Auto??? Someday I hope somebody takes this chase scene and sets it to "Yakkety Sax", that song used in "The Benny Hill Show". Get on that, YouTube!
This all culminates in an explosion at a gas station. Reeves escapes, but Spader goes home and suffers from one of his crippling migraines or something, because his boss finds him passed out in front of his neglected fridge. He's rushed into the hospital, where Marisa visits him, and we discover that Keanu has planted a hidden microphone on her. He listens to the recording of the hospital visit and decides to plan his endgame.
He abducts Marisa and the kidnapping is featured on the news. Spader then realizes how much she resembles the woman who was burnt to death previously. Checking himself out of the hospital, Spader goes to the cemetary the woman was buried at, and meets Keanu there. They discuss their past, and Keanu agrees to take Spader to see his damsel in distress.
He has her tied up in a warehouse, surrounded by fuel and explosives. Spader sits through the usual, long-winded exposition scene, then wounds Keanu. Of course this sets off a chain reaction of fire, sparks and the usual fireworks show, and as Keanu burns alive, Spader and Tomei escape by breaking a window and jumping. All 3 fall into the harbor these factories are always built near(in movies, at least), and as our heroes are fished out of the water, Keanu's corpse also is fetched, depriving me of even a half-assed attempt at a final scare. BOO! HISS!
Despite the simplistic approach, The Watcherwasn't as awful as most of the crap I watch. There was at least 1 cute victim(Jessie, the homeless chick), some good actors(Tomei and Hudson, mostly), and an average-ish body count(around 5, that we actually see--Keanu included--though supposedly Keanu killed many more as he moved from city to city). Not the best by far, but there are many that could be worse. 3 killer trees out of 5.
What has The Watcher left me with?
-Keanu should be a serial killer...he's so hard to take seriously, he'd probably get more victims than Jason and Freddy combined.\
-Marisa Tomei is like the girl in that one Seinfeld episode, the one where she looked super hot in some lighting, and a crone the rest of the time.
-Both Reeves and Spader went to the Shatner School of Dramatic Emoting. Ugh.
-Some homeless chicks are majorly HOT!
Next movie up is Mountaintop Motel Massacre, sometime in the middle of the week. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The Forest
Well, after the fiasco of dealing with The Sorority's crappy DVD, I was a little apprehensive about getting another low-budget slasher. However, The Forest at least PLAYED on my laptop, so there's already 1 point in its' favor. The bad news? No sound. *(see footnote after the recap)
SPOILERS follow, possibly...but only if I'm the world's luckiest guesser...
Okay, so I'm going to have to GUESS what's going on.....ready? The silent movie begins with a couple at what looks like a national park, hiking. The credits are shown as they hike. Exciting. Oh, the movie stars such luminaries as Stafford Morgan(wasn't he a savings & loan?), Tony Gee(I hope he married Louise Whiz!), and Corky Pigeon. I shit you not, that's someone's actual name. Dear god, this one may destroy my fragile mind.
The woman hears a noise. Lucky for her. I never get to! We get a few POV shots of the killer watching the couple. Again, the woman hears "something", or maybe her Spidey sense is tingling. Who knows? As they (hilariously!) decide to hike faster, the killer runs behind them from one hiding spot to another. Looking constipated, the woman freaks out. The guy tells her to go behind tree and use a pine cone to wipe with I guess. She begs him for HIS feminine hygiene products and he agrees. She stomps off, and he gets a knife to the gut THE SECOND she goes offscreen. Or maybe the crotch. He's wearing so much friggin' denim, it's hard to tell.
Debbie Downer comes back, and finds the body. Increasing the frown to Chloe-on-24-like proportions, she panics and begins running. The killer apparently has very little depth perception, as he stabs a tree instead of her. Then, in a move that would have impressed Houdini, our killer grabs her from behind a tree, while showing her the knife IN FRONT OF the tree. And she couldn't outrun this rocket scientist WHY??? He shows her the knife before stabbing her to death.
The movie then switches to a montage of traffic jams. Again, no joke. We get to watch scene after endless scene of cars bumper-to-bumper in heavy traffic. Fun times. 2 guys who look like Robert Reed(the dad on The Brady Bunch) and Rick Springfield(has-been rockstar) or maybe Adrian Zmed(T.J. Hooker) are sitting in the traffic jam. Mike Brady has his arm on the back of pseudo-Zmed's seat, making me wonder if it actually IS Reed(although he played the family man on Brady, Reed was gay in real-life). The guys are apparently NOT them, because they pick up their wives and take them to Papa Gino's.
At the restaurant, no one notices Mike Brady's head smoking. They're too busy pretending to give a crap about something one of the girls is saying. She looks like a cross between Kirsten Dunst and a Muppet. The other girl tries flirting with Mike Brady, and he just tells her "something suddenly came up". Hey, no sound and it's my recap: they say what I tell 'em to. The girls get really drunk, probably after realizing this movie will bring their acting careers to a grinding halt, and Mike Brady demonstrates how he used to put Bobby to bed.
Breaking your date's ribs is apparently not a good idea, because the next scene shows the girls packing their suitcases to try their luck as showgirls instead of Hollywood starlets. ZmedHead kisses Muppet-girl, and the other one stares dreamily into Brady's eyes while reminding herself to get a blood test done the minute she gets home. The SECOND the girls leave, the 2 guys hold hands and plan a trip together. Geez, what the hell kinda movie did I rent? They have the most boring car-chase in history, which ends with the guys giving up the chase to stop at a gas station. It's probably the gas station most of them ended up working at after making this movie.
At the gas station the guys run into Andy Richter's dad. He agrees to look over their job applications if the whole "movie star" thing doesn't pan out. While the guys are re-thinking their future, the girls(let's call 'em Thelma and Louise....Thelma can be the Muppet.) arrive at THE FOREST! Louise puts on a vest made out of Leslie Nielsen's back-hair, and off they go. As the guys are FINALLY finishing their job interviews, Thelma and Louise walk past the tree that the Keebler elves all live in. They climb rocks, they jump over logs--hey, I guess all those feminine hygiene ads were right! Although I can't hear the dialogue, I'm willing to bet it went something like:
THELMA: Where the hell are we?????
LOUISE: i dunno, the film crew left about 3 hours ago. If cell phones ever get invented, maybe we can call a cab.
The guys end up on one of those narrow, winding roads that only ever seem to exist in this type of movie. They somehow find the girls' vehicle and park next to it, as the girls are setting up camp waaaaay the eff away. The guys put on backpacks and pretend to be David Naughton and Griffin Dunne in An American Werewolf In London. They meet the poor man's Burt Reynolds, moonlighting as a State Trooper, and he looks about as useless as the REAL Burt. Having no trail to follow or way to let the girls know they've arrived, the guys decide to just start walking in a random direction. That works out about as well as you'd imagine.
Cue nightfall. The girls are discussing the possibility of becoming lesbian cave hermits, if their boyfriends don't arrive soon. While they dreamily contemplate throwing each other into the fire they built, 2 ghost-children, a boy and a girl, show up. Again, I'm not screwing with your minds, this actually happens. They look like refugees from the Little House On the Prairie set. Who are they? Beats me. The boy apparently wants to have a little camp-orgy, but the ghost-girl doesn't seem into it. He tells her about his blue balls, and Thelma and Louise figure out that they're not alone.
ANOTHER ghost shows up, this time a woman. She has a scratch where Bill Clinton's desk apparently hit her forehead. Wow, what a crappy way to die. She warns Thelma and Louise about accepting internships in Washington and POOF! she vanishes. The girls decide to start attending AA meetings and try to leave their campsite, but are blocked by a moth. Oooooh, scary!
The guys get tired of wandering around in the dark, and decide to just let the killer get the girls. At the same time, the ghost-kids go talk to their dad, who turns out to be Will Sasso's version of Kenny Rogers. He picks up a knife and decides to take care of the girls, all while singing "Kill the Wabbit" under his whiskey-strong breath. After holding a knife above one of the girls for about a fortnight, she FINALLY wakes up and sees...the ghost-kids again. Damn. They warned Thelma and Louise, dagnabbit!! No fair!
Thelma and Louise decide the best course of action would be to stand up and just look around like the 2 useless meatbags they are. Louise runs off after a Shatneresque scene of emoting and rubbing ghost-blood off her forehead. Give that gal an Oscar....Mayer weiner.
Kenny chases one girl, but she outwits him with her knack for general stupidity. He goes after the one who stayed behind instead, making no attempt to hide or sneak up on her. She somehow STILL manages to miss seeing him approach RIGHT BESIDE HER. She does finally notice the crazy old man holding the knife, and reacts by just standing there. Dingbat. He stabs AT her several times, but I guess we have to use our imaginations, because other than a few fake blood-stains, there doesn't seem to be a mark on her. Even while slitting her throat the camera switches to a different angle. Laaaaame.
Louise sees her die and decides to run around, in the dark, in THE FOREST the killer knows like the back of his hand. Smart. Kenny chases her, and the chase is so long, they go from night to day. Rather than let him get her, Louise jumps down a waterfall and makes a swim for the opposite embankment. Kenny watches her for a minute, then chooses to go back to fetch Thelma before pursuing her.
The guys(remember them?) are still standing in the middle of nowhere, ooh-ing and ahhh-ing over a compass. A COMPASS. Dumbasses. It starts raining, and I pause to wonder if the movie heard me wish bad luck upon them. The dingleberries find shelter in a cave, and it's the cave Kenny lives in. OF COURSE. They briefly grope each other's chests, only to find the ghost-kids watching them. Before they can traumatize the kids too much, Kenny comes back. He decides to invite them to dinner, apparently forgetting that he's in a slasher movie.
While chowing down on Thelma's ribs, Kenny tells them about his plan to open a chain of restaurants, and call them Kenny Roger's Roasters, using campers as the main course. Wisely, the guys decide to turn down his offer and refuse to invest in his business plan. In a weirdly placed flashback scene, Kenny is shown walking in on his wife and her lover, a repairman of some kind. They were having an affair, and had been forcing his kids into the bedroom closet while they screwed each others' brains out.
He chokes the wife to death, and knocks her forehead into the bedside table, which explains the blood on her forehead as a ghost. He then goes to stab the lover to death, but they end up brawling instead. In a chase scene that defies logic, the boyfriend keeps escaping the killer, only to find the killer has somehow managed to get ahead of him again, each time brandishing a new weapon. HUH???
Whatever. The killer eventually corners the wife's lover and forces him up against a circular saw, imbedding the teeth of it into the guy's chest. The kids watch him bury the bodies, and then he drags them away, presumably to kill them as well. Hey, I'm doing pretty damn good for a guy with no sound.
The Idiot Brothers decide to spend the night. Because no one would refuse shelter from a guy who just told them that he murdered his family and then became a cannibal. Yeah, pull the OTHER leg, movie. Further solidifying my belief that they are Robert Reed and Adrian Zmed, the 2 doofuses (doofii?) sleep together on the floor in adjoining sleeping bags. They even have a very "Brady" talk before bed. Yeesh.
They somehow survive the night, and pack up early the next morning to leave. Ol' Whatsherface also wakes up the next morning, after having slept under a rock. Good hiding place, soon-to-be-dead-chick!
The guys waste more screentime searching the rocks for the girls. Why the rocks? Who knows? Who cares? They eventually find the campsite, with no sign of Thelma or Louise. They backtrack to Kenny's cave, which is also now empty. Louise, while aimlessly wandering around in THE FOREST!!!!!!, sees the ghost kids again. They distract her long enough for Kenny to catch up, because that just makes no effing sense in the least. (At this point, my laptop still didn't give me the movie's volume, but an annoying whistle started up. Great.)
Anyway, Louise slides down a hill. She hides just as Kenny shows up, and she chooses rocks and trees that don't conceal her very much at all. I say let Kenny kill the chick. Do the world a favor, Kenny. Kill a dumbass, and save us from this cheap-ass movie. The movie then grinds to a halt so we can watch the guys do laundry. I swear.
The killer has found Louise, and while she's hiding under some rocks, he's sitting above them, waiting for her to emerge. She must've made a sound or something, because he stops gnawing on her friend's flesh to look around a bit. Dude, you got some Thelma stuck in yer teeth.
Mike Brady leaves, probably to get help, and leaves Zmed-for-brains at the campsite. In case the girls come back, I guess. Oh, and ZmedHead now has a headband. ZmedHead, I dub thee Rambozo!
Brady injures himself in the dumbest way possible and has a piece of bone poking up through his leg. He ain't going anywhere. The ghost-kids meet up with Louise, probably to discuss why late '70's/early '80's fashion sucked so much. Kenny hears them and decides to keep tracking his prey.
Brady stops hop-limping away, so that he can have himself a good, manly cry. Night falls, and Rambozo waits for someone to find him. "Someone" turns out to be the killer's wife. She freaks out Rambozo before vanishing. Rambozo is further unsettled by the approach of the killer, even though they appear to be in different time zones(Rambozo's scenes are at night, by the fire; Kenny's scenes are in daylight.)
Kenny does exactly what he did before: he walks out in plain view, and waits for his victim to miss seeing him. Luckily, our guy is(barely) smarter than Thelma was. They scuffle, and both men drop their weapons. Rambozo seems to have the upper hand, until they both fall in the water. The cannibal drowns him.
While wandering around, Louise encounters the kids again. She lets them lead her to safety, and instead they take her right to the spot where the killer is preparing to cut up Rambozo. Nice kids. She freaks out, and the killer hears her. Before he can kill her though, the kids manage to stop him. They then help her to get away, hopefully to find Cryin' Mike Brady.
Using a heavy tree branch as a makeshift crutch, Brady eventually falls down. The killer sees him fall, and begins making his approach. They have a showdown, but Brady is caught off-balance and the killer tries to focus his attacks on the injured leg. With Brady helpless on the ground, the killer swoops in for the finishing move, but Brady rolls away at the last second. Quick recap:A guy evades a mass-murdering hillbilly cannibal by ROLLING SLOWLY AWAY. Then we see Louise grab one of the dropped knives. She lunges at the killer, who sees her as his dead wife and panics. She plunges the knife into his chest, killing him and ending his cannibal murder spree.
The kids show up one last time to say goodbye to the couple. Then the ghost-Mom shows up. Geez, this is turning into Scooby-friggin'-Doo. They tell her the kids are gone, and she whooshes back to the killer's cave. As she watches, he hugs the 2 kids and they all vanish. THE END. During the credits, they show the now-deserted cave, then a scene out in a field. Wow. 1 and a half trees out of 5. The 1's a gift, as thanks for the lack of audio. I can only imagine how dumb this shit would've been if I had to have the full experience....
So, what has this week's crapfest taught me?
-Deafness can be a blessing.
-A movie about a cannibal who slaughters and eats about 8 people can somehow be boring as hell, and almost completely devoid of good kills.
-Adrian Zmed and Robert Reed reallllllly dug each other. Yikes!
I think the next movie coming in is The Watcher, but I'm not going through the hassle of my crappy wireless signal to double-check, so don't hold me to that. See you next week!
*(a quick footnote---towards the end, my laptop overheated and shut down. When I rebooted, the sound on the movie worked again, so I rewatched this thing. While I messed up some of the story with my guesswork---Brady and the "Louise" are married and on the brink of a divorce---frankly, my guesses were more fun than the actual film...Some of the other stuff I got wrong as well, obviously...The kids died of "sadness"? The guy WASN'T their father?? If this POS ever gets remade, they need to re-write most of the "plot", and make the kills more interesting.)
SPOILERS follow, possibly...but only if I'm the world's luckiest guesser...
Okay, so I'm going to have to GUESS what's going on.....ready? The silent movie begins with a couple at what looks like a national park, hiking. The credits are shown as they hike. Exciting. Oh, the movie stars such luminaries as Stafford Morgan(wasn't he a savings & loan?), Tony Gee(I hope he married Louise Whiz!), and Corky Pigeon. I shit you not, that's someone's actual name. Dear god, this one may destroy my fragile mind.
The woman hears a noise. Lucky for her. I never get to! We get a few POV shots of the killer watching the couple. Again, the woman hears "something", or maybe her Spidey sense is tingling. Who knows? As they (hilariously!) decide to hike faster, the killer runs behind them from one hiding spot to another. Looking constipated, the woman freaks out. The guy tells her to go behind tree and use a pine cone to wipe with I guess. She begs him for HIS feminine hygiene products and he agrees. She stomps off, and he gets a knife to the gut THE SECOND she goes offscreen. Or maybe the crotch. He's wearing so much friggin' denim, it's hard to tell.
Debbie Downer comes back, and finds the body. Increasing the frown to Chloe-on-24-like proportions, she panics and begins running. The killer apparently has very little depth perception, as he stabs a tree instead of her. Then, in a move that would have impressed Houdini, our killer grabs her from behind a tree, while showing her the knife IN FRONT OF the tree. And she couldn't outrun this rocket scientist WHY??? He shows her the knife before stabbing her to death.
The movie then switches to a montage of traffic jams. Again, no joke. We get to watch scene after endless scene of cars bumper-to-bumper in heavy traffic. Fun times. 2 guys who look like Robert Reed(the dad on The Brady Bunch) and Rick Springfield(has-been rockstar) or maybe Adrian Zmed(T.J. Hooker) are sitting in the traffic jam. Mike Brady has his arm on the back of pseudo-Zmed's seat, making me wonder if it actually IS Reed(although he played the family man on Brady, Reed was gay in real-life). The guys are apparently NOT them, because they pick up their wives and take them to Papa Gino's.
At the restaurant, no one notices Mike Brady's head smoking. They're too busy pretending to give a crap about something one of the girls is saying. She looks like a cross between Kirsten Dunst and a Muppet. The other girl tries flirting with Mike Brady, and he just tells her "something suddenly came up". Hey, no sound and it's my recap: they say what I tell 'em to. The girls get really drunk, probably after realizing this movie will bring their acting careers to a grinding halt, and Mike Brady demonstrates how he used to put Bobby to bed.
Breaking your date's ribs is apparently not a good idea, because the next scene shows the girls packing their suitcases to try their luck as showgirls instead of Hollywood starlets. ZmedHead kisses Muppet-girl, and the other one stares dreamily into Brady's eyes while reminding herself to get a blood test done the minute she gets home. The SECOND the girls leave, the 2 guys hold hands and plan a trip together. Geez, what the hell kinda movie did I rent? They have the most boring car-chase in history, which ends with the guys giving up the chase to stop at a gas station. It's probably the gas station most of them ended up working at after making this movie.
At the gas station the guys run into Andy Richter's dad. He agrees to look over their job applications if the whole "movie star" thing doesn't pan out. While the guys are re-thinking their future, the girls(let's call 'em Thelma and Louise....Thelma can be the Muppet.) arrive at THE FOREST! Louise puts on a vest made out of Leslie Nielsen's back-hair, and off they go. As the guys are FINALLY finishing their job interviews, Thelma and Louise walk past the tree that the Keebler elves all live in. They climb rocks, they jump over logs--hey, I guess all those feminine hygiene ads were right! Although I can't hear the dialogue, I'm willing to bet it went something like:
THELMA: Where the hell are we?????
LOUISE: i dunno, the film crew left about 3 hours ago. If cell phones ever get invented, maybe we can call a cab.
The guys end up on one of those narrow, winding roads that only ever seem to exist in this type of movie. They somehow find the girls' vehicle and park next to it, as the girls are setting up camp waaaaay the eff away. The guys put on backpacks and pretend to be David Naughton and Griffin Dunne in An American Werewolf In London. They meet the poor man's Burt Reynolds, moonlighting as a State Trooper, and he looks about as useless as the REAL Burt. Having no trail to follow or way to let the girls know they've arrived, the guys decide to just start walking in a random direction. That works out about as well as you'd imagine.
Cue nightfall. The girls are discussing the possibility of becoming lesbian cave hermits, if their boyfriends don't arrive soon. While they dreamily contemplate throwing each other into the fire they built, 2 ghost-children, a boy and a girl, show up. Again, I'm not screwing with your minds, this actually happens. They look like refugees from the Little House On the Prairie set. Who are they? Beats me. The boy apparently wants to have a little camp-orgy, but the ghost-girl doesn't seem into it. He tells her about his blue balls, and Thelma and Louise figure out that they're not alone.
ANOTHER ghost shows up, this time a woman. She has a scratch where Bill Clinton's desk apparently hit her forehead. Wow, what a crappy way to die. She warns Thelma and Louise about accepting internships in Washington and POOF! she vanishes. The girls decide to start attending AA meetings and try to leave their campsite, but are blocked by a moth. Oooooh, scary!
The guys get tired of wandering around in the dark, and decide to just let the killer get the girls. At the same time, the ghost-kids go talk to their dad, who turns out to be Will Sasso's version of Kenny Rogers. He picks up a knife and decides to take care of the girls, all while singing "Kill the Wabbit" under his whiskey-strong breath. After holding a knife above one of the girls for about a fortnight, she FINALLY wakes up and sees...the ghost-kids again. Damn. They warned Thelma and Louise, dagnabbit!! No fair!
Thelma and Louise decide the best course of action would be to stand up and just look around like the 2 useless meatbags they are. Louise runs off after a Shatneresque scene of emoting and rubbing ghost-blood off her forehead. Give that gal an Oscar....Mayer weiner.
Kenny chases one girl, but she outwits him with her knack for general stupidity. He goes after the one who stayed behind instead, making no attempt to hide or sneak up on her. She somehow STILL manages to miss seeing him approach RIGHT BESIDE HER. She does finally notice the crazy old man holding the knife, and reacts by just standing there. Dingbat. He stabs AT her several times, but I guess we have to use our imaginations, because other than a few fake blood-stains, there doesn't seem to be a mark on her. Even while slitting her throat the camera switches to a different angle. Laaaaame.
Louise sees her die and decides to run around, in the dark, in THE FOREST the killer knows like the back of his hand. Smart. Kenny chases her, and the chase is so long, they go from night to day. Rather than let him get her, Louise jumps down a waterfall and makes a swim for the opposite embankment. Kenny watches her for a minute, then chooses to go back to fetch Thelma before pursuing her.
The guys(remember them?) are still standing in the middle of nowhere, ooh-ing and ahhh-ing over a compass. A COMPASS. Dumbasses. It starts raining, and I pause to wonder if the movie heard me wish bad luck upon them. The dingleberries find shelter in a cave, and it's the cave Kenny lives in. OF COURSE. They briefly grope each other's chests, only to find the ghost-kids watching them. Before they can traumatize the kids too much, Kenny comes back. He decides to invite them to dinner, apparently forgetting that he's in a slasher movie.
While chowing down on Thelma's ribs, Kenny tells them about his plan to open a chain of restaurants, and call them Kenny Roger's Roasters, using campers as the main course. Wisely, the guys decide to turn down his offer and refuse to invest in his business plan. In a weirdly placed flashback scene, Kenny is shown walking in on his wife and her lover, a repairman of some kind. They were having an affair, and had been forcing his kids into the bedroom closet while they screwed each others' brains out.
He chokes the wife to death, and knocks her forehead into the bedside table, which explains the blood on her forehead as a ghost. He then goes to stab the lover to death, but they end up brawling instead. In a chase scene that defies logic, the boyfriend keeps escaping the killer, only to find the killer has somehow managed to get ahead of him again, each time brandishing a new weapon. HUH???
Whatever. The killer eventually corners the wife's lover and forces him up against a circular saw, imbedding the teeth of it into the guy's chest. The kids watch him bury the bodies, and then he drags them away, presumably to kill them as well. Hey, I'm doing pretty damn good for a guy with no sound.
The Idiot Brothers decide to spend the night. Because no one would refuse shelter from a guy who just told them that he murdered his family and then became a cannibal. Yeah, pull the OTHER leg, movie. Further solidifying my belief that they are Robert Reed and Adrian Zmed, the 2 doofuses (doofii?) sleep together on the floor in adjoining sleeping bags. They even have a very "Brady" talk before bed. Yeesh.
They somehow survive the night, and pack up early the next morning to leave. Ol' Whatsherface also wakes up the next morning, after having slept under a rock. Good hiding place, soon-to-be-dead-chick!
The guys waste more screentime searching the rocks for the girls. Why the rocks? Who knows? Who cares? They eventually find the campsite, with no sign of Thelma or Louise. They backtrack to Kenny's cave, which is also now empty. Louise, while aimlessly wandering around in THE FOREST!!!!!!, sees the ghost kids again. They distract her long enough for Kenny to catch up, because that just makes no effing sense in the least. (At this point, my laptop still didn't give me the movie's volume, but an annoying whistle started up. Great.)
Anyway, Louise slides down a hill. She hides just as Kenny shows up, and she chooses rocks and trees that don't conceal her very much at all. I say let Kenny kill the chick. Do the world a favor, Kenny. Kill a dumbass, and save us from this cheap-ass movie. The movie then grinds to a halt so we can watch the guys do laundry. I swear.
The killer has found Louise, and while she's hiding under some rocks, he's sitting above them, waiting for her to emerge. She must've made a sound or something, because he stops gnawing on her friend's flesh to look around a bit. Dude, you got some Thelma stuck in yer teeth.
Mike Brady leaves, probably to get help, and leaves Zmed-for-brains at the campsite. In case the girls come back, I guess. Oh, and ZmedHead now has a headband. ZmedHead, I dub thee Rambozo!
Brady injures himself in the dumbest way possible and has a piece of bone poking up through his leg. He ain't going anywhere. The ghost-kids meet up with Louise, probably to discuss why late '70's/early '80's fashion sucked so much. Kenny hears them and decides to keep tracking his prey.
Brady stops hop-limping away, so that he can have himself a good, manly cry. Night falls, and Rambozo waits for someone to find him. "Someone" turns out to be the killer's wife. She freaks out Rambozo before vanishing. Rambozo is further unsettled by the approach of the killer, even though they appear to be in different time zones(Rambozo's scenes are at night, by the fire; Kenny's scenes are in daylight.)
Kenny does exactly what he did before: he walks out in plain view, and waits for his victim to miss seeing him. Luckily, our guy is(barely) smarter than Thelma was. They scuffle, and both men drop their weapons. Rambozo seems to have the upper hand, until they both fall in the water. The cannibal drowns him.
While wandering around, Louise encounters the kids again. She lets them lead her to safety, and instead they take her right to the spot where the killer is preparing to cut up Rambozo. Nice kids. She freaks out, and the killer hears her. Before he can kill her though, the kids manage to stop him. They then help her to get away, hopefully to find Cryin' Mike Brady.
Using a heavy tree branch as a makeshift crutch, Brady eventually falls down. The killer sees him fall, and begins making his approach. They have a showdown, but Brady is caught off-balance and the killer tries to focus his attacks on the injured leg. With Brady helpless on the ground, the killer swoops in for the finishing move, but Brady rolls away at the last second. Quick recap:A guy evades a mass-murdering hillbilly cannibal by ROLLING SLOWLY AWAY. Then we see Louise grab one of the dropped knives. She lunges at the killer, who sees her as his dead wife and panics. She plunges the knife into his chest, killing him and ending his cannibal murder spree.
The kids show up one last time to say goodbye to the couple. Then the ghost-Mom shows up. Geez, this is turning into Scooby-friggin'-Doo. They tell her the kids are gone, and she whooshes back to the killer's cave. As she watches, he hugs the 2 kids and they all vanish. THE END. During the credits, they show the now-deserted cave, then a scene out in a field. Wow. 1 and a half trees out of 5. The 1's a gift, as thanks for the lack of audio. I can only imagine how dumb this shit would've been if I had to have the full experience....
So, what has this week's crapfest taught me?
-Deafness can be a blessing.
-A movie about a cannibal who slaughters and eats about 8 people can somehow be boring as hell, and almost completely devoid of good kills.
-Adrian Zmed and Robert Reed reallllllly dug each other. Yikes!
I think the next movie coming in is The Watcher, but I'm not going through the hassle of my crappy wireless signal to double-check, so don't hold me to that. See you next week!
*(a quick footnote---towards the end, my laptop overheated and shut down. When I rebooted, the sound on the movie worked again, so I rewatched this thing. While I messed up some of the story with my guesswork---Brady and the "Louise" are married and on the brink of a divorce---frankly, my guesses were more fun than the actual film...Some of the other stuff I got wrong as well, obviously...The kids died of "sadness"? The guy WASN'T their father?? If this POS ever gets remade, they need to re-write most of the "plot", and make the kills more interesting.)
Sunday, August 8, 2010
The Sorority
Well, the latest slasher flick to cross my path is The Sorority, and "wow". Just "wow". My laptop's DVD player didn't even want to load it up. I shoulda taken that as a sign from God. This was bad, man. Reeeeeeeeeeeeal bad. And only about 5 minutes long.
Filmed on what looks like someone's cell phone (this is one SERIOUSLY filmy, gauzy image...did they film it through a box of tissues?), this monstrosity makes Troma films look epic in their grandeur. We open on a law enforcement standoff or raid, I dunno. Everyone looks like they're playing "Cops & Robbers". They find a charred corpse, and we get the opening credits that look like they were done on a Windows 95 movie making program. After that, we open on a scene where a woman is stumbling around the Temple of Doom. We even get to see 2 cult members in CVS-budget Halloween robes at an altar. There's some silly cartoony lightning, and the pair of figures reveal that they're both somewhat-attractive-in-a-bad-porno-kinda way. The woman we saw earlier takes out a switchblade and cuts loose another girl who was some kind of sacrifice, I'm assuming.
After making the laziest attempt at an escape EVER, they just sort of stop so that the "victim" can reveal that they all duped the rescuer, so that SHE could be captured instead. Riiiiiiiight. Anyway, the screen turned yellow, then blue, then crapped out on me. I tried the Windows Media Player, the Interactual DVD player, a Quicktime Player, and 1 or 2 other freeware DVD players before finally giving up. Zero trees, just for wasting my time. If anyone out there has ever actually seen this, let me know what I missed, will ya?
I re-configured my Netflix queue so that I don't have to worry if I get a random dud DVD every now and then. So, my next SAW should be The Forest, barring any glitches. If not, I have 3 other immediately following it on my list: The Watcher, Season of the Hunted, and Gutterballs. We'll play it by ear, mmmmm'kay?
Stay tuned!
Filmed on what looks like someone's cell phone (this is one SERIOUSLY filmy, gauzy image...did they film it through a box of tissues?), this monstrosity makes Troma films look epic in their grandeur. We open on a law enforcement standoff or raid, I dunno. Everyone looks like they're playing "Cops & Robbers". They find a charred corpse, and we get the opening credits that look like they were done on a Windows 95 movie making program. After that, we open on a scene where a woman is stumbling around the Temple of Doom. We even get to see 2 cult members in CVS-budget Halloween robes at an altar. There's some silly cartoony lightning, and the pair of figures reveal that they're both somewhat-attractive-in-a-bad-porno-kinda way. The woman we saw earlier takes out a switchblade and cuts loose another girl who was some kind of sacrifice, I'm assuming.
After making the laziest attempt at an escape EVER, they just sort of stop so that the "victim" can reveal that they all duped the rescuer, so that SHE could be captured instead. Riiiiiiiight. Anyway, the screen turned yellow, then blue, then crapped out on me. I tried the Windows Media Player, the Interactual DVD player, a Quicktime Player, and 1 or 2 other freeware DVD players before finally giving up. Zero trees, just for wasting my time. If anyone out there has ever actually seen this, let me know what I missed, will ya?
I re-configured my Netflix queue so that I don't have to worry if I get a random dud DVD every now and then. So, my next SAW should be The Forest, barring any glitches. If not, I have 3 other immediately following it on my list: The Watcher, Season of the Hunted, and Gutterballs. We'll play it by ear, mmmmm'kay?
Stay tuned!
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Don't Go In the House
Remember the double-feature movie Grindhouse? Great movie experience...you get 2 hysterically cheesy movies spoofing the kinds of crap films you'd see at a drive-in, plus several ridiculous movie trailer spoofs. Well, the reason I bring up Grindhouse is because one of the trailers, Don't..., is a direct spoof of the horror genre of "Don't" movies. You know, like Don't Look in the Basement, Don't Answer the Phone, and today's cinematic "gem", Don't Go In the House.
The story is about young, crazy Donny. He's a troubled loner who is obsessed with fire. As the movie starts, Donny is at work(some kind of factory job), and he inserts a flammable can of spray into a furnace. A co-worker opens the furnace door, and BOOM--he lights up like a Roman candle. While others come to the man's aid, Donny just stands back and watches. Later, when confronted about the "accident", a supervisor asks him directly why he didn't cover the guy in something to douse the flames, and Donny's reply is, "I did...I covered him in fire." Nice guy.
From here, we start getting into a pretty blatant Psycho rip-off: Donny hears the voice of "Mother" telling him what to do. As Donny grew up, Mother apparently punished him by burning him on their stove, usually for sex-related "crimes". (sound familiar?) When he gets home, he even offers to make her some tea. Just like Norman Bates. In one of the funniest scenes I've ever witnessed, he "finds" her dead and has a reaction that even William Shatner would call hammy acting. (I'm still not entirely convinced he didn't kill her himself)After failing to revive her, Donny hears another voice, which informs him that he is now free to do anything he wants. His first major act of freedom is to listen to shitty Disco music at full blast, smoke a cigarette, lounge around...and hear his mother's voice screaming at him. Just like Norman, his mother haunts him.
He calls in sick to work and buys himself a flame-retardant suit. Then he reels in his first victim, a young florist. He buys flowers from her just as she's closing her shop, then offers her a ride when she misses her bus. Of course, instead of driving her home or to the next bus stop, he takes her to his house. Didn't she see the title? DON'T GO IN THE HOUUUUUUSE!!!!! Well, she does. Dumbass. As she wanders around the house getting progressively more and more freaked out, Donny tries to persuade her to stay. When she resists he knocks her out, strips her naked, and chains her up inside a fireproof room. Throw in a rose ceremony, and it looks like a standard episode of The Bachelor. (nice body, btw...I guess in the 70's there were far fewer "No nudity" clauses for movie starlets...) Donny splashes her with gas and sets her on fire. As Paris Hilton would say, "That's hot!"
His next victim is a woman stranded by the side of the road. We never even get to know her name. After he picks her up, her next scene is as a burnt-up corpse. Immediately following her murder, he kidnaps a woman at a convenience store and brings her home to "meet mother" and the other victims. At least this one has a name: Linda.
Before he can finish off Linda, Donny gets a call from Bobby, a co-worker. Bobby tells him that if he keeps missing work, his ass is grass. He must have killed Linda offscreen, because we see a LOT of scenes of Donny having nightmares of his victims coming after him, hallucinations of them appearing on stairwells and in doorways, and, of course, more scenes of Mother' s corpse being all corpse-y. Feeling lost and confused(join the party, Donald!), Donny goes to church. He shows the local priest what his mother did to his arms as a child, and the priest shows genuine concern for his health, both physical and mental. He even offers to hear Donny's confession.
Feeling better than he has in a looooong time, Donny goes home and asks his mother's corpse for forgiveness. Donny calls his ol' pal Bobby. Bobby is at home and surrounded by family, so of course he proposes that Donny meet up with him later to have a group-grope with some easy chicks. OF COURSE! Donny agrees to meet them...BAD idea!!
First, Donny goes out and buys himself a 3-piece suit and new shoes. Looking like Juan Epstein(any Welcome Back, Kotter fans?), Donny shows up at the Disco to meet Bobby and their "dates". While Bobby is dancing with his, Donny is having the MACE(Most Awkward Conversation Ever!)...or he was, until his date left to go dance with another guy. Having flashbacks of what his mother did to his arms, Donny accidentally burns a woman who wants to dance with him. He flees the nightclub and picks up 2 drunk women.
He tells the 2 drunks that he was mugged by, and he beat up, 3 tough guys. He suggests the girls come back to his house, and they idiotically agree. He then lures one of the girls into his "burn room"...
Meanwhile, Bobby tracks down the priest Donny talked to earlier. He tells him about the nightclub fire, and asks the Father to go with him to Donny's house to reason with him. Worried, they both agree that it would be best to find Donny before anything else happens. DUH.
The other girl that came home with Donny begins to worry when she can't find her friend, Suzanne. She wanders through the house, calling her name, unaware that Donny is right behind her. When she finds the room with all the bodies, Donny grabs her before she can scream. *gulp*
By this time, Bobby and the priest have arrived. They knock, but of course Donny is upstairs yelling at his corpse-harem. While Donny is changing his clothes, they break down the front door and hear a woman screaming. They follow the sound and find both Suzanne and the other girl in the fire-proof room, still very much alive. The manage to untie the frightened women, and start to lead them to safety, but the priest hears a noise upstairs and decides to stay behind. Sloooowly creeping up the stairs(another scene reminiscent of Psycho), he encounters Donny, dressed in his asbestos suit. Donny introduces the poor guy to his flamethrower, and makes Chicken Fried Father.
Bobby manages to throw a blanket over the priest to try to put him out, and now Donny is like a man on a mission: he moves from room to room, flamethrower in hand, until he reaches the Smoking Room(heh, sorry, I couldn't resist). All the while, his mother is shadowing him, but he barely seems to register her ghostly presence. He instead tells all of the voices, mother and others, that he's done listening to them. Of course, he coulda realized this epiphany BEFORE he decided to start setting fire to the house, but hey, he's the expert here.
Anyway, the grand finale is completely gonzo-crackers-bananas: Mom, his victims and the "friendly" voices all rebel against him. Seriously. The corpses all rise, Mom included, and kill Donny in the most mundane way possible. The movie then gives us an "epilogue", where we see another little boy being abused by his parent. Ooh, do I smell a sequel? Nope, that's just Donny becoming a Crispy Critter. 3 trees out of 5, for the ho-hum presentation of what SHOULD HAVE been the most crazy-ass movie ever seen by human eyes.
What have I learned from Don't Go In the House?
-Not to go in the house...see? I paid attention!
-The '70's had the worst music and fashions EVER.
-You can keep multiple charred and/or decomposed bodies in your house without EVER noticing the smell. I swear, scout's honor!
Next time: something called The Sorority. Don't tell Donny!
The story is about young, crazy Donny. He's a troubled loner who is obsessed with fire. As the movie starts, Donny is at work(some kind of factory job), and he inserts a flammable can of spray into a furnace. A co-worker opens the furnace door, and BOOM--he lights up like a Roman candle. While others come to the man's aid, Donny just stands back and watches. Later, when confronted about the "accident", a supervisor asks him directly why he didn't cover the guy in something to douse the flames, and Donny's reply is, "I did...I covered him in fire." Nice guy.
From here, we start getting into a pretty blatant Psycho rip-off: Donny hears the voice of "Mother" telling him what to do. As Donny grew up, Mother apparently punished him by burning him on their stove, usually for sex-related "crimes". (sound familiar?) When he gets home, he even offers to make her some tea. Just like Norman Bates. In one of the funniest scenes I've ever witnessed, he "finds" her dead and has a reaction that even William Shatner would call hammy acting. (I'm still not entirely convinced he didn't kill her himself)After failing to revive her, Donny hears another voice, which informs him that he is now free to do anything he wants. His first major act of freedom is to listen to shitty Disco music at full blast, smoke a cigarette, lounge around...and hear his mother's voice screaming at him. Just like Norman, his mother haunts him.
He calls in sick to work and buys himself a flame-retardant suit. Then he reels in his first victim, a young florist. He buys flowers from her just as she's closing her shop, then offers her a ride when she misses her bus. Of course, instead of driving her home or to the next bus stop, he takes her to his house. Didn't she see the title? DON'T GO IN THE HOUUUUUUSE!!!!! Well, she does. Dumbass. As she wanders around the house getting progressively more and more freaked out, Donny tries to persuade her to stay. When she resists he knocks her out, strips her naked, and chains her up inside a fireproof room. Throw in a rose ceremony, and it looks like a standard episode of The Bachelor. (nice body, btw...I guess in the 70's there were far fewer "No nudity" clauses for movie starlets...) Donny splashes her with gas and sets her on fire. As Paris Hilton would say, "That's hot!"
His next victim is a woman stranded by the side of the road. We never even get to know her name. After he picks her up, her next scene is as a burnt-up corpse. Immediately following her murder, he kidnaps a woman at a convenience store and brings her home to "meet mother" and the other victims. At least this one has a name: Linda.
Before he can finish off Linda, Donny gets a call from Bobby, a co-worker. Bobby tells him that if he keeps missing work, his ass is grass. He must have killed Linda offscreen, because we see a LOT of scenes of Donny having nightmares of his victims coming after him, hallucinations of them appearing on stairwells and in doorways, and, of course, more scenes of Mother' s corpse being all corpse-y. Feeling lost and confused(join the party, Donald!), Donny goes to church. He shows the local priest what his mother did to his arms as a child, and the priest shows genuine concern for his health, both physical and mental. He even offers to hear Donny's confession.
Feeling better than he has in a looooong time, Donny goes home and asks his mother's corpse for forgiveness. Donny calls his ol' pal Bobby. Bobby is at home and surrounded by family, so of course he proposes that Donny meet up with him later to have a group-grope with some easy chicks. OF COURSE! Donny agrees to meet them...BAD idea!!
First, Donny goes out and buys himself a 3-piece suit and new shoes. Looking like Juan Epstein(any Welcome Back, Kotter fans?), Donny shows up at the Disco to meet Bobby and their "dates". While Bobby is dancing with his, Donny is having the MACE(Most Awkward Conversation Ever!)...or he was, until his date left to go dance with another guy. Having flashbacks of what his mother did to his arms, Donny accidentally burns a woman who wants to dance with him. He flees the nightclub and picks up 2 drunk women.
He tells the 2 drunks that he was mugged by, and he beat up, 3 tough guys. He suggests the girls come back to his house, and they idiotically agree. He then lures one of the girls into his "burn room"...
Meanwhile, Bobby tracks down the priest Donny talked to earlier. He tells him about the nightclub fire, and asks the Father to go with him to Donny's house to reason with him. Worried, they both agree that it would be best to find Donny before anything else happens. DUH.
The other girl that came home with Donny begins to worry when she can't find her friend, Suzanne. She wanders through the house, calling her name, unaware that Donny is right behind her. When she finds the room with all the bodies, Donny grabs her before she can scream. *gulp*
By this time, Bobby and the priest have arrived. They knock, but of course Donny is upstairs yelling at his corpse-harem. While Donny is changing his clothes, they break down the front door and hear a woman screaming. They follow the sound and find both Suzanne and the other girl in the fire-proof room, still very much alive. The manage to untie the frightened women, and start to lead them to safety, but the priest hears a noise upstairs and decides to stay behind. Sloooowly creeping up the stairs(another scene reminiscent of Psycho), he encounters Donny, dressed in his asbestos suit. Donny introduces the poor guy to his flamethrower, and makes Chicken Fried Father.
Bobby manages to throw a blanket over the priest to try to put him out, and now Donny is like a man on a mission: he moves from room to room, flamethrower in hand, until he reaches the Smoking Room(heh, sorry, I couldn't resist). All the while, his mother is shadowing him, but he barely seems to register her ghostly presence. He instead tells all of the voices, mother and others, that he's done listening to them. Of course, he coulda realized this epiphany BEFORE he decided to start setting fire to the house, but hey, he's the expert here.
Anyway, the grand finale is completely gonzo-crackers-bananas: Mom, his victims and the "friendly" voices all rebel against him. Seriously. The corpses all rise, Mom included, and kill Donny in the most mundane way possible. The movie then gives us an "epilogue", where we see another little boy being abused by his parent. Ooh, do I smell a sequel? Nope, that's just Donny becoming a Crispy Critter. 3 trees out of 5, for the ho-hum presentation of what SHOULD HAVE been the most crazy-ass movie ever seen by human eyes.
What have I learned from Don't Go In the House?
-Not to go in the house...see? I paid attention!
-The '70's had the worst music and fashions EVER.
-You can keep multiple charred and/or decomposed bodies in your house without EVER noticing the smell. I swear, scout's honor!
Next time: something called The Sorority. Don't tell Donny!
Monday, July 26, 2010
Sorority Row
Sometimes(well, okay, MOST of the time), slasher movies can really suck. And yet, every so often, you get one that's either a guilty pleasure, or is just viewed at the right time to enjoy it. Sorority Row(a remake of House on Sorority Row) is a combination of these last two: a slasher movie that I SHOULD hate, but actually found quite fun. Is it dopey? Ohhhhhhhhhhh yeah. But it's also pretty amusin and fun as well. Not too many stars are in it--Carrie Fisher("Obi Wan, you're our only hope!"), Rumer Willis(Bruce and Demi's daughter), and Audrina Partridge("The Hills") are about as famous as the cast gets.
The story is your very basic "killer-revenge" plot: A group of sorority sisters have staged a "death" of one of their own, Megan(Audrina Partridge), in order to prank a fraternity douchebag, Garrett, and humiliate him. Of course he freaks out, and before they can reveal the nature of the trick they played, he mutilates the girl by impaling her with a tire iron/lug wrench/whatever-the-hell-it-is. What do I look like, Mr. Goodwrench? Anywhoooo...Now she really IS dead, and he and the sisters of Theta Pi make a pact to dispose of the body and never reveal what happened that fateful night. Of course, this being a slasher flick, we all know how well THAT'S going to turn out, right? Well, these gals have never seen a slasher film in their lives, so they dump the body down a very deep mineshaft...
Cut to 8 months later: Graduation Day, in fact. The girls are no longer as close as they were before "that" night, but still together in their pact. There's just a teensy-weensy little problem--they all get a mysterious text message. From Megan's phone. Showing a hooded figure holding the murder weapon. Did she really die that night, or is she out there, stalking her friends killers for vengeance?
There are certainly enough suspects: we have Maggie, Megan's younger sister, who shows up after the graduation ceremony; there's Garrett, who was pretty bitter about how events transpired the night of the murder; Jessica, the queen-bitch leader of the pack who convinced them to cover-up the murder to begin with(and has most of the film's funniest lines); Mrs. Crenshaw, played by Carrie Fisher, the crabby housemother who not-so-secretly hates the sorority girls; and Andy, the son of a wealthy affluent family, who may just be desperate enough for a future in politics to kill anyone who would ruin his career.
The girls are all a little more generic: we have the hot Asian chick, Claire; the hot drunken slut, Chugs; the hot bookish nerd, Ellie...and a few more here and there. And the kills seem to be there mostly to pad the film's running time, as many of the victims are introduced then killed almost immediately after. For example, we have a school shrink who screws his pretty patients in his spare time. He's handcuffed to the bed when the killer arrives, and gets loose just in time to be slaughtered. Ditto with the sorority sister, Chugs, who finds him bed-bound. She is promptly(and gruesomely) slaughtered with a broken bottle imbedded in her throat. Within the next 10 minutes, another victim is a girl in a shower who overhears characters discussing the cover-up. Now, I'm not a guy who's gonna complain about a shower scene, but why not make the character someone who left an impression on me as a viewer? I mean, sure, she had to be eliminated because of what she overheard, but there were other characters already in the movie who could've served the same purpose!
Oh, who cares? It's rated R, so it's not some lame-duck thriller, like the recent remakes of Prom Night or When a Stranger Calls. Trust me, that's a plus! The girls realize there is a killer among them, and panic. They then decide to attend their final kegger anyway, because apparently, beer and sex are the perfect cure for brutal impalements. Never read that in any medical journals, but it sounds good. Anyway, Claire's ex, Mickey, is next, getting his leg slashed right down to the bone, before the killer slices open his throat. Nice.
So by now, the girls are getting nervous.They get a text, telling them to meet where the body was dumped. While there, they meet up with Garret, who slashed his own wrists. They think he might be the killer, until they find a text message to him, also from Megan. Frustrated by the lack of answers, Cassidy is elected to go down into the pit to see if Megan's corpse is still there or not.
Using her cell phone as a flashlight(when did cell phones become flashlights? This is like the 3rd film in the last month or so I've seen that in), Cass finds "Theta Pi Must Die" written in blood. Apparently deciding to forget looking for Megan's body, the girls go back to a suddenly-deserted Theta House. They learn from a drunk chick that the party was moved to a different house, and now they are alone.
Being smart girls who know a killer wants them dead, they all split up. At this point can I volunteer to kill these dumbasses? Claire decides to go turn off the hot tub, or something, and ignore the danger of wading through a wet, bubbly maze to find an electrical outlet. Sheesh, do they still give out the Darwin Awards? Anyway, she doesn't die from electrocution, so that's a plus...while the other 3 girls are in the house, she's getting chased through foam by the killer. She gets her ankle caught in some power cords or garden hose or something, and gets dragged away by the killer, as the others watch. Cassidy wades out into the sea of bubbles and finds her with a flare going off in her mouth.
Back in the sorority house, Jessica finds Megan's sister in her bed, talking about how Jess's boyfriend Kyle did things to her that the Kama Sutra hadn't invented yet. There's a great catfight, lotsa hairpullin' and wacky shenanigans ensue until the other two show up and put a stop to it. Damn.
They all realize someone else is there, and Jessica grabs a fire axe. She nearly gives Mrs. Crenshaw a heart attack, and gets a broken nose in return. YES!! The girls tell Crenshaw everything, and she orders them to hide in a bedroom while she goes after the killer. Oh, and Maggie finally hears the whole story and freaks out that her sister might be dead, or might be a living breathing killing machine. And you thought YOUR family was messed up!!
Crenshaw sees the killer, then decides she's at a carnival shooting gallery, and shoots at every plate in the house. Because, you know, aiming for the killer woulda made too much sense. She ends up impaled, with a big closeup of her once-young bosom(ah, Princess Leia in the golden bikini...WTF happened to you?) Hearing the shooting, Jess and Cass, I guess(seriously, I have to keep looking up the names of these characters) decide to try to escape from the opposite end of the house. Ellie, on the other hand, elects to stay in the bedroom.
Maggie, meanwhile confronts the killer herself, still hoping it might be her sister. The robed killer responds to her pleas by setting the house on fire. This leads to my favorite scene: Amidst all the chaos, Ellie declares, "I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!!"...and quickly, decisively hides in a closet. YEAH!!!!!!!!!
So now we have the final battle...Jessica and Cassidy find out the killer is....Kyle? Seriously? I mean, no offense, movie, but...KYLE??? At one point in the final chase, he even suggests they "hug it out", lol. The 2 girls find Megan, and yes, she is dead. Very dead. Very, very dead. Deader than the Dead Parrot in Monty Python. Deader than Disco. At that point Kyle auditions for the lead in The Shining, but blows it when he forgets to say "Heeeeeere's Johnny!!"
This leads to a huge WTF moment: Kyle is confronting the girls, talking about his career and future, and in the middle of his speech, he gets an axe to the back of his head. Now, being the son of a politician, he should be brainless, rendering the weapon harmless, but in the movie, they act like he has a brain, so maybe there was some scifi in there, too, Anyway, the axe was wielded by Andy, Cassidy's boyfriend, who was gone for so long I assumed he had gotten himself trapped in another movie somewhere.
So he swoops in, saves the day, movie over. Right, movie? Nope. He's ALSO a psycho killer. He kills Jessica before she has a chance to bitch about stuff again, then begs Cass to let him get away with murder. Uh huh.
He forces her through the burning house, ostensibly to find and kill Ellie, the last Theta Pi. Cassidy gives him the slip, with the hope of finding Ellie before he does. She does, but Andy finds them both, and attacks them. Ellie gets away, and Cass manages to fight off and knock out Andy. Looking for Ellie, Cassidy instead finds Megan's sister Maggie. While trying to help her navigate through a burning room, Cassidy again confronts Andy. They scuffle, and Andy pins her down as he prepares to finish her off. Then, outta nowhere, Ellie comes back and shoots him in the chest.
Eh, not so bad, he could survive tha---awww, he just fell through the burning floorboards, where he was engulfed in flames. Ellie, Maggie and Cassidy work together to escape, and have one of those great, dramatic slo-mo walks away from the burning house, chests heaving and--wait, what? What's this "15 months later" shit? No, movie, you ended. Let it go. Dammit, all right, but hurry up:
So we get this final, pointless scene. Rush Week at the rebuilt house. Maggie ended up pledging the same sorority her sister died for, for no reason that makes any kind of sense. Oh, and after they show her as a pledge, we see Garret's hand(easily identifiable, due to his previous wrist-slashing), holding a gardening tool in as menacing a way as any schmuck can hold a gardening tool. Ay yi yi. How the heck did HE survive??? And was there any male character who WASN'T trying to kill these girls?
Still, not bad for what it was....we got about 9-10 deaths, some brief nudity, good effects and THREE psycho-killers. Heck, even some of the DVD outtakes were fun to watch. And the alternate ending was one I actually liked, so "yay, me", I guess. 4 killer trees outta 5.
And what wisdom did I glean from watching Sorority Row?
-My childhood fantasies didn't always age very well....
-1 killer isn't enough for today's audiences. Try 3.
-A "fun" movie doesn't necessarily have to be a "good" movie to be enjoyable.
-Hollywood can make R-rated slasher flicks and the world won't end. And a REMAKE too!!
See you next week!!
The story is your very basic "killer-revenge" plot: A group of sorority sisters have staged a "death" of one of their own, Megan(Audrina Partridge), in order to prank a fraternity douchebag, Garrett, and humiliate him. Of course he freaks out, and before they can reveal the nature of the trick they played, he mutilates the girl by impaling her with a tire iron/lug wrench/whatever-the-hell-it-is. What do I look like, Mr. Goodwrench? Anywhoooo...Now she really IS dead, and he and the sisters of Theta Pi make a pact to dispose of the body and never reveal what happened that fateful night. Of course, this being a slasher flick, we all know how well THAT'S going to turn out, right? Well, these gals have never seen a slasher film in their lives, so they dump the body down a very deep mineshaft...
Cut to 8 months later: Graduation Day, in fact. The girls are no longer as close as they were before "that" night, but still together in their pact. There's just a teensy-weensy little problem--they all get a mysterious text message. From Megan's phone. Showing a hooded figure holding the murder weapon. Did she really die that night, or is she out there, stalking her friends killers for vengeance?
There are certainly enough suspects: we have Maggie, Megan's younger sister, who shows up after the graduation ceremony; there's Garrett, who was pretty bitter about how events transpired the night of the murder; Jessica, the queen-bitch leader of the pack who convinced them to cover-up the murder to begin with(and has most of the film's funniest lines); Mrs. Crenshaw, played by Carrie Fisher, the crabby housemother who not-so-secretly hates the sorority girls; and Andy, the son of a wealthy affluent family, who may just be desperate enough for a future in politics to kill anyone who would ruin his career.
The girls are all a little more generic: we have the hot Asian chick, Claire; the hot drunken slut, Chugs; the hot bookish nerd, Ellie...and a few more here and there. And the kills seem to be there mostly to pad the film's running time, as many of the victims are introduced then killed almost immediately after. For example, we have a school shrink who screws his pretty patients in his spare time. He's handcuffed to the bed when the killer arrives, and gets loose just in time to be slaughtered. Ditto with the sorority sister, Chugs, who finds him bed-bound. She is promptly(and gruesomely) slaughtered with a broken bottle imbedded in her throat. Within the next 10 minutes, another victim is a girl in a shower who overhears characters discussing the cover-up. Now, I'm not a guy who's gonna complain about a shower scene, but why not make the character someone who left an impression on me as a viewer? I mean, sure, she had to be eliminated because of what she overheard, but there were other characters already in the movie who could've served the same purpose!
Oh, who cares? It's rated R, so it's not some lame-duck thriller, like the recent remakes of Prom Night or When a Stranger Calls. Trust me, that's a plus! The girls realize there is a killer among them, and panic. They then decide to attend their final kegger anyway, because apparently, beer and sex are the perfect cure for brutal impalements. Never read that in any medical journals, but it sounds good. Anyway, Claire's ex, Mickey, is next, getting his leg slashed right down to the bone, before the killer slices open his throat. Nice.
So by now, the girls are getting nervous.They get a text, telling them to meet where the body was dumped. While there, they meet up with Garret, who slashed his own wrists. They think he might be the killer, until they find a text message to him, also from Megan. Frustrated by the lack of answers, Cassidy is elected to go down into the pit to see if Megan's corpse is still there or not.
Using her cell phone as a flashlight(when did cell phones become flashlights? This is like the 3rd film in the last month or so I've seen that in), Cass finds "Theta Pi Must Die" written in blood. Apparently deciding to forget looking for Megan's body, the girls go back to a suddenly-deserted Theta House. They learn from a drunk chick that the party was moved to a different house, and now they are alone.
Being smart girls who know a killer wants them dead, they all split up. At this point can I volunteer to kill these dumbasses? Claire decides to go turn off the hot tub, or something, and ignore the danger of wading through a wet, bubbly maze to find an electrical outlet. Sheesh, do they still give out the Darwin Awards? Anyway, she doesn't die from electrocution, so that's a plus...while the other 3 girls are in the house, she's getting chased through foam by the killer. She gets her ankle caught in some power cords or garden hose or something, and gets dragged away by the killer, as the others watch. Cassidy wades out into the sea of bubbles and finds her with a flare going off in her mouth.
Back in the sorority house, Jessica finds Megan's sister in her bed, talking about how Jess's boyfriend Kyle did things to her that the Kama Sutra hadn't invented yet. There's a great catfight, lotsa hairpullin' and wacky shenanigans ensue until the other two show up and put a stop to it. Damn.
They all realize someone else is there, and Jessica grabs a fire axe. She nearly gives Mrs. Crenshaw a heart attack, and gets a broken nose in return. YES!! The girls tell Crenshaw everything, and she orders them to hide in a bedroom while she goes after the killer. Oh, and Maggie finally hears the whole story and freaks out that her sister might be dead, or might be a living breathing killing machine. And you thought YOUR family was messed up!!
Crenshaw sees the killer, then decides she's at a carnival shooting gallery, and shoots at every plate in the house. Because, you know, aiming for the killer woulda made too much sense. She ends up impaled, with a big closeup of her once-young bosom(ah, Princess Leia in the golden bikini...WTF happened to you?) Hearing the shooting, Jess and Cass, I guess(seriously, I have to keep looking up the names of these characters) decide to try to escape from the opposite end of the house. Ellie, on the other hand, elects to stay in the bedroom.
Maggie, meanwhile confronts the killer herself, still hoping it might be her sister. The robed killer responds to her pleas by setting the house on fire. This leads to my favorite scene: Amidst all the chaos, Ellie declares, "I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!!"...and quickly, decisively hides in a closet. YEAH!!!!!!!!!
So now we have the final battle...Jessica and Cassidy find out the killer is....Kyle? Seriously? I mean, no offense, movie, but...KYLE??? At one point in the final chase, he even suggests they "hug it out", lol. The 2 girls find Megan, and yes, she is dead. Very dead. Very, very dead. Deader than the Dead Parrot in Monty Python. Deader than Disco. At that point Kyle auditions for the lead in The Shining, but blows it when he forgets to say "Heeeeeere's Johnny!!"
This leads to a huge WTF moment: Kyle is confronting the girls, talking about his career and future, and in the middle of his speech, he gets an axe to the back of his head. Now, being the son of a politician, he should be brainless, rendering the weapon harmless, but in the movie, they act like he has a brain, so maybe there was some scifi in there, too, Anyway, the axe was wielded by Andy, Cassidy's boyfriend, who was gone for so long I assumed he had gotten himself trapped in another movie somewhere.
So he swoops in, saves the day, movie over. Right, movie? Nope. He's ALSO a psycho killer. He kills Jessica before she has a chance to bitch about stuff again, then begs Cass to let him get away with murder. Uh huh.
He forces her through the burning house, ostensibly to find and kill Ellie, the last Theta Pi. Cassidy gives him the slip, with the hope of finding Ellie before he does. She does, but Andy finds them both, and attacks them. Ellie gets away, and Cass manages to fight off and knock out Andy. Looking for Ellie, Cassidy instead finds Megan's sister Maggie. While trying to help her navigate through a burning room, Cassidy again confronts Andy. They scuffle, and Andy pins her down as he prepares to finish her off. Then, outta nowhere, Ellie comes back and shoots him in the chest.
Eh, not so bad, he could survive tha---awww, he just fell through the burning floorboards, where he was engulfed in flames. Ellie, Maggie and Cassidy work together to escape, and have one of those great, dramatic slo-mo walks away from the burning house, chests heaving and--wait, what? What's this "15 months later" shit? No, movie, you ended. Let it go. Dammit, all right, but hurry up:
So we get this final, pointless scene. Rush Week at the rebuilt house. Maggie ended up pledging the same sorority her sister died for, for no reason that makes any kind of sense. Oh, and after they show her as a pledge, we see Garret's hand(easily identifiable, due to his previous wrist-slashing), holding a gardening tool in as menacing a way as any schmuck can hold a gardening tool. Ay yi yi. How the heck did HE survive??? And was there any male character who WASN'T trying to kill these girls?
Still, not bad for what it was....we got about 9-10 deaths, some brief nudity, good effects and THREE psycho-killers. Heck, even some of the DVD outtakes were fun to watch. And the alternate ending was one I actually liked, so "yay, me", I guess. 4 killer trees outta 5.
And what wisdom did I glean from watching Sorority Row?
-My childhood fantasies didn't always age very well....
-1 killer isn't enough for today's audiences. Try 3.
-A "fun" movie doesn't necessarily have to be a "good" movie to be enjoyable.
-Hollywood can make R-rated slasher flicks and the world won't end. And a REMAKE too!!
See you next week!!
Thursday, July 22, 2010
The Hills Run Red
Well, after 3 weeks of killer-baby films, I FINALLY get to watch something else...about a killer named Babyface killing people to make a"real" horror movie. Oh well. At least this one trades in 1980's Michael Moriarty for 2009 William Sadler. I'd call that a trade-up. As always, SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
So, this week's slasher is The Hills Run Red. From the title, I was thinking it was probably a direct-to-DVD SyFy-Channelesque ripoff of The Hills Have Eyes, but it's actually a pretty decent film, story-wise. The premise is simple: years ago, a horror-film director(William Sadler) made a film so shocking, it was pulled after only 1 or 2 showings. A group of film students set out to find this legendary missing film, with the aid of the late director's daughter. Unfortunately for them, the film is still being made, and anyone who looks for it becomes a victim of the film's psycho, Babyface--so-called because he is disfigured, and wears a baby-doll mask over what's left of his real face. The disfigurement is also the film's opening sequence, and is actually pretty damn effective.
The daughter, a drugged-out stripper, agrees to help them with their project after the main character Tyler(played by the guy who was "Stifler" in American Pie's Band Camp sequel) gets her off the drugs. Getting her off the drugs is code for tying her to a bed, watching her de-tox, then screwing her brains out while she's still vulnerable. Uh huh. Along with best friends Lalo and Serina(who also BOTH had a secret fling, despite Tyler being in love with Serina), Tyler and Alexa go on a road trip to her late father's home to search for the completed film. Along the way, their journey is shown along with quick-cuts of the "lost" film's footage--and a menacing hulk in the background. filming them as they get deeper and deeper into trouble.
Now, up to this point, I still wasn't quite sure what kind of horror movie I was watching: was it a "movie-reality mixes with the real-world" kind of supernatural premise, in the vein of Midnight Movie? Was it a "psycho makes his kills into a movie, but not really", like the Scream franchise? Was it one of those "we're someplace we shouldn't be, pissing off the locals and getting ourselves killed for our hubris and lack of humility", like the recent slew of movies in the Wrong Turn series, or the remakes of The Hills Have Eyes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre?
In a word: yes. It has elements of all the above-mentioned films...Stifler--errr, I mean, "Tyler" drags his 2 friends and the stripper along on a road trip so he can make a documentary about the search for the legendary movie. Almost immediately, the group stumbles into a small hillbilly community and start to ask them questions about the film's authenticity. During the trip, Alexa starts having long-repressed memories resurface, which doesn't actually make sense(more on that in a bit, but it realllllllllllllly doesn't make sense when the plot unfolds). Alexa reveals that her father's house is nearby, and that he kept all of his films there. Okay, so off we go!
"Nearby" means about 100 miles away in a forest. At night. With a deformed killer filming them. Heck, add Chevy Chase, and you have the best Vacation sequel EVER. Oh, and in the forest they discover things like body parts and dolls, to keep them on the right track. There's even a nifty flashback showing Concannon filming a woman tied up by Babyface, and her dismemberment as she is literally torn apart. Spielberg has nothing on this guy.
At some point, they decide that they need to set up camp for the night. During the night, the hillbillies from town find them, and decide to rape and pillage. Bad idea. Babyface shows up and makes the townies into mincemeat. He then turns his attention to our intrepid film students, but settles on just abducting Alexa after a halfhearted attack on the group.
Separated, the trio wander through the woods, trying to avoid the killer while also trying to find each other. Lalo and Serina try to call the police, but are unable to give the dispatcher any information about their location. During the phone call, they suspect they are being followed, and fire a flare gun(Lalo brought along the flare gun, a pistol, a cell phone...he must've realized what kind of movie he was in, huh?) into the darkness, revealing Babyface, who was silently stalking them the entire time. After making sure Serina gets away, Lalo tries to divert Babyface's attention, and is shot for his trouble.
Tyler, meanwhile, finds Wilson Concannon's house and breaks in. Inside, he finds tons and tons of film reels, all marked as The Hills Run Red--including footage of his friends, Alexa, and himself from earlier scenes in the movie. Hearing Alexa screaming, Tyler finds her in the house, tied to a bed. He releases her, they escape Concannon's house, and they promptly find Serina...just as Babyface bursts in. He knocks out Tyler, and attacks Alexa, who reveals that she's working WITH Babyface.
Now, remember earlier, where I said that Alexa's repressed memories didn't make sense? Think about her character for a moment: she's luring victims for Babyface to kill, she's faking drug addiction(I guess) to gain the trust of the main character, and she and her family have been killing people for what looks like years. So why not just throw in some dialogue where she mentions her memories of growing up? Why have her fake amnesia? And since she's faking the memories, why show them to the audience as "flashbacks"??? All right, back to the movie:
Serina at this point is hiding, trying to avoid the killers, and looking for a way to escape. She finds a car to hide under, just as Babyface arrives. He moves into a barn and she makes her way to the barn's cellar(barns have cellars, hey I learned something new!), where she discovers numerous corpses and barrels of blood and gore. Babyface nearly finds her but leaves, giving her time to find a better hiding place. Sure enough, when he returns he can't find her, and he leaves again.
Turns out she was hiding in one of the blood-barrels. Covered in blood, she takes a lesson from Last Action Hero and manages to almost entirely wipe the blood off before she leaves the barn. Babyface, proving that he wasn't just born as a baby yesterday, knew she was hiding in there and waits for her on the roof, swooping down as she emerges. Yeah, sure.
Meanwhile, in another movie, Tyler finally wakes up. He's tied down to a wheelchahir and sees reels and reels of film around him, all titled The Hills Run Red. The director, Wilson("Wiiiiiiiiiilson!") Concannon is there to pull a James Bond, and tell Tyler his evil plan so Tyler can escape and get the upper hand. Alexa is his daughter, and Babyface is both his grandson AND his son! Saves a bundle on Father's Day and birthday cards, I guess.
He shows Tyler a scene from his original film of The Hills Run Red, where the actor playing Babyface is screwing up the take. Frustrated, Concannon is so fed up that he walks in front of the camera, yells at the guy, then demonstrates how he wants the scene done by stabbing the guy to death. Driven insane by the pressure to complete his film, Concannon makes all the killings real, which ironically gets the film banned for being too violent.
Wheeling Tyler into the barn(I haven't seen so many barn scenes since Friday the 13TH III), Concannon shows him that Alexa has tied up Lalo, and has him in a verrrrrry tight bondage-y outfit that is pushing rolls of his flesh through openings in the material. As she begins slashing at Lalo's exposed midsection, Concannon criticizes her technique, and an arguement between them ensues. The discussion ends with Concannon shooting her.
Using their altercation as a distraction, Tyler manages to free himself. He is confronted by Babyface, who appears as Concannon shoots Alexa, which gives Tyler an idea. Picking up a camera, Tyler "directs" the scene, and tells Babyface to kill his father. After seeing what happened to Alexa, Babyface is only too happy to oblige. Before Babyface can turn his attention back to killing Tyler, Serina decides to reappear in the movie, stabbing and impaling him with a skewer. Of course no one ever dies in these things, so Alexa pops up again to knock both of them out with a shovel.
When Tyler regains consciousness THIS time, he is in the mansion's "theatre room", surrounded by corpses, including the bodies of Lalo and Concannon. Alexa tells him that he will now watch the entire, uncut film. As she leaves the room, Tyler watches as scene after scene of carnage and atrocities unfold on the screen, including everything that just happened in THE FRIGGIN' MOVIE I JUST WATCHED!!!!! Geez. Taking a page from the Sam Neill horror flick In the Mouth of Madness, Tyler eventually goes insane, roll credits. At least HE got a good laugh out of this.
Oh, and there's another scene in the credits: Alexa walks into a room where she's holding Serina hostage. She holds the Babyface mask in front of Serina, who is now pregnant. So I guess if Tyler doesn't make a good Babyface, they have an alternative....in about a decade and a half...
Eh, despite the kind of "meh" ending, I liked this one. No killer babies, no watered-down botched editting, and a killer who's not afraid to just say WTF, and pop a cap in a hillbilly. I do sort of wish we could have seen more of the "film-within-the-film", but what they did show was still fairly fun and gruesome. 4 Killer Trees out of 5.
So, what did The Hills Run Red teach us this week?
-You can't always judge a movie by its title...unless it's released by The Asylum.
-Stifler would still be alive if he had stayed at Band Camp.
-In the movies, people can have names like "Lalo" and "Wilson and Alexa Concannon", and it doesn't sound weird to others around them.
-I can spoil an entire movie about a killer named Babyface, and not make a single, sarcastic joke about it....but if the next movie's killer is named "R. Kelly", I can't make any guarantees...Same goes for the lack of jokes about The Hills.
So, this week's slasher is The Hills Run Red. From the title, I was thinking it was probably a direct-to-DVD SyFy-Channelesque ripoff of The Hills Have Eyes, but it's actually a pretty decent film, story-wise. The premise is simple: years ago, a horror-film director(William Sadler) made a film so shocking, it was pulled after only 1 or 2 showings. A group of film students set out to find this legendary missing film, with the aid of the late director's daughter. Unfortunately for them, the film is still being made, and anyone who looks for it becomes a victim of the film's psycho, Babyface--so-called because he is disfigured, and wears a baby-doll mask over what's left of his real face. The disfigurement is also the film's opening sequence, and is actually pretty damn effective.
The daughter, a drugged-out stripper, agrees to help them with their project after the main character Tyler(played by the guy who was "Stifler" in American Pie's Band Camp sequel) gets her off the drugs. Getting her off the drugs is code for tying her to a bed, watching her de-tox, then screwing her brains out while she's still vulnerable. Uh huh. Along with best friends Lalo and Serina(who also BOTH had a secret fling, despite Tyler being in love with Serina), Tyler and Alexa go on a road trip to her late father's home to search for the completed film. Along the way, their journey is shown along with quick-cuts of the "lost" film's footage--and a menacing hulk in the background. filming them as they get deeper and deeper into trouble.
Now, up to this point, I still wasn't quite sure what kind of horror movie I was watching: was it a "movie-reality mixes with the real-world" kind of supernatural premise, in the vein of Midnight Movie? Was it a "psycho makes his kills into a movie, but not really", like the Scream franchise? Was it one of those "we're someplace we shouldn't be, pissing off the locals and getting ourselves killed for our hubris and lack of humility", like the recent slew of movies in the Wrong Turn series, or the remakes of The Hills Have Eyes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre?
In a word: yes. It has elements of all the above-mentioned films...Stifler--errr, I mean, "Tyler" drags his 2 friends and the stripper along on a road trip so he can make a documentary about the search for the legendary movie. Almost immediately, the group stumbles into a small hillbilly community and start to ask them questions about the film's authenticity. During the trip, Alexa starts having long-repressed memories resurface, which doesn't actually make sense(more on that in a bit, but it realllllllllllllly doesn't make sense when the plot unfolds). Alexa reveals that her father's house is nearby, and that he kept all of his films there. Okay, so off we go!
"Nearby" means about 100 miles away in a forest. At night. With a deformed killer filming them. Heck, add Chevy Chase, and you have the best Vacation sequel EVER. Oh, and in the forest they discover things like body parts and dolls, to keep them on the right track. There's even a nifty flashback showing Concannon filming a woman tied up by Babyface, and her dismemberment as she is literally torn apart. Spielberg has nothing on this guy.
At some point, they decide that they need to set up camp for the night. During the night, the hillbillies from town find them, and decide to rape and pillage. Bad idea. Babyface shows up and makes the townies into mincemeat. He then turns his attention to our intrepid film students, but settles on just abducting Alexa after a halfhearted attack on the group.
Separated, the trio wander through the woods, trying to avoid the killer while also trying to find each other. Lalo and Serina try to call the police, but are unable to give the dispatcher any information about their location. During the phone call, they suspect they are being followed, and fire a flare gun(Lalo brought along the flare gun, a pistol, a cell phone...he must've realized what kind of movie he was in, huh?) into the darkness, revealing Babyface, who was silently stalking them the entire time. After making sure Serina gets away, Lalo tries to divert Babyface's attention, and is shot for his trouble.
Tyler, meanwhile, finds Wilson Concannon's house and breaks in. Inside, he finds tons and tons of film reels, all marked as The Hills Run Red--including footage of his friends, Alexa, and himself from earlier scenes in the movie. Hearing Alexa screaming, Tyler finds her in the house, tied to a bed. He releases her, they escape Concannon's house, and they promptly find Serina...just as Babyface bursts in. He knocks out Tyler, and attacks Alexa, who reveals that she's working WITH Babyface.
Now, remember earlier, where I said that Alexa's repressed memories didn't make sense? Think about her character for a moment: she's luring victims for Babyface to kill, she's faking drug addiction(I guess) to gain the trust of the main character, and she and her family have been killing people for what looks like years. So why not just throw in some dialogue where she mentions her memories of growing up? Why have her fake amnesia? And since she's faking the memories, why show them to the audience as "flashbacks"??? All right, back to the movie:
Serina at this point is hiding, trying to avoid the killers, and looking for a way to escape. She finds a car to hide under, just as Babyface arrives. He moves into a barn and she makes her way to the barn's cellar(barns have cellars, hey I learned something new!), where she discovers numerous corpses and barrels of blood and gore. Babyface nearly finds her but leaves, giving her time to find a better hiding place. Sure enough, when he returns he can't find her, and he leaves again.
Turns out she was hiding in one of the blood-barrels. Covered in blood, she takes a lesson from Last Action Hero and manages to almost entirely wipe the blood off before she leaves the barn. Babyface, proving that he wasn't just born as a baby yesterday, knew she was hiding in there and waits for her on the roof, swooping down as she emerges. Yeah, sure.
Meanwhile, in another movie, Tyler finally wakes up. He's tied down to a wheelchahir and sees reels and reels of film around him, all titled The Hills Run Red. The director, Wilson("Wiiiiiiiiiilson!") Concannon is there to pull a James Bond, and tell Tyler his evil plan so Tyler can escape and get the upper hand. Alexa is his daughter, and Babyface is both his grandson AND his son! Saves a bundle on Father's Day and birthday cards, I guess.
He shows Tyler a scene from his original film of The Hills Run Red, where the actor playing Babyface is screwing up the take. Frustrated, Concannon is so fed up that he walks in front of the camera, yells at the guy, then demonstrates how he wants the scene done by stabbing the guy to death. Driven insane by the pressure to complete his film, Concannon makes all the killings real, which ironically gets the film banned for being too violent.
Wheeling Tyler into the barn(I haven't seen so many barn scenes since Friday the 13TH III), Concannon shows him that Alexa has tied up Lalo, and has him in a verrrrrry tight bondage-y outfit that is pushing rolls of his flesh through openings in the material. As she begins slashing at Lalo's exposed midsection, Concannon criticizes her technique, and an arguement between them ensues. The discussion ends with Concannon shooting her.
Using their altercation as a distraction, Tyler manages to free himself. He is confronted by Babyface, who appears as Concannon shoots Alexa, which gives Tyler an idea. Picking up a camera, Tyler "directs" the scene, and tells Babyface to kill his father. After seeing what happened to Alexa, Babyface is only too happy to oblige. Before Babyface can turn his attention back to killing Tyler, Serina decides to reappear in the movie, stabbing and impaling him with a skewer. Of course no one ever dies in these things, so Alexa pops up again to knock both of them out with a shovel.
When Tyler regains consciousness THIS time, he is in the mansion's "theatre room", surrounded by corpses, including the bodies of Lalo and Concannon. Alexa tells him that he will now watch the entire, uncut film. As she leaves the room, Tyler watches as scene after scene of carnage and atrocities unfold on the screen, including everything that just happened in THE FRIGGIN' MOVIE I JUST WATCHED!!!!! Geez. Taking a page from the Sam Neill horror flick In the Mouth of Madness, Tyler eventually goes insane, roll credits. At least HE got a good laugh out of this.
Oh, and there's another scene in the credits: Alexa walks into a room where she's holding Serina hostage. She holds the Babyface mask in front of Serina, who is now pregnant. So I guess if Tyler doesn't make a good Babyface, they have an alternative....in about a decade and a half...
Eh, despite the kind of "meh" ending, I liked this one. No killer babies, no watered-down botched editting, and a killer who's not afraid to just say WTF, and pop a cap in a hillbilly. I do sort of wish we could have seen more of the "film-within-the-film", but what they did show was still fairly fun and gruesome. 4 Killer Trees out of 5.
So, what did The Hills Run Red teach us this week?
-You can't always judge a movie by its title...unless it's released by The Asylum.
-Stifler would still be alive if he had stayed at Band Camp.
-In the movies, people can have names like "Lalo" and "Wilson and Alexa Concannon", and it doesn't sound weird to others around them.
-I can spoil an entire movie about a killer named Babyface, and not make a single, sarcastic joke about it....but if the next movie's killer is named "R. Kelly", I can't make any guarantees...Same goes for the lack of jokes about The Hills.
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