Sometimes I’m my own worst enemy.

I decided to review one hopefully underexposed “top” horror film from every year for my Post Millennial Trauma section. As a result, I’ve waded through an enormous amount of schlocky crap from the more fallow years of the 21st Century hoping against hope to find something that would fit the bill. The vast majority of the films that I inflicted on myself are absolutely terrible and not even worth comment (Bloody Mary), being a hateful combination of inept, uninspired and frankly fucking boring. I toyed with whether or not to even bother writing this review, and in the end have decided to for two reasons: it’s got Dee Wallace Stone in it, and we all like her, and more importantly, the writer/ director actually started out writing for Fangoria. If that hack can produce such an obvious piece of Orang of Doom worthy shit then surely us good Changians must be able to raise the funding for the eagerly awaited masterpiece that is Astrodykes v Werewolves on the Moon.

Boo does not have the most promising opening that I’ve ever seen. Our intrepid heroine (who it turns out will have psychic powers for no reason other than that they had managed to paint themselves into a daft narrative corner requiring psychic powers to get out of)  is on the phone in a scene horribly familiar to anyone that’s seen Scream. Which is kind of the point of the whole film, actually. Anyhow, a guy in a mask turns up, except it turns out it’s her boyfriend (a twat of such earth-shattering magnitude his name is actually Twattus Ginormicus)  who has plans for them all at Halloween staying in an abandoned lunatic asylum. So, our assembled group of douchey teenagers go to the asylum and spend the night getting tormented by an evil paedo ghost before being picked off one by one and our intrepid heroine and two other douchebags (it never properly bothers explaining what they’re doing there, so I shall not be bothering either) escape.

This is a terrible film. It’s risibly bad and completely clueless. First and foremost, the central characters are enormously unlikable. Asshole boyfriend, for example, shags our heroine’s best friend within minutes of being in the building thereby sacrificing all sympathy for the character (which was pretty limited anyway), and his big idea of practical spook-related scares being fun is just an epic failure. Secondly, our heroine has psychic powers and a link to her dead mother (related to us in a jaw-droppingly slow piece of exposition) for the sole reason that someone needed to explain why the building is haunted, what the ghost is playing at and also to give them a means of escape from certain death. This last one is actually ignored anyway, as it’s Dee that comes to the rescue.

Which brings me around to the script- it’s a fucking mess. The story is contradictory and confusing, the characters are poorly drawn and unlikable and the dialogue is inept. The sole good line in the film is when the black characters says to douchebag “shoot me in the head and I’ll kick your arse”, and that’s not even a very good line. As if that’s not annoying enough the entire film has a slimy post-modernist glaze to it that really leaves the viewer cold. It’s just so fucking pleased with itself and there is no Earthly justification for this satisfaction. The relative failure of the writing here leads me to believe that anything we turn out will be vastly superior to this toss, because we won’t be as smug as this.

The acting, actually, isn’t that bad. Trish Coren tries hard as Jesse, but the character is an idiot with magic powers, Dee is fine as saviour nurse, and M. Steven Felty is reasonably scary and pretty disgusting as spectral kiddie-diddler Jacob. However, the whole edifice is bought crashing town by the truly woeful performance put in by Jilon Ghai as Kevin. Kevin is an asshole, and a severely unsympathetic and unentertaining asshole, but this is a grating performance nonetheless. I was actively screaming at the screen praying for him to get his just desserts.

The effects are pretty mediocre. There’s a nice line in exploding bodies, but the ghost effects themselves are pretty piss poor. Furthermore, they look completely fake, and as a result any time the film manages to manufacture any tension whatsoever we’re yanked out of it by a shitty flickering spectre lurking in the background being about as scary as fucking tellytubby. Fail.

Overall, this film is shit. It’s not worth watching and if it hadn’t been on Lovefilm’s “watch now” list then I’d never have bothered with it. Ordinarily when doing Vault reviews, I lean towards the generous and would give this shit, even if it’s completely and utterly worthless, 1 chang purely for Dee Wallace Stone, but I’m ill at the moment so my patience is fragile and as a direct result it can have a double eye-poke fuck you Orangutan of Doom. With a festive twist.

This is a boring, pointless, irritating waste of time that’s far too full of itself and is one of the more completely inane films that I’ve seen recently. I’d rather finish watching “Bloodrayne 2: Vampire Cowboys and Juggs are boring”  than waste another second of your time or my time on this shit.

Until next time,

Jarv.

This is what you get for bringing me into a world ruled by men!

Jarv’s Rating: One and a half Changs. Pompous, obnoxious but lovingly made shite.

What the hell was I thinking of. Seriously, how did I think watching this “Notorious” film would be a good idea? Gianfranco Mingozza’s film has been described as Nunsploitation, however this is utter crap. What it is, is a nasty and tawdry 1970′s issue film attempting to crassly pin feminist ideals on medieval Catholicism. Shameless tries to promote this film with “Witness the most notoriously graphic and nasty descent into the nunsploitation genre with Gianfranco Mingozzi’s unforgettable masterpiece of shock cinema.” Which is an utterly, erm, shameless description of the film, but an understandable one as it’s damned difficult to write marketing blurb when the key adjective is “dull”.

This won’t be a very long review, as it is an interminable film. Flavia the Heretic was apparently inspired by a real moorish sacking of an Italian town, according to its postscript, but it strikes me as remarkably tasteless to attach a shitey psuedo-feminist dogma onto a real massacre. Everyone knows that the catholic church were real bastards in the middle ages (not that they’re whiter than white nowadays) and it’s just not that interesting an idea to attack them. It can be done, The Devils, for example, does it much more effectively than this, but all in all it strikes me as a bit of a pointless exercise.

Anywho, Flavia (played by Florinda Bolkan) is sent to a convent by her dad for  a life of quiet contemplation. There she witnesses several atrocities including a repellent rape and a really, really nasty torture of Sister Livia. She tries to run away, but is returned and savagely horsewhipped. Understandably, she’s a bit off men. Nevertheless on her next trip to town she witnesses the Muslims attacking and shacks up with head Muslim to take revenge on any man who wronged her.

What this amounts to is a completely surreal orgy scene, a couple of beheadings before she’s abandoned by her new husband and then gruesomely skinned alive.

This film is essentially really boring. Going over the plot outline makes it sound much more extreme than it actually is. I inflicted it on myself due to malingering curiousity over the film and nunsploitation in general. However, in reality, the only real nastiness only lasts seconds. With one exception- a horse is castrated, and this is by far the nastiest scene in the film. It appears, and I hope to god that this isn’t true, that this was a real horse, and done with no special effects. If this is true, fuck everyone involved in this film as it’s absolutely unjustifiable to actually hurt animals in the name of entertainment.

Furthermore, this is also an astonishingly boring film. With the exception of the orgy scene which is gloriously surreal and includes the truly bizarre image of a naked nun climbing into the hanging carcass of a cow, this film is not only dull but strangely coy. Sure there’s a shit load of nudity and whatnot, but it’s the usual massively bushed and generally unacceptably hairy Italian actresses of the time. However, we never actually see anyone shag, with the exception of the rape- there are two rape scenes, one heterosexual and then a homosexual gang rape- which is just crass and tasteless.

The other thing that really bugs me about this film is the writing, particularly the dialogue. Flavia witters on and on about “Men dominated me” and shit like that, which is epic in its dullness. Sister Agatha also has a good few ranty speeches along these lines before she’s mercifully put out of my misery.

So, is there any reason to watch this obvious horseshit? Erm, no, not really. The only possible reason I could give for sitting through it is that Florinda Bolkan is towering in the title role. It’s a really strong performance, but unfortunately for her, she’s not particularly sympathetic, being all poise and steel and lacking in empathy.

IMDB has 7 writers credit on this mess, and I honestly think that each of them spent 10 minutes writing a few worthy sentences on a beer mat and then some poor mug had to assemble this gibberish into a coherent film. Mingozzi is clearly not intrested in making an exploitation film- he’s making a self-important 1970′s historical art film. As a direct result of this he’s managed to make that all too common type of film: a deathly boring one.

Overall, I’ve given this 1 and a half changs, and that’s for Bolkan. I’ve now seen her perform brilliantly in several films that, if I’m being objective, are utterly terrible. I wonder if she ever actually made a good film, and if she did it must be even money that she’s atrocious in it.

I do have to say though, that “Flay me Baby one more time” strap line did make me laugh.

Until next time,

Jarv.

Let me introduce you to a man named Len. He’s a cheap and cheerful director of pure schlock from Pennsylvania. I’m going to go through all his films in order, and attempt to do actual criticism of them, rather than throw the word “cunt” around a lot. So it these may not be the most entertaining reviews I’ve ever done. Nevertheless, here we go with his debut feature, 2005′s Swamp Zombies.

Swamp Zombies is a fairly simple film made excessively complicated. Basically, an evil scientist dude is tinkering with a serum to re-animate the dead. Anyway, there’s a school trip to the swamp near his facility, and sure enough the dead come back to life and start terrorising the living. The sherriff, Jack, eventually cleans things up and saves the day.

Firstly, the acting in this is pretty bad. Len himself plays Jack and he’s not too bad, actually, and he’s supported by Porn Star Jasmin St. Clair, Blue Meanie Brian Heffron and Pamela Sutch. St. Clair is comfortably the best on-screen, but I suspect that’s because she’s had the most experience. However, the real revelation here is Heffron- if I didn’t happen to know that he made this before Fist of the Vampire then I would honestly believe that the films were made the other way round. He’s much more “natural” on-screen here, and it’s a much better performance than the later role. The rest of the support is clearly comprised of amateurs, and it’s pretty obvious.

The writing is a touch ropey, and I’ll come back to this in a minute. Len himself wrote it, and there are problems- it’s contradictory, the mad scientist plot is, I’m pretty certain but stand to be corrected, straight from Resident Evil (the game, not the piss-poor Anderson film) in that he’s stimulating electrical energy (I think), and it’s otherwise a fairly generic zombie film. The dialogue is also laboured, and some of the characterisation makes little sense. To be fair, this is because a lot of the characters are little more than zombie fodder.

This is clearly an almost zero budget film so there’s no real point criticising it. There’s never going to be extensive CGI or impressive makeup in a film like this. The gore, on the other hand, is thrown around all over the place, and it’s well done and in a little schlocky film like this there’s no point at all in sparing the claret. To Len’s immense credit, this is the second film I’ve seen, he clearly doesn’t feel any need at all to spare the blood.

I happen to know, because Len said so, that Troma was the model for Swamp Zombies, but the point of a lot of Troma films, notably Poultreygeist and Toxie, is that there’s a strong thread of satire running underneath the gore and gross antics. Swamp Zombies is completely lacking this sly intelligence which is a shame, because that’s really what makes Troma as great as they are. Having said that, though, Swamp Zombies is intentionally funny on more than one occasion. The best example I can give is the sequence where Sutch is escaping from the zombies. She’s trying to put her top on and the living dead are shambling along behind her. It’s an intentionally funny sequence, and feels really reminiscent of Benny Hill. I don’t know if this was the model, but I wouldn’t be surprised either. The other stand out funny sequence is when Jack’s deputy is being killed and he’s doing DIY. This is so absurd, and so well done that it shows considerable promise.

There is a strong sense of slapstick to the film. Len’s background is martial arts and he always throws in a good amount of fighting. In this case, the scenes with Jack fighting the zombies are downright funny on occasion as the undead get tossed around like rag dolls. While I’m on this subject, the best piece of shot composition in the film is during one of these sequences- Jack slams a zombies head through a closed car window. The camera is placed inside the car and the zombies head smashes the glass right up to the camera. It’s a really good shot, and stands out in the film.

The other thing that Len clearly understands is the nature of these type of films, and isn’t shy of getting his actresses naked for the cause of cinema. St. Clair gets a completely pointless and gratuitous shower sequence, Sutch runs along with her tits out and so forth. There’s a lot in the way of nudity here.

Nevertheless, this isn’t a terribly good film. I’m giving it a lot of latitude because it’s a debut, but I’m sorry to say that for a lot of the time Swamp Zombies is boring. Basically, every single idea that they had is regurgitated on-screen here. There’s no sense of control and it’s run time is credited as 90 minutes on IMDB, but honestly felt a lot longer. A more tight edit (a lot of this should have ended up on the cutting room floor) would have made a world of difference to it. Shame.

Secondly, Len himself choreographed the fight scenes and they’re not great. The problem here is that he’s working with amateurs. Heffron stands miles ahead of the rest of the cast here, but he should with his wrestling background. The problem is that the fight scenes are far too slow and you can see a lot of punches/ kicks etc miss the target. I totally understand that Len can’t go about clobbering his extras but these scenes drag and look amateurish. If I had to give out a bit of advice regarding this, it’s another cracking example of less being more, and the big climactic scene itself feels really flat.

Overall, Swamp Zombies is a bad film and I don’t recommend it. However, I would say that it does in fact show some promise. The car-window smash suggests that Len has genuine potential, and the St. Clair shower scene is worth the price of admission by itself. Finally, when the comedy works, it’s quite funny. However, for most of the time the film doesn’t work, drags and is kind of dull.

All in all, it’s not a good film, sure, but it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I actually think that it might be better than Fist of the Vampire- it certainly doesn’t offend as badly, you can see and hear what’s going on (unlike fist) and there’s no crappy CGI that I remember. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, Troma this ain’t.

I give it 1.5 Juggs out of 4 (there really is an awful lot of nudity here).

Until next time (Please don’t hit me Len),

Jarv.

Tell us a Mary Hatchet story

Jarv’s Rating: 1.5 Changs out of 4. A bit shit, and quite in bad taste, but not the worst film that I’ve ever seen. There’s a quite staggering amount of gratuitous nudity though, and that always helps to pass the time.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done one of these, so excuse me if I’m a bit rusty.

I’m venturing back into the vault because as it was Halloween, I watched a quite phenomenal amount of low rent horror. Most of it wasn’t really worth commenting on, and that fucking Children of the Corn series is killing me, but mixed in amongst it was this sleazy fucking slasher/ ghost film hybrid from 2009. Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet is, to quote Droid, somewhat dodgy. However, I’ve never let that stop me in the past, so I’m not going to let it stop me now.

Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet, is apparently based on a real story. Of course it is, there’s been many a documented case of a teenage girl going loopy on her first period and butchering her entire family with an axe. Not to mention the millions of recorded instances of her being incarcerated in a mental hospital, raped by an orderly, carrying the child to term, before it’s taken off her which prompts a murderous rampage culminating in the Long Island police gunning down a naked chick. Honestly, you see these sort of stories in the papers every day. Not to mention that she then comes back as a ghost hell-bent on wreaking vengeance. What a load of bollocks.

Why do people insist on doing this rubbish? Nobody remotely believes that it’s a real story. I don’t, Mrs. Jarv didn’t and it’s completely unnecessary to pretend that it is.

Anyhoo, as you may have gathered from this preamble, BN:TLOMH is the story of Mary Hatchet. Mary is burdened by something called pre-menstrual psychosis which prompts her to butcher her family. Then, when in the asylum (in a scene of quite staggering tastelessness) she’s brutally raped by an orderly. In the most boneheaded attempt at a twist, we’re told that her daughter died at birth, before she goes on murderous rampage part 2 which culminates in (another staggeringly tasteless sequence) 2 cops gunning down a naked chick. Which kind of puts the whole Rodney King beating in perspective. 20 years later, the story continues with a group of teenage horn dogs partying to celebrate “blood night”. Bet you can’t guess what’s coming up?

Alright then, I’ll tell you. The party goes a bit sour and people start getting messily bumped off. Our cretinous and booze addled teenagers recruit a degenerate alky called Graveyard Gus, and return to the asylum to exorcise the ghost. Except, shock horror, it’s not a ghost, it’s Mary’s daughter!!!

Bet you didn’t see that coming. Anyway, the film ends with least-douchey teenager throttling the daughter and then being murdered by the ghost!!! So there was a ghost after all!!! Wow!!! Colour me a bit bored.

First things first, one of the cardinal sins of slasher films that Scream eviscerated is casting actors in their late twenties/ early thirties to play horny teenagers. Blood Night goes right down this route with the casting of 32-year-old Nate Dushku in the lead with 32-year-old Danielle Harris (who’s on a one woman mission to appear in as much shitty horror as she can) as Alissa. Nice one, morons. The acting is absolutely fine for this kind of film. Bill Mosely plays frazzled Gus, and he’s the pick of the bunch, but I’d like to commend the female cast for their dedication to nudity, particularly Samantha Facchi as Mary herself, who spends the entire film naked as the day she was born.

The writing, on the other hand is shit. Really, really awful. The twist that I deliberately blew above is moronic, idiotic shit. There isn’t a single line of good dialogue in the film, loads of it just doesn’t make sense and characters are pushed around to service the plot. Furthermore, the sheer boneheadedness of the trip to the (conveniently deserted) asylum defies description, not to mention that how the hell does psycho daughter know they’re there? If anything, the word I’d use to describe the writing is “convenient”. Everything in it is “convenient”. It’s convenient that Mary’s daughter happens to be a friend of one of the girls. It’s convenient that Gus worked at the asylum in the past. It’s convenient that the characters declare love for each other and so forth. It isn’t convenient, actually, it’s lazy.

The gore effects, on the other hand, are ridiculously elaborate and hilariously effective. This is one messy fucking film, heads get slashed off, limbs get schocked, people get cut in half and there’s claret thrown everywhere. If I had one complaint about this film, it’s the menstrual blood effect. It’s disgusting that there is literally a gusher of dark, red, gloopy mess pouring out of Alissa’s skirt at every opportunity. We get the idea, she’s on her period, but she doesn’t have to put her hands in it and smear it on the fucking mirror. I’m not squeamish, but it is severely unpleasant.

Basically, this is a flagrant rip off of Halloween. But there’s a depressingly familiar retread feel to it. There’s literally nothing innovative here, and the supernatural twist just doesn’t work. I’m not sure why they went for this amalgamation of the psycho and the ghost, but I’m not convinced that it was a good idea. Jonah described it as feeling like Darkness Falls (fucking terrible film, that) and that’s a bit harsh, but I do agree with the sentiment. It does remind me of other shitty schlock efforts, but it’s not quite as awful as Darkness Falls. There’s a lot more nudity, which does help pass the time.

Overall, I don’t really recommend this. With a few beers and a pizza it isn’t totally offensive. If you’re in the mood for a silly teen slasher that leaves no cliché unmined and has more boob than you can shake a stick at then it’s probably a perfect film. If you’re looking for a slightly better standard of schlock, let alone a proper horror film, then pass it over. It’s eminently ignorable and so completely derivative that I can’t think of a single reason to give it my stamp of approval. Once again, if you’re in the mood for a slasher film, there are far superior examples out there, and if you’re in the mood for a ghost story then there are other much better ghost stories. This strange hybrid of horror genres doesn’t really work, and it’s completely forgettable.

Weirdly, though, Mrs. Jarv liked it- but she also liked Hatchet.

Until next time,

Jarv

I’ve been waiting for this all my life

Jarv’s Rating: It’s the double eye poke fuck you Orangutan of Doom for this shit. Fuck this film, fuck every cunt involved in this. Fuck Brain Damage films, fuck Len Kabasinski. This film is utter fucking shite and managed something that we all claimed to be the fucking impossible.

Dearly beloved, I stand before my fellow believers on this sombre day with some terrible news. Before we take a moment of silence to mourn the passing of happier days, I would like you all to join me in a moment of prayer, where we shall ask our gods to visit these Brain Damage motherfuckers with great vengeance and furious wrath for their transgressions against cinema, and don’t hold back on the wailing and gnashing of teeth. For these cunts, and this Len Kabasinski cunt in particular, have managed to not only offend your holy name, but to rend our dreams asunder and shake one of the key tenets of our beloved church. The 29th September 2007 shall forever be a day that lives in infamy for us Changians, for it was on that day that the heresy of Fist of the Vampire first received a release.

What have they done that is so terrible? Consider that I will sit through almost anything, so for me to have hit my limit it must be pretty bad. Well, I can’t believe I’m about to write this, so please allow me a moment to compose myself.

These useless, talentless cunts have managed the impossible. Are you ready for this? The writer, director, cunt in chief, one Len Kabasinski, has managed to craft a film so woefully inept that he made lesbianism boring. That’s right, this is the only film I’ve ever seen that isn’t redeemed by utterly gratuitous acts of lesbianage.

The question that must be asked, is how the fuck can you manage that? Well, I know now, and I feel it incumbent upon me to share it with you. What you do, is cast a soft core porn actress, say Darian Caine (for the sake of argument), then cast a woman with a face like a blind carpenter’s thumb and a body that could do with a crash course of bulimia opposite her. Then you film the whole thing through a filter that looks like it was made from a pair of soiled pantyhose, to a soundtrack of some dreadful sub-Evenescence caterwauling that sounds like it was recorded for the sole purpose of pissing me off. When Kabasinski finished putting this magic combination together, he’d crafted a lesbian scene about as erotic as a bowl of rice pudding. What a cunt, he’d actually managed to make the usually glorious sight of two naked women fondling each other boring.

Rather than just rant for 1000 words about this fucking travesty, I suppose I should explain what Fist of the Vampire is actually about. The film opens in 1977 with a family being slaughtered by 3 vampires. I actually took 4 attempts to make it past this scene, as it’s filmed in some dreadful grainy psuedo-grindhouse style and is actually almost completely unwatchable. Furthermore, this is the first instance of lousy CGI in the film (this time it’s fire). It’s really, really fucking horrible stuff. Anyhow, the film cuts to Supercop (Lee) played with all the charisma of a small root vegetable by Brian Anthony,  kicking some ass. He’s busted in on a drug factory and is shooting cunts all over the place with his magic gun that never requires reloading. There’s mucho claret thrown around here, except it’s all CGI and terrible, and even worse the fucking muzzle flares are CGI. What sort of cunt would think that was a good idea? Oh, and Lee gets to beat up a woman for a bit in a decision made in a complete taste bypass. Thankfully, it’s not so grainy now, but instead we’ve got idiotic camera angles, stupid slo-mo and cuntish over-editing. You really can’t make out what’s going on.

Anyhow, for reasons too boring and cuntish to go into, Lee joins the DEA and goes undercover at some stupid and cuntish fight club run by Nicholas, the fat vampire, played with complete absence of talent by Brian “Blue Meanie” Heffron, allegedly a wrestling superstar (except if he’s a wrestling superstar then I’m in line to be Poet fucking Laureate). He’s a fat cunt, with a cuntish beard and a cuntish outlook. Anyhow, Lee teams up with Cheyenne King’s undercover cop and they clean the place out. Lee, apparently, was the survivor of the initial murders. As if I care. As if it matters.

As you may have gathered this film is terrible. The acting is uniformly atrocious. Darian Caine may be the veteran of about 1000 soft core filth offerings, but on the evidence of this was by far the most talented person  involved. Anthony, in particular, has all the charisma of a tin of baked beans. His Lee is a complete and utter plank with the emotional range of a blow up sex doll. However, worst of the lot is the fat beardy cunt that appears from nowhere to play the drug dealer. The cunt has clearly modeled his performance on Gary Oldman in True Romance, except without a single modicum of the talent necessary to pull it off. Honestly, when this cunt is on screen it’s almost a preferable option to bang a knitting needle through your ear to end the pain.

As will also no doubt come as a massive shock, the writing is also terrible (once again, that’s something that that cunt Len is directly responsible for). Events just occur for no apparent reason and with no apparent consequences, like for example, Caine’s feeding scene. Nicholas and Reno turn up at her place and find it full of naked vampire chicks with her sitting with another chick in a bath full of blood. Nicholas is, unsurprisingly, pissed at this one, and lectures her about if she must feed she has to “Clean her plate” (HAR DE FUCKING HAR, CUNT). Then they bugger off.  There’s no mention of the fucking army of semi-naked/ completely naked lesbian vampires left behind. There also isn’t a single memorable line in the film. Utter shit.

Seriously, can any cunt make out what the fuck is going on here?

Then there’s the cinematography. It’s fucking terrible. Most of the time the camera is either too low, too high, or moved in a jerky way. Furthermore, it looks like shit (the nylon filter mentioned above) and it’s damned hard to make out what the fuck is going on. As if that wasn’t irritating enough the fight scenes (allegedly all involving people that can actually fight properly) are fucking terrible. The combatants move with the speed of a slug slithering through treacle, and you can clearly see missed blows and the rest of it.

Then there’s the sound. Fuck me. The score is all over the fucking place, with a combination of grating techno, the aforementioned faux-Evenescence drivel and some god awful theme song that sounds as if Kabasinski went out of his fucking way to find the least talented Slipknot tribute band spawned from a flyover state basement. Like Slipknot themselves, actually. As if that isn’t insulting and shit enough, there’s also terrible folio work. Gunshots don’t match up to muzzle flares and in one interminable scene at the beach all you can hear is the sound of the waves because some silly cunt stood in the wrong place with the mike and no other cunt noticed. Woeful.

This all sounds insulting and obnoxious, doesn’t it? But believe it or not, I’m not done. There was clearly a budget of some sort involved in this (not a  big one) and Kabasinski decided to wax the whole fucking lot on dreadful CGI. The vampire death effects are horribly bad, but they look like Avatar compared to the simply awful CGI gunshots, CGI blood and CGI fire. There’s a CGI overload in this sack of crap that makes me actively angry. It wouldn’t have been less shit with practical effects, but it might not have been as cuntish.

Overall, this film is complete and utter fucking shit. I am actively angry at this toss, because I enjoy rooting around through schlock, and because of this I’m now a bit trepiditious about venturing back into the vault. Thank you very, very fucking much, cunts. Avoid this shit.

As a final note, interestingly this is my second stab at this review. I wrote it once, and almost as if Moonwolves itself was actively offended at it, when I hit publish, it did nothing of the sort and in fact deleted the first effort. So I’ve had to redo it. Needless to say, for a film as shit, obnoxious and downright cuntish as this one, I can’t say I blame the site.

Until next time,

Jarv

]]> http://moonwolves.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/jarvs-schlock-vault-war-wolves/ Thu, 08 Jul 2010 06:00:44 +0000 Jarv http://moonwolves.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/jarvs-schlock-vault-war-wolves/

It’s only the alcohol that stops me tearing you all apart

Jarv’s Rating: 1 Chang- This is a shit effort.

The Sci-Fi Channel are a fucking enigma. They are so serially incompetent that I find it astounding that they manage to make any money whatsoever. Occasionally, they do manage to bang something good out (usually more through luck than judgement) such as Mammoth, Infestation or Pandorum, but most of the time their less than stellar efforts fail to even reach the dizzy heights of mediocre (Frankenfish), instead wallowing in their own filth and offending the viewer with their ineptitude (Minotaur). This is one of the latter.

My Christ this film stinks. It’s such a good idea, and it is so painfully botched that I feel actually vengeful towards the bastards that made it. It should be so fucking simple: Army in Iraq+ Werewolves= gold, instead what we get is a poorly staged, poorly shot, poorly acted (with a few  exceptions that I will come to in a moment), incoherent load of gobbledegook without even the levity of the occasional boob sighting. There is the odd moment of completely unintended hilarity (and that’s completely down to the sheer incompetence of whatever moron did the werewolf makeup), but not enough to justify the film’s existence.

 I fucking knew this one was going to be trouble as soon as the opening credits finished. I’m watching 3 reasonably attractive women that are allegedly in the army beat 3 guys at a game of Touch American Football. Then there’s a confusing battle scene that for some reason involves werewolves. Cut back to America, and it seems that all the people that were on that expedition are suffering (in a dreadfully hamfisted attempt at being topical) from varying degrees of PTSD. The women, in particular are now on a homicidal rampage across America looking for Captain Jake Gabriel, who is apparently important but no cunt ever bothers explaining why, despite the fact that he’s an alcoholic. They’re being pursued by two OAP Army Black Ops wolfbusters and the film builds to a climax as dull and confusing as anything ever filmed.

 This film is utterly charmless. Tim Thomerson and John Saxon supply the only real entertainment in the film as the old codgers, and Adrienne Barbeau makes a welcome appearance as Gabriel’s sponsor, a patient woman given to spouting pointless home-spun wisdom. I think she’s meant to be psychic or some such, but she is far above the material here. The three “War Wolves” Natasha Alam, Kristi Clainos and Siri Baruc fill out fatigues nicely but cannot act to save themselves. Alam in particular is completely dreadful- she may be pretty but she can’t act, and the film squandered the chance to show her goodies. I actually toyed with taking the solitary Chang off it for that, but decided that Thomerson and Saxon were worth it, and it would be harsh to on them to give this film the double eye-poke Orangutan of Doom. Michael Worth, on the other hand, the writer/ director/ lead actor/ fight choreographer is fucking dismal, proving to be completely useless in every single one of those roles. The storyline is a confusing mess- for example, the big showdown at the end has head werewolf bird just bugger off for no reason at all, there are countless throwaway scenes and characters (the lesbians in the motel leaping to mind) that just don’t add anything, and the fighting is as inept as to be laughable. Really, the dude is a colossal failure on every level.

The man to blame: Michael Worth.

War Wolves was clearly almost completely unencumbered by a budget, and this is particularly telling with the werewolf effects- which are fucking ridiculous. Honestly, there’s one sequence where the girls are quite far along the transformation which features them with, and this is unbelievably bad, clearly fake black dog noses on. You can even see the joins with their skin. This incompetence is actually highly entertaining, but unfortunately it keeps being interrupted by the tedium of what passes for the narrative.

I actually wonder if this odious sack of shit wasn’t originally intended to be a pilot episode for a series. If that is the case, then I thank the lord that Sciffy decided to make it feature length, because the premise of two old guys hunting werewolves across America is exactly the sort of piss poor series that I’d get sucked into and persevere with for 4 episodes. So at least the error of judgement limited my pain to 90 minutes.

 Overall, I really, really do not recommend this film. It’s absolute shit and just no fun whatsoever. Furthermore, it utterly squanders a great premise, and is just a totally anti-fun experience. The only reason, as I’ve said above, that this ginormous boil of a film avoids the Orangutan is that it’s nice to see Thomerson and Saxon (who are clearly enjoying themselves), even if they are incredibly wasted in a dull, confusing, nonsensical load of cobblers such as this.

 For shame Sci-Fi, for shame.

 Until next time,

 Jarv

You had to let them out!

Jarv’s Rating: 2.5 Changs. Funny stuff.

The Boogens must be the single stupidest title that I’ve seen for a horror movie. For a start, the vaguely onomatopoeic sound of “boogen” is just silly and it most puts me in mind of snotty kids on public transport. Not scary. Nevertheless, this is a fun film, being simultaneously dreadful and amusing. It’s got some quality b-movie actors, a very silly script, a truly laughable monster and was clearly made for peanuts. It’s a cracking little early 80′s schlock, and boy is it schlocky.

It’s true enough to say that there aren’t movies like this made any more, and I’m in two minds over whether or not that’s a good thing. On one hand, clearly compensating for no budget by banging out torture porn is clearly bad, and on the other, well, these films do (as a rule) tend to suck. The Boogens actually had my heart sinking when I watched the opening credits- it was a well thought out montage of old Newspaper stories explaining the closure of the mine at Silver City, Colorado. Being exactly one to judge films (particularly schlocky films) by this sort of thing I started to make noises about turning it off. Mrs. Jarv, being much more patient than me told me to shut up and give it a chance.

I’m a dumbass, and she was right.

Anyhoo, wisdom of the fairer sex aside, back to the plot. Decades later, a mining company (represented here by about 5 guys) reopen the mine. Nice guy Mark and horndog Roger have rented local accommodation which is conveniently built over the mine tunnels. Roger’s girlfriend Jessica and her straight-laced friend Trish turn up (along with annoying dog, Tiger). Shenanigans ensue.

A fair amount of thought went into this film. They knew for a fact that they didn’t have the budget to do a full-on creature feature, so instead made a slow burn horror film with a nice sense of humour. As a result, there is very little in the way of carnage. Sure terminal horndog Roger (who calls himself Hormoneman) gets whacked before discovering if he can, in fact, leap over tall women with a single bound, but it isn’t exactly messy. A significant amount of time is spent on Mike’s dreadful, but ultimately successful, attempt at slipping inside Trish’s fur coat, and even Tiger the dog gets some character work. That Tiger is a wholly misguided and deeply annoying stab at comic relief is mere coincidence. This is the first film I’ve seen where I was actively screaming for the dog to die.

The acting, actually, is really quite good for this sort of film. The two girls are both veterans of cheesy horror, and both are good. As a pointless piece of trivia, Jessica is played by Anne-Marie Martin who (I’m told) went on to be Mrs. Michael Crichton. Wow. Nevertheless, digressions aside, all the acting in this film is solid.

This is a film that didn’t so much have a small budget as no budget at all. As a result, they did not have anywhere near close to enough money to make a proper creature feature. Nevertheless, necessity is the mother of invention, so we get a lot of Boogen P-O-V shots as it scuttles around terrorising our victims. It’s actually quite effective and diminishes the laughable nature of the creatures quite well. Honestly, the best description I can give of them is that they look like the Muppets, if the Muppets had been created by Henson in the midst of a crystal meth binge.

They have tentacles, a kind of turtle shell, trunk like legs and are completely and totally ridiculous. The makers were clearly aware of this, so hide them in the dark, and the budget obviously didn’t extend to two Boogen puppets, so although we’re told that there are fucking hundreds of them, our heroes only get terrorised by one at a time. I imagine pissed off cave animals form orderly queues to harass horny twenty-somethings.

This is all highly entertaining, albeit a bit standard, but there’s one sequence in particular that had me howling with laughter. Jessica is taking a shower (this is not a film afraid of casual nudity) and hears Tiger up to no good. On comes the towel (boooooo!) and she goes to investigate a convenient grating on the floor. No sooner has she leant over it, when (in the best schlock traditions) out pops a tentacle and tries to drag her in. Somehow, clutching her modesty and the remains of her dignity to her (too late for that love), she manages to extricate herself, and being a smart girl, she upends a wardrobe over the grate. Needless to say, a puny wardrobe is no match for a mighty BOOGEN! (motherfucker) so the chase is on. Cue towel-clad Jessica sprinting away from the Boogen (the whole scene is shot from his point of view) attempting to hinder his progress with such insurmountable obstacles as a teapot, some cardboard, and other assorted bits and pieces. Needless to say this isn’t enough and she gets fucked up. However, what makes this so funny, is that the monster isn’t exactly quick. She had enough time to (if she’d run) escape, get dressed, rent a snowmobile, drive into town, buy a big fucking gun, get back and splatter his mutant turtle head all over the screen. Hilariously inept stuff.

Obviously, a film such as this is never going to be perfect and there are a few Don Murphy sized flaws. Firstly, the film relies on an awful amount of dull exposition. And it really is dull. Secondly, there is no getting away from how annoying the fucking dog is. If it were down to me, I’d have booted the furry cunt out into the snow.

Overall, I have to say that I would recommend the Boogens. Late at night with a few beers in and my irony dial turned up to 11. It’s fun, well thought out and nowhere near as incompetent as it wants to be. If the monsters themselves were half way decent, then this would be a great little film. Fact is, though, they aren’t, so The Boogens is a worthy little piece of schlock and one that I enjoyed even if it could have been more.

And I didn’t even mention the crazy dynamite-weilding old man.

Until next time,

Jarv

    Jarv’s Rating: 2.5 Changs. I want to give it more, but have to admit to this being a hilarious but deeply rubbish film.     

Mrs. Jarv, paragon of patience that she is, passed her limit with me the other week. Apparently it is not amusing, and is certainly childish to deliberately want to see a film called something as patently absurd as Oversexed Rugsuckers from Mars. My feeble justifications that it wasn’t in fact lesbian porn melted like a snowman in the sunshine when I was pointedly asked to explain what, if that is the case, it actually is about and more importantly, why the fuck would anyone want to watch something called Oversexed Rugsuckers from Mars that isn’t porn. So, given that this splendid bastion of B-movie filth isn’t smut, what the fuck is it? Well, Oversexed Rugsuckers from Mars (and I giggle typing that out) is a strange hybrid of stop motion animation, claymation, comedy, social satire (well, I’m lying about that one) and courtroom drama. It was made on a shoestring, is if I’m honest, quite badly shot, but is still 90-odd minutes of sheer daft entertainment.      

Massive spoilers ahead.   

Oversexed Rugsuckers from Mars opens with three Clay Martians that resemble Tony Hart’s much beloved Morph:      

"But Chas, Tony didn't give us penises. So we can never consummate our love"

 Except that I doubt that the great man would have seen fit to give his children’s creation with enormous genitalia. Anyhoo, said ridiculously endowed clay Martians are busy experimenting on the human race. One of them pipes up with the cracking idea of getting a human to breed with a vacuum cleaner (this may explain the big grin on a Henry’s face):      

Is this the face of a molested appliance?

 This isn’t as easy as it sounds, which can’t be that much of a shock to anyone. Apparently, the way you do it, is launch an enormous amount of clay martian space jizz at an unlucky victim, who will then be instantly compelled to hump whatever he can get nearest to, regardless of gender (more on this later), species or even sentience. Like so:      

Nope, that ain't birdshit.

 Anyhow, lucky man picked is Vernon, the tramp, and he wastes no time in hilarious mounting an upright vacuum cleaner and pumping away. This apparently, and for reasons never properly explained, gives the vacuum life.    

 In the meantime, A bored suburban couple (Tom and Beverly) are having marital difficulties. Tom (who is allegedly English, although I thought he was an Aussie until another cast member said “he’s English”) spends hours every day in the bathroom beating off while watching their next door neighbour (Rena) shave her enormous man-eating lion of a bush. Beverly, on the other hand, is in a manic keep-up-with-the-Joneses rampage that has pushed them to the brink of penury. She needs a new Vacuum, but Tom is skint, so for reasons never properly explained he goes and buys a beaten up, recently violated Hoover from a gangster. Vernon, however, is currently in some kind of psychiatric therapy to turn him into a functioning member of society, but he’s not doing well, because of his love for Dusty.   

Tom comes home, and Beverly is unimpressed at the new cleaner. However, in a bid to show willing and inject some spark back into their marriage, she makes him some aphrodisiac tea (guaranteed to put the wang back in his wanger). She spills it, uses the Hoover to clean up, which stimulates it beyond a recommended level. Tom is in the bathroom beating off again, looking at Rena so is unaware of the peril of an engorged Dusty who rapes and murders Beverly. With me so far? Good.   

Tom sees the remainder of the spilt tea, and so (whoops) breaks out Dusty to clean it up. He’s then on the receiving end of an appliance violation. The next day, Tom is arrested by two LAPD (one of whom  is clearly Welsh as he’s married to a sheep), neither of whom believe his story about a sex-crazed vacuum cleaner. Fortunately Rena does. But she would, because…   

 She’s also, it must be noted now (this will be important later) in a relationship with a colossal douchebag. He’s an idiotic hippy well in need of a slap to the chops (or being raped by a vacuum), and he doesn’t understand her need to eat meat, sing ridiculous 80′s music badly and shag the mulletted English goon living next door. She also, and this is also important, works in a law firm as a secretary. This gives her access to a Lawyer to represent Tom:   

This is how you hire a sleazy lawyer for some Pro Bone work

Anyhoo, Tom goes to trial, and the only witness he can find is Vernon (still in love with Dusty), who doesn’t really help matters much. His proclamation that he’s come out of the closet (as a homosexual, not someone that shags household cleaning devices) is met with howls of derision in the courtroom. Tom, at this stage, looks fucked. However, all is not lost, as a now heavily-pregnant Rena (don’t ask) gives birth to a half human-half vacuum cleaner in court, completely vindicating him. It seems to be lost on everyone that said baby looks exactly like a cabbage patch doll stuffed in a dustbuster cover, but nevermind that nonsense. Shenanigans ensue, Yoga-hippy-douchebag gets shot and Dusty escapes with Vernon. The police pursue, and gun dusty down. Film ends happily with Tom and Rena married and she’s a multi-platinum selling hair-metal artist. Who is, it must be said, better than Bon Jovi.   

Douchebag.

There are good things about this film, mostly that it’s fucking funny. But, there are many, many bad things. The claymation martians are crap, and the stop-motion on Dusty’s various shenanigans ain’t great either. The acting is atrocious and the script wretched. Direction and music wise, it’s a complete fucking shambles, but really none of that matters because it’s a raucous farce of a B-movie about a rampant vacuum cleaner.   

So overall, do I recommend it? Well, it depends. Did you find that plot description funny? If you did (like I do) then you’ll love it. However, on any reasonable level of film-making it’s a gigantic fail. Nevertheless, it was one of the more enjoyable schlocky films I’ve seen recently, and if the mood for some silliness takes you, then you can do far worse than this little gem. I shall be rewatching it next time I’m hammered and I can’t say I’ll begrudge the time. 

Oversexed Rugsuckers from Mars- silly, shoddy fun. 

Until next time, 

Jarv.

He found their one weakness…

Jarv’s Rating: 1.5 Changs- I can’t bring myself to totally hate on this, even if it is fundamentally terrible and does feel a touch like an American Ninja rip off.

If there’s one thing that really pisses me off when watching these films, then it is being lied to by either the title or the poster. Honestly, you don’t buy a plane ticket to get the bus, or you don’t order a steak to then happily eat fish. So why do these fucknuts think that it is remotely acceptable behaviour to call a film, say, Demon Cop and then not have it feature a Demonic police officer? It’s a way to guarantee to piss me off and put me in a negative frame of mind before writing the review. Bad Cinema needs to do exactly what it says on the tin- Split Second, for example, features Rutger Hauer fighting a rat monster that may or may not be Satan. Exactly as the poster depicts. Needless to say, Cyborg Cop does not feature a cyborg police officer. It features cyborgs, and one of them used to be in the DEA before he was killed, but he is not a Cop now. He’s a cyborg assassin. So why lie to me? Not to mention the fact that he’s barely in it. Wankers.

Rant aside, this is what Cyborg Cop is really about: David Bradley plays Jack. Jack is a gung-ho DEA officer who (ridiculously) uses armour-piercing bullets to kill a crackhead holding a woman hostage. It turns out that the crackhead was actually somebody important and as a result the DEA take his badge. In the meantime, his brother Phillip is leading an assault on nefarious evil bastard Kessel’s (John Rhys-Davies paying the mortgage) lair. However, Kessel knows he is coming and so lays a trap, eliminates all of Phil’s support and captures him to perform bizarre surgery to turn him into a robot assassin. He will then sell said cyborgs to evil bastards trying to overthrow the President of the tropical island they live on. Jack is somewhat perturbed to hear of his brother’s disappearance, so travels to St. Keith to investigate. In the meantime he beats up a lot of people, hooks up with unlikely reporter Cathy (Alonna Shaw- cast in the film entirely for her willingness to take her top off. It can’t be for her acting), before the film builds to a massively stupid finale.

Well, this film is, as is to be expected, pretty terrible on most levels. Bradley is reasonably entertaining as Jack, and Rhys-Davis is on a scenery chewing rampage as Kessel. However, most of the other actors flat-out stink. Particularly Shaw, who is one of the worst actresses I’ve seen, and puts in one of the worst performances I’ve seen since Kari Wuhrer’s terrible turn in Beastmaster 2. However, she’s more than happy to get her juggs out for the camera, and very nice juggs they are too. So I forgive her. Having said that, though, I’m not watching a film called Cyborg Cop because I expect to see Academy Award winning performances. So it doesn’t really matter.

Gimli's GOTTA EAT!

The same goes for the script. It’s pretty awful. There’s a terrible scene in particular with Jack ranting at Phillip’s boss that just made me want to treat the writer like a puppy sitting guiltily next to a puddle: roll the script up and twat him across the snout while saying “bad writer. Bad”. Nevertheless, again, this doesn’t really matter. I’d like a few action-y type pay off lines, but I can live without them.

I can’t remember the score at all. Not one note. This is most unusual for me, I can usually think of them- I can even remember the horrible noodlings in Thundercrack!, for fuck’s sake. This leads me to believe that it is nondescript and inoffensive.

So given all the above, why doesn’t this get the Orangutan? Well, it’s quite entertaining. Director Firstenberg, who made the excellent American Ninja films (well, excellent in a ridiculously stupid kind of way) knows how to stage action, and Bradley knows how to fight. This means that Cyborg Cop is full of mano e mano violence as Bradley clobbers henchmen by the dozen. It’s all good fun.

Furthermore, there are some, I believe intentional, comic touches in this film. Kessel, at one point, in possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen on the screen, flies a radio controlled plane full of explosives and crashes it into a DEA agent. This is fucking golden, and far and away the best thing (outside of Shaw’s juggs) in the film. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen and had to rewind the scene again just to confirm that I had witnessed a DEA agent exploded by a model plane. More films should do this- imagine how much more entertaining Moulin Rouge would have been if someone had crashed a toy plane full of explosives into Nicole Kidman.

Overall, would I recommend it? No. I have to say that it’s mostly garbage. The fighting is well done, and reasonably enjoyable, but there are much better examples of fighting out there. It certainly isn’t the worst film I’ve seen in a long time, but I do have to admit that I don’t feel any urge ever to see it again- there are just too many flaws.

Cyborg Cop: a lying bastard of a film, but not a complete failure.

Until next time,

Jarv

What I’ve got in my blood is worse than AIDS

Jarv’s Rating: 4 Murphs. What he may have is not worse than AIDS, however I could make a case for this film being worse than toothache.

Demon Cop is a bit unfortunate, really, in that I’m writing this review in a thoroughly filthy mood. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a 4 Murph film alright, and doesn’t even manage to scale the giddy heights of crappily entertaining, but it’s going to get a far more abusive review than it would have otherwise. Actually, I was going to retire the Murph rating (it’s served it’s purpose) for the Orangutan of Doom, but this turd of a film is so bad that the only way it could possibly be any worse is if the fat man had written, directed and produced it himself.

This fucking gargantuan turd of a film, which by the way is not about a Demon Cop, was made by talentless cunts that I’m convinced deliberately set out to make as bad a film as possible- one that, Troma style, is hugely entertaining because of its rubbishness. That they failed is indicative of the complete lack of gumption that the fuckers had. This film is awful: produced by cunts, directed by a huge cunt, shot by a blind cunt, scored by a deaf cunt, acted by cunts, and written by a cretinous cunt without any sense of decency or any actual ability to assemble English words into a sentence.

 Demon Cop does feature policemen. However, the Demon isn’t one of them. He’s a probationary officer wounded in a drive by shooting (pity he wasn’t killed as this takes place before the film starts) and possessed in a shoddy blood transfusion by the demon of rage. The film charts his less than interesting antics, as he fights (poorly) gang members (I’m not joking about this, at one point he uses his mighty strength to throw one at a wall- except the guy waddles towards the wall, stops a centimetre short and drops to his knees leaving an unconvincing red paint mark on the brickwork) and whinges a lot. Eventually, he’s put out of my misery by a guy with a tranq gun. Film ends.

"Is that a cunt I see before me? Wait, fuck, it's a mirror"

This turd, this King-Kong’s finger of a loaf, is an epic fail and I struggle to put my finger on what I hate most about it. The script defies description it is so bad. The “Aids” line I used above (that’s in terrible taste and not bad enough taste to actually be funny) is actually one of the better lines in a film that flits between incomprehensibility and irritation. Just complete garbage.

The acting, for want of a better word for it, is utter dogshit. The lead guy’s demon voice is a wheezy… pause… for…. a… bit… between… words… because… that… makes… you… sound… supernatural… and… not… at… all… like… you… are… desperately… fighting… not… to… take… a… shit… in… your… pants. His support, the least convincing ex-gang members outside of a Westlife video, are all beyond irritating, and their faux-pompous liberalism really grates. It’s all so sincere, but not in a good way.

Then, and I think this is my real beef with the film, there’s the cinematography. This Elvis-killer of a film, was produced by one Hal Miles. I can only assume that he is a complete cunt because he did the cinematography as well. Demon Cop has the most grainy and irritating footage that I’ve ever seen, and as it is on DVD, I must only assume that this is deliberate. I’ve seen VHS rips with better quality. You can’t make out a damned thing that’s going on for the first half of it, which is a bit of a relief as when you can see it (if you haven’t got a migraine) then it’s apparent what a bucket of poo you are watching.

Then, as if that’s not enough to add insult to injury- look at the fucking cover. Look at it! The cunts actually had the balls to put “Probably the Worst film you’ll ever see” on it. Well, cunts, congratulations. Like everything else you attempted in this exercise in boredom and irritation, you’ve failed. It isn’t the worst film I’ve ever seen. That honour still goes to Oasis of Fear, but you did nearly manage to edge it out as it at least features Ornella Muti’s norks.

What the fuck are you screaming at?

Overall, would I recommend this film? As a substitute for a clay pigeon, sure. To watch? Absolutely not. This film is so bad that it falls in the Ankle Biters league of incompetence where I actually want to find the people who encouraged the director, a talentless cunt by the name of Rocco Karega, to make it. Whoever told him he could needs a thorough stomp on the bollocks.

I blame them for it- he’s clearly retarded and does not know better.

Until next time,

Jarv

“Maybe you forget what big girls want”

Jarv’s Rating: An astonishing 2.5 Changs out of 4. And this is a Shameless film!

Well, fuck me up the arse with an epileptic porcupine. I suppose it did have to happen eventually, but I’m astounded that something as flagrantly awful looking as this has managed it. This is by the admittedly abyssal standards of Shameless a 4 Chang film. In reality, by any other standards,  it isn’t- it’s actually  borderline good. I am simply flabbergasted that a simple little piece of Giallo like this could even be remotely competent- especially one that comes in the banana yellow clothing of Shameless films: Purveyors of utter crap.

Well, having said at the start that this is an actually good film, I suppose I had better go into some detail with it. Shameless are trying to flog this as being some kind of precursor to Don’t Look Now, and I’ll come back to this in a second, but overall it isn’t. What it is is a solid Giallo. George Lazenby plays Franco, international sculptor and man least likely to win father of the year award. His creepy ginger daughter Roberta is visiting him in Venice. Unfortunately George is a part-time sculptor and full-time swordsman, so leaves his daughter playing with strangers on the street while he goes off to get some 1970′s style giant beaver. In the meantime, Roberta is abducted by a creepy old woman dressed in Black. She turns up floating in a canal 2 days later. The rest of the film sees George drawn into a web of intrigue involving blackmail, pornography, witchcraft and murder in a sleazy and atmospheric Venice populated by freaks and oddballs as he attempts to find out who killed his daughter.

The writing in this is pretty mediocre, to be honest. There’s not a single fucking line of memorable dialogue, and it really doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to work out who is the killer. It’s a pretty taut and effective mystery, with more red herrings than a colour blind fishmonger, but I do have to say that the journey to discovery is far more interesting than the massive “meh” that the reveal is. The characters are competently drawn, being as they are all utterly one-dimensional (creepy Art dealer, cripple, weirdo priest, estranged wife with issues, nutjob ping-pong obsessive) but that doesn’t really matter either.

The acting is, as is to be expected for something made in Italy in the 1970′s, complete shit. Lazenby is the worst actor ever to don Bond’s tuxedo, Strindberg looks nice, and the rest of them are atrociously dubbed nonsense. Again, though, this doesn’t matter. Interestingly Nicoletta Elmi, that plays a creepy Roberta, went on to be arguably the crown princess of Italian Horror. Not that that is an accolade to aspire to, more of an insult to avoid, but nevertheless, she was in loads of them (including congealed cock cheese Le Orme).

This sounds, so far, like an atrocious film. However Who Saw has 2 trump cards that most of these films don’t have. The first is that the cinematography was done by Franco Di Giacomo (who later went on to do Il Postino) and is absolutely sumptuous. He conjures up an atmospheric rain-sodden Venice that oozes grime and throws in enough memorable images to fill a gallery; particularly the body in the aviary. This really is first-rate work- and contributes greatly to the tension of the film.

The second, and far more important one, is that the score was composed by Morricone. Who Saw Her Die is primarily scored with a child’s choir, and this choral music underpins the whole film. It’s a frankly staggeringly good score, one that unsettles the audience, is brutally eerie and ratchets up tension without any effort whatsoever. It can become intrusive on occasion, but when it is used properly (the abduction) it makes the nerves jangle and rooted me to the edge of my seat. This is a score good enough to stand with any of the other exceptional work of an illustrious career.

Before I conclude, I’m just going to quickly debunk that asinine Don’t Look Now comparison. On the whole, all this has in common with Roeg’s tour de force is that it is set in Venice and involves the death of a child. There are no dwarves, no psychological undertones, nothing like that. Who Saw Her Die is basically a murder mystery. It’s a ludicrous comparison. Aside from one scene, and I’m nearly convinced that Roeg had seen this film before he made Don’t Look Now based entirely on this sequence. Remember the intercut sex scene/ child’s death from Don’t Look Now? Well, if not, it’s really famous and so you should. However, that scene is taken almost beat for beat from this film. Who Saw Her Die cuts flashily back and forth between Roberta’s abduction and Lazenby getting laid while the choral music soars in the background. It’s a fucking stunning scene, and Roeg’s is so close to it that I’d be astounded if he hadn’t seen this film. I’m not discounting the possibility that Lado was influenced by the sex scene cut with violence in Performance, but the comparison between DLN and this is spookily similar. This is actually indicative of the stylish direction here, and although I have no desire at all to see another Lado film, this does make me think that he might not be an utter hack like, say, Fulci. He certainly knew enough to pick a top class cinematographer and composer.

Overall, would I recommend it? In comparison to every other Shameless film? Fuck yes. Otherwise, probably not. I would recommend hearing the score, though, and I would certainly recommend watching, if you can find it, the abduction scene as this is quite clearly the highpoint of the film. However, at the end of the day this is a mystery Giallo by numbers and I remain convinced that the only Giallo to actually go out of your way to watch is Suspiria, and Who Saw Her Die is absolutely a film you would have to root out.

So, In conclusion, if you blunder across it, watch it. Otherwise, it’s a good film, but not worth a massive grail quest type expedition. I’m just staggered that Shameless have something in their catalogue that I would even consider watching again.

Until next time,

Jarv

“The fire of the gods? I wonder what that could be”

Jarv’s Rating: 3 Murphs. Offensively awful rip off of Gremlins with all the charm of the fat cunt himself. Unamusing, unoriginal, worthless horseshit. Watch Critters instead if you really want to see Gremlins plagiarised.

Mrs. Jarv is a very patient woman. I’m sure that she thinks that I’m basically a retard, and worth only pity, but she has got a level of tolerance for my idiotic foibles that would put Mother Theresa to shame. This film is a case in point.

In the beginning, there was Gremlins. A film about nasty little midget monsters that terrorise a small town. Joe Dante’s film was successful and as is the way with these things spawned a huge slew of lesser imitators. Some, such as Critters, were passable to quite good, but others were not. Munchies is one of the ones that failed, and it didn’t fail by a little bit- it was such an enormous and crushing failure that it managed to somehow make both Ghoulies and the justifiably maligned Hobgoblin look good. This is a shit film.

Anyhow, being me, I was seduced by the poster. The poster makes the film look like great schlocky fun. Unfortunately, the only thing that poster has in common with the actual film is the little crocodile monster thingy. It’s a complete misrepresentation. This is what the film is actually about: Simon Watterman (Harvey Korman), a nutjob archeologist drags his cretinous, unfunny son Paul (Charlie Stratton) on a dig in Peru. They discover a small affectionate monster, which for reasons best known to themselves they smuggle back to small town USA. Simon goes off to the university to prove that he has a real alien in the bag, leaving the Munchie (that they’ve christened Arnold) in Paul and his girlfriend Cindy’s (Nadine Van der Velde) tender care. Paul and Nadine go off to have possibly the weirdest sex ever seen on film (inflatable hammers!?!) and Simon’s bastard brother Cecil kidnaps Arnold, who turns savage because of poor treatment and then escapes. Hilarity singularly fails to ensue.

Basically, as I’ve touched briefly on, this film is fucking atrocious. To begin with, it doesn’t know what it wants to be- is it a kiddie film (the sequels went down that line) or a proper monster movie? I personally do not consider this to be a kiddie film, despite the obvious cuteness, due to a series of crass and embarrassing sex jokes. I’m pretty liberal, but I’m absolutely positive that I would not be comfortable letting a child see any film where a South American Crocodile type monster wanked itself into a frenzy over an old playboy inside a duffel bag. This is, by the way, a mistake that burrito-breath Murphy produced Giant Robots Hitting Each Other^tm; also made. If it’s child-friendly then wank gags should absolutely be off the table. Then there’s the risible and cringeworthy ”distract them” scene which has Cindy in full 80′s gear attempting to distract the Munchies by gyrating like a stripper. There’s no skin, so that’s OK, but really- they’re small crocodile monsters, why the fuck are they getting sexually aroused by a small (and quite cute) human woman. I’ve not seen such stupidity outside of Splice (albeit it was a man aroused by an animal in that instance).

The writing in this film is fucking wretched. Paul works out that the monsters reproduce like worms for no good reason, then proceeds to watch as his idiot uncle cuts one into 4 pieces. He also works out how to kill them from a conveniently placed book that may as well really be called “how to kill Incan crocodile monsters”. The rest of the characterisation can generously be described as paper-thin and downright irritating. Furthermore, there are gargantuan plot holes- one I particularly like is that they just forget about one of the monsters that is persecuting Cindy. Paul kills the rest of them, but this one just disappears, and they weren’t planning for a sequel (that’s done another way), it’s just rank incompetence.

 The acting is shit, with the honourable exception of Korman, but that’s to be expected with a script as bad as this one. The Munchie effects are utterly meh, the humour is flat-out unfunny, the score is an irritating Kiddie-movie score and the direction (by otherwise accomplished editor Tina Hersch- who even edited Gremlins) is just utterly shambolic.  

As if all of the above wasn’t shit enough, Munchies is a film that knows damned well that it’s basically stealing from Gremlins. Therefore there are fucking nods galore to the vastly superior model. The shitty car that the munchies steal has “Gizmo” as part of its number plate, there are Gremlins posters, and other such references. It’s fucking maddening, because instead of being clever and postmodern (which is what they were obviously trying for), every time I saw one it just made me think “I wish I was watching Gremlins instead of this annoying, unfunny shit”.

Overall, would I recommend this film? Well, I’d recommend Gremlins, and I’d recommend Critters, but if you ever catch me recommending this utterly third-rate facsimile then you will know that I’ve been on the receiving end of a massive blow to the cortex. It’s fucking diabolically awful garbage (although I am told that the sequels are better) that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. It isn’t violent or gory enough to be an adult film and yet has sex gags that prohibit it being family fare, the ending is unsatisfactory, the acting shit and, oh fuck it, everything  about it on any reasonable critical or entertainment level fails.

Munchies is celluloid dogshit of the lowest order and do  not under any circumstances put it on. It’s terrible.

Until next time,

Jarv

Killer clowns, from outer space. Holy shit!  

 Jarv’s Rating: 3 Changs out of 4. Honestly, it’s very funny

Sometimes schlocky films make me despair, and other times the makers manage to completely mislay their medication and produce something gleefully insane, unexpectedly amusing and totally enjoyable. Killer Klowns is one of the latter, and I’m glad it arrived this week as I’ve got 2 reviews of Murph worthy dogshit to do that I can’t face.

 I’d like to know the story behind this film. I reckon that the Chiodo brothers were watching TV one afternoon, maybe smoking a few spliffs, maybe chewing on some mushrooms, and one of them said “you know, Clowns really scare me” to which another replied “nah, you’re nuts. Aliens are scary” to be followed by the third with “Well what about alien clowns?”. My reasoning is that this film seems to be the obvious result of massive narcotic consumption, and I would love to hear how they managed to persuade some blithering numpty to stump up $2m for it.

Killer Klowns is a gleefully anarchic mess of a film. It has a bit of gore, but I can’t honestly believe it was played as a horror film. If it is a horror film, then it’s a staggeringly unsuccessful one. However, having said that, the film has its tongue wedged deeply in its cheek, so I think it must have been played for laughs, and it is funny. There are several hugely successful sight gags, the odd great line, and it has a pleasingly cheesy B-movie feel to it. Really, this is a great little film.

Killer Klowns takes place in a small town. 2 horny teenagers (Dave and Debbie) see a meteorite hit the Earth and so go to investigate. They find a circus tent with the internal dimensions of the Tardis and some homicidal clowns that shoot popcorn at them. The two teenagers manage to make it back to civilisation, and run straight to the cops, one of whom- Mike – was Debbie’s ex, to tell their story. One thing leads to another, homicidal Klowns attack the town, wrap all the population in Candyfloss, before the intrepid band manage to kill all the extra-terrestrial circus performers.

The acting is fine- with Snyder being amusing in a screamy-type role as Debbie. However, the reason I’m reviewing this is that the Klowns invading the local town scenes are absolutely hilarious. They are unrepentantly crass and gleefully fun. The various attacks include: Midget Klown punching a biker’s head off, Klown popping out of a pizza delivery box, group of Klowns standing under a window holding a circus-style net for catching jumpers, pie throwing, balloon dogs that actually work as sniffer dogs, a hilarious Punch and Judy show and so forth. I could actually go on and on about these scenes for a while, but they’re all funny and there’s a huge variety to the various clown-y murder techniques.

The Crimewatch reconstruction of what Droid did last weekend

 The sets and other design are cheap and cheerful. Given that they waxed the whole budget extremely fast, the Chiodo brothers worked a minor miracle. All the sets, especially those on the spaceship/ Circus Tent, are all bright, kitschy, colourful and fun. Even if they do resemble 1980′s Dr. Who a touch. The other effects, particularly the Klown shadow puppet, are also well realised (even if deliberately unconvincing) and much more effective than they have any right to be.

There are other great sight gags- but I want to give a quick shout out to “Klownzilla”, one of the most stupendously stupid ideas that I’ve seen in a long time. A giant, indestructible angry Klown that Mike kills by stabbing it in its big red nose, after local idiots the Terenzi brothers crash an ice-cream truck into it. This is a storming idea, and fits into the anything is possible ethos that the film has.

I briefly touched on it above, but some of the dialogue is knowingly funny. The exchanges when Debbie is trying to convince Mike that the Klowns are real contain a huge amount of winks at the camera with lines such as “They’re clowns, they fire popcorn, what else did you expect” mixing in with earnest attempts to rationalise the insane. Or grumpy Officer Moony who believes that the whole town is playing some kind of joke on him, because they’re all assholes. Let me give you a clue, Moony, if you think everyone else is an asshole, you’re wrong. There’s only one, and he’s much closer to home. The Klowns themselves are silent, but manage to convey a limited range of expression from under the heavy masks through gestures and so forth. Not the easiest job in the world, but they did manage to give the main Klowns distinctive personalities.

Nevertheless, as much fun as it is, this is a flawed film. Not to whinge, but it does seem to run out of steam in the last third (before Klownzilla), a few of the characters are a bit annoying and there’s a severe absence of gore and nudity. Neither of these things should be completely essential, but for some inexplicable reason there’s a scene with Debbie being terrorised in the shower. If you must include a shower scene (and it’s a completely gratuitous sequence) in a schlock film, then you must include some skin. Otherwise it is pointless as well as gratuitous.

Klownzilla!

Overall, would I recommend Killer Klowns? Absolutely. If anything, this is potentially one of the most epic drunk/ stoned films that I’ve seen in a long time. The reason it’s got a relatively low score is that I was completely sober when I saw it and therefore totally aware of flaws and suchlike. If I’d been a bit intoxicated then I am nearly certain I’d have enjoyed it even more.

I haven’t said this in a while, but get some beer, put this on and laugh at the clownish antics. Killer Klowns is loads of fun, a light-hearted, superficial gigglefest of a film, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Oh, and don’t fuck the sequel up, guys. This film is light fun, I do not want to see the inner-angst of Klownzilla. I don’t want to see him crying because his father never laughed at his pie in pants based antics. Keep them originless and insane.

Until next time,

Jarv

Time to see how the other half lives

Jarv’s Rating: 1 Murph. This film is shit.

Due to a small technical error, I’m having to abandon my Class of Nuke ‘Em High trilogy. Instead, I’m reviewing the bona-fides Murph worthy bucket of shit that is Ronald Moore’s Future Kill. A film that has an inexplicably epic Giger designed poster that is so far superior to anything else that takes place that it is a crying shame it was squandered on this dismal rip off of The Warriors and Escape From New York.

This film, as already stated is fucking terrible. It’s a loathsome load of shit that shamelessly steals from several actually good films, mixes the constituent parts together into a giant shit sundae, then garnishes it with an enormous loaf on top. This film is the equivalent of an American Idol winner covering the Clash in that it completely fails to understand the material it is copying and yet still pompously regards itself as some sort of artist.

It’s the near future and society has collapsed into factions. On one side is the Mutants/ Freaks and on the other are a loathsome group of dickheads that are clearly meant to be the aristocracy. They’re defined as “frats” because clearly the world is so simple that you’re either in a fucking fraternity or a pathetic neo-punk Camden twat. Because there’s clearly no middle ground. The Mutants are a peaceful group that protest nuclear power for the most part and are led by Ed. His second in command is the deeply unhinged Splatter (the only reason to watch the film). They wear shitty clothing and crappy makeup because of some ridiculous tree-hugging rationale that after nuclear power takes over the entire population will look like them: a raccoon that lost a fight in the makeup department of Boots.

Our “frat” heroes, that we’re meant to give a fuck about despite the fact that they are all without exception monumental fuckheads, have to make amends for some boring hijink or other that they’d pulled early on (some clichéd crap with tar and feathers) so have to put on the slap so that they can go and kidnap (for reasons never properly explained) a freak. Once on the wrong side of the tracks, Splatter murders their preppy dickhead leader and Eddie, pins the blame on the frat tossers who then spend the rest of the film trying to get back to civilisation. But not without a few monumentally tedious fights, a piss poor concert, and a nauseating and patronising “we’re all the same on the inside” message is dogmatically pounded at the viewer.

The acting, with the exception of Edwin Neal as Splatter, is complete shit. The actors aren’t helped by a terrible script that doesn’t at any point give them any chance to try to get the audience on side. The frats are so fundamentally unlikable that I was rooting for Splatter from a really early phase. This is not a good thing.

Aside from the dialogue being bad, and the characters being poorly drawn, the script also contains numerous plot holes. I say numerous and that’s an understatement: it leaks like a fucking sieve. For example, for no reason that I can see, one of the frats is the son of the Chief of Police. We’re told this when he rescues a freak from a beating at the hands of the cops. Yet for some reason, he doesn’t get a lift back to the right side of town with said cops. No pig on the fucking planet is going to leave the Chief’s son to a probably fatal beating- not least for the chance to win brownie points. That’s a petty example, but there are millions of them, lots of the narrative simply doesn’t make sense.

There are several set pieces in the film that piss me off, but the one I’m going to pick on is the concert. Why on Earth when they are in deep shit and fleeing from a deranged half robotic sociopath and his tooled up gang do they decide (other than for the half-baked thematic idea touched on above) to see a terrible, shitty, atrocious new-wave type band playing utterly mince protest music. And then having blundered into the bar with the band playing why the fuck do they hang around and “party” for a while? Other than, and this could be me being cynical, the makers were making a crass and unsubtle point and also needed the band to play the whole song to fill up run time.  Christ this film is shit.

However, what really, really offends me (and it viscerally offends me) is that they took The Warriors for the template, but completely failed to understand what it was that made The Warriors so epic. They also aimed at EFNY for the look of the film, but this amounts to using that shitty 1970′s Sci-Fi font, a synth heavy score and dark light. However, once again, they completely failed to understand anything about why Carpenter’s film looked so effective. I’m all for stealing from good films, but try to understand what it is you’re stealing- if you don’t then all you are doing is pissing on the original. And this film has its fly open, cock out and is fountaining piss all over those better works.

As bad as this film is, it isn’t a 4 Murph effort. In fact, I’ve knocked 3 Murphs off the total for Splatter. He’s a good villain, albeit one that has been done better elsewhere. Neal has a neat line in angry snarling, and Splatter has a neat metal arm with spikes that he uses to kill people. He’s quite cool, and in a film that didn’t suck balls he’d be the head henchman. Unfortunately, this film does suck balls, and he kills the charisma vacuum Eddie to take de facto control of the gang.

Overall, would I recommend this film? No I would not- Future Kill is complete and utter shit that flits between tedium, irritation, and offensiveness.

I would recommend the poster though, even if it’s a crying fucking shame that they squandered it on a low rent shitty rip off of other much better films. Fuck this film.

Until next time,

Jarv

We will not ask you to do anything embarrassing, humiliating, or abnormal at any time.

Jarv’s Rating: 2.5 Changs out of 4 and I damned nearly gave it 3 just for the giant mutant squirrel.

 Part two of the wonderfully misguided Class of Nuke ‘Em High trilogy has absolutely nothing in common with part 1. In fact, if I were to be cynical, then I might suggest that Troma deliberately stuck a completely unrelated film in as a sequel to cash in on the reasonable success of the first film. However, that doesn’t stop it being a damned entertaining little romp, even if considerations such as plot completely fall by the wayside.

Class of Nuke ‘Em High 2: Subhumanoid Meltdown takes place, allegedly, directly after the events of the first film. What with Tromaville High having being levelled by a big explosion, the town was clearly in need of a facility for education. So, the benevolent “Nukamama” corporation steps in and builds a giant nuclear power plant and houses the Troma Institute of Technology (TIT) in it, where students are encouraged to assist with the day-to-day running of the plant. Quite how this solves the problem of the high school’s destruction is one of many things never addressed in the film. Anyhoo, TIT has severe space restrictions, so the student body has to wear fuck all in the way of clothing. There’s also a psychotic gang, called the Squirrels, terrorising the students. The whole place is run by Dean Okra and Professor Holt and is really a secret laboratory for the development of “subhumanoids” that will become slave labour afterwards. Ooooh-kaaay, this isn’t confusing.

The film opens with a Troma style homage to Godzilla with a giant mutant squirrel called Tromie trashing the plant, pissing on cooling towers and vomiting all over the place. We’re introduced to our intrepid hero, a gigantic ass-pickle called Roger, who despite having a quite ridiculous ponytail and being built like a brick shithouse, seems to be a social outcast. Something to do with body odour apparently. Roger is attempting to carry his beloved girlfriend, Victoria (more on this in a moment), out of harms way, but for some reason is compelled to stop and narrate his story into a dictaphone. Victoria, meanwhile, is vomiting green goo and generally not in the best of health.

Right, where was I?

OK, the film then cuts to “2 weeks earlier” and follows Roger’s dismal attempts to get laid. Out of sheer desperation he’ signed up to a “sex study” which will get him some action, and the princely sum of $8 (which I reckon he needs more than the poon). He’s (yuck) number 65 and the experiment is to see how many men in a row a subhumanoid (Victoria) can pleasure. Yes, he is indeed stirring the biggest pot of porridge since breakfast at Culloden. Victoria also has, and fuck knows why, a second mouth where her belly button should be.

Roger, for reasons never properly explained, falls head of heels in love with Victoria (pointlessly as she’s probably on number 9002 by now). In the meantime, Professor Holt is explaining what she’s up to- which seems to be splicing (I wish I’d seen this before I saw Splice) DNA of different species together to create the subhumanoids. Her earlier attempts are kept in the cellar and include a bulimic half man half dolphin. The fully created subhumanoids (Droid may recognise them) are kept in the basement before being sent in to general population.

Dren preparing herself for a hook-nosed cornholing

Nearly there- I promise.

The Subhumanoids have a variety of attributes that make them valuable workers. One is a ridiculous level, by the standards of Tromaville in that they actually have some, of hand eye co-ordination. Unfortunately, they are prone to melting down and turning into disgusting little boglin type thingies. That can fly. Because that makes sense. This development is worrying Professor Holt, who is striving to create a vaccine (turns out to be surprisingly easy in the end) to prevent this. Dean Okra has other plans, though, and all hell breaks loose before a squirrel eats some toxic waste and grows into “Tromie” and we’re back at the start.

That was a bastard.

Class of Nuke ‘Em High 2 is, by any reasonable critical measure, a very, very bad film. It’s completely incoherent, the acting (particularly Brick Bronsky as utter chode Roger) is diabolical, and the special effects stink. Seriously, for the giant squirrel attack they have an obvious man in suit stand on cardboard houses and GI Joe figures. This is amusing, but really not competent. The stop motion effect on the dolphin-man thing are jerky as hell, and the flying furry boglin efforts are ludicrously awful. The writing is pretty abysmal as well, and there’s very little of the usual sly Troma intelligence at work. The only example is a billboard advertising Dolphin Meat in tuna tins, but that’s it. The score consists of some awful commissioned for this film filth called “Class of Nuke Em High 2: Subhumanoid Meltdown” sung by a dreadful Van Halen cover band. Or at least I think that’s who sings it.

However, none of this matters a jot. It’s confusing, insane, shoddy stuff but is also piss-takingly funny. The laughs come thick and fast and are supplied via sight gags(Holt’s ridiculous hairstyle), the occasional good line, and the odd unexpected cameo (Toxie shows up completely out of the blue). It is extremely funny.

As with all the best Troma, the boob count is astronomical. There’s a quite staggering amount of gratuitous juggs on display. I just wish, though, that they’d actually have attractive women get them out. These are not the most pleasant breasts you’ll ever see, and that goes doubly so for the nudity on the bald subhumanoid women. However, the gore count is non-existent. The odd subhumanoid melts down, and there’s an unpleasant scene with one eating glass, but as a rule, this is a Troma film with no gore. How strange.

Nevertheless, there were some seriously bad decisions made. Dean Okra, for example, talks in an excruciating high-pitched whine that is incessantly annoying and you can see the actor straining to produce the sound. They should clearly have just gone with his actual voice, as this is a gag that falls completely flat. Not to mention that there’s only so many times you can watch someone melt into green goo before it becomes somewhat tiresome, and the vast majority of the scenes with Roger actually attempting to be a journalist flirt with being painfully unfunny. I was actually quite pleased when his editor/ Journalism professor got chucked out of the window, because if I’d had to listen to one more cack-handed attempt at satire from her then I’d have chucked the DVD out of the window.

Overall, would I recommend it? Yes, I would. It may be seriously flawed, even by Troma’s standards, but there’s an unflagging anarchic energy and dedication to extreme bad taste that is hugely entertaining. It’s a riot, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself for the most part- the sequences with Tromie the squirrel, in particular, are hysterical.

Give it a whirl, Class of Nuke ‘Em High 2: Subhamanoid Meltdown is never less than great fun.

Until next time,

Jarv

“What’s happened to you people? Six months ago you were the honor society, not a drug pushing gang of thugs.” 

Jarv’s Rating: 2.5 Changs although I’m tempted to give it more

Welcome to Tromaville- a classy town, with great real estate, interesting local residents, a fine eduction system, full employment at the various nuclear facilities, and a law enforcement agency run by a sociopathic monster with an uncontrollable urge to see justice done.

1986 was a funny time for Troma. They had, for the first time in their history, a bit of money in the bank due to the completely unexpected success of Toxie. So, Troma being Troma, what did they decide to do: Expand the budget and aim a bit higher? or jump gleefully back into the barrel in a quest to scrape the bottom of it and produce an absolutely raucous piece of schlock with all their hallmarks? To be absolutely honest, I’m glad they went for the latter- it’s much more fun, and any tool can make a mediocre movie.  Class of Nuke ‘Em High has the distinction of being the first Non-Toxie movie set in Tromaville, and is an absolutely hilarious slice of low brow schlock.

Tromaville is a bit of a shithole. In fact, it’s a colossal shithole. The events of Class revolve directly around the usual Tromaville slapdash respect for health and safety laws with a nuclear leak next to the local high school leading to carnage and shenanigans. In this case, the leak (which looks suspiciously like Lime Jelly) has the unfortunate side effect of causing a geeky student to froth at the mouth before throwing himself out of the window and decomposing in front of the school. Nice.

Other side effects of the spill are- it does something weird to marijuana plants- if you smoke even one drag of an infected spliff you turn into a rampant fuckmonster, then either a superhero or unfortunately vomiting a disgusting spiky leach thing. Which grows causing chaos.

In the middle of all this is winsome all-American couple Warren and Chrissy. Warren is a bit of a tool and a fuckup, while Chrissy is coming to terms with the volatile hormones raging through her teenaged system. They desperately want to do the nasty, are being tormented by former Honour Students turned outlaw gang, The Cretins, and eventually go to a nice college before a life of middle management. This all gets a touch derailed by the toxic spill- Warren morphs into a nuclear zombie hero that clobbers the cretins and Chrissy births the creature. Carnage and hilarity inevitably ensue, before Warren blows the school up using a laser and a load of radioactive isotopes.

This is a cracking slice of Troma cheese. It’s, predictably for Troma, nowhere near as dumb as it’s making out. They clearly stole the template from the far superior Class of 1984 (which was also remade as the excellent Class of 1999) and there is a really pleasant sci-fi air amongst all the silliness. The idea of the honour students morphing into an outlaw gang called The Cretins is intrinsically funny, and as Troma never exactly gave a shit about subtlety, all the  bikers are called things like Spike. It’s a nice homage in a rip-roaring film.

Also, predictably for Troma, the following things all suck ass: The acting, the special effects, the direction and the score. However, although they are all below par, this was one of Troma’s gonzo efforts, so they are all enjoyable enough for what I’m watching. The thing about Troma is, and this is what nobody ever gets, if something is bad, it’s because they intend it to be so. That’s the whole fucking point and as a result, much of the enjoyment from watching Troma comes from watching terrible special effects fail to convince while actors look over their shoulder to see if the cops are going to arrest them for filming a naked woman running down a street without a permit. If you don’t find this fun, then don’t watch one- they are never going to be what could sneeringly be termed quality.

As already mentioned, there is always a sly intelligence at work. At it’s best Troma can pull some satire out of the bad, or some clever parody. In Class, they aim for surrealist absurdity, and as a result the set is decorated with clever faux-ironic ornaments such as the Have a nice day poster above. I really like this about them- it’s almost as much fun spotting them referencing other films (usually toxie) as it is watching the comedy on screen.

Another defining feature of Troma is that there is a serious above and beyond the call of duty dedication to gore, tits, and offensive behaviour. Like all the best Troma, Class has them in spades. There’s many a gratuitous boob sighting, and there’s gore aplenty to keep the kids interested. To be honest, I’d be disappointed if there wasn’t.

I’ve already said that the special effects suck ass- and they do with the exception of the monster. He’s great- a big, rubber, spiky man in suit with an attitude problem. He’s by far the best effect in the film. Better than the jelly that doubles as nuclear waste, or the wiggly leech things anyhow.

Also, although I’ve been rude about the acting, it isn’t all bad- Janelle Brady is a classic Troma heroine and plays her part well. I see she didn’t have much of a career after this, which is a bit of a shame as she’s got a certain charm and a certain presence that was somewhat surprising for this film.

Overall, this is a cracking film- it’s rowdy, riotous and raucous fun. Troma have made a lot of shit over the years, but when on song, nobody does it better. So would I recommend it? Unquestionably yes, and the only reason I haven’t given it more is that the sequels are actually better and if I did that, then I’d be in the ridiculous situation of having to give a Troma sequel 3.5 Changs.

Even I know that’s ludicrous.

Until next time,

Jarv.

Hehe… my friend, the astro-bastard, time for talkies

Jarv’s Rating: A very well earned 3.5 Changs out of 4. Superb.

 I defy anyone not to love Peter Jackson’s debut feature. It may be a bit gross (the clue’s in the title) and it may be a bit rough around the edges, but it’s hard to think of a more amusing, more lovably ramshackle debut as this one.

I don’t, for the life of me, know how Jackson got this made. It was shot over 4 years by him and his mates, the cast kept changing (Craig Smith dropped out because his new wife wouldn’t allow him to film on a Sunday, but returned after the divorce), they had nothing in the way of cash, and very little to actually work with. That Bad Taste turned out as accomplished as it did says a lot about their dedication, and even more about their willful exuberance under what must have been hugely trying circumstances.

Anyway, in a nutshell, Bad Taste is the story of an alien invasion of a Kiwi town. They aliens turn up, slaughter the townsfolk (they’re samples of meat for the galaxy’s latest taste sensation) and are all set to escape when the New Zealand government calls in the crack commando outfit known as “The Boys” or the Astro Investigation and Defence Service (AIDS hehehehe) to give them their full title. In the meantime, the aliens are proposing a victory feast, the main course of which is a local charity collector who will be the dish of honour. Carnage and shenanigans ensue, before one of the boys, Derek, “goes apeshit” with a chainsaw.

This film is obscenely entertaining. From the opening scene with the minister and his claw hand, the whole  movie is rammed full of comic touches that make me laugh. Some of them are sight gags, such as Derek’s awesomely stupid Beatles car, and others are provided by a script that contains such great lines as “I’m a Derek, and Derek’s don’t run”, but this is a film that manages to be consistently crassly funny.

It is, however, a film that really goes out of its way to live up to its name. There are multiple shots of Derek attempting to put his head back together, a huge level of splatter, an audacious amount of cursing, and most brilliantly, one of the characters has to drink from a bowl full of vomit. After the rest of the Aliens had (brilliantly started by the head alien with, just after swallowing some,  ”Aren’t I lucky, I got a chunky bit”). This is an extremely gross film, and as it is deliberate, it’s also downright hilarious.

As already noted, Bad Taste is probably the epitome of the amateur production, and as such it is incredibly rough. The acting in particular is a tad on the ropy side- with multiple parts being played by each cast member, but in this case I think it adds to the film’s rough and ready charm. The only cast member, aside from Jackson himself, to really come through with honours is Doug Wren as Lord Crumb, who sadly died during post production thereby forcing Jackson to dub the alien voices with another cast member.

The special effects, particularly the alien makeup, are surprisingly good. Jackson made the alien masks himself, baking them in his mother’s oven and as  a result necessity became the mother of invention. The masks as originally designed were too big to fit, so Jackson had the genius idea of curving them back. This is a superb look for the Aliens, and one that is surprisingly effective. The gore effects are all equally good (even if a few of them do look suspiciously like meat from a butcher’s shop), with price clearly being a major consideration. I honestly find it hard to criticise the effects in a film with a budget as small as this that has the audacity to put in some large scale explosions, man-in-suit monsters and a flying house. So I’m not going to.

 I’d like to talk about the score, but in all honesty I can’t remember it. Aside from that, though, the other sound work is excellent- there’s a cornucopia of revolting squelching noises, convincing explosions, twangings, motor noises, slapping sounds etc that all lend a madcap comic feel to a superficially extremely nasty film. That it is a comedy rather than a horror is down in large part to the effectiveness of the sound work.

It isn’t perfect, although I did toy with giving it a maximum, as the last act (again) lags a wee bit. The shootout in particular is not that interesting and seems to go on far too long, and in a film as short as this one it does feel a bit like makeweight. However, at the same time it also looks like they were having a riot filming it, and if they got a touch carried away, then it is completely understandable. A minor quibble really in an excellent and hugely enjoyable film.

Overall, would I recommend Bad Taste? Well, without even thinking about it, yes. This is an enjoyably raucous slice of low-brow entertainment and certainly much more enjoyable than anything Jackson made since he discovered the Slim Fast plan. I actually wish he’d go back to his roots, because this, Braindead, Meet The Feebles and The Frighteners are all vastly superior to everything he’s done since Fellowship of the Ring. The man isn’t a serious artist, he’s a schlockmeister that got astronomically lucky and I’d love to see him return to the subject matter he’s best at: quirky, offensive, odd-ball gross out material.

Bad Taste is a superb film, and one that I highly recommend.

Until next time,

Jarv

I haven’t seen you since you took a bullet for me trying to save my life…

Jarv’s Rating: A ludicrously macho, and possibly homosexual, 3 changs out of 4. 

I really miss 80′s action films. They were so far superior to the tepid offerings we get in this century and I’ve got a theory as to why: they were simple. There was never any attempt to humanise the bad guys- each film was a straight, balls out, ultra-violent action film where the man in the white hat invariably overcame hugely superior numbers of men in black hats. There was no moral ambiguity because there didn’t need to be- they were simple escapist fun. All of which boring preamble brings me round to Deadly Prey- a less famous but simply hilarious entry in the 80′s action canon.

Deadly Prey is fucking great. Seriously. I know I never start a review like this, but this is without a shred of hyperbole one of the most amusing, overly macho action films that I’ve had the pleasure of seeing in a good while. And, frankly, having just sat through the terminally depressing The Wrestler, it came as a bit of blessed relief. I’m not really sure how to summarise the plot of this, because for all intents and purposes there isn’t one- but in a nutshell: evil ex-Special Forces general Hogan is training an army of mercenaries 70 miles outside of LA. His preferred method is to kidnap some poor mug and then have his recruits hunt them down. Unfortunately his troops fuck up and they kidnap one Mike Danton, the baddest hot pants wearing, mullet sporting one man army to have ruled the roost in ‘Nam. Mike wastes no time in exterminating the lot of them, in his hot pants, forcing Hogan into ever more extreme actions to try to contain and eliminate him. Mike wins. Sort of.

In all honesty, I have to wonder about the competence of Hogan’s numpties. They really do suck. Mike picks them off one by one without any difficulty, but not because he’s some sort of arch-ninja crack commando motherfucker, but because they’re clueless gimboids that can’t see things in front of them. I’m not joking about this- one of the kills has Mike hiding in a pond, a bad guy leans close to the water, Mike pops up and twats him. This would be fair enough, aside from the fact that you can fucking see Mike just below the surface.  I fear for Hogan’s tits if they ever face actual combat. Hogan makes many a reference to what a badass Mike is, but really, he doesn’t need to be- this lot are completely useless- a prime example being when they walk right past him when he’s sitting in a tree.  Wow, what subterfuge.

The acting in this film isn’t great if I’m absolutely honest. Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter, because all the characters are completely one-dimensional. There is no reason for them to have any depth because the film isn’t interested in that kind of thing- it’s only concerned with the action. Mike’s wife Jaimy supplies the vast majority of the character work, and she’s competently, if unspectacularly, played by Suzanne Tara. Ted Prior is suitably knuckleheaded as Mike, and David Campbell makes a good fist of the nefarious general, and that’s all there really is to say of interest about the acting. The writing is also acceptable without being spectacular. The script is a cliche-laden beast, and some of the motivations are a touch on the dubious side, but again, it doesn’t matter as everything is an excuse for the action. There’s a few flights of fancy that require suspension of disbelief (the sheer bad luck in kidnapping Mike to begin with, or the fact that an army, with a full armoured division could be lurking so close to LA) but aside from the clunky side plot involving Jaimy’s father, there’s no real point criticising it.

Which brings me round to the direction and in particular the action. It’s great- the fighting is all fun, the shootouts are fun, the ridiculous traps Mike sets are fun, the showdown is fun- you get the gist. This is fun. We don’t give a monkey’s nut because the film doesn’t let us care about the villains. It’s completely and utterly transparent: these are bad guys and Mike is doing the world a favour by killing them. Continuing with the fairness, the last act does drag a wee bit as it becomes a touch repetitive, but until that point there’s nothing but fun to be had watching the military equivalent of the Keystone Cops chase the hardest hot pants sporting motherfucker in California around a wood.

The soundtrack is a hilarious 80′s archetype, and it’s strangely fitting to the action on screen. There’s some synth, a lot of drums and it’s all fairly cheesy stuff. Which, given the material, is absolutely fitting.

However, as good as this is, and as much fun as this is, I can’t in all honesty give it 4 changs, and that’s purely because of the last act. As I briefly mentioned above, it does get a touch repetitive (not necessarily a bad thing), but more worryingly the ending itself is one of the most nihilistic things that I’ve seen since Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General (underrated review forthcoming), and it’s seriously jarring given the previous action. Without going into too much detail, if the purpose of the film is to reduce man to hunter and prey, then they completely succeed animalising Mike, but not without some serious fucking provocation. In all honesty, I want a film like this to end with the good guy, buxom wench and goofy sidekick to walk off into the sunset while some supremely 80′s band covers the fucking Beatles. That’s appropriate. What happens here is not.

Overall, do I recommend it? Unequivocally yes. This is a first-rate beer and pizza movie and I can honestly say that it’s an absolute paragon of dumbhouse. Deadly Prey is a gloriously mulletted throwback to a time when these films were made for fun and profit, and I really, really miss them. I don’t want to hear about the nefarious bad guy’s abused childhood, and I don’t care about psychological motives. Sometimes I just want men in white hats to kill men in black hats and that’s more than enough- and on that count Deadly Prey delivers in spades.

Recommended.

Until next time,

Jarv

Jarv’s Rating: 2 Murphs. That’s right- it’s a 0 chang film. Look at that fat tool, he’s even more appropriate for this than the orangutan.

What a great way to introduce my new rating for those films that fall below half a chang. The coveted “murph” will be out of 4 and a sort of reverse chang. O is just a crap film, one is awful, 2 is truly horrendous, 3 is diabolical, and 4 is for one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.

It’s been a long time since I’ve tangled with a Shameless film, and I really should have learned my lesson by now. Le Orme ducks being my first ever 4 Murph film for reasons that I’ll go into later, but it is by no stretch of the imagination worth your time. It’s a weird film, not to mention a deeply boring one, but it does look nice.

Florinda Bolkan (previously entertainingly unhinged in Flavia the Heretic) plays Alice. Alice is suffering from a worrying gap in her memory. She’s lost 2 days and hasn’t a clue what happened to them. All she has to go on is a horrible dress and a torn up postcard from the island of  Garma. Not the greatest lead ever, but enough to encourage her to take the time out and travel to the island in the hope of  piecing together her past. What this involves is a lot of nothing, before a completely uncalled for sex scene, a strangely bloodless murder and a fucking bizarre climax. There’s also frequent interruptions that I suppose are meant to represent Alice’s nightmares, of people in space suits walking around in a trippy blue light.

This is a crap film, just in case I haven’t made it obvious so far. It’s fucking mind-numbingly dull. To be honest, Bazzoni was clearly attempting to make some sort of psychological thriller, but really nothing at all happens. Alice wonders around the island, talking to and harassing people (including a creepy child) to try to establish what the hell went on. It appears that she was there last week, had a strange wig, called herself Nicole wore a bad red wig and got in to some trouble of some description. It’s not very clear what the hell went on last week, but I don’t think it was anything that traumatic, although I could be wrong about that. I just don’t know.

Bolkan is passable as Alice, in so far as the acting in this film is passable, but it’s hard to tell because she’s badly dubbed. I will come to this in a while, but there are frequent sections of the film where Shameless clearly couldn’t find the dub track so it drops into Italian with subtitles (and is actually a lot better). The dubbing, particularly on the creepy child is laughably bad, and it’s hard to see if there is an actual good performance under it. Kinski is in a blink and you’ll miss it characater and Peter McEnry as Harry displays the sexual allure of a post Thanksgiving meal Don Murphy. I hear that chicks dig morbid obesity, flatulence and turkey grease.

I’ve read a lot of reviews waxing lyrical about the cinematography of this film representing Alice’s mental breakdown by having wide shots of Bolkan wandering around Garma, it’s an attempt to show her loneliness and isolation. However, it doesn’t really work. What it is, is a sumptous, staggeringly dull holiday video. It does look gorgeous, but that’s down to the location and doesn’t excuse the fact that nothing at all of any interest is going on on screen. There’s also a lot of atmosphere shots of Bolkan staring aimlessly out at the lake/ ocean/ whatever, but really I just fail to see how this could be construed as atmospheric. The score also does it’s best to try to fashion something out of nothing, but it is also fighting an uphill battle that it is never really going to win.

The script, as far as there is one, is completely underwritten. Alice has encounters with people (such as the child) and terminally uninteresting conversations that are clearly meant to reveal the mystery of her missing days but they just don’t- she did really mundane things like buy scissors, wear a bad red wig and I can’t see why she’s so desperate to find out what happened. Her encounters with Harry are in particular confusing and unilluminating. I think he was her boyfriend when she was younger, or something, but it’s all so unenlightening and he’s got so little in the way of charisma that I just don’t see the point of it. As for her nightmares, well, fuck it- everyone has bad dreams and these dreams which hint at a secret organisation or some such aren’t even that bad. They are shot in a weird blue filter, but that doesn’t make up for them being confusing and unhelpful interludes in a film that almost seems to be going out of its way to be opaque.

Nevertheless, now we come to the reason that I’m actually bothering to write a review of this film, given that I don’t think anyone is going to bother to see it, and as films go it certainly doesn’t deserve your time. Le Orme was, as far as I can tell, a lost film. Someone at Shameless showed remarkable dedication and went out of their way to unearth and reassemble it. As such, there are huge stretches of the dubbing missing (I wish I had had the option of watching it with the subtitles) and the film is markedly better when the actors are using their natural language. The transfer is grainy and there are several times where there are lines and suchlike running down the screen. Rebuilding this was clearly a labour of love, and I haven’t got it in me to completely rubbish something that someone clearly invested a lot of themselves in. I’ll kick it up to a point, but I have to wonder if there aren’t more worthy films out there that deserved this treatment (Split Second still hasn’t got a UK release, for example). I just don’t think that it is worth the effort that obviously went in to rebuilding it- it isn’t scary, it isn’t exploitative (there’s nary a boob sighting and the only murder is a completely sanitised affair) and it just isn’t interesting.

I’m not trying to be a dick about this, because Le Orme is a sumptously filmed, lovingly recreated film. It’s also a terrible one. Alice is an unlikable character, the plot is not interesting (there’s never any doubt that she is going nuts) and the whole film feels like a bit of a waste of time. I, for the life of me, cannot understand what the hell is in this to merit the 18 certificate. It’s just not violent, not sexy, there’s no gore, and fuck all happens.

Overall, I’m not even bothering to ask the question- I don’t recommend this film. It’s just too boring. Maybe I’m a hopeless juvenile with arrested development and therefore totally unequipped to watch a slow-burning psychological thriller, but I don’t think so. I need something to fucking happen, something to generate some atmosphere and some element of doubt that what I am watching may or may not be real for the character. This film supplies none of those and is, at the end of the day, a well shot but completely soulless effort that has put me right off giallo for a while.

Until next time,

Jarv

Jarv’s Rating: 2 Changs. Not the greatest effort ever, but any film where Lou Diamond Phillips gets clobbered in the happy sack  by both a bag lady and a nun on different occasions is clearly worth a bit of my time.

Sometimes a concept is just a bad one. I can see the thinking about this, it really does fit right into its time- the late 80′s/ early 90′s- when a whole raft of serial-killer-returns from the dead films were released. This is one of them, a lesser one, but it has to be said that it is quite an enjoyable entry. Nevertheless, a bad idea is a bad idea, and The First Power has, I think, about 6 bad ideas.

Lou Diamond Phillips plays Russ Logan, a hard-bitten LA Cop. Despite all evidence that may suggest he’s the most useless policeman in the history of Cinema, and I mean worse than Frank Drebbin, he is apparently a crack investigator who has been single-handedly responsible for the arrest/ death of 3 serial killers in 5 years. Unfortunately for Lou, there’s a real bastard of a serial killer on the loose and he’s stumped. However, fortune is a fickle mistress and he receives an anonymous call telling him precisely where he can catch the Pentagram Killer, all he’s got to do is not kill the guy. Lou, being a dickhead, knows better, so off Patrick Channing goes to the Gas Chamber. Unfortunately this releases Channing to possess and murder a whole slew of people, and torment Logan for shits and giggles. Eventually he possesses a bag lady, turns up at Logan’s apartment, sticks the head on him before clobbering him in the joy department. Happy coincidence has it that there is a psychic nun armed with the magic knife that can kill him, and so she (for no good reason) accompanies him to the showdown. Whereupon Channing possesses her, and then proceeds to wallop Logan in the family jewels. Again. Logan eventually overcomes the nefarious occult bastard, before being gunned down by the cops, who inexplicably haven’t taken the whole “Stabs Nun” thing very well.

The acting in First Power ranges from the dreadful to the absolutely awesome. Lou is passable as Logan, but he isn’t helped by the fact that the character is a complete dickhead. Honestly, Logan is probably the worst cop ever seen on screen- he screams at witnesses, breaks into apartments pointlessly, holds a lit zippo in a comatose suspects face, can’t see the obvious and seems to be as bright as the bottom of a rabbit warren. He’s a massive tit. At some point the writers thought “Shit, better give him some depth” so there’s a ridiculous tangent, where he tries to show his, for wont of a better word, range by gurning frantically at the camera in an utterly doomed attempt to portray loss of faith. Having said that, he does portray “been booted in the nuts” well, which is just as well, really. Tracy Griffith is utter crap as “professional psychic” and Elizabeth Arlen doesn’t exactly set the world on fire as Sister Marguerite. However, Jeff Kobler brings an absolutely terrifying psycho to the screen- one of the 2 Changs is purely for his performance. Channing is depraved, insane, sadistic, and has a great line in tormenting Logan. It’s a first-rate performance and deserves better than this film.

The First Power is also badly written. To begin with, the plot just doesn’t make sense. The First Power in question is reincarnation and can apparently be bestowed by either God or Satan (we discover this from a really, really heavy exposition scene towards the end that only exists because someone realised that the film didn’t make any sense at all). This is fine, except Channing isn’t reincarnating, and also seems to have a shit load of other powers such as teleportation, flying and being able to clobber Lou in the nut sack with unerring accuracy The magic knife in question (apparently an ancient Catholic “idol”) looks straight from a Korean flea market, the rubbish on Channing’s background is completely nonsensical, and Tess’ psychic powers exist solely to move the plot forward when they have painted themselves into a corner. Furthermore, the dialogue is laughably inept, but actually kind of enjoyable with Logan and Channing sharing some hilarious exchanges that I can’t believe that nobody spotted.

Nevertheless, this is a ridiculously entertaining film. It’s fundamentally terrible by pretty much any critical standard that could possibly be used- including that a film ostensibly set in LA clearly has Chicago landmarks such as the Sears Tower visible, but that doesn’t matter. The murders are downright hilarious (one cop is stomped to death by a horse), and there’s a flying bag lady. A flying bag lady, for fuck’s sake! Hilarious stuff. Furthermore, watching Logan get walloped by women is funny, and watching his attempt at intimidating a nun is beyond ridiculous. I have to say that despite the film’s best efforts, I did find myself enjoying it. It’s fun in a completely unintentionally goofy way, and it was an unexpected pleasure.

Overall, would I recommend it? Well, it’s worth seeing for Kobler’s performance, and it’s certainly one of Lou Diamond Phillips’ better films. It did make me laugh out loud on more than one occasion (notably flying bag lady), and it veers so often into the ridiculous that it’s never boring. It’s frequently stupid, but never boring. At the end of the day, this is just one of a number of films like this released at the same time, but I think it’s the only one that I would even consider coming back to.

Not to mention that a psychic nun belts Lou Diamond Phillips in the meat and two veg, something that is amusing by definition.

Until next time,

Jarv

Jarv’s Rating: 1.5 Changs. Reasonably enjoyable stupid violent fun, but at the end of the day it’s heavily flawed and kind of shit.

Well, after the crushing disappointment that was Splice, I wasn’t feeling all that great about watching anything in particular, especially not anything that was released in the summer. However, at the same time, I’m busy watching as many vampire films as I can stomach in the hope of unearthing some that aren’t completely terrible and preferably nothing like the romance driven soppy vampiric drivel that plague the genre nowadays. Except, now that I’ve watched it I have to say that this isn’t  a vampire film.

The thing is, I know it’s got “Vampire” in the subtitle, but really, that’s a misrepresentation. I’m getting a bit sick of this, to be honest. If I purchased some food and bought a tin with “beans” written on the front, then opened it to find that it actually had tuna inside then I’d be a bit pissed off- and this is happening all the time with films. Splice, for example, is clearly being sold as some kind of cerebral Species, when it’s nothing of the sort. Or Black Snake Moan being sold as sexploitation when it’s nothing of the sort. Or Tarantino movies being sold as actual films rather than the cinematic onanism that they actually are. Anyway, you get the drift. It’s dishonest. At no point in the film Blood is the word “vampire” even mentioned. Demons are, and “old ones” quite frequently, but not “vampire”. Also, they can go about in daylight, don’t have any vampiric weaknesses, don’t really have a blood dependency and so on and so forth. These aren’t vampires. Also on this note, there’s no blood in the film- despite what the tagline says. There’s plenty of CGI squib’s bursting and showering red stuff everywhere, but it isn’t blood.

Nevertheless, they are demons, and therefore quite eligible for a small Korean woman (I know she’s meant to be Japanese, but she’s Korean) to cut them in half with a ridiculously big sword, so that’s all right then. There are also samurai, ninjas, secret societies, good actors paying the mortgage and stupid Americans so really, I can cope with the lack of vampire action.

Blood: The Last Vampire follows the adventures of Saya(Gianna) in her quest to eliminate all the demons- particularly the oldest one, an uber-bitch with head popping powers called Onegin. For reasons too confusing to think about she has to go undercover at an American Base, and much head chopping fun ensues. She also gets an annoying American sidekick (Alison Miller) who adds nothing to the story, but traipses around after her generally getting in the way. The film trundles along quite happily interspersing flashbacks with the action before climaxing with the inevitable showdown between Saya and Onegin.

This is not, and this isn’t going to come as a massive shock, a particularly good or even noteworthy film. The writing in this is pretty bad, but there are plenty of unintended chuckles to be had- particularly in the Darth Vader moment between Saya and Onegin-

“You kill my father”

“Child where do you think you get you’re strength from? Me, I am your mother”

“Noooo. I kill you”

Obviously, I’ve paraphrased that, but you get the idea. Which reminds, me Onegin in the final face off resembles an end of game boss from Final Fantasy- being suspended 10 feet in the air with ribbons around her. This is not a good thing.

Gianna is ok-ish as Saya, but if I’m honest, after her stunning turn in Daisy, a bit of a disappointment. Oh and don’t call yourself “Gianna”, love, your name is Ji-hyun Jun- don’t pander to us ignorant westerners. Alison Miller sucks ass as the sidekick, being at least 7 years too old for the part and having the screen presence of a small root vegetable. Other than that, there are numerous British thesps begging for a paycheck (Liam Cunningham and Colin Salmon), Japanese actors who should know better, but the acting overall is alright without being spectacular.

Then there’s the action. This is a bit of a fuckup, to be honest. It’s like Chris Nahon watched 300 and thought, it was OK, but clearly needed a bit more slo-mo. The fights themselves (particularly the ninjas in the wood) are choreographed well, and it’s good fun, however, the climactic battle is as damp a squib as damp squibs go. Furthermore, I’m starting to come round to Koutch’s thinking on this one, but CGI blood is a fucking plague and needs retiring. There’s no practical blood at all in this, but fountains and fountains of ridiculously fake looking CGI blood. Still, it’s hard to complain when demons are getting split down the middle by a Japanese schoolgirl.

Which brings me on to the effects generally. Which are shit. The demon transformations are pretty lousy really, and there are numerous fucking laughable demon effects in it. There’s one sequence in particular where Colin Salmon’s demon form is running along the side of a building that just redefines terrible. If you can’t do CGI properly, don’t do CGI.

Nevertheless, despite all of the above, it manages to be quite good fun. Ninjas and demons are intrinsically entertaining, as are 25-year-old Japanese schoolgirls, and it is really surprisingly enjoyable watching them get chopped up. It’s a thoroughly ridiculous premise, and they try to be incredibly serious with it, so the whole farrago is just kind of funny. Much to my amazement, I found myself enjoying something that I was all prepared to hate.

Overall, would I recommend it? Maybe. Add some beer, and this is a potential winner, but the ridiculous CGI blood is far too excessive and it’s a bit of a soulless experience. It’s not the worst thing I’ve seen recently, but it hasn’t exactly fucked my eyeballs either.

A great big “meh”.

Until next time,

Jarv

“My Brother’s the antichrist? Mom is gonna be pissed.” 

Jarv’s Rating: 2.5 Changs and I really want to give it more, but just can’t.

 This film is far better than the 2.5 Chang rating that I’ve given it in terms of entertainment. I watched it as part of my ongoing quest to find a witchcraft movie that doesn’t suck balls, and assumed a film called The Convent would be about black magic. Instead, and much to my amazement, I blundered into a rollicking little movie. The Convent is full of comedy, gore, ultraviolence, funny cameos and great laughs. It ain’t perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it is great fun.

The Convent had a frankly hilarious journey to the screen, which may be why it vanished unfairly off the map. Mike Mendez, the director, was in talks with the big studios to direct shit like Species 2, but instead he was under contract from a tiny independent. He couldn’t find a script he wanted to do, when someone passed him the treatment that one of the secretaries had written. He loved it, but mostly because of the opening scene (best bit of the film by far). Unfortunately, 2 goth pricks went apeshit at Columbine, and the opening sequence was (correctly) deemed to be far too close to the bone. So with that in mind, Mendez went back, rewrote it, and amped the violence up to 11 thus rendering the film cartoon-like and breaking the mental association with Columbine. The model for this film was clearly Sam Raimi’s epic Evil Dead 2 (curse you Frank, I’d link to that here if you hadn’t deleted it), with ridiculous gore, flourescent blood, and laughs given more importance than horror. A wise decision, albeit one that’s incredibly difficult to pull off.

The film opens with a sunglasses wearing badass chick pulling up outside of a convent. She stubs out her cigarette before walking confidently into the building. Once inside, she pulls a baseball bat out of her bag before laying waste the nuns and (brilliantly) the priest. This, apparently, isn’t in bad enough taste, so out comes the petrol and we’ve got a catholic barbecue. Which still isn’t in bad enough taste, so out comes the shotgun. What a fucking opening. I’m not exaggerating with this, it is absolutely hilarious. The film then cuts to “30 years later” and a group of college douchebags plus strangely hot goth chick are heading up to the old convent to do whatever fraternity fuckheads do in abandoned buildings. We all know where this is going. They get rousted by the cops, but the goth chick trades sexual favours with one of the douchebags to say that she isn’t there. A bad decision, as she gets kidnapped by a group of wannabe goth douchebags, who decide to perform a sacrifice on her (she’s, as hard as this is to believe, a virgin as she’s “saving herself for Marilyn Manson”) which raises demons. Carnage and hilarity ensues, before main college girl escapes to find help in the form of the woman who killed them all to begin with. More carnage and hilarity ensues culminating in one of the funniest and most ridiculous endings that I’ve seen in a while.

This is a glowing review that I’m giving this film, and despite that it’s superficially one of the daftest pieces of schlock I’ve seen in a good while, there’s many a reason why. To begin with, it’s genuinely funny. Let me give an easy example, the wannabe “Lord of Darkness” is a complete fucking tool, and when he’s going to sacrifice Monica, she pulls the gag off and busts him as being a “white trash loser working in fucking Dairy Queen”. Clearly she does end up being sacrificed, but he’s got no balls whatsoever, and one of the more amusing running gags of the film is that he can’t go through with murdering someone and has to have an acolyte do it. The Demons have no such qualms, they’ll happily slaughter anyone that isn’t smart enough to get out of range.

Secondly, the film is blatantly derivative of films such as Evil Dead. There’s a shot in particular where one of the college douchebags transforms into a demon that’s straight from Raimi’s classic. It’s lifted wholesale and unabashedly. Furthermore, the blood isn’t so much thrown around as a gigantic tsunami of viscera and it doesn’t for a second resemble blood. It looks like flourescent paint. If you’re going to copy someone, then you may as well copy the best. There’s a particularly amusing scene, where college douchebag gets off his tits on ‘shrooms and attempts to collect on his promise from goth chick. Cue hilarious stoned sequence followed by excruciating blowjob, fountains of blood and a laughable transformation scene. There are plenty of genuinely funny moments- such as when the heterosexual male virgin is chained to the homosexual one, who suggests that they pop cherries to get out of being sacrificed. Funny stuff.

Furthermore, the acting in this is great. The college douchebags are all veterans of other shitty horror films (mostly of the Platinum Dunes variety) so know exactly what they’re taking the piss out of. As a result they’re all note perfect. Mendez noted that they were all under contract, and didn’t give a fuck what they were doing, but just followed his direction explicitly- provided he was fast. This is interesting, I wonder if more actors removed their heads from their asses if this approach could prove effective in other films. The real joy of the acting, though is in the Cameos. Coolio (hehehehe) plays one of the cops that shift the kids from the convent first time round, and he’s damned funny. I think intentionally, but he’s such a fucking clown it’s hard to tell. However, while this cameo is fun, the best by far is that Adrienne Barbeau makes a welcome return as demonic nun killing badass Christine. She’s a motorcycle riding badass that smokes like the smouldering remains of Lohan’s career, drinks whiskey neat and has a great line in nun decapitation, shotgun use, and wisecracks. Barbeau plays this with real relish, and the film lights up like fucking Vegas when she’s on screen.

The effects are all practical, and for the most part really good. Eyeballs pop out, faces are ripped off, entrails torn out and there’s nary a sign of CGI. Good work. The demon makeup is also quality, even if it is a bit reliant on flourescent/ UV.

As much fun as The Convent is, there’s definite negatives. Firstly, it’s short. They clearly didn’t have the material to extend it to a decent running time so didn’t bother. Part of me thinks this was a wise decision, but lots of it does feel a touch like it’s going over the same ground. Particularly the abortion scene which comes up about 3 times.

However, more importantly, the Demon effects become irritating. The initial flourescent mess looks great on first sight, but they twitch around like epileptics under strobe lighting. Not good. They also shuffle like robots and generally suck ass. And as for The Antichrist himself- he looks like shit, does fuck all bar annoy me and isn’t a great addition to the film.

Overall, would I recommend it? Unquestionably yes. It’s fucking great fun, and although seriously flawed, doesn’t hang around long enough to piss you off. Any film that opens with something as gleefully depraved as this one is worth a look, and I have to say that it’s nice to see Adrienne Barbeau in something again. Apparently the studio wanted Linda Blair (which would also have been nice) but Mendez held out for Barbeau. You don’t often see dedication like that in a schlocky film.

Recommended.

Until next time,

Jarv

“We’ll make the world safe again… for Ice Cream” 

Jarv’s Rating: 2.5 Changs out of 4. Slick and clever.  

The 80′s was a funny time indeed. It was, arguably, personified by the “Greed is good” mantra of Gordon Gecko, and consumer spending began to spiral out of control (a chicken that finally came home to rest a few years ago). The music was frankly atrocious, a fact that no amount of revisionism or kitsch nostalgia can change, and this was the start of the evolution of the Blockbuster as we know it. However, at the same time, there was a raft of low-budget schlocky films produced that had far higher pretensions than just being another schlock release. The Stuff is a fine example of this- it’s a little film with big ideas. 

I was always under the impression that I’d seen this on VHS when it was released, but when I rewatched it at the weekend, it occurred to me that I actually hadn’t. I’d seen the trailer about 95 times on other films. In a way, I’m glad that this one had passed me by, because as an 8 year old, I’m sure it would have been shit, and I really enjoyed watching it “fresh”. There’s a lot in it that doesn’t hold up, and the final third in particular runs out of steam (aside from a truly film stealing cameo from Paul Sorvino), but until that point The Stuff is a sharp and witty social satire that sinks its claws into saturation advertising, corporate greed, corrupt beaurocrats and consumerism. 

The plot of this film is almost irrelevant. It is basically just an excuse for Larry Cohen to satirise contemporary America. The film opens with an old man working in a mine somewhere in the ass end of Georgia. He happens across a suspicious looking white substance bubbling out of the ground and being a greedy old sod decides to try some. Because Americans always eat things they find on the ground. It then cuts to the near future, and “The Stuff” is a consumer phenomenon with massive sales. A group of corporate bastards working for an Ice Cream company aren’t exactly chuffed to be looking at losing a bit of their market share, so hire corporate saboteur “Mo” Rutherford (Michael Moriarty) to sort it out for them. At the same time, a kid in Long Island (Scott Bloom) has noticed that The Stuff is evil and has a negative effect on his family. He goes berserk in a Supermarket smashing every container that he can get to. The film then follows Rutherford and Nicole’s (Andrea Marcovecci) investigation which eventually leads them to crazed militia leader Colonel Spears (a hilarious Paul Sorvino), unconvincing war, and everyone lives happily ever after. Or do they?

What this plot is, actually, is an excuse for Cohen to be satirise 80′s America. The first third in particular is fucking superb, seamlessly interchanging mock adverts (that look worrying real) with the action to great effect. Jason’s family in particular are horribly creepy, resembling the worst inanimate Bisto family that Saatchi and Saatchi could possibly devise. There’s also a pleasing feel of paranoia, as it becomes apparent that nobody (including the FDA) has the slightest clue what goes into the stuff. The dialogue matches this with Jason’s mother saying weird shit like “It tastes great, AND it’s low in calories” while the family robotically shovels the crap into their mouths. Furthermore, it turns out that The Stuff is more addictive than crack and once people are eating it, they can’t stop. All they can do is shovel the foul looking food into their hungry maws. Rutherford, hilariously, keeps referring to them as “Stuffies” and the point is neatly driven home with the slogan “Enough is never enough” that appears on all the advertisements.  In all honesty, the scenes of this section following Rutherford are highly entertaining, but aren’t anywhere near as sharp as the action in suburbia.

The second section in Georgia is also both sharp and entertaining, being as it borrows extremely heavily from films such as Invasion of the Bodysnatchers”. Through events to complicated to go into, the characters discover that once you consume enough of “The Stuff” it takes you over, and your body is basically a husk for the living yoghurt to inhabit. There’s some fun action here and some genuine thrills to be had.

Then, unfortunately, there’s the final third. Once our heroic triumvirate hook up with The Colonel, the film descends into farce, and not especially interesting farce. Sorvino does chew some scenery and does deliver some hilarious dialogue, but  it’s forced and manic, and more than a little irritating. However, this section is redeemed by the film’s show stopping effect- an absolutely stunning piece of work on what was a very limited budget. It does, however, make one final attempt at satire by having Nicole try to take blame in a news segment for The Stuff as it was her marketing campaign that doomed humanity, before with a shady back street drug deal for The Stuff. Not an especially subtle close.

The acting is passable. Moriarty is a bit annoying, but aside from him, the rest of them admirably keep their end up. The score is a clever rehash of appropriate sounding ad jingles, and some first-rate tension music for the Bodysnatchers scenes. However, the effects fluctuate between absolutely superb practical work, pretty shitty stop motion and some intensely bizarre superimposition. The Stuff itself was apparently made from a combination of Haagen Dazs, Yoghurt, shaving foam and fire extinguisher foam, and does look exactly like a generic pudding.  The aforementioned show-stopping effect mentioned earlier is when The Stuff vacates a human who basically crumbles into mush- it’s a superb effect, and cleverly saved for the climax of the film.

Overall, would I recommend The Stuff? As a foodstuff? Fuck no. As a film? Fuck yes. It’s hugely entertaining and sharp as a guillotine for two thirds, and if the last third is messy and confused, it doesn’t detract from the excellent previous sections. The Stuff is a little film that aimed high on a tiny budget, and as such is, I believe, well worth a look.

Until next time,

Jarv

   We upset the balance of nature   

Jarv’s Rating: 0 Changs. I have now come to the conclusion that we need some sort of symbol such as a giant pile of graboid shit to sum up films like this. I seem to watch a lot of them, and it is somewhat irritating that I haven’t got a picture that expresses my feelings for this absolute dog of a film.   

You know what? I’m now coming to the conclusion that it must actually be quite hard to make a big fish eats people film. I mean, the amount of abject failures out there, suggests to me that it must not be as easy as “place boneheads in water, have big angry fish chomp them, preferably in amusing ways”. I know this sounds daft, because the formula seems so fucking easy, but so many film makers miss the proverbial open goal. This rotten load of garbage is a case in point.   

Megalodon is shit. There’s no beating around the bush here: it’s shit. It’s so shit that I suspect that it’s used in China to fertilise rice paddies. It’s so shit that I’m nearly certain it’s standing for election in the UK in a few weeks. It is unquestionably crap. I mean, really, how the fuck do you cock this up: it’s about a giant fucking shark for fuck’s sake.   Basically, this is the plot: An oil baron has built a 2 billion dollar giant oil rig (imaginatively called “Colossus”) for deep-sea drilling in the Arctic circle. The oil baron has decided to invite a journalist on board as a PR stunt, and his douchey, uninteresting crew accidentally crack the bottom of the ocean to reveal another fucking ocean, but this one with prehistoric life in it. Giant fucking shark breaks free, carnage and hilarity singularly fail to ensue. Shark gets killed, Jarv throws DVD out of the window to watch it pleasingly shatter against the local government building office. Jarv then remembers that it’s a Lovefilm DVD, but a moment’s consideration leads him to the conclusion that it was fucking worth it.   

There are several serious problems with this film. The first, and by far the most important is that they fucked the premise up. By basing the film in the Arctic circle, you basically guarantee that nobody is going to be in the water in any danger of being Shark Bait. Cretins.   

Secondly, this is a film about a giant angry prehistoric shark. Therefore at some point in the first hour, I’d like to see said giant angry prehistoric shark. The nearest thing to action is when one of the minor characters is bitten on the arm by a fish hiding in a pipe. This is not interesting, Aside from the fish thing, there are endless shots of the underwater elevator going up and down to the bottom really fucking slowly, and an utterly interminable section in the revealed ocean with pretty illuminated jellyfish. Fuck flourescent sea creatures, who gives a toss about them? The film is called Megalodon for fuck’s sake. Where is the fucking shark?   

Thirdly, the action in this is utterly boring. When the shark does finally make an appearance, we get lots of shots of people piloting submarines around to avoid the shark. Except it actually looks like they’re sitting on the shitter in a port-a-cabin trying to park a coil. We also get shots of the shark swimming in circles banging into the struts of Colossus, and shots of the people in the fucking glass elevator. This is so completely and utterly boring that I can barely summon up the energy to describe it. When they do find a means to have the shark eat people (smashing up through underneath an iceberg), they’re so fucking pleased with themselves that they repeat it 3 times.   

The characters are bland and uninteresting. There’s the occasional tossy monologue, or bullshit “moment” but as a rule, nothing of interest is revealed about them. The chief diver used to be a professional competitive spear fisherman (not joking) and is an environmentalist, but nobody comments that working on an oil rig is a bit hypocritical. The cameraman and the journalist were apparently really close and BFF’s (ZOMG), but this is only revealed in a cynical and exploitative close sequence, there was no indication of it in the film. The only character of any interest is the oil baron, who I think may be English, but that’s because he’s doing it for his kids. Or some such shit.   

The acting is fucking inept as well. Al Sapienza, who plays creepy environmentalist spear fishing oil company working diver, looks and sounds like a fucking paedo. His girlfriend, imaginatively called “Maz” is a boring hippy cow as well, played with great aplomb as a boring hippy cow. I could go through the whole cast with this, but there’s no real point.   

The special effects are also garbage. There’s terrible CGI galore, the shark has the gravity pull of a wafer thin mint, and the gore is laughably lame.   

Overall, would I recommend this? Abso-fucking-lutely not. Not unless you’ve got an overwhelming urge to watch boring individuals go up and down in a glass elevator, or strain to park a coil. This film is a complete waste of time, a tragically and terminally boring entry into a genre that is replete with crap.   

Megalodon: So wank that I’d rather watch a double bill of Sharks in Venice and Mega Shark v Giant Octopus.   

Complete and utter shit.   

Until next time,   

Jarv.   

Demons aren’t gonna ring the doorbell!

 Jarv’s Rating: 2.5 Changs- enjoyable 80′s fun.

 This is one that I watched a bit ago and for one reason or another never got round to reviewing properly. Seeing as I’ve watched nothing for a while, I thought I’d dig this discarded review out of the pile, polish it up a wee bit and post it for today’s vault entry. I was prompted to do this by the frankly inexplicable news that this little gem is being remade, and not only that, but the man at the helm is none other than Alex Winter: Bill S. Preston, Esquire himself. Don’t fuck this up, “dude”.

The Gate has an interesting history. It’s one of the first PG13 horror films, and was also one of the “hardest”, pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable at that level. It was helped by the fact that PG13 was a relatively new rating, and by cleverly going for this level, they managed to attract a larger audience than they would otherwise, and quite easily thrashed notorious star studded mega turkey Ishtar at the Box Office. Since then, though, it’s been shunted around distributors and is actually amazingly difficult to get hold of. Without resorting to piracy, that is.

The Gate is basically about Glenn, his sister “Al” and his best mate, Terry. They’re pretty unremarkable kids, really, being interested in shit like bottle rockets, crap music, digging holes looking for meteorites, the supernatural and in Al’s case, hormone driven teenage encounters. Unfortunately for them, their garden happens to be over a hellmouth, and through a series of unfortunate events they accidentally complete the ritual to release Lovecraftian “old ones” to wreak havoc on the world. Terry knows this, because a shitty European LP tells him, but only because (in a nod to the notorious subliminal “backmasking” nonsense at the time) he played the record backwards.

The acting in this film is surprisingly good. Stephen Dorff puts in arguably his lifetime’s performance as Glenn, and the other child actors hold up their end reasonably well. There’s a frankly hilarious scene with nerdy Terry playing air guitar to the unspeakable Euro-rock (could have been worse, he could have got hold of a Scorpions album- then the world would have been fucked) and he’s also able to convincingly portray a hurt and confused kid with serious parental problems. It’s a good effort.

The writing is also reasonably sharp. I can’t help but wonder if the backmasking reference in this film wasn’t inspired by the idiocy aimed at Led Zeppelin by fundamentalists- which would fit considering the LP is “from Europe”, because it’s cleverly done and amusing that the instructions to save the world would be only available if you play it backwards. As opposed to the accusations that Stairway has “It’s my sweet Satan … Oh I will sing because I live with Satan” on it. Which is clearly bollocks. Incidentally, this nonsense reached a peak in 1990 when Judas Priest were sued by 2 Nevada families over the allegedly subliminal message in one of their songs that caused the two sons to off themselves. If you can ever find the footage of the trial, it’s absolutely fucking hilarious. The singer tries to demonstrate in court and it sounds like “Chewing gum” before he breaks down and asserts that if they were going to plant a message it would be “buy more records”.

Anyhow, I digress. The other cleverness in the writing is that the childhood trauma suffered by the kids is handled deftly and sympathetically. Terry in particular has serious problems, and Glenn’s father tries to explain it as gently as he can to Glenn. This is a great touch, and there’s plenty of them in the film.

The real show stopper of the Gate though is that it has absolutely superb effects. They were great at the time, and the blend of stop-motion and other work hasn’t aged badly at all. Whereas CGI tends to look out of date by the time you’ve left the theatre, the effects in these older films usually manage to last a lot longer than the shiny superficial computer driven nonsense.

However, there’s just one thing to point out about The Gate that stops it gettnig a higher rating: it isn’t scary. It wasn’t scary in the 80′s and it isn’t scary now. Unfortunately, they didn’t realise that they didn’t have the juice to scare the crap out of the audience, and as a result, The Gate is played as a straight horror. If there had been a few more intentional laughs in it, or even accidental ones, then the film would be much, much better. Either that or the gore and terror should have been ramped up, if they were aiming for horror, as what we are left with is neither one thing or the other. A shame.

Overall, would I recommend it? Yup, unquestionably. The demons are great fun, and it’s an enjoyable kiddie-aimed romp. There’s nothing in it that would scare a nervous Twilight fan, but there is plenty that can be enjoyed. It’s a funny thing to say about a horror film, but this is as close as the genre ever got to good gentle fun. It’s the horror Goonies.

And Bill, dude, I really mean this: don’t fuck this up.

Until next time,

Jarv