The first little pig built his House of the Dead

"They missed the boat to the rave. If only they'd decided to stay back in Seattle..."

HOUSE OF THE DEAD (Brightlight Pictures, 2003)

Uwe Boll is a notoriously bad director...or is he? He somehow manages to land medium-sized franchises, like a video game property, that has name recognition and popularity. At the end of a predetermined amount of time he turns in a finished product, usually under budget, that draws crowds and makes the investors their money back. So why is he so universally despised? I guess we'd better go find out.

While nearly EVERY movie Uwe Boll (pronounced Oo-wee Bowel) has made will end up in the Antipreservation Archive at some point, I thought I'd give myself a treat for the holidays and view one I hadn't seen before: House of the Dead, based on the 1996 arcade game of the same name. Really? It took them seven years to put this out? The game has no discernible plot - you point a lightgun at the screen and shoot zombies. That's it. What, was the script just not capturing the essence of that? Anyway, with no story to follow, I'm curious what they'll come up with.








Oh.

One of the big things that people laugh at about this movie is when it inexplicably switches to footage of the game itself - mid 90's polygonal graphics that could never, EVER be mistaken for real actors - right in the middle of a scene. Sometimes it's used as a transition, and sometimes it's used to "enhance" the "action." Either way, it's terribly jarring, hokey, and blatant...but also kinda ballsy. Uwe Boll (pronounced Ooh-Vee Bawl) is kinda saying "I wasn't gonna finish that shot. Look at this for 1.32 seconds instead." We're first treated to the CG shenanigans 40 seconds into the film, after a 20 second voiceover uses the word "death" three times in a single sentence. A rave sequence acts as the background to the opening credits, which contain a surprising number of names I'm familiar with - Jurgen Prochnow, Clint Howard (AWESOME), Tyrone Leitso, and...Production Design by Tink? Tink? Perhaps if we clap our hands, this movie won't suck.

We open with a quick breakdown of the main characters by the voiceover, which utilizes freeze-frames and swishing sounds while explaining the quirky love triangles between them, or whatever the hell it's talking about. All of these people are going to die, I really don't care if Cynthia loves Greg, or Simon only has eyes for Alicia. Moving on.

Our horny and vapid leads are trying to get to a rave they found advertised on one of those postcards you used to find on the bulletin board at the coffee house, only instead of in an empty warehouse, this one's on an island. And it's apparently sponsored by Sega, judging from the signs everywhere. Way to kill off your customers by putting them on an island filled with the undead, Sega! No wonder you don't make consoles anymore. Our "young and sexy" fodder (they're all kinds of different ages) missed the boat to the shindig, so they need to charter one. This leads to the introduction of my two favorite characters in the whole fiasco, Captain Kirk and his First Mate Salish, played by Jurgen Prochnow and Clint Howard, respectively. These two really had fun with their roles, as they ham it up for the entire duration. Prochnow even has some passable action scenes, if you can believe it. The guy described by Mysterious Voiceover Dude as "not having much between the ears" offers the intrepid fisherman (actually smugglers) $1000 to take them to a party that probably would have cost $30 at the door...which is still a rip. Unless they're giving out free Dreamcasts?

(Watch the scene here)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TvAEADzFJQ

Immediately following is one of my favorite sequences in the movie: the first topless scene, which is a recreation of the opening scene from Jaws...as directed by Uwe Boll (pronounced Ah-vy Bael). Oh, but there's a twist! It's not the girl in the water that gets it, it's the guy on the beach! You didn't see that coming, did you? Fifteen minutes in is the first "official" splice of the video game graphics, but they're just going to keep coming, people. Our zombies finally appear briefly, which is fortunate as they sort of resemble the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal. Did I mention this movie is ranked #53 on IMDB's Bottom 100 list? Awesome.

The teens/20somethings/whatevers make the island while a lady cop pursues the Captain, but they manage to hide all their plundered booty before the fuzz arrives. Get it? They're pirates! And Ron Howard's brother is wearing a slicker like the killer from I Know What You Did Last Summer (Oh, we'll get to you)! The group wanders through the "Bog of Eternal Stench" from Labyrinth, finally making it to the "Sonic the Hedgehog" themed rave, which is comprised of a bunch of trashed circus tents. Because that's what a rave is like. So, we have a bunch of kids piecing together a mystery, some pirates, a cop, an isolated island, monsters, people in rain slickers, boats, woods, a cemetery...Oh my God, Uwe Boll has made a long, bad episode of Scooby Doo!

A couple of morons on the island get knocked off while Captain Kirk kicks some swimming zombie ass on his boat...wait, while I was typing that she said it! She actually said Scooby Doo, holy crap! It just must be on purpose, because nothing else explains this. Though really, as the main group finds an abandoned mansion, this movie becomes more like Resident Evil than that Milla Jovovich movie did - it's ridiculous, badly scripted and acted, and filled with zombies. The difference is, the first Resident Evil game did it on purpose. There are Romero references made, almost like the movie is saying "Give me credit, I'm hip!" Terrible. One of the new characters (some survivors from the rave) is a girl named Liberty - and, I shit you not, she is wearing a leotard patterned after the American flag. She knows martial arts and shit, because she's Asian. Another newbie is a guy found in an overturned Port-A-Potty. Shit jokes ensue. The Lady Cop finally shows up to save the day by shooting first and asking questions later, and the action, um, proceeds. One of the monsters spits acid on a dude's face, like Giger's Alien. That's a new one. The Zed Word (aka Zombie) is finally uttered, before we're treated to a flashback shot in monochrome about some pirates that explains that...wait, what? All these zombies on the island are PIRATE ZOMBIES. This is freaking great, I can't wait for the ninjas to show up!

Uwe Boll (pronounced Ew-Wee Boah) rips off all kinds of movies for his action sequences, but they all turn out looking like the production team from Xena: Princess Warrior trying to ape The Matrix. Something utilized WAY too often is that weird 360 degree "turntable" camera effect that spins around the actors frozen in an "action pose." Apparently, this was the last movie to use the device that made that effect possible without digitization, as the machinery involved was deemed a hazard to the actors. Good thing he only used it, like, 53 times! The now-legendary cemetery battle, clocking in at 10 + minutes, has some fine moments in cinematic history, mostly because of the generic rap/techno song, gratuitous violence, video-game footage inserts, Liberty's best Charlie's Angels impression, and the way they OH MY GOD THERE'S THE NINJA! It's like this movie can read my mind; one of the zombies is a martial-artist. He does flips and throws a hatchet and stuff. Most agile dead person ever.

Lady cop (with a name like Casper, she's bound to become a ghost, right?) gets her legs chopped off surprisingly fast (and almost surgically precise) in the effort to get into the old house, and some other people buy it, too. I don't even care anymore. The guy that was revealed as Mysterious Voiceover Dude, and therefore is our hero, lets a BUNCH of women die through his inaction - and usually badly. He's really not so great. Unfortunately, we know he's going to live, because he and the other white chick were given an extra 20 seconds of quipping together, in a cozy little two-shot. They're gonna live, because they're 20 seconds funnier than everyone else.

More bad dialog takes place, some awkward kisses ensue...wait, is this a topless movie, or a romantic comedy, or a horror flick? Make up your mind, movie! Eh, whatever it is, it has my favorite zombie since Bub (of Day of the Dead) in it - Clint Howard returns as Salish: The Whistling Zombie! I'm not kidding! Jurgen Prochnow puts him down swiftly, just before sacrificing himself with some dynamite and one of his signature "sea captain" cigars. Oh, but wait, they aren't all zombie pirates, because there's a lab that has some blood in it or something, according to a self-appointed "scientist" character, as well as a stock of gunpowder, which comes into play later when another character sacrifices himself by shooting it and blowing up the entryway...even though it's in a wooden barrel, and a nine-millimeter round wouldn't...nevermind.

We're pared down to the typical last three, but you know damn well the black chick is gonna die. And she does, as she's groped to death in a tunnel by moss covered tree people from a Middle-Earth convention. But fear not, because our surviving white people are rescued by a guy in a cape with a sword, who looks like he just got back from a long weekend LARPing with his guild buddies. But he turns out to be a piecemeal freak wearing a dead persons face (who would kinda serve as the final boss in a videogame, if this were one). He has a bunch of bad dialog about being immortal, there are more bad flashbacks (where it turns out that he was involved the whole time), and some more stuff happens. The last woman bites it in a sword fight that looks like a Matrix Meets The Three Musketeers mess, bringing our hero Rudy's death count to three women, and at least two men. But she comes back to save his bacon in one last heroic act, of course. So, the slime lives. Oh, then she does too, somehow. Nevermind, Rudy, you're off the hook.

A chopper lands (of course) and the characters from the first game emerge. It's all over...or is it? I guess not, as there were at least two sequels to this garbage, and the games somehow managed to survive the bad name of Uwe Boll (pronounced Ew-we, ew-we baby, ew-we, ew-we baby, ew-we, ew-we baby, won'tyouletmetakeyouonaseacruise), with a House of the Dead game coming out on the Wii this very year.

I bet Sega is proud of this one.



We'll be looking at Mr. Boll again in the future, but is he the worst director ever born? No, but he comes close, simply by strapping steadicams on running zombies. That's just...weird.

She's Too Young...for made for television movies

She's Too Young (Lifetime Original, 2004)




Oh, dear. Where to start? Tom McLoughlin, who helmed one of the better "Friday" movies, takes on an even scarier subject than Jason Vorhees - the modern teenager! Or rather, the idea of teenagers, as penned by an amazingly out-of-touch middle-aged white guy: Richard Kletter, who teaches at the USC School of Cinematic arts. What does he teach? SCREENWRITING! Yes, you too can learn how to shove dialogue into your characters' mouths that's so unwieldy, they'll choke on it! Immortal lines like "Hey guess what guys I have Syphilis." Don't worry, we'll get to that shortly.

Our little journey into TV movie Hell begins by explaining that everything we are about to witness is fictional and bears no resemblance to reality whatsoever. Well, at least they can admit it. We're treated to a montage of tweens looking in mirrors, making themselves "pretty," which is inter cut with shots of magazine models and "sexy" imagery, all set to an annoyingly sugary pop song. We meet our cliched "permissive mom," who says things like "Hey girlfriend!" to her 14 year old daughter. Archetypes are quickly established - there's our sweet girl, our slut, their bumbling parental units, and the scuzzy older boy I like to refer to as...wait a minute, MARK SNOW? Mark Snow, the composer from The X-Files? He did the music for this? THAT'S AWESOME! I bet it'll be good.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. "Patient Zero," AKA Nick. He's the guy that every girl wants to be with...and he's been with them all. Not five minutes into this crap, the following exchange takes place.

Becca: "Where's the glove?"
Nick: "Uh, damn, I forgot. I could go out and get one and you could do like, English homework while I'm gone."
Becca: *Takes off pants*

I love these characters! Marcia Gay Harden plays the good girl's mom. We're supposed to view her as overbearing, overprotective, and intrusive, when in fact she only behaves as any reasonable parent in this situation would. It's the situation itself that is unbelievable, as we move from an early '90s after-school special straight into a horror film. All of a sudden, we're in the middle of freaking "Outbreak," as Nick spreads Syphilis to damn near every girl in the school. This begins to come clear when Hannah, our cello playing shy girl, starts to date Nick, and her friend Becca makes a trip to the school nurse. Will Becca warn Hannah about her cankers? The suspense is killing me.

Time and time again this movie beats its points into us like a sledgehammer. If you speak to your daughter, she'll rebel. If you ignore your daughter, she'll rebel. If you have unprotected sex, Nick will give you the Syph. Ah, make up your mind! Nick finally bullies our sweet Hannah into going down on him, as we all know that oral sex isn't real sex, right? Oh, but it is, and the parents in this movie are going to inform you of it at least 27 times. I may have head trauma from the sheer blunt force of the message.

So, Becca finally comes clean to her friends during a joint-babysitting session ("Hey guess what guys, I have Syphilis!"), but it's too little too late. Our heroine realizes what a skag Nick is when he tries to pressure her into a three-way with one of his (fully fleshed out, complicated and realistic) friends. She mopes around for awhile, and we're treated to some more of Marcia Gay Harden's suspicious glances.

The school begins a treatment plan for the infected kids, though most are too embarrassed to come forward (You slept with Nick? Eeeeeeeew). Of course, none of the boys take any notice, and continue to spread disease amongst the population...this is seriously on par with "The Hot Zone," or any number of contagion-based films. There's even a map with pins in it, showing how it could become an epidemic. Awesome! Family drama ensues amongst the principal players when the school sends home "a letter," and parents begin to put two and two together.

Then, we finally get a sequence I approve of - Hannah looks up Syphilis on America Online, and we're treated to a brief montage of diseased bodies set to the music of Bach. Throw away the rest of this movie, and show kids two hours of THAT footage. Shit, according to the movie, everything is gonna be okay, as soon as you get the vaccine (I'm pretty sure syphilis is bacterial? Wuh?)! In fact, there are never any consequences for any of your actions, because all you have to do is get a shot! Don't worry about pregnancy (there's a shot for that) or AIDS (there's a shot for that) or any other consequence unprotected sex could bring (because there's a shot for that). Did they forget we've just been bashed about the head for two hours with the DON'T HAVE SEX message? Because, seriously, it's almost like at the end, they turn around and say "Oh, that stuff? That stuff we were telling you? Nevermind...there's a shot for that."

But don't worry...there's more! After the hoopla at school, the girls get together to discuss sex ("I'm a 14 year old sexpert!") and get blitzed off a single wine cooler. The "permissive mom" catches them, and Hannah is berated by her father in a scene where he finally does something besides sit in the background and look dumb. Marcia Gay Harden, having had enough, begins an information campaign (more like a crusade) to get all the parents on the same page. This portion is actually watchable, as we come up against all the cliched grown-ups that want to enforce abstinence and turn a blind eye to their children's' realities. Most Lifetime Original productions feature these types of characters, but they've always lacked a Marcia Gay Harden shrieking in their faces. The town's population is so upset with her meddling that, I shit you not, there is actually a scene where a bunch of teens try to run Hannah and her mom off the road! I love this movie.

While our hero-mom is finally getting through to some of the sheep-like adults, the various kids make their way to a party. A party where all the boys sit around watching porn (wait...what?!?) Hannah is visiting her gay friend (did I not mention him? Oh, yeah, he likes her for her, or something. Except that he's gay), and she tries to get in his pants. That's what boys want, right? He spurns her advances, being gay and all, and she runs off in shame...to the party. Why? Why not just go home? Your mom is out looking for you, she's not there. Every time you leave your room your life becomes a giant clusterfuck. GO HOME! Ugh.

So, there's this typical teenage party, right? The one with a bunch of people watching a live sex show in the living room? One of Nick's friends tries to rape Hannah, Nick looks shocked but does nothing, and the gay friend shows up just in time to save her...with his cell phone. Attempted rape of a 14 year old? I love this movie! Becca (or is it Dawn? I can't tell them apart) starts to reconnect with her immature mother, while upstairs her little sister goes through her slutty clothes and inspects herself in the mirror, echoing the opening sequence. Set-up for a sequel? Hannah gets tucked into bed by her mother, because everything is okay now.

The End.

Did Tom McLoughlin have a stroke before filming this? The first ten minutes has enough swish pans, quick cuts, and blurry MTV-style editing to make a jet pilot nauseous. The music is a terrible mash of pop and rap songs with lyrics that spell out exactly what is happening on screen, while the one piece of original music sounds like one of those preset demos on a Casio keyboard (way to go, Mark Snow). The acting is so overwrought I want to force Valium on half the cast, and the words coming out of their mouths are so unrealistic that we've lapped "laughable" and gone all the way around to "terrifying." What is the message we're supposed to take away from this? Sex is bad? But there's a shot for that? And after you're cured, Brad will rape you? What the hell was I supposed to learn from this hot mess?

I'll let Patient Zero have the last word. On Nick and Hannah's first date, he takes her home to watch a movie.

Nick (watching from the couch): "This is really bad."

Yes, Nick. It really, really is.

Hell Comes to Frogtown - Ribbit!

If you had asked me if I would be able to sit through a movie about a man whose penis was the property of the government, I would have said "hell no!" so quickly your head would spin. 

I made it through though, and I feel as if i deserve a badge, or a medal or something, for not turning it off before it was finished.

Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988) is a movie about post nuclear war america.  The plot goes something like this...  In the ten years post nuke, most of the population is sterile, and a large percentage of the men on earth were killed in the war itself.  This makes fertile men REALLY important to the new, female run, government.  In addition to all the death and sterilization, there are radiation created mutants... frog mutants... who live on reservations and drink green beer.

 Into the mix they throw wrestling legend "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, sans the "Rowdy", as Sam Hell (yeah... really.), one of the last fertile men on the planet.  They strap this contraption, kind of a government issued chastity belt, on over his junk, and charge him with spreading his seed far and wide, to help repopulate the country.

 

The catch is that his handler, Spangler, has control over his contraption, and can shock him or arm the plastique explosive that is in the belt, blowing his bits to...erm... bits at any time.

ouch!

Their first stop ends up being a mutant reservation called Frogtown, where a group of mutants, led by a dude named Toaty who has captured a group of fertile females.

It all goes downhill from there.

Now I can't really harp too much on production values, as the special effects, such as they are, are pretty well done.  I mean, as silly of an idea as mutant frogs may be, the prosthetics are really good.  They talk, blink their froggy eyes, and generally go around being entertaining.

 She is HOT!

 

He looks backed up, honestly.

If I can't pick on them, then I have to turn to another aspect of the movie that makes it so horrible.

Oh! The plot!

Ignoring the fact that nuclear war would most likely result in total ahnihilation, it is effective as a prod for a story.  And I might have been inclined to believe that it would cause mutations, even of the frog variety, but I have a hard time swallowing the fact that people were just turned into these frog monsters.  And that the aformentioned frog mutants would congregate in what looks like an old smelting factory.  And that the previously alluded to frog creatures would develop an old west style society, with a dash of eastern mistique thrown in (the harem of fertile women) for flavor.

Whatever

Poor Roddy Piper.  I wonder if he read the script before he signed up for the film.  I mean, who pitched this to him?

"Listen, Roddy, in one scene you get to have fake sex with a dirt smeared fertile woman who has been drugged into insensibility by your female superior, while the other chicks look on!  It looks nothing like date rape!"

"Later on Roddy, you convince a frog woman that you'll sleep with her if she would just put a bag over her head!  Just like you do with all your women now!"

I just can't imagine.  The movie HAS a plot, just a tasteless one.

Some high (or low) points:

• The pink vagina mobile.  Women now run the world, to hell with camoflague!  We want to drive around in loud pink trucks!

• Dialogue!
  "we're gonna get 'em out, and you're gonna get 'em pregnant."
  
  "maybe you oughta try makin love to a complete stranger in the middle of a hostile environment, see how you like it!"

• The silly dance sequence where Hell's handler is "performing" for the leader of the mutant reservation.  This is supposed to be erotic, but it just looks like some kind of interpretive dance depicting a dying goose!

• The final battle between Toaty and Hell is so reminiscent of the classic Shatner/Lizard Man fight from the original Star Trek you can't help but laugh.
  

I first ran into this movie (or rather... it ran into me) on USA's Up All Night.  I think I fell asleep then.  Now, Up All Night could definately produce an endless supply of blog fodder, with their consistent supply of bad B movies, but this one is near the bottom of the barrell.  Having actually watched the thing from beginning to end, I can say that this movie needs to die... but not before you watch the trailer, because everyone deserves a laugh.

Evil Toons - Don't drink the Boone's Farm!

The year is 1992, and a man, Fred Olen Ray, has a vision.  A vision of another great mixed media film.  A film to rival Who Framed Rodger Rabbit in the animation/live action genre.

Evil Toons is the result.

Though to be honest, Evil Toons should just be called Evil Toon, as there is only one animated character, and he is only present for, at best, three minutes.

The plot, such as it is, consists of an evil book, a bevy of bouncy chicks, and David Carradine.

The WTF starts early, during the opening credits.  What is this? Demon salad tossing? Keepin' it classy, that is for sure.

The opening scene is oddly prophetic, considering how Carradine met his end.  With a swell of dramatic music, he places a noose round his neck and hangs himself.  Ouch.

Once again we are greeted with stilted dialogue, delivered woodenly and over emoted to the point of hilarity.  There are several references to pretty girls meeting their end in horror movies.  "Why do things always have to start with the young, beautiful coeds going down into the basement?" "Why is it, when there are pretty girls in a big spooky house, it has to thunder and lightening?" "I'll get you in the sequel you bitch!"

When talking about the dialogue, it can't be ignored that at several times during the movie, dialogue is just added in, without regard to what is actually happening onscreen.  It is understandable considering the movie was made in eight days with the equipment and crew from another production.  Post  must have been a challenge, though one would have thought they would have went to some effort to match things up.  It almost ends up looking like a bad japanese overdub, with speech seemingly emanating from characters whose mouths are not even moving the teeniest bit.

They took a line from looney toons with the sound effects, with over the top crashes and beeps and bloops, with hilarious results.  Really, during a scene where a girl is doing a strip tease (for the other girls for no reason, mind you) she tosses her top to the side, and you hear glass breaking.  I know it was the early nineties, but undergarments weren't that heavy duty!  It just gets worse after that.

Leaving the plot (such as it is) and the dialogue (such as IT is) alone, we are left with what is basically a B movie boob fest, with the entire movie one big set up for the next scene where the girls can take their tops off.  Now I'm not one to complain about boobs, but even I have to draw the plausibility line somewhere.

A few high points make this movie watchable (barely).

• The character played by Dick Miller (who is the only good performer in the film, really) is watching A Bucket of Blood, in which Miller himself starred.  The comment "How come this guy never won an academy award?" is hilariously delivered, totally deadpan.

• Dick Miller once again, getting his junk bitten off in his death scene.  Bet that looked great on the old resume.

• The Scooby Doo wimpery sniveling!  I kept expecting someone to say "zoinks!", though it never happened.  

• Unnatural sleeping positions.  Who lays like this?  Did no one notice she is laid out like she is already on a slab?  Come on!

All of the horror aside, this movie goes above and beyond to be cheesy and over the top, and they almost make it work.  Almost.  The fact that the girls almost all ended up working in the adult entertainment industry is testament to the quality of the acting. (Your face would melt, looking at the places my research took me on the 'net, trying to find out where they are now.)  You can definately take this movie off your must watch list, though check out the trailer, because at least that is entertaining.

Not a great bouquet - Flowers in the Attic

I will never forget the first time I came across V.C. Andrews. I was twelve years old and browsing the bookshelf of my aunt's, and I came across a book whose cover caught my eye.

Yes, it was Flowers in the Attic. 

I pulled the book from the shelf and spent the rest of the afternoon sitting cross legged on the bed, transported to a world of untouchable excess and incest.

Yes, incest.

Looking back now, I was much too young to be reading something like that (where were my parents! Oh, my sullied youth!), but once I finished the book, I was hooked.  I NEEDED to find out what happened to the children after the last page was turned!  Luckily for me, Andrews was a prolific writer, and there was no shortage of books penned that followed the same basic formula of excess, loss, and sex.

I was kept busy for quite awhile.

Eventually I moved on, and my tastes matured.

Many years later, I came across a video cassette in a dusty box at a garage sale.  Nestled in the bottom of the box was a tape, marked twenty five cents.

"Flowers in the Attic"?! I exclaimed to myself.  They made a movie based on a book I so well remembered!

I threw the quarter at the old lady on the porch and ran to my car with my find, eager to get home and pop it in.

An hour and a half later, I was ready to claw my eyes out and stick pins in my ears.

What the hell had they done to the story?!  It was only dimly related to the book! The character's names were the same, and the basic plot was similar, but they left out so much of what made the story a page turner back in the day. 

I'm willing to forgive that though.  I don't hold the story in such high esteem (its about incest for the love of it all, how good can a formula romance about incest be?) that I want things to be exact.  As long as the movie is good!

This wasn't.

Jeffery Bloom did the script treatment, and also directed the film.  Up until this point, Mr. Bloom had been involved with mostly TV stuff.  Well, there was that movie, Blood Beach, but that is a post for another day.

The film opens with a voice over by Cathy, the eldest daughter, played by Kristy Swanson (who has been pretty prolific in television post Flowers).  Whoever the sound guy was, they failed.  It sounds as if she is speaking with the microphone IN her mouth for the entire voice over. 

Then there is the creepy daddy angle.  We are treated to a variety of shots of Cathy in what might be compromising positions with her father.

 We are left to assume that she is the favorite of her father's for a very special reason.  In the background, they always show her mother, looking on with disapproval.

The father dies somehow, and now we have a single mother with four children who must go crawling back to her childhood home, where her overbearing mother waits to welcome her back with a bullwhip.

Yup.  A bullwhip.

On the bus headed to their grandparents house, we are treated to this wonderful bit of dialogue:

Cathy: Mother should have prepared us for something like this.

Chris: What do you mean?

Cathy: She never allowed us to have a dog... or a kitten.

Chris: What's that got to do with anything?

Cathy: Because pets DIE Christopher! And if we had had a pet, we would have learned something about that!


Yes... A dead pet is the perfect training tool for the loss of a parent.  I need to go get a hamster or something.

The premise from this point out is that the kids are locked into a suite in this giant house, with access to an attic, while their mother tries to win back the love of her dying father.

So now we are stuck with four kids to carry the weight of the story.  Okay, I don't mind.  The two little ones, Cory and Carrie (played by Ben Ganger and Lindsay Parkey), are so young that they are fed a line at a time so they don't flub.  This leads to a choppy series of cuts back and forth between the little one uttering a line, and a reaction shot from someone else.  At times it is dizzying.

I'm not going to bore you with the rest of the plot (trust me, you would be bored), so I'm going to hit the high (or.. is it low?) points for you.

• The random groundskeeper/dog handler/handyman.  Why are we treated to random shots of him staring angrily out of a window? 

• Horrible wigs.  I've seen better fare in costume shops, and those are cheaply made.

• The ability of the elder brother, Christopher, to divine that they are being poisoned with arsenic, using an old microscope and some dusty reference books.  Hey, wish I could do that! 

• The kids constant reference to their grandmother as "THE grandmother".  Not really a big deal, but it got on my last nerve the five hundredth time I heard it. (Another robotic Nurse Ratched performance from Louise Fletcher, but what works in One Flew falls flat here.)
  

• The score! Holy hell.  At the beginning of the movie Cathy gets a music box from her father, and we hear the same damn refrain throughout the whole film, with dramatic swells and squealing string sections during such dramatic events as... walking down the stairs.

• At the climax of the movie, Cathy is shoving a broken cookie in her mother's face, yelling "EAT IT MOTHER! EAT THE COOKIE!". This causes her mother to fall to her death.

• Cathy does another mic in the mouth voice over at the end of the movie, talking about how she got a job to put her brother, Christopher (oh mighty arsenic discoverer), through med school.  After being locked in the attic for who knows how long, poisoned, and uneducated, just what was she doing to put him through school? I'm not sure I want to know.

Interesting to note, an alternate adaptation of the novel was penned by renowned horror writer/director Wes Craven back when the book was being shopped, but this was passed over for Bloom's by a studio that was afraid to be up front with the incest and rape present in the original story (innuendo, and faint innuendo at that is all we are treated to). 

I had a chance to read through Craven's script, and I can say I dearly wish it had been produced.  Written just after the first Nightmare on Elm Street, it is full of witticisms and humor, and doesn't shy away from the harder subjects the book tackles.

V.C. Andrews died just before the film was released in 1986, but was reported as saying she was not happy with the finished product.

Neither should you be.

A New Beginning for cynicism

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning



With Jason done in "once and for all" at the end of "The Final Chapter," the producers of this now iconic series found themselves in a quandary - the villain was vanquished, but these films were still making a great profit on the turnaround. What to do? This is how we find ourselves staring down the gaping maw of "A New Beginning."

Our film starts with a reasonably done dream sequence, shot in Corey Feldman's backyard, in which he reprises his role as Tommy from Part 4. Some random teenage idiots dig up Jason's grave, while little Tommy Jarvis watches from the trees. Jason, who just happens to be buried at ground level, clad in his hockey mask and grasping a weapon in each hand, awakens and makes quick work of the disrespectful douchebags who dared to disturb his sleep. Noticing Tommy in the treeline, he hefts his machete, and approaches in his usual menacing way. Tommy stares, horrified, while the rain mists his glasses, and finds himself unable to move. As Jason looms, he begins to scream...and I've now described the only scene in this entire movie worth seeing. The rest of the flick follows a teenage Tommy as he arrives at his new home, and people start dropping like flies, as per the formula.

It's true that these films are formula pictures, but don't let that fool you; done correctly, a formula can be quite entertaining. I refer here to your James Bond or Rocky-type flicks: we all know what to expect, and that often is part of the fun. But "writers" Martin Kitrosser, David Cohen, and Danny Steinmann seemed to have missed the point; the fun, corny dialogue of the previous films is replaced with vulagarity, the novel "jump scares" of the first two films are replaced with gore, and the subtle sexuality of the teens in the originals is traded in for gratuitous T&A. That campy humor I so loved in the early sequels? It became gross overgeneralizations of unwholesome, disgusting characters, and that's what we're left with for our comic relief. A prime example are the white trash Ethel and her son Junior, who utter such memorable lines as "He hurt me, Ma," and Ethel threatening the sherrif by screaming "I got a bomb on me!"



This is supposed to be funny? It hurts my soul a little.

Practically 2/3 of the characters in this movie are pathetic examples of human beings, and we're exposed to their depravity from the very beginning. The aide that delivers the teenage Tommy Jarvis to the Pinewood Youth Development Center (some kind of strange home for disturbed and wayward youth, where most of the "action" takes place) does this disturbing thing with his tongue behind actress Melanie Kinnaman's back...and that's just in the first five minutes. From the paramedic who laughs at a teenagers dismembered corpse, to the antics of Ethel and Junior, and even to the slimey Mayor himself, no sense of common decency goes unchallenged in this movie. While the first movies were sort of potboiler/thrillers that loved to pay off a gag with what they called "a magic trick," this one just revels in all the wrong things. Knowing that co-writer/director Danny Steinmann had a background in the adult film business, I more liken this outing to something I refer to as "murder porn." The fact that it was pretty much butchered by the MPAA upon release is only the more upsetting, considering that what made it to the screen was already more than over the top. Also, seriously lacking in this film are the strong females we'd so loved in the previous films. There wasn't really a heroine to cheer on, unless you count the 12 year old kid. No, I contend that Pam survives out of sheer luck, and the rest of the women are only here to be naked for a bit, and then to be dead for a bit.

A lot of people dislike this one because (spoiler) it's not Jason at all, but a copycat killer. I happen to think that was a great idea, a fun bit of misdirection, but the people wanted their masked slasher, God love 'em. No, what bothered me was that the guy behind the mask had no motive whatsoever. So, your candy bar obsessed kid was chopped up
with an axe by a woodchopping lunatic? Great, go get him! Oh, wait, he's in jail. I guess I'd better off two greasers working on their car! Yeah, that makes sense. Hell, Jason himself had better reasons for his rampages than that!

I'm hard on the director, but there were two shots (aside from the opening) that I did genuinely enjoy: One is a closeup of Junior's snot and blood-covered face as he rides manically around in circles on his bike, and the other is when the camera is mounted behind a flashing police light, "Naked Gun" style. Yes, this is the work of a true autuer.



And that's about the best acting in the whole movie...nah, the Doctor (played by the guy that gives young Indy his hat in "Last Crusade") really wasn't that bad. I also must give kudos to composer Harry Manfredini, who once again turned in an incredible score. It's just too bad they had NO IDEA where to place it! I refer here to a driving scene, with suspenseful strings behind it...but there's no tension. There's no kill. They're driving a car, and it's scored like a chase scene.

Ultimately, this movie raises more questions than it answers. Where the hell did Tommy learn Kung Fu? Why is the killers mask, which should be evidence, in Tommy's bedside drawer? For that matter, why is there a butcher knife in a hospital room? Why does the punk rocker chick do a pop and lock/mime dance to a synthpop song? And why, during the traditional "cat jumps out and scares you" scene, did they feel it necessary to fling a cat, from offscreen, headfirst at a table? And finally, why did I pay money for this sleaze?

I contend that this movie should be scoured from the Earth, and the producers agreed - the inevitable sequel completely ignores the fact that it ever existed, and so should we all.

The Unborn - Should have been aborted.

It seems that everything Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes production company had taken on up to this point had been a remake of a piece of my childhood.  From The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Friday the 13th, you could expect that the movies would be obviously predictable (I mean, we knew the stories already right?), but entertaining nonetheless.

Enter David Goyer's The Unborn.  This was, to quote the producers, “Just what we had been looking for in an original script.” Granted, I would have had high hopes too, coming from the man who wrote the screenplay for Dark City, The Dark Knight, and a slew of other films.  The Unborn, however, ends up being a horrible mishmash of posession/jewish exorcism/nazi experiments/fetal demise/ugh.  (Can you believe that Goyer compared his script to the likes of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist?!)

Being a huge Gary Oldman fan, I went into this willing to look PAST whatever shortcomings there were, and just sit back and be stupidly entertained for an hour and a bit. 

I just couldn't.

Odette Yustman plays the main character, Casey, and I have to wonder if Megan Fox was too booked or too expensive for them to woo with the script. Odette is a veritable clone of Fox, almost down to the cow eyed looks she splashes across the screen with such frequency.  It doesn't matter who they cast in the role at the end of the day though, because the STORY is just so badly done, no amount of professionalism or oscar worthy acting can save it.

So here is the premise of the film, some chick starts having weird encounters with strange potato bugs, starts seeing blue gloves laying in the street, her eye starts to turn blue, and it all turns out to have been because she had a twin that died in utero.  A twin who wants to be born now.  A twin named Jumby. (Jumby?)

But wait! That isn't all there is to the story! It ALSO has to do with Nazi experiments on twins during the war!  Don't forget about the Dybbuk angle, which it seems they tried to tie in with the whole dead in utero twin thing, but only half heartedly.  Oh! And this is all supposed to tie in with the fact that Casey is pregnant (though she doesn't know it until the end of the movie, and with one “baby-makin” scene in the whole film, in the middle of the film, after things have already started to go all wonky, I'm not sure how the audience is supposed to just understand that a pregnancy is totally the reason it is all crazy up in there.  One of the funniest quotes of the movie, unrelated except tangentially, is Romy, the token black friend, talking to Casey in the opening scenes about one of Casey's dreams: “That your vagina is completely disease infested.”  This in response to Casey wondering what it all means.  They then share a laugh that can only be replicated by two chicks who have gone shopping for douche together.)

The story line is so fragmented and nonsensical that it doesn't even really pay to try and make sense of the strings that tie everything together.  The story can really take a back seat, though as long as you don't mind sitting through five minutes of exposition to get to a special effect or a predictable jump.

The special effects aren't bad.  Mostly CGI and quick shots of disturbing images, but interesting.  As long as you like upside down headed dogs, people crab walking on the stairs (a la the exorcist), old people with upside down heads crab walking (a la In the Mouth of Madness),  and people with huge mouths, it will suit your taste.

A few highlights:

• Gary Oldman tootling on a glitter dusted shofar before the exorcism of Casey starts.
• Romy opening the door to the little kid, who says, in a creepy voice: “the door is now open”. (really?!)
• Casey's boyfriend killed by her own hand. (bye bye baby daddy!)
• Potato Bugs.  Come on, but Jerusalem Crickets are totally sweet.
• The evil demon/dead twin/dybbuk think is named Jumby for goodness sake.

 Um, yeah, that is really about it.

Save an hour and a half and just watch the trailer.  It has all the good parts in it.  That is what sucked me in.  I should have known better, but I'm an endless optimist when it comes to horror movies, so predictably I spend most of my time being disappointed.

This was no exception.

An Auspicious Start

It was pointed out to me that the name of our new fledgling project had been used before. As a Mistie (follower of the pop phenomenon Mystery Science Theater 3000) I'm embarrassed to say that this connection eluded me, though I am perfectly willing to admit that there was most likely a subconscious influence by those pioneering folk from Minnesota. To give credit where it is due, I feel obliged to present to you the original Film Antipreservation Society, as envisioned by my hero, Crow T. Robot.



One hopes to carry on in this great tradition, and do the little gold fella proud.

In the beginning...

No one can deny that there are great films out there.

Movies that touch your heart.  Movies that chill you to the bone.  Movies that draw you into non stop action.  Movies that make you laugh until your ribs are aching.

However.

For every great film, there are hundreds of movies that should never have seen the light of day.  Movies that do the entire industry a disservice.  Movies that should have been allowed to die long ago.

This is dedicated to those movies.  From here on out, sit back, grab the popcorn, and prepare to embark on a journey into a realm few have the fortitude to enter.  Join us as we explore the vast landscape of movies that stink.  Movies even WE have a hard time sitting through.  Movies that should have never seen the light of day.

We, the Anti Preservation Society, invite you to kill a few brain cells with mind numbingly bad horror, comedy that is so bad it is scary, and action that falls flat on its face.  These movies must die, but we just can't help ourselves.