NIGHTMARE IN WAX (1969)

Max Black is a typical movie studio head. The pictures he makes are just a way for him to get his grubby hands on a young starlet by offering her a part, and they’re also his ticket into the biggest Hollywood parties where he can raid the whiskey and cigars and grope the help. For the record, I would do the exact same thing in if I was in his shoes, but still. Oh, and then there’s the money. The actual quality of the pictures are meaningless; a picture is good if it makes money and it’s bad if it doesn’t. 

Well, Max has his eyes set on hot young starlet Marie, but she is engaged to wax museum owner Cameron Mitchell. No matter; Black sets fire to Cam and several months later offers Marie the leading role in his next big picture. However, things aren’t so simple. Marie is distraught that her interim actor boyfriend Tony has mysteriously disappeared, and has lost all passion for acting as a result. Oh, I should’ve mentioned that Marie left Cameron after he got all burnt to shit, but I don’t blame her in the least. Not only did the flame job leave Cameron completely covered in bandages except for one eye, it turned him into a total chain smoking asshole who would just yell at Marie when she would visit him in the hospital. I find it unbelievable that the nurses let him chain smoke after being set on fire to the point that he’s completely covered in bandages, but that was the 60’s for ya. 

Anyway, good ole’ Cammy Mitch has since recovered quite nicely and gone back to work at the museum, left with only some old chewing gum on his cheek and a busted eye he covers up with a patch. Lo and behold, Cam creates an astonishingly lifelike head of Tony right after he disappears in order to honor his great acting career. Max catches wind of this and decides that he can lure Marie into starring in his movie by having a wax figure of Tony co-star along with her, with the idea that she’ll be comforted by an approximation of her boyfriend. I guess that makes sense. It should be noted that the movie is apparently a suspense version of Chekhov’s "Three Sisters" directed by a Alfred Hitchcock knockoff named “Alfred Herrmann” (via Bernard Herrmann). I’m not quite sure how you could make a taut suspense thriller from a play of three Russian sisters yelling at each other, but maybe the wax figure is that key element that makes it all work. 

The astute viewer, or even the lobotomized viewer for that matter, should quickly figure out that Cameron is using real people as his wax figures. However, instead of simply killing people and covering them in wax, it looks like he injects them with some drug that makes them motionless, so some of the “wax figures” are just people standing still and occasionally twitching. Some of them are just human heads that occasionally talk and moan. Incredibly, these figures don't arise suspicion. Even some detectives who are looking for Tony visit the museum, but don’t even find it strange that a version of Tony’s head with perfect human skin is sitting there. Indeed, they only visit him to procure advice on how to solve the case. I don’t know why all wax museums don’t just kill people and use their corpses rather than take the time and cost to build wax figures if it’s that damn easy to get away with it. 

Nightmare in Wax is essentially a remake of House of Wax (1953), the 3-D Vincent Price vehicle, which itself was a remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). This version adds a wonderfully ludicrous flashback backstage Hollywood structure, like someone with a head wound trying to ripoff The Bad and the Beautiful. There is also plenty of mid-60’s kitsch (making it oddly outdated considering it was released in 1969), especially in the amazing scene where Cameron visits a go-go club to try and lure an incredibly dumb redhead dancer to his museum. Then there’s the groovy hairstyles on the women, and the steamy sax solos anytime two people kiss. 

Most of all, the movie has a pretty cool dimestore Mario Bava candy colored aesthetic. The photography is especially effective in the scene where Cameron chases around the aforementioned redhead through the museum, what with the atmospehric lighting and distended camera angles. Cameron magically teleports around and pops up to scare her, even shoving a mannequin head in her face, and the real wax figures and wax limbs add to the creepiness factor. Granted, the rest of the movie is mostly dumb goofy fun, but it does have this nice creepy centerpiece that almost operates as a carny ride of sorts.  That is, if there was a carny ride through a wax museum.  Maybe you could just ride on through with a go kart or something.  That would be pretty awesome.

P.S. This was written as part of Project Terrible, hosted by Alex over at Mondo Bizarro.  This particular movie was picked for me to review by Maynard over at his Horror Movie Diary.  Check 'em out!

THE DEAD UNDEAD (2010)

The number of zombie movies is pretty much well past critical mass at this point, and it’s not like zombies are really that distinctive from one another. Oh sure, you can have fast moving zombies or slow moving zombies, but that’s about the extent of it. There are also a bazillion vampire movies out there, but at least you could argue that different vampires have different personalities.   Maybe one vampire prefers hooker blood and another uses massive amounts of gel in his hair.  You know, character development and shit.

So, a new zombie film usual requires some sort of interesting innovation to make it worthwhile, and The Dead Undead obliges with…vampire zombies? Why didn’t somebody think of this earlier? I bet you’re wondering…aren’t vampires really just zombies with personality who drink human blood instead of eating flesh?  What happens when you combine two different strains of undead monster? Well, none of that matters in this one folks. Basically, these are just the generic fast moving zombies, except they don’t come out during the day and you can spot dimestore fangs right before somebody is about to turn into one. Whoop de do. 

But, I’ve gotten ahead of myself folks. A group of good looking Montana teens head out to a motel on a lake to do whatever it is young people do on a lake (chug PBR and do cannonballs, I guess). Ominously, there's no one around, not even in the motel office, but they go ahead and grabs themselves a room anyway because, you know...getting drunk and shit. 

Lo and behold, a zombie vampire kid with a mullet pops out of nowhere and bites one of the girls. Suddenly, it’s night, and zombies start coming out of everywhere. The entire area was empty just moments before, and now dozens of zombies are jumping out from behind bushes and out of trees and maybe out of the lake and out from God knows where else (sort of like that scene from House of the Dead but way more boring). Maybe they all live during the day in a secret underground bunker next to the lake? But, who made the bunker? I don’t get it folks.

Luckily, the dude’s SUV is equipped with firearms like that dude’s van in Birdemic. However, a couple of guns isn’t going to stop an entire zombie onslaught. Thankfully, a militia shows up in a van and starts blowing away wave after wave of zombies to the tune of some terrible numetal. On second thought, it might actually be extremely competent numetal, but that only makes it worse. Either way, it seems odd that there is such a huge zombie problem that a heavily armed militia is roving around trying to contain it, yet there wasn’t any news about a zombie threat getting back to the teens before they left town. That shit would be all over Facebook pretty quick. 

When the militia aren't blowing zombies away, they are sitting around bonding with each other and the surviving teens.  Normally, these types of scenes are supposed to be filled with some sort of tension, with characters clinging to some vestige of humanity while an apocalyptic threat closes in on them. Here, it comes across like they're taking a break from shooting zombies because shooting zombies can get boring after awhile and maybe lead to carpel tunnel syndrome. 

If you think these scenes might humanize these characters, you’d be completely wrong (except maybe teen girl Summer, but I was probably too busy checking her out to notice if she was indeed being humanized or not). Not only are the characters pretty much annoying, their very existence doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. You see, the militia members are vampires themselves! However, they’re not zombies I guess. They're undead all right, but not that undead.  However, you would never know that for a second looking at them. They are just militia grunts who work at night. They don’t even have sharp teeth because they file them down. One of the dudes even moonlights as a female columnist (?!?) that Summer actually reads. I’m not even gonna try to break down the logic of that one. It should be noted that this factoid is most definitely not an attempt at absurdist comedy, but is presented as banal “getting-to-know-you” chatter for some ungodly reason. Oh, and I think the zombie vampires are a result of vampires contracting mad cow disease. I don’t know either. I just work here folks. 

Apart from Vernon Wells showing up at the end to cash a paycheck, and the ubitiquitous hacky Forest J. Ackerman cameo, there are also two long flashback scenes showcasing the previous lives of several militia members. One couple used to be Norse warriors with American accents, and another dude used to be an old west gunfighter. This all seems like pretty bizarre and unnecessary back story for characters that wear fatigues and shoot guns at moving targets. Maybe more of the emphasis should have been put on the zombies (well, vampire zombies). As far as I can tell, they are just monsters that are forced to pop into frame, wait for the squib in their shirt to go off, and then fall over. If anyone is being dehumanized here, it’s the zombies.  

P.S. This was written as part of Project Terrible, hosted by Alec over at Mondo Bizarro.  He also picked this movie for me to watch, because the world could always use another rambling analyzation of a crappy zombie movie.

DEAD CERT (2010)

Freddie is a London gangster that wants to give up the life and earn an honest living. By “honest living”, I mean running a strip club. I know that’s not the kind of job that regular people have, but it’s perfectly admirable for a tough gangster weaning himself off of selling drugs and shooting people in the back of the head or whatever it is he did previously. It’s sort of like how someone might quit heroin and instead choose to smoke cigarettes for the rest of their life. 

Anyway, Freddie also runs an underground fight club, which I assume isn’t legal, particularly because it involves gambling. I’ll go ahead and give Freddie the benefit of the doubt and assume that he’s using profits from the fight club to get his strip club off the ground and spruce it up a bit; maybe get some exploding nipple tassels for the ladies. It shouldn’t take him too long to acquire the money he needs. In this day and age, you can get the word out quickly about your fight club through social media, and pretty soon you’ll be raking in the cash. 

Well, as luck would have it, some Romanian gangsters REALLY want to buy the strip club. Of course, they make Freddie an offer he can’t refuse. Namely, they want to set up a fight between Freddie’s toughest fighter (his brother-in-law Dennis) and the toughest fighter from the Romanian gang. If Dennis wins, Freddie gets several million pounds (which is like a billion dollars in U.S. money), and if the Romanian wins, they get the club. We all know Romanians can’t fight, right? I’d think Jimmy the Greek would agree that placing that bet would be “like printing money”. However, not only does Dennis lose the fight, but he gets his ass beat so badly he dies. I don’t know all the rules of fight club, but “not killing a dude” is probably on there somewhere. 

In fairness to Dennis, the Romanian dude was a vampire, just as the other Romanian gangsters are vampires. Vampires, as you well know, have super strength, which is why fight clubs should make a rule that says “no vampires allowed”. If you’re wondering why vampires would so desperately want to own a strip club, it has something to do with it being built on a burial ground. As a side benefit, they get to turn regular strippers into vampire strippers, and we all know how rad vampire strippers are. 

So, some Van Helsing type character (poor Steven Berkoff) warns Freddie that the Romanians are indeed vampires, and eventually joins him and his toughs (very eventually) to raid the strip club and take it back. However, I don’t know how that would work as far as the paperwork goes. I’d hate to see them kill all the vampires but get overruled in court. 

Dead Cert is essentially a variation on From Dusk Till Dawn. Instead of a bank robbery, we have the inner workings of a gang. However, Dead Cert is structurally a mess. I guess the idea was to present a “Goodfellas”-lite look at some London gangsters, and then later introduce the horror elements once this world is set up. However, the script feels vague, and the bulk of the movie becomes a series of aimless conversations between gangsters where the structure of their relationships to one another are fuzzy, as are the details of this criminal “underworld”. We are supposed to be drawn into Freddie’s world and surrounding characters, but the script doesn’t work on a basic dramatic level, so it becomes a series of dialogue scenes featuring people you don’t give a shit about. 

The vampire element is both unsurprising and forced. If I was actually buying into the story, it might have been ruined by the ridiculous forced conflict with the vampires and the burial ground and the fight. When we get to the actual showdown, it’s 10 minutes of our heroes arguing in the basement of the club, and then a lackadaisical 10 minute fight and then it’s over. The vampire element mostly operates as the third act of a gangster movie, rather than From Dusk Till Dawn, which sets up in the 1st act that it’s going to be one thing and then turns into something else. 

I never thought that gangsters fighting vampire strippers would be boring, but this movie feels like someone wanted to make a serious gangster movie, but was then forced into including a vampire element in order to be commercial. The results are a movie that achieves neither, and not because these elements necessarily couldn’t fit together. I am reminded of John Landis’ Innocent Blood, which took a gangster world and integrated a vampire element. However, Innocent Blood was funny, where as Dead Cert isn’t. Maybe vampire strippers shouldn’t be taken so seriously. No, I take that back. It’s mainly a problem of execution. I think a dramatic story about a vampire stripper could be riveting. Even if it isn’t, at least you get to see a hot vampire chick naked for half the movie. You know, I’m casting too wide a net once again. How about not being fucking boring? That’s a good rule of thumb I guess.  You can go ahead and include that as one of the rules of fight club too, if you plan on ever starting a fight club.  You're welcome. 

P.S. This was written as part of "Project Terrible", hosted by Mondo Bizarro.  This movie was chosen by Maynard Morrissey, who has a Horror Movie Diary here.  Check 'em out!

BIG MONEY RUSTLAS (2010)

I’d like to think I’m hip to the jive, folks. I enjoy a little hippa to the hoppa now and again. You know, to where I just can’t stoppa. However, homey don’t play willful ignorance. In fact, he thinks it’s a scourge upon the human race. When the Insane Clown Posse decried to the heavens “fucking magnets, how do they work?”, chalking them up to a miracle, they cemented themselves as ignorant. The reality of how magnets work is readily available to anybody with access to the internet or a local library. The Posse is under the faulty assumption that just because they don’t understand something, that means that nobody could possibly understand it, and therefore, it must be magic. That’s not keepin’ it real folks. Yup yup. 

Well, the old west town of Mud Bump has a big problem. Namely, there’s a fat clown in town who talks like a wigger (he especially likes the word “muthafucka”). If that wasn’t bad enough, him and his cronies are terrorizing the town, whether cheating at cards and blowing away anybody who argues for the sake of fairness, or shaking down local businesses for cash. The fat clown was previously responsible for offing the sheriff (Ron Jeremy, because why not) and his two sons, one of which was a flaming gay guy, I guess because “hey look at that dude, he’s a homo! HA HA!”. 

Enter the skinny clown, the son of Ron Jeremy, who rides into town seeking justice and order, but not after offering his sexual services to the hot wife of a struggling wagon family. I guess he is such a pimp that his crotch is a poverty erasing gift from the gods. Later, there’s even a montage of him getting jiggy with Bridget the Midget, scored to a crap synth ripoff of the theme from Once Upon a Time in the West. I’d like to think this is meant to be ironic, but based on the surrounding film, I have to assume it’s a combination of the composer being lazy and the assertion that a little porn star with little arms must be amusing to look at. 

Anyway, the skinny clown is aided by a masked Mexican hero named Dirty Sanchez (of course) in his quest to defeat the bad guys and restore order to Mud Bug like his father once did. Oh, he does hire a deputy (Jason Mewes), but he’s just as spineless as the current sheriff. This leads to the best attempt at humor in the film where Mewes asks “how do I know I won’t get shot?”. The skinny clown responds with “tell you what; if you get shot and die, I’ll double your paycheck”. That’s as a good as it gets folks. There is a guy with a giant foot, and a reoccurring gag where the skinny clown slaps somebody for no reason, if that’s your bag. 

There are also “celebrity” cameos that I think are supposed to be funny, whether it’s Brigitte Nielson, Vanilla Ice, Jimmie Walker, Todd Bridges, or Tom Sizemore. At least they are getting paychecks out of this. Wait a second, I don’t actually care if those people find work or not. Never mind. Incredibly, David Yow from The Jesus Lizard has a “cameo” as a piano player, but I gotta assume he was just hired as an actor. I have a hard time imagining that ICP were interested in giving a shout out to the Lizard in their so-called cowboy comedy, but maybe I am too quick to doubt their taste in indie rock. 

The whole thing feels like a vanity piece strictly for fans of ICP, and I’m more of a Digable Planets kind of guy; call me a pussy if you will. So I guess these fans wanna see the fat clown say “muthafucka” and shoot people for no reason, and the skinny clown slap people and boink any woman he wants. However, this obviously doesn’t make for an interesting story, but neither does it make for good comedy. It’s the same reason why a douchebag stand-up comedian talking about how much he gets laid isn’t funny. Vulnerability, pathos, and failure are keys to comedy, but I guess ICP places tough guy posturing above all. Considering this posturing takes place in a fantasy world, it strikes me as nothing more than empty bravado. 

P.S. This was written as part of Project Terrible hosted by Alec over at Mondo Bizarro, who also deviously chose this movie for me to review.  Devious I say!

ADVENTURES OF THUNDERSTORM: RETURN OF THOR (2011)

Somewhere in Canada, two scientists are busy working in a tiny office on a government funded project to create a cosplay Thor costume. I guess Canada can afford to throw money away on stuff like this since they don’t spend trillions on national defense. By an incredible coincidence, scientist Grant happens to be a descendent of Thor. By an even more incredible coincidence, Thor himself needs to inject an earthly relative of his with the ability to shoot Photoshop lightning balls in order to save the world or whatever, and since Grant happens to be working on a Thor costume for unrelated reasons, why not. Seems like a good fit. 

Some bald, faux-Anton LaVey douchebag transforms some hot chick into an evil cosplay lady that shoots red Photoshop electricity. They team up to attempt to kill the gods by starting Ragnarok (the “twilight of the gods”) because…I don’t know why*. I guess it’s a pretty metal thing to do, so why not*. However, not only are these gods not worshipped by anyone who isn’t a LARPer, they are really just photos that are shaken in front of a new age screensaver. Anyway, I guess it’s bad for the universe if these talking photos are blowed up, so we need some dude in spandex (named “Thunderstorm” instead of “Thor Jr.”) to take care of beeswax. 

In order for the villains to complete their quest, they need to reconstruct the “dragon’s cross”, a piece of which they have to steal from an art gallery. A young female cop in street clothes investigates the robbery, and becomes entangled with Grant/Thunderstorm in his quest to stop the evil pair and their henchmen. She lacks a superpower though, unless you count being the only halfway decent actor in the movie a superpower. 

 Here is a scene of drama.  You can tell because our hero takes off his helmet in order to show off some emotionalism.

Will good overcome evil? Will the gods survive? I’m sure you probably don’t care, as I probably don’t care. In fact, I can’t muster up the energy to figure out whether or not I care. The movie is largely people (most of whom can’t act) standing around in some very generic location (like an office or a parking lot) providing endless exposition without actually setting up a story that has any stakes. Thunderstorm’s sense of duty amounts to “well, I guess I’m supposed to, so…”, where as the villain wants to destroy the gods just because I guess. It should be said that some of this endless exposition is hard to hear because it is drowned out by the new age hero Casio score, and the god dialogue is also drowned out with some very shoddy reverb effect, making it virtually unintelligible. There is also a 3000 word crawl at the beginning of the film that tries to explain the Norse mythological background of the story, but instead of clarifying, it will mostly just give you a headache. 

The biggest take away from this film is that I don’t know why someone would make a serious version of the comic book Thor for $5,000 with a script that is mostly stuffed with mangled exposition. Yes, I know it’s REALLY made to cash in on the Hollywood movie, but you can still make a vaguely entertaining ripoff for no money. God only knows how you would achieve that, but I imagine it might be possible. You could make it stupid or humorous, or be self-aware about it being an impossibly cheap superhero movie. There is a moment where the female detective asks our hero why he’s driving a crappy car, and he defends it by mentioning that the car is electric. However, I think this is less a self-aware comment on shoddy superheroes than an honest stab at humor. The movie does have several stabs at humor which feel vaguely Canadian. Granted, they aren’t funny, but it has that Canadian comedy feel of being pleasantly odd instead of crass, mean spirited, or overly literal. So, that was something I noticed. I have to find something to think about while I’m watching horseshit like this. 

*I think the lady villain might be a god herself, worshipped by the main villain and his cronies, and they want to kill the other gods in order to be the only game in town, I guess. 

P.S. This was written as part of Project Terrible, hosted by Alec at Mondo Bizarro.  This particular choice was selected by Robert over at Gaming Creatively.  Check 'em out!

THE BLEEDING (2009)

Shawn Black is a man haunted by his past and a generic name, but mostly his past. According to a series of rapid and intrusive flashbacks, his parents were killed by vampires, he is haunted by visions of a biblical apocalypse, and he also fought side by side with his brother in Afghanistan only to watch him be killed in the line of duty. If that wasn’t enough, he is burdened with the responsibility of being the one and only vampire slayer, although I’m unsure how that works exactly (maybe it’s a genetic thing). It’s a good thing we are shown these quick clips, because our hero is not interested in outwardly conveying any of this emotional baggage, apart from occasionally gritting his teeth. I guess he is so distraught that he has emotionally shut down and can only stare blankly into the camera. That must be it. 

Black has also taken up drinking. Apparently, his father was Italian, and his mother was Irish, so “I didn’t know whether to drink or get revenge. I needed to do both.” Hopefully this trend has since become finito, but this used to be the standard opening line for an ultra hacky stand-up comedian. They would introduce themselves by describing their parentage, like maybe that they are half-Jewish and half-Chinese, and then say something like “with parents like that, I don’t know whether to order Chinese take out or deliver it.” My point is, the line portends an ominous absence of wit, although I don’t know what I was expecting exactly. 

Well, you’re probably wondering where this is headed. Vinnie Jones is an evil vampire leader with a bunch of vampire underlings, although you wouldn’t know he was evil from glancing at him, what with his ridiculous fur coat and hat and long hair, making him look like Kevin MacDonald’s pimp character from The Kids in the Hall. Either way, Shawn Black is the man to take them down. He enlists the help of an alcoholic, gun toting priest played by a slumming Michael Madsen (although maybe this “slumming” has been an intentional acting style all along). Madsen even hands Black a sword that lights up when he holds it, proving that he is the one and only vampire slayer. I guess it’s sort of like a Sword in the Stone type of thing. 

Skipping to the end, Black and the priest find the abandoned factory where the vampires live by asking some dude who works in a record store (like a real record store, with like records and shit). Just as they are infiltrating the “compound”, the factory turns into a rave with like 1,000 people, 90% of which appear to be hot chicks, and 80% of which are twirling glowsticks for no goddamn reason. I hate it when a giant party interrupts a covert operation. Who am I kidding; I have never engaged in covert ops. If I try to sneak around, I bump into shit and knock stuff over. Anyway, this raises the stakes, as the vampires are using the rave as a farm system of sorts, mainly because there was a similar scene at the beginning of Blade. 

Anyway, to say the script has plot holes is to insult holes. Take one short scene, for example. Despite not having a job, Mr. Black drives his near $100,000 Shelby Mustang (he owns an entire fleet of expensive sports cars) to a deserted rest stop in the middle of the night. He is attacked by a vampire that happens to be hanging out in the bathroom. Now, this isn’t a world overrun by vampires, but rather, a secret cabal that has yet to be revealed to the public. Maybe he just has bad luck. 

After dispatching the vampire, two hot chicks arrive at the rest stop in their vintage Dodge Challenger convertible that costs god-knows-how-much. Black talks to the brunette like nothing is going on, and her blonde friend heads to the bathrooms where Black just killed a vampire, with others potentially hiding in the facility. However, he doesn’t bother to warn either of them. Not only that, but those girls driving that car are the least likely visitors to a creepy, dimly lit rest stop that you could possibly come up with, so I guess they’re there because it looks cool. The girls coincidentally pop up a couple more times before it turns out that Black has to save the brunette at the very end. The scriptwriter apparently thinks you can set up a character and a potential love interest just by having her coincidentally show up every once in a while and have no effect on what’s happening. Maybe I'm nitpicking, but my point is; every scene is like that. Seriously. Now I have a headache. Christ. 

The movie’s most egregious sin is the ugly visual style. When not looking shitty because of bad day-for-night or bad exposures, the film is bathed in Windows Movie Maker filters and effects, whether ugly color filters, or an underwater effect, or digital processing that blows out the image in different ways. It makes it impossible to enjoy the movie even on the dumb level of vampires and hot chicks and cars and bikes randomly thrown together. Then there’s the incredibly annoying flash cut editing, as if oodles of background information has to constantly be inserted, otherwise the audience would be unable to follow the obtuse storyline. I know it’s all a ploy to try and add style to the movie, but, speaking of pimps, I believe a wise pimp once said “baby, either you got style or you ain’t got style. You can’t fake that shit”. 

P.S. This was written as part of Project Terrible, hosted by Alec over at Mondo Bizarro.  This particular choice was provided by Craig over at Let's Get Out of Here!.

P.P.S. I realize the pimp character comparison is a bit of a stretch, but Kevin MacDonald was wearing a fur coat in my head when I imagined the character while writing the review.  Maybe he did in one of the sketches.  KITH did a bunch of sketches about hookers.

FEEDING GROUNDS (2006)

The movie opens in prime Texas Chainsaw Massacre style, if TCM was filmed in cheap digital fuzz-o-vision.  There’s the desert dust, the baking heat, the tin can ambient score, and the creepy redneck hitchhiker wearing a shitkicker cowboy hat.  Thankfully, two ladies turn him down and continue to drive along.  If there is one thing I’ve learned from driving cross country, it’s that you never pick up a guy wearing a shitkicker hat, and you ESPECIALLY never pick up Rutger Hauer (sorry Rutger).  Or anybody with visible sores.  You know what, better not to pick up any hitchhikers ever.  They say hitchhiking is incredibly dangerous, so the only people that hitchhike are people that don’t mind doing something incredibly dangerous.  Those people are crazy, ergo…never mind.

Anyway, our two ladies are driving along in their SUV in a part of the California desert only populated by scattered rednecks and lizards.  Curiously, they have a book called “Sophistry” sitting on top of the console.  I was wondering why someone would want to learn how to engage in empty philosophical discussions in the desert, but then I looked closer and saw that the book was actually called “Sapphistry”.  This is the filmmaker’s way of telling us that they are lesbians because they carry around a lesbian sex manual in their car.  That is pretty hot.  Sure enough, they park out in the middle of nowhere, and one lesbian proposes to the other on the side of the road.  I thought women were more romantic than that.  At a minimum, a man will at least take his honey out to a Hooters or something when he’s proposing.

Well, it’s somehow immediately night, and the couple are both dying of thirst.  They are so dehydrated that these two lovebirds are now screaming at each other and calling each other “bitch”.  They stop the car so one of them can vomit, and they are apparently eaten by some unseen force.  I’m going to guess it’s a cannibal family a la The Hills Have Eyes.  However, I’m not sure how they knew where the ladies were going to stop their SUV along the barren highway, but maybe they were riding behind them in an invisible car.  No, that’s crazy.  A cannibal family could never afford an invisible car.  No, there are probably hundreds of cannibal families in the California desert, hiding near roads, waiting for people to stop so they can enjoy a family brunch (or tolerate a family brunch if they’re anything like my family).  Maybe they each have their own jurisdictions.  Perhaps this is what happens to all the actors who move to L.A. but their pilot never gets picked up and they are forced to flee to the desert and eat people to stay alive.  Why not.

Two cops find the vehicle and quickly realize that the couple was eaten, but they don’t want to report it because that means they’ll have to investigate an area that is probably overrun with cannibals.  Now, I hate ineffectual porkers as much as anyone, but they kinda have a point on that one.  The area is also called “Doom Desert”, so you could argue it’s your own damn fault if you don’t drive straight through a place called Doom Desert.  Right on queue, 4 douchebags and their 3 hot girlfriends (I believe it is a legal requirement that, in order to have a hot girlfriend, one must be a douchebag) drive along in two cars through Doom Desert, taking notice that they drive by no less than 4 cars that are abandoned on the side of the road.  You know, even if there weren’t cannibals running around, an abandoned car means that one or more people are stranded out in the middle of nowhere in 120 degree heat.  An engine that overheats in the middle of Death Valley in the summer will smoke your ass just as sure as a tribe of man eating nutters.

If that wasn’t enough, they aren’t even driving through Doom Desert, but instead are intentionally taking a vacation there in order to smoke weed!  Why smoke weed in the most dangerous place in North America when you could just rip a bong load in your apartment and watch The Hills Have Eyes on DVD?  There is one couple that drops acid, and that actually makes some sense.  I heard it’s best to do acid in the desert because you’ll see all kinds of crazy shit, like maybe a bat-winged Jim Morrison swinging a flaming sword at a minotaur while a cactus breakdances nearby (not too nearby).  Of course, I keep my temple clean, so this is all just stuff I’ve heard through the grapevine.  The acid tripping does lead to some cool shots I guess, like where the chick is dancing around with a red sheet and teleporting around to different spots.  These little bits actually reminded me of the video for Romeo Daughter’s “I Cry Myself to Sleep at Night”.  It’s a very obscure pull, but one that I’m happy to make considering I have nothing better to talk about.

I should’ve mentioned that there was an 8^th member of the group, a frumpy burnout girl who talks shit to the others and brings along a video camera.  However, she stops being interesting when she turns nice because one of the douchebags who’s a deadbeat dad shows her a picture of his kid, a kid he’s probably met like three times.  I’m sure he just shows off that picture to help him get laid.  If you thought this burnout character would provide an interesting found footage angle to the movie (to the extent that found footage could ever said to be interesting), you would be wrong.  No longer taking her douchebag friends down a peg, she becomes just another person you don’t give a shit about.

They find a human ear and quickly decide to get out of dodge, except for the slightly gothy douchebag who’s tripping balls.  He just tells his buddy “you wanna bring it to the lost and found…I “ear” they’re missing one!”.  I thought acid was supposed to inspire and provoke the imagination, and you come with that sorry bullshit?  How about you make like a tree and “leaf” the jokes up to the professionals.  Anyway, you’d think their escape plan would be easy.  You get in the car and drive in a straight line and, viola, you’re home in L.A.  However, they start arguing and going crazy I guess, and occasionally spot some slime, and decide that wandering off from the road and yelling is the way to deal with the situation.  Too bad Maxim magazine never featured any articles on crisis management. 

I’d like to say that the movie surprises and doesn’t go with the obvious Hills Have Eyes cannibals like I presumed, but I’m not quite sure what is going on here.  The group seems to be affected by some sort of plague that makes them go crazy and not want to keep driving, but there is also clearly a creature of some sort off camera that is never really seen.  There’s even a conspiracy theory guy rambling on the radio.  Maybe it all makes sense if you pay close attention, but I wasn’t paying close attention, and I’m not going to rewatch the movie.  Instead, I’m going to listen to some more Romeo’s Daughter.  Sure they are crap, but they are better at sucking than pretty much anybody.

P.S. This was written as part of "Project Terrible", hosted by the lovely and prolific Alec over at the Mondo Bizarro blog.  This particular movie was chosen for review by the even lovelier but less prolific Michele over at The Girl Who Loves Horror.  Clicky and check 'em out.

THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN (1968) - of all the Nazi plans for world domination, this one could've used a rewrite or two

Even with my low expectations for the human race, it's hard for me to fathom that a group of people would want to preserve Hitler’s brain. I can’t think of anything I'd like to save least. Heck, I might argue that Hitler’s brain is the most evil thing the world has ever seen. I mean, it was chiefly responsible for masterminding the holocaust, as well as being responsible for persuading others that this was a good idea. You know, If I ever happened upon Hitler’s brain, I’m punting that fucker into oncoming traffic.

Well, it turns out that a group of straggling Nazis have saved Hitler’s entire head, keeping it alive in a fish bowl that sits atop a ham radio (not a radio made of ham you moron). Hitler’s head apparently wasn’t satisfied with the six million dead Jews, and wants to destroy more human life by way of the “G-gas”, which paralyzes human brains within a very large radius (and is also undetectable). This is explained during an educational film where an elephant is subjected to the gas and rolls over and falls asleep. Standing in their way is a scientist who has concocted an antidote to the gas named “Formula D”. You know, maybe if the gas was named “extermination gas” and the antidote was called “savior rub” instead of these generic sounding titles, perhaps people would view them within the proper moral context. Anyway, I guess Adolf is not just content killing Jews and now wants to kill everyone all of a sudden. Everyone, that is, except his cronies and himself (well, what is left of himself). If there is anything worse than genocide, it is inconsistent genocide.

Luckily, there is a hero out to foil this plan. He points out that the Nazis are “slappers of women and torturers of old men.” This fits nicely within the 50’s sci-fi tradition of having the hero call out the villain as an evil no-gooder, but this cutting description seems lacking for such an evil bunch. Lo and behold, when the hero’s wife (who doubles as his sidekick) starts to get hysterical after being stalked by a Nazi, he slaps her to “get her back to normal.” Maybe the director was saying that the pre-feminism male was “Nazi-esque”, but somehow I doubt it. Before feminism exploded, there were certain instances where slapping your wife was apparently the right thing to do. You know, real men doing real things the right way while wearing a suit.

Now, I know what you’re thinking folks; Hitler died in that bunker and could have never lived to star in a borderline nonsensical exploitation film! Au contraire…there were actually “stunt Hitlers” running around during World War II, and the Hitler body that was found was actually one of these stunt Hitlers. You see, if you stick a Charlie Chaplin mustache on any angry German fellow with black hair, he’s pretty much Hitler, and no one can tell the difference. Anyway, our hero figures this out and ends up chasing the head in a jar and his cronies to a cave that might not be Bronson Canyon, but is no doubt the next closest thing to Bronson Canyon. He handles thing the American way, indiscriminately tossing hand grenades, one of which happens to land close to Hitler’s fish bowl radio setup (which was pretty cutting edge circa 1963, like “Playboy Magazine ad” cutting edge). Granted, it’s all a day late and six million short, but evil has been vanquished and the world can finally sleep easy. The end.

If that sounds like scant plot material for a 50’s sci-fi cheapie, keep in mind that the original film “Madmen of Manora” is actually from 1963 and runs a svelte 63 minutes. However, this version is credited as being from 1968 (despite showcasing what looks to be early 70’s fashion) and runs a robust 91 minutes. Basically, the first 30 minutes or so is additional exposition footage shot later to try and further explain the intricacies of the “unleash a gas to kill a bunch of people because Hitler’s head said so” plot. I know you want to make a movie seem “modern” by having a character show up and give exposition whilst rocking a crucial mustache and a flared collar, but the end result is that you are padding out plot areas that nobody gives a shit about. For the people that do give a shit, they would have probably paid close enough attention to the shorter version to figure out what was happening.

The central thrust of the movie is the absurdity of the evil central plot for world domination, but it is much more talked about than shown. I guess Nazis like Hitler, even if he’s just a head, and Hitler thought killing masses of people was a great idea…so why not. The point is that Nazis are a bunch of evil fucks out to destroy the world, and our hero has to find them and stop them. This is hardly worthy of a 90 minute run time, but at least the Madmen of Manora section has pretty cool photography by the great Stanley Cortez (Night of the Hunter, Shock Corridor), including angular and even zig zaggy shadows. In the end, it may seem ridiculous to want to worship some screaming German head that lives in a fish bowl, but the really ridiculous part were the ideas that the brain part of the head was able to justify using psychopathic hatred and faulty logic, and the will to persuade as many people as possible that these ideas should be worshiped.

P.S. This was written as part of "Project Terrible", hosted by Mondo Bizarro. Click on the link; there is plenty more terrible where that came from.

ABERRATION (1997) - if you thought geckos couldn't be more of an annoyance than that Geico gecko, think again

Here's the big scene of gecko horror action.

The “animals run amok” genre has a long and proud tradition of entertaining us by showing innocent animals eating a bunch of privileged white people. You know, the kind that drive along in an SUV to a house in the woods, throwing non-biodegradable styrofoam burger containers out of the window along the way. Now, I don’t know how a radioactive squirrel knows that these people are privileged and selfish and therefore deserve to be killed, but I’m certainly pleased with the results.

However, the problem with such a well-mined genre is that most every animal has already been used. Filmmakers have fused animals together in order to keep things innovative, whether the shark octopus or the gorilla squid or the lobster giraffe. Hell, even a plant was used in the “animal run amok” classic The Little Shop of Horrors. Now, I know that nobody else on this planet would consider Little Shop of Horrors an “animal run amok” movie, considering that it stars a plant that doesn’t move. However, I think that a plant that eats people is pretty much an animal (editor’s note: writer is not a zoologist; he’s not even a crypto-zoologist), and there’s no need for the plant to run amok when it can coerce Seymour into doing his dirty work for him. If a grizzly bear with crab hands who lives in a cave had a cronie to bring him victims, he wouldn’t even bother to leave the house. Well, it makes sense to me.

Anyway, the plot as standard as it gets, as Pamela Gidley is a hip chick that heads out to a cabin in the woods and is forced to defend herself against radioactive (although regular sized) geckos. Yes, Aberration is about killer geckos, which sounds pretty ridiculous, but admittedly they are rarely glimpsed. They live beneath the floorboards of the cabin and when the geckos do get out and about, they do so in POV shots (reminiscent of the classic killer tarantula flick Kingdom of the Spiders, starring legendary space stud Bill Shatner). They even spy upon Pamela’s ass as she gets ready to take a bath. I guess it can get pretty boring living under some floorboards, so these geckos take any cheap thrills they can get.

So, if the TYPE of critter doesn’t play a big part in the story, why go with the gecko? Why not go with an old standby, like tarantulas, for example? Well, basically, Aberration is a quirky, post-Tarantino (there’s even a subtle reference to Reservoir Dogs), post-Twin Peaks (Gibney was in Fire Walk With Me) variation on the “animals run amok” genre, and the gecko fits as a quirky and original choice. Fittingly, Pamela combats them in quirky ways, whether arming herself with a Super Soaker filled with poison, or when she tries to drown one in a fishtank, only to be forced to electrocute with a lamp when she discovers that these geckos can breathe under water. Instead of going for straight horror or camp, the movie goes for quirk, without being self-conscious to the point of annoyance. Pamela is a perfect heroine for this style, with her pink highlights and alternative style (“alternative” meaning “120 Minutes with Dave Kendall”) and dialogue that conveys a detached cool, keeping her composure while subtlety cracking wise. She also talks to her cat, which is something that quirky girls do, and continue to do as they grow up to be crazy cat ladies. She also bumps into some off-kilter characters along the way, in particular a creepy old man who lives in a nearby shack, as well as a slightly nutty but charming ecologist whom she develops a bit of a relationship with. The soundtrack is surprisingly good and fitting of the Pamela character, with some tremolo guitar score (a bit Twin Peaks) and alternative songs, a few which sound like Concrete Blonde. There’s also a twist ending that will seem familiar to anyone who remembers what movies were like in the aftermath of Pulp Fiction. You know, a movie about quirky criminals. I think I have now set a record for the most uses of the word "quirk" within one paragraph. There's another one.

A good point of comparison is Ticks (1993), another Evil Dead-influenced (specifically the camera work and location) “critters in a cabin in the woods” movie, employing genre revisionism in a 90’s style. The difference is that the “hipness” of Ticks is decidedly pre-Tarantino. The characters also employ self-referential humor, but are still partially in the “dumb victim” mold. The characters in Aberration play it smart while keeping it cool, slyly commenting on the situation without drifting into camp, and never rendered helpless or shrieking. However, at its core, Aberration is basically about a girl in a cabin forced into pest control, so it never really inspires terror in the way that the best “animals run amok” movies do. It may as well be a movie about a quirky girl dealing with an annoying roach problem. However, pest control, no matter how well done, is not going to put asses in the seats. You gotta sell it as a movie about some crazy ass monster eating people and ripping limbs off. In other words, subtlety and quirk is what opens on Friday and closes on Saturday or, in this case, goes direct-to-video.

P.S. This was written as part of "Project Terrible" over at Mondo Bizarro. If you like crap, click on the link.

ACCIDENTS (1989) - an unlikely sci-fi terrorist plot thwarted by a scientist with an unlikely and unfortunate hairstyle

The mullet rarely works, but when it does, it really fucking works. It’s the perfect hairstyle for a 6’4’’ hockey goon from Ottawa, and Dalton from Road House just wouldn’t be the same without his patented mane. However, for every Martin Riggs from Lethal Weapon, there are a thousand mulleted meatheads out there with follicles to horrify the retinas of humanity. A bad mullet is a hairstyle not to be taken seriously, and this can spill over to the man himself. Take, for example, scientist Eric Powers, star of Accidents. I cannot take any of his scientific discoveries seriously because of the mullet. A scientist should no doubt be business in the front, but that much party in the back can only lead to trouble. If you party that much on your off hours and show up to the lab hungover the next morning, no doubt your data is going to suffer.

Also, it’s hard to take a scientific discovery seriously when it’s a little piece of plastic. You see, Mr. Powers has created an anti-terrorist weapon that looks like a model kit UFO that is operated by remote control. As he explains to his daughter, the thing shoots lasers that screw with the electromagnetic fields in someone’s brain and they blow up (it’s an “amplified brainscan system”). If this description seems obtuse to certain viewers, they show the scientists testing the weapon on a mouse wearing one of those little metal helmets that they hook electrodes up to. That way, they can record data when the mouse’s head starts sparking, in order to find out what happens scientifically speaking right before it blows up.

Of course, Powers finds out that his secret terrorist-fighting project is being sold to…TERRORISTS! I guess they put in a higher bid. Anyway, we know this because the main official of the project is seen sitting on a park bench with a shady looking guy with a shady sounding accent. Just remember; if you ever see an older white man in a suit whispering quietly to a Middle Eastern or Eastern European guy with a beard, there are either state secrets being sold, or someone’s ass is getting assassinated. You know what, I just realized that the word “assassinated” begins with the word “ass” repeated twice. That’s amazing.

Anyway, people who know too much are being murdered, and Powers is thrust into a conspiracy. His best friend and fellow researcher leaves a worrisome message on his answering machine that “sounds like a Woody Allen monologue” (this was back in the day when people made fun of Woody Allen for his neuroticism rather than because he boinked his stepdaughter). Soon after, he steps in his jacuzzi at home and is mysteriously electrocuted. Nobody finds it strange that he is magically electrocuted just by dipping his toes in some water, but Powers does connect the phone call with the murder and he becomes suspicious. Later, another guy with knowledge of the project is driving along minding his own business when the little saucer magically appears hovering above the car and shoots a laser through the windshield and into his brain (or whatever it does).

Now, I’m probably putting too much thought into this (i.e. any thought), but why use the secret undercover weapon to kill people that know too much about the secret undercover weapon? Why not just hire a vaguely European goon (not to be confused with a hockey goon, since Canadians draw the line at murder) to shoot these guys? The weapon could be damaged or noticed by someone or even stolen in the process. Also, how is this thing supposed to stop terrorism? Maybe you can find out where the terrorist lives and sit outside in the bushes and try to remote control the saucer into the house and into the guy’s bedroom and shoot him with a laser. That’s a whole lot of trouble when you can just launch a missile from above and nuke the guy’s house. It’s not like the U.S. military is above blowing up a terrorist's house, no matter who else is inside.

The other thing is that this little saucer just seems to shoot a laser at people, and I don’t see what is so special about that. Maybe that was a bit cutting edge for 1989, but it even pales in comparison to a similar laser in the film Real Genius, released 4 years prior. That laser could nuke an exact site from space using a satellite tracking system, which is balls out more impressive than a little remote control piece of plastic that looks like a NES accessory.

Speaking of which, do you remember that scene in Real Genius where the kids sit at a restaurant table in celebrations of having completed building the laser? They made the laser cannon thing out of a love for science, but it dawns on them that the laser was going to be used as a destructive force. Apart from the two ridiculous murders early on and the lame shoot out at the end, Accidents is basically that scene drawn out to 80 minutes, only without the fun nerdy characters and the Val Kilmer wisecracks. Marry that to a soul-curdling synth score and you have a conspiracy movie where the real conspiracy is that it conspires to bore you. That’s as close as I’ll get to Gene Shalit folks.

P.S. This was written as part of "Project Terrible" over at Mondo Bizarro. Check it out!

VAMPIRE BOYS (2011) - if you're incredilby desperate for a gay version of Twilight, this is the movie for you!

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my works. I want to achieve it by not dying.”
-Woody Allen

Many people would happily sign up for immortality if all they had to do was bite a wayward hooker on the neck every once in awhile. Even then, you’re giving Porsche or Licorice the gift of immortality. However, there’s all the other shit you gotta deal with as a vampire, like having to avoid garlic at all costs (pizza is probably a no-go) and being unable to wander around in the daylight. Then there’s also the holy water, and the wooden stakes, and the crucifixes, all of which can quickly put the kibosh on the whole immortality thing. However, lead vampire boy Jason (who has 3 vampire boy underlings) doesn’t have to put up with any of that stuff, chalking it up to “false myth” in a long exposition passage (thank god he took the time out of his busy schedule to explain all of these vampire plot discrepancies). The only other rule is that the vampire boys are not allowed to wear shirts under ANY circumstances. Maybe they have extra hot vampire blood, and they need to be shirtless in order to keep their body temperatures at a normal level. That must be it.

Oh yeah, there is one major caveat (sorry...it’s hard to keep all of these rules straight): Jason has to find a vampire life partner by his 100th birthday or he turns into dust. He has two potential partners: a blonde chick that goes to college with the vampire boys (yes, they are working towards degrees) and a boy named Caleb, who used to be a swimming champion but has since “hung up his Speedos” (although he’s traded them for borderline-Speedo boy shorts). This is a tough call for Jason, and he has to choose by…TOMMORROW! Yes, he waited until the last day or two to look for an eternal partner, when hitting the deadline without one means certain death. I’ve started school papers the night before, rushing through in a No Doz-induced haze in order to finish it on time, but my mortality wasn’t at stake (sorry).

Anyway, he prefers Caleb over the blonde (probably because he’s gay, but maybe I’m prejudging ), but his vampire bros want him to hook up with the blonde chick. This confused me, since I thought the whole clan was gay, and therefore would’ve wanted Jason to pick a dude to join them. Maybe the other three are actually straight and don’t approve of his gay ways, but they never come out and give that as a reason (one of them says “Caleb is a phase”). You know, to be perfectly honest, I have terrible gaydar. Usually I don’t start questioning another man’s sexuality until his hand is on my ass. I think that’s normally a good thing (it’s a form of being nonjudgmental), but functioning gaydar would probably be helpful when reviewing gay themed movies, and is a definite must in prison. It’s weird; I have excellent douchedar (that’s where you can tell if someone is a douchebag or not), and my gorilladar is second-to-none (that’s when you can tell if someone is a real gorilla or just a guy wearing a monkey suit). I guess we all have our blind spots.

Of course, there are a couple of vampire attacks mixed in, starting off with a woman being stalked through the L.A. River. If you’re wondering how somebody could be stalked “through a river”, keep in mind that the L.A. River is essentially a concrete basin with few small puddles of mud and the occasional “objet de trash” (like a rusty shopping cart filled with used condoms). Later, a girl drags two “straight” guys into the middle of nowhere (probably Griffith Park) and tells them that they have to make out if they want to have a threesome with her. They happily oblige, even showing off their mini-dudes to the camera. I guess guys like banging chicks more than they hate flirting with homosexuality. Either that, or guys are dumb and will do anything a hot chick tells them to do. Or maybe all douchebags are secretly gay. Regardless, they are just vampire fodder and are quickly dispatched, putting an end to a plethora of subtextual ruminations. By the way, if you need a title for a film class thesis, you can go ahead and use “plethora of subtextual ruminations”. I don’t expect payment; just please credit me in your works cited page. Thank you.

Anyway, these “horror” scenes seem perfunctory, as the relationship between Caleb and Jason is really the focal point. Like Twilight it seems (although I’ve only seen half of the first movie), the vampirism seems like a pointless side issue to the relationship. Vampire Boys could’ve just been a movie about a semi-gothy gay romance, where forced conflicts keeps the two apart. There’s Jason bros, who want him to go hetero, and Caleb’s roommate, who wants to hook up with him but Caleb isn’t biting (again…I apologize). The roommate becomes suspicious of Jason, pointing out that “he doesn’t even have a Facebook page!”. Little does he realize that vampires don’t need Facebook, as they can telepathically send messages to each other (however, Mark Zuckerberg is working on a “Facebook telepathy” app as we speak). Caleb is drawn to Jason’s mysterious abdominals, and not because Jason has vampire hypnotizing powers (there is some indication of this, but it doesn’t enter the equation once they actually get together). Meanwhile, he is flattered that his roommate his attracted to him, but that’s as far as he wants their relationship to go. All the vampire shit feels like padding, and all of the vampire discussion to justify the vampire shit feels like extra padding.

The relationship material between the three is undermined by a bad script and awkward line readings, but Christian Ferrer (Caleb) holds it together with a believable (believable for a non-vampire movie) performance as a young gay man stuck in a limp love triangle. You know what…maybe he’s actually straight in real life. Holy shit. If that’s the case, it’s an AMAZING performance. You know, Dustin Hoffman rightfully won an Oscar for playing an autistic savant in Rain man, yet I never truly believed his character was autistic (a savant, yes; he memorized the phone book after all). So, if Ferrer is actually straight, give the man a Golden Globe…make that two Golden Globes. They hand those out like they’re candy anyways. You know what…he’s probably gay. I really should get my gaydar checked out. Maybe I can buy gaydar pills on the internet. Oh wait, I’m broke. Never mind.

P.S. This was written as part of Project Terrible, hosted by our good friends at Mondo Bizarro. It is also post #6 in the Lazy Baker Halloween Horror Countdown, and the review is also featured over at Planet Fury! That's called getting bang for your writing buck, folks (assuming you're not being paid).