Nine Miles Down (2009)

Directed by: Anthony Waller

Writers: Everett De Roche, Anthony Waller

 

With its pretty high production values, Nine Miles Down was a refreshing change from the crap about which I usually write here. Unfortunately, the story didn't exactly follow, so it all boiled down to a large overall "meh".

 

The entire movie takes place in a remote drilling station somewhere in Sahara, which the security patrolman Duncan McL..., sorry, Adrian Paul, is sent to investigate after the contact with the scientists working there had been lost. As he arrives, he finds the place completely deserted, with some disturbing writings on the walls, signs of struggle and a gratuitous slaughtered jackal in one of the rooms.

 

Obviously, the first thing you want to do when you arrive at a place where something sinister had obviously happened is to spend the night there, so he does, and surprisingly he encounters no demons, ghosts or anything else during the night. However, in the morning he runs into a hot blonde scientist who just jogs around and doesn't seem horribly shaken by the things that happened.

 

Our suspicions immediately arise. Is she evil? Is she the Devil? Is the place itself evil? Is Adrian Paul insane? Why the hell is Waller showing us extreme close-ups of Adrian Paul's ass? How are sad events from Adrian Paul's past related to the horrifying visions he experiences?

 

While I appreciate some of the tension and the mystery surrounding the place and the characters, the movie simply didn't "do it" for me. Generally, when a character torments us too often with his or her visions and flashbacks and whatnot, I get bored rather quickly. Nine Miles Down wasn't boring, but I never cared about any of the characters enough to appreciate the ending or feel any bit moved by it or some crap like that.

 

One of the reasons for me not enjoying this that much might be the high expectations I had from the authors - Everett De Roche wrote some great films like Long Weekend, Razorback and Fortress (which was prevented from being one of the best films ever made only by the weaker direction), though, in all fairness, he did also write crap like Storm Warning, and Anthony Waller directed An American Werewolf in Paris, which most people hate, but for me it was great fun. Of course, this is all highly subjective, and if you read the reviews, you'll see many people enjoyed it more than I did, so... give it a shot.

 

Ninja the Protector (1986)

Directed by: Godfrey Ho

Writers: AAV Creative Unit (story), Godfrey Ho (screenplay)

 

One thing you might be wondering is who the hell is this "AAV Creative Unit" guy that supposedly wrote the, ahem, "story" for this film. Was it a (very) young Ron Artest or perhaps some previously unknown daughter of Frank Zappa? Who knows. What's more important is that the director is the infamous Godfrey Ho, the Orson Welles (or was it Ed Wood?) of Hong Kong ninja cinema.

 

This is my first Ho movie so I'm certainly no expert on his body of work, but from what I gather from the reviews written by more knowledgeable people, Ninja the Protector is totally consistent with his general "style" of filmmaking. AAV Creative Unit came up with an intriguing story of an evil ninja organisation that threatens to screw everything up. The police can't do much because (see the poster) only a ninja can defeat a ninja (!). Now where have we heard that already? Oh yeah, in just about every single ninja movie in existence.

 

But all is not lost - the leader of the police, played by Richard Harrison, is actually a ninja (!), so he spends part of the time in his office, explaining the grimness of the situation to his subordinates, and rest by walking around in his nicely coloured ninja outfit, beating the crap out of the evil ninja organisation's members and leaving them handcuffed for said subordinates to arrest and bring to the justice. Such a nice example of a split personality. Robert Louis Stevenson, eat your heart out!

 

However, this is not the only thing going on in the movie. To prevent the viewers from getting bored by the nonstop ninja action, Ho ingeniously created another subplot by inserting footage from some lame drama about two brothers, one of which is a model or something. Of course, with all the overdubbing, it's hard to know what (if anything) was going on in the original film, but in this one it is turned into a subplot of a police agent going undercover to infiltrate a model agency, which happens to be the cover for the more sinister doings of the Evil Ninja Organisation.

 

One thing you must absolutely avoid at all costs is trying to follow the "plot", as it will cause irreparable damage to your brain. Godfrey Ho is an artist and he's doesn't let such trivialities as logic and continuity get in the way of his creativity. More than once you will be baffled by some character mentioning the consequences of some event before that event has actually taken place. There's also a moment in which a character, through a flashback, remembers a soft and tender love scene which he didn't witness. The dubbing also has its own quirks - for example, in one scene a pissed off girlfriend, wanting to kick her boyfriend out, tells him to get off instead of out. Or maybe she really meant it?

 

It's not hard to see that Ninja the Protector is rightfully considered to be a masterpiece of modern cinema. Not only has Godfrey Ho given us two movies for the price of one (or perhaps none), bravely challenged our perception of time and space through the lack of continuity and the supernatural powers of the ninjas who are able to (dis)appear in a puff of smoke, not only has he given us a heartwarming drama that treats not only family relations but also the dangers of modelling (so we feel a massive relief when our lead character decides, quote, "to give up modelling immediately and lead a normal life"), drama powered by numerous but tasteful sex scenes (at least those that don't feature rape) that increase our sympathy for the characters (especially the one on the beach between the lead character's brother and some bimbo) - in addition to all this, we have an opportunity to listen to some really great music, like Jean Michel Jarre's Ethnicolor, Pink Floyd's One of These Days and many others. This music brings such depth to certain scenes that it was definitely worth stea... paying large sum of money for it.

Death Stop Holocaust (2009)

Directed by: Justin Russell

Writer: Justin Russell

Justin Russell's The Sleeper was a somewhat surprisingly interesting retro sorority slasher, one that I found worthy enough to keep an eye out for the director's other offerings. Death Stop Holocaust is his earlier movie and, like The Sleeper, a nostalgia piece that this time attempts to recreate the look and feel of the 1970's grindhouse films. It's almost completely style-over-substance and, while it's very successful in the audio-visual domain, it fails the most basic movie test ever, and that is the ability not to induce boredom.

 

I was extremely happy when I noticed Jenna Fournier in one of the lead roles. Her part in The Sleeper wasn't big, but she was my favourite character in the movie, not to mention that she's the cutest young actress I've seen probably since Liv Tyler in Stealing Beauty. In this movie, she and her friend Lisa Krenisky go to a remote island to have a nice peaceful vacation, which turns into... a nightmare of terror, no less. I wonder how much they pay the person who comes up with such original taglines.

 

Anyway, it doesn't take long for the two girls to fall victims to a gang of brutal maniacs with scary animal masks that start to terrorize them for no apparent reason. To my endless disappointment, Jenna is killed very early and Lisa is left alone to play a cat-and-mouse game with the killers throughout the large chunk of the movie. If there's anything scarier than a silent killer wearing a pig mask, it's the disturbing fact that other people on the island seem to be in liaison with the killers. That and the scary Japanese long-haired ghosts. In fact, I would argue that the Japanese ghosts are even scarier, but that's beside the point.

 

The main problem (which Justin successfully solved in The Sleeper by introducing dozens of characters) is that the attackers are very soon left with a single helpless female victim. Obviously they can't kill her because the movie would be over, so the only thing left for them is to act like a bunch of complete retards and, instead of killing or torturing her, to simply let the girl go for no reason every time they capture her, which is often.

 

With any trace of story hopelessly gone, the movie soon turns into tedious and repetitive exercise for nerves where the only thing happening are Lisa's pointless nightmarish visions that serve no purpose except as another means of attack on the viewer's senses. All this is powered by Lisa's too literal understanding of the "scream queen" phrase. She screams and screams, and then screams again, and she's loud and while I have no objection to the logic of that (in that situation I would have been screaming, too) it's just so damn annoying. Many times I thought "Just off her already and let my ears take some rest!".

 

Even though the movie is brutal in places, it simply lacks the atmosphere and it's hard to feel sympathy for the main character, so I find The Sleeper a much better film. While it sucks for Death Stop Holocaust, it's good for Justin Russell, since it shows obvious improvement. He just needs to do one thing in his following movie and that is to give the lead role to the wonderful Jenna Fournier. It's a sure win.

Cheerleader Camp (1988)

Directed by: John Quinn

Writers: David Lee Fein, R.L. O'Keefe

From David Fein and R.L. O'Keefe, the brilliant minds that brought us... well, nothing, comes this extraordinary tale of, you wouldn't guess it in a million years, a cheerleader camp (!) Admittedly, a story about the place where cheerleaders train for their cheerleading might've been a little boring without being spiced up with a bit of something extra, like for example a murderous maniac on a rampage, or steamy lesbian orgies, or (preferably) both. Well, orgies are unfortunately out, but a maniac is there, so there's at least one good thing about those cheerleaders - they die.

 

The story takes place in, brace yourselves, a cheerleader camp (!) somewhere in the woods. I have no idea what that place is supposed to be and how it works, since the sound was too bad for me to understand most of the dialogue, not that I feel a terrible loss about that. Apparently, some cheerleaders are there either to learn to cheerlead, or to have some kind of cheerleading competition, so there's an expected large collection of cheap bimbos, in addition to which we also have some equally useless male characters, like a fat prankster bastard with a camera, an inept sheriff, the lead heroine's stupid annoying horny boyfriend etc. The least bad moments in the movie were the deaths of these losers.

After the first few bodies are found, they are considered suicides, so the party doesn't stop. We wouldn't want a few minor deaths get in the way of the cheerleading, would we? This means that the characters continue to ignore the killer's presence, giving him the opportunity to increase the score (i.e. body count) without much effort, but it also means that the murders are not shown. Unfortunately, this lack of explicit violence continues deep into the film and poses a serious problem for the movie's integrity. Instead, the director chose to torture us with the lead character's nightmares, which are repetitive, boring and serve absolutely no purpose, except as a setup for the final plot twist, which is simply "meh".

The opening credits look as if freshly stolen from a John Carpenter movie, unfortunately, all similarities end there. This is not Halloween, and the lack of violence (and orgies) is not in any way compensated by tension, uneasiness or anything similar. Boredom is the dominating feeling and the movie is saved from being completely unwatchable only by the two wonderful leads, played by Betsy Russell (Saw III, IV, and so on) and Lucinda Dickey (who played one of the lead roles in Ninja III: The Domination, even though I haven't mentioned it in the review of that movie). Seeing those two beautiful ladies warmed my heart and made all the crap (which comprises pretty much everything else in the movie) almost bearable, but it's still not enough to recommend anything but avoiding this title.

The Super Ninja (1984)

Directed by: Wu Kuo-Jen

Writer(s): IMDb doesn't know, so how the hell would I?

Similar to the Sho Kosugi films we have already described, this one starts with a one-against-many fight where some white ninja kicks some serious ass. Of course, it's all some kind of final test that certifies that the tested one has enough skills to become a ninja. The big difference this time is that this is not an ordinary ninja... it's super ninja!

 

You might think that with such a cool name he has to be some kind of superhero among ninjas, someone whose skills are as high above those of common ninjas as Superman's superpowers are above ordinary humans, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Pretty much everyone here shows approximately the same skill and The Super Ninja triumphs simply because he's a good guy. While we're here, the fights in this movie are really well done. Alexander Lou (the Super Ninja) and Eugene Thomas (his black sidekick) are very skilled martial artists and similar could be said for their antagonists, the supernatural Five Elements Ninjas (don't ask), so there's enough ninja stuff to please everyone. (Incidentally, pay attention to the fact that we have a leading yellow-black heroic duo some fifteen years prior to Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker).

 

They say that the Japanese and Chinese treatments of ninjas are very different. I wouldn't know about that since I'm just starting to get into this whole ninja thing, but this film certainly does support that statement. While the movies in the Ninja series are certainly no Palme d'Or candidates (even though the second one deserved to be!), they are serious in their treatment of both the story and the action (well, except for the last one, which was downright silly).

 

On the other hand, let's see what The Super Ninja has to offer us: We start with the fight scene we have already mentioned, which shares the same general characteristics of all fight scenes in the movie - heavy use of wirework, various manipulations of the filmed footage, including slow-motions, speeding up and reversing, etc., impossible moves achieved by said means, et cetera. Then we have a scene of an attempted rape, prevented by our two heroes (but not before some nudity is shown), which sets the tone for the somewhat surprising sleaziness of the whole thing. For example, the girlfriend of the Super Ninja is felt up by some bastards twice in the movie and there's also an absolutely ridiculous, totally unromantic, by the lack of chemistry only comparable to scenes from Samurai Cop, insanely long sex scene that's just a few seconds shy (no pun intended here) of the impressive five minutes length (!). That's a long one, even by Jim Wynorski standards. And it ends with an extreme close-up of the girl's ass being held by the Super Ninja. Subtlety is for them obviously just something that happens to other people.

 

Of course, horrible overdubbing is a must, and the biggest victim of this was the black sidekick who sounded like a total pussy, which was such a contrast with his general appearance that I had a smile on my face every time he opened "his" mouth. Add to this the obligatory work-of-art dialogue like "You are a murderer! A filthy dirty rat! I'll break your neck for you!" and you have a clear winner, but The Super Ninja doesn't stop here (he's a super ninja, after all) - another treat that warmed my heart, made my day and brought a nostalgic reminder of the days long gone, was the pervasive anti-white racism. Our heroes' boss, for example, is one mean sleazy racist son of a bitch who often spews various race-based insults (nigger and stuff like that) at our heroes. They, on the other hand, don't exactly go to length to hide their despise toward the "white man world" (meaning: the worst possible kind), and Lou says to Thomas at one moment "For the love of the whites, the people you despise, you betray me? Now shoot! SHOOT!" (okay, that's a bit of a spoiler there, I'm sorry about that, but don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds like). I'm guessing if someone made something like this today, with, say, black people as bad guys, they would be promptly sent to jail.

 

This movie is a must see. With such hilarious action scenes and blatant in-your-face political incorrectness, if it doesn't get you, then you're already dead.

 

The Day (2011)

Directed by: Douglas Aarniokoski

Writer: Luke Passmore

 

Here's another siege movie that's set in a post-apocalyptic future just because why the hell not. Absolutely the same story could have been told in any setting, but this one is just so cool these days and besides it gives a perfect excuse for everyone feeling gloomy and depressed. Can't have a serious movie without a huge amount of pain, right guys?

 

However, even though The Day takes itself a bit too seriously, it's actually a perfectly watchable movie, mainly thanks to good actors, who somehow manage to alleviate the cheapness of the dialogues and generic characters. There are also some nice action sequences towards the end, but these suffer from extremely poor CGI blood, that's in sharp contrast with the overall pale, almost black and white photography.

 

One trap that the filmmakers managed to avoid is too much exposition. We follow a small group of characters who, through their conversations, do explain that some kind of apocalypse had happened (because, of course, actually showing us a destroyed city or some similar thing was clearly out of the question), but they never venture into overly detailed explanations. We also learn that they are trying to avoid some other people, but don't know exactly why until we learn it first hand later in the movie.

 

It seems that during or after the apocalypse most people turned into cannibals of some kind, and our five heroes are possibly the last normal human beings. They are going somewhere, occasionally finding shelter and food in abandoned houses, but never staying in one place for too long. The movie follows the events that screwed up the group, namely when it turned out that the house where they stayed for the night was a trap made by the cannibals.

 

Now, having a small group of survivors barricaded in a house, awaiting the attack of the cannibal hordes sounds like a scenario from heaven, but unfortunately those cannibals look and act exactly like normal people, except that they have some marks on their skin. So, the action scenes don't create any kind of feeling different from a regular action movie, and since the entire movie takes place in (and around) that one house in the country, there isn't any kind of special apocalyptic atmosphere. The most interesting thing is to follow the relations among the heroes themselves. Some nice plot twists happen (look for the scene with Shannyn Sossamom and the shotgun shells towards the end of the movie), nothing too original, but enough to keep you from falling into sleep. So, while I wouldn't recommend this movie for its (post)apocalyptic atmosphere, which is severely lacking, you can watch it for a decent (albeit totally unoriginal) story and solid performances.

Mr. Hush (2011)

Directed by: David Lee Madison

Writer: David Lee Madison

 

 

Mr. Hush is a film so disastrously horrible in every possible way that I felt sorry for everyone involved in making it. I felt sorry for Jessica Cameron (who was my number one reason for seeing it) and Stephen Geoffreys, who must have remembered with sadness the days when he played in comparative masterpieces like Latin Crotch Rockets, Just 18 and Gay and Transsexual Prostitutes 2. I felt even more sorry for David Lee Madison because he's, after all, the one responsible for all this mess. A small consolation for him may be that some really big names started their careers with lame movies (Wes Craven and Sam Peckinpah come to mind). But above all I felt sorry for myself and the time I wasted - I would've been better off watching Howling 6 for the fifth time.

The movie starts by introducing us to the lead character, Holland Price, who is such a nice guy. He has a very nice wife and a daughter who's, you won't believe it, also very nice. Holland's character is further developed by him being nice to all the trick-or-treaters that knocked on the door (did I forget to mention that it's Halloween night? Well, it's Halloween night). Just when you think there there's simply no more room to any further niceness, Holland takes it up to eleven by letting a strange priest come inside the house and use the phone because his bus full of children broke down or something.

The priest asks to use the bathroom first, but then quickly changes his mind and kills Holland's wife (exit Jessica Cameron) and apparently the daughter. Because, surprise, surprise, the "priest" is actually not a priest at all, but Mr. Hush (!). Who'd have thought? Anyway, Holland runs upstairs to see what had happened to his daughter and lets out a desperate scream. However, whatever he did (not) see, remained off screen.

Right after that we cut to a completely different scene. Holland is sitting in a doctor's (dentist's?) chair and the doctor (dentist?) prepares his tools. Then he approaches Holland with some scary instruments in his hand and our hair goes grey and our hearts sink to the bottom of the pool of depression when we realise that the doctor (dentist?) is actually... you won't believe what you're about to read... Mr. Hush (!).

Holland screams and wakes from the horribly confusing prologue. Apparently, it's ten years after the sad event of Mr. Hush killing Holland's family (sorry Holland, I'll stop rubbing it in very soon). He lives in a tent on some meadow with some sidekick and works as a dishwasher at some nearby café, or a restaurant, or some crap like that. Well, his career may be in full blossom, but he still can't forget the tragedy that befell him ten years before, when Mr. Hush invaded his peaceful home and slaughtered Jessica Cameron, and also did some unnamed thing to their daughter.

His colleague (hold on a sec while I look for her name on IMDb) Debbie (does Dallas) has a crush on him. So, after exchanging their sad life stories (what better foreplay than a personal tragedy, right?) they become lovers of some kind. Debbie (does Dallas), by the way, has a daughter that's of similar age to Holland's. One night they are having a dinner together and someone rings the ring on the front door and it turns out to be... wait for it... Mr. Hush (!), who immediately proceeds to slaughter Debbie (does Dallas). Holland screams again to no avail, and then passes out and finds himself tied up on a chair in some basement.

You might at this point think that Mr. Hush might possibly have something against Holland and you would be right. Mr. Hush is actually a vampire (!), whose wife was killed by Holland's grandfather decades ago. Ain't life a bitch? So, but that twisted vampire moral logic, he reckons he has a right to torment Holland for the rest of his life and kill every woman he lays his hands on. The bastard.

Our hero is understandably less than happy about this turn of events, so he throws myriads of insults at Mr. Hush and his sidekick Stephen Geoffreys. Then he has a dream about his grandmother, who informs him that there's something strange about Mr. Hush (but that's not much help for the audience, because anyone who had seen at least one horror movie already knows that he's a vampire). Fortunately, after it's been spelled out for the slowest members of the audience, there's no need for Mr. Hush to hide his true self (so far he appeared only in his human uniform), so he transforms into a sickest looking vampire son of a bitch I've seen since Max Schreck. When you first see him, it's not easy to decide whether he's simply ridiculous or downright disturbing. The final showdown between Good and Evil may begin.

It's hard to say what's the worst thing about this movie. The writing is horrible - half of the scenes in the movie (the nightmare scene at the beginning, the dream scene later, Mr. Hush and Stephen Geoffreys buying a coffin, etc.) are simply useless and serve absolutely no purpose and the quality of the dialogue makes the Magic Bullet Infomercial look like an excerpt from a Quentin Tarantino movie. The editing is next to nonexisting, with many scenes featuring completely fixed camera position and almost no cuts - as if you're in a theatre. The directing takes out even the slim potential for suspense that existed in the totally incompetent screenplay and don't even get me started about photography and the rest. The few unintentional laughs in some scenes (like for example the second murder scene) can't make up for the rest of the movie which feels like an eternity of pain.