Frankenstein's Army (2013)

Directed by: Richard Raaphorst

Writers: Chris W. Mitchell, Miguel Tejada-Flores, Richard Raaphorst (original idea)

At first I was very skeptical about this movie - at least 95% of found footage films are pure crap. This lasted until the first monster appeared, when I thought "Hey, actually this doesn't look so bad!". After that came a "Wow!" and then another one and another one and this lasted to the very end.

 

The story follows a group of Russian soldiers, who face some really horrifying Nazi monsters in Eastern Germany towards the end of the second world war. The ever decreasing group of (anti)heroes stumbles upon a secret Nazi lab, where they find the explanation for the monsters' existence. Of course, one of the soldiers carries a camera and records everything.

 

As usual, the film gains nothing from being made in found footage style. The atmosphere is not improved one bit, while at the same time it imposes severe limitations on the narrative. Found footage films generally suffer from the "let's film everything even though we're dying left and right" and this one is no exception. The excuses the characters make to keep filming get progressively stupid. At the same time, it appears that monsters never attempt to attack the person holding the camera.

 

I also didn't like the portrayal of the soldiers. The film seems almost decidedly anti-Russian, so there are no sympathetic characters here. Everyone's either a murderer or simply insane or generally doesn't give a damn about anything. The identification with the protagonists is absolutely essential for this type of film, and yet they fail over and over again. Given this fact, some plot twists that follow (related to the identity and secret plans of some of the group members) have minimal to no impact. It's also interesting that none of the group members are played by actual Russians, so you can imagine what their accents sound like.

 

Having said all this, the movie simply wipes out all this weak points with its complete and utter coolness. You simply won't believe what kind of screwed-up creatures you're about to see here. I won't even attempt to describe them, my English is not good enough, though I suspect much better writers than me would have problems with that. The picture on the poster gives you some idea. Then, there's almost no CGI here, everything is done with the good old make-up effects. All those insane monsters, streams of blood flowing around, piled-up dead bodies, dirty old secret labs, mutilations, it's all real (so to speak). With all its drawbacks regarding the story and screenplay, visually this is a stunning work and deserves to be seen on a screen as big as possible. Thumbs up!

Hell Baby (2013)

Directed by: Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon

Writers: Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon

Hell Baby may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I quite liked it. There's something about this absurd Dude, Where's My Car-type of humor that I find appealing. Of course, it's not as funny as, say, There's Something About Mary (or any part of Austin Powers), but it keeps a smile on your face (if you're the right audience) and, while it gets a bit nasty in one or two places, it never crosses the border of vulgar, for which I'm immensely grateful.

 

The story follows Jack and Vanessa, an expectant couple, that move into a house which happens to be haunted. What's worse, it turns out that what Vanessa is carrying is actually the spawn of Satan himself. Enter a whole bunch of silly characters and the fun begins. The plot isn't very important and there are no witty Tarantino-style dialogues or magnificent visual gags - the movie gets its humor solely from the silliness of the characters and their interactions. And it works!

 

For example, we know that the key to comedy is surprise. Not only the surprise of the viewer, but also of the characters in the movie. Rob Corddry, who plays the lead role, absolutely rules in this. I'm not familiar with his other work, but here he simply nailed it. Most of the film's funniness comes from him being surprised or uncomfortable in various bizarre situations, for example when his wife chases away a particularly scary dog by speaking in a demonic voice, or when he finds his wife's sister naked in the shower, or when he gets repeatedly electrocuted by the same lamp, or when an irritatingly friendly neighbor keeps popping up in their house... All of these are scenes that might work or fail miserably, solely depending on the comedic timing of the people in it, and his performance was perfect. The other characters were also interesting and played perfectly, especially the two idiot cops that keep harassing Jack for some reason.

 

The humor, as I mentioned before, is intentionally brute force and may not work for everyone. The writers (who also happen to play the priests) think that lines are "It is our duty to legally enforce that hug", "By the way, you have a very nice penis, Jack" and "Doctor, you can very clearly see the outline of your penis in those shorts" are tremendously funny, and for me they were - exactly because they are so "self-aware" and forced. By the way, I hasten to add, not all jokes in this movie are penis related.

 

So, proceed with caution - if you're a fan of silly comedies like those mentioned in the first paragraph, chances are you will like this one. Otherwise, stay the hell (baby) away.

 

 

 

Doghouse (2009)

Directed by: Jake West

Writer: Dan Schaffer

Danny Dyer, Noel Clarke and the rest of the team go to a remote village to have fun and drink their asses off, only to find the place almost completely deserted. Almost is the key word here, as they'll soon discover that while all the men are dead, the women are still there, albeit transformed into some kind of bloodthirsty zombie-like creatures.

 

Don't have to say much about this one, really. Despite the great cast and a very promising premise, the screenplay is seriously lacking in humor and memorable moments. One would expect a lot more politically incorrect jokes and crazy situations (like in Feast series). As it is, this one plays it rather safe from the beginning to the end, which makes for a pleasant watch (especially with a right group of male friends), but it's hardly awe-inspiring or memorable.

Jug Face (2013)

Directed by: Chad Crawford Kinkle

Writer: Chad Crawford Kinkle

 

Here's a nice little movie that brings a breath of fresh air, both with its story and the execution, both of which are miles beyond what we usually see today, at least when low-budget horror films are concerned.

 

Jug Face takes place in a deranged redneck community that worships something called The Pit - which is actually a pit (!). Generally, every now and then the Pit wants the blood of some specific community member, who is then promptly slaughtered above it. The identity of the future victim is revealed by the Pit to the local potter (in a dream or something), who then makes a jug with said person's face. Then the face is revealed to the public and the joyful slaughter ritual may begin. The lead heroine is a young girl who for some reason isn't terribly happy about being slaughtered, so she steals the jug with her face and hides it. Naturally, the Pit isn't exactly delighted with this turn of events and chaos ensues.

 

The most important thing is that this film actually looks quite good. The interesting backwoods locations are well utilized by people who actually know how to frame a shot and handle a camera, so we actually have a bit of that good old 1980s B-movie feeling that's sadly absent from most of today's low budget films because they are all unwatchable crap made with cheap crappy equipment by talentless losers. The story also packs a few punches. The very first scene has the lead character being screwed by her own brother. As the time passes and we learn more and more about the Pit, we also get a better understanding of the rather sick nature of the relationships in the community. Except for the heroine, who is actually half-sane, there's hardly a normal person here. However, all this weirdness never turns into shock for the sake of shock - throughout the entire film I always had a feeling that the writer/director respects the audience and wants just to tell them a story and not torture them.

 

Unfortunately, towards the end the film does lose some of its impact and it appears as if the director didn't have a clear idea of how to finish the story. There are also some cheesy apparitions I could live without. But generally, I liked the story and how the Pit was a real evil entity that demanded sacrifice and not just some fantasy made up by the insane villagers (they are insane, but for other reasons). One of the producers was Lucky McKee, who probably liked that weird backwoods feeling of the movie. All in all, this is a refreshing little film that's well worth a watch.

V/H/S 2 (2013)

Directed by: See below

Writers:  See below

 

The first V/H/S movie was pretty much a disappointment, at least given the names of some of the people involved. However, due to its anthological nature, it never got really boring, so I can't say watching it was a waste of time. Something similar goes for the sequel, but the quality of the stories varies much more here. Since there are only four stories (compared to 26 in The ABCs of Death), we'll look into each one of them briefly:

TAPE 49
(Written and directed by Simon Barrett)

The one that connects them all. Some people get into some house (which might or might not be the one from the first V/H/S, I don't remember), find some tapes and watch them. At the same time, we are made aware that something sinister is happening in the house, leading to a "shocking" twist at the end. Boring.

PHASE I CLINICAL TRIALS
(Directed by Adam Wingard, written by Simon Barrett)

A filthy rich guy (played by Adam Wingard himself) gets a supercool fancy eye-camera implant, which unfortunately makes him see dead people (Haley Joel Osment, eat your heart out). He spends most of the time running around completely terrified after a huge number of jump scares, which creates some pretty funny moments. Then he's visited by a girl who hears dead people. And then bad stuff happens. This one is told completely in the first person POV, has some nice humor in it, so I guess I'd call it not bad.

A RIDE IN THE PARK
(Directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale, written by Jamie Nash)

A guy goes for a nice bike ride in the park, only to fall victim to some zombies. He then wakes up as a zombie, forms a zombie party with some other guys and together they crash some child's birthday party. This one is also rather funny at times and it's interesting to see the events from a perspective of a zombie (the lead character has a camera on his helmet), however it drags in places and the birthday party chaos is not nearly as effective as it could have been.

SAFE HAVEN
(Written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans, story by Timo Tjahjanto)

By far the best story in the movie is also one of the most insane things I've seen in a long time. A film crew somewhere in Indonesia is making a documentary about a mysterious end-of-the-world sect, led by some obviously insane bastard. First they interview that insane bastard in a café or something, where he gives them a piece of his philosophy and then they persuade him to let them visit the place where his followers abide. Big mistake! After a somewhat slow intro, this quickly turns into a bloodbath of epic proportions, where randomly crazy stuff happens every few seconds. None of it makes much sense, but I guess the directors weren't exactly concerned about that - they wanted to give us a hilarious thrill ride, and boy did they succeed! This story was co-directed by Gareth Huw Evans, the director of the mightily successful Raid, and I'm so glad he gave a shot at directing a horror. Let's hope he does a full feature one after Raid 2.

SLUMBER PARTY ALIEN ABDUCTION
(Directed by Jason Eisener, written by Jason Eisener and John Davies)

Some kids are playing pranks on each other and then they are attacked by aliens and everything goes to Hell. The stupidest and most boring story of them all, it consists solely of irritating kids screaming "Oh my God, did you see that, what is that, we're gonna die, woe are us!!!!!" and pointlessly running around trying to escape some equally boring aliens. I don't know why in the heck did they put this one at the end, to ruin the entire impression. Jason Eisener had previously made a great little short called Treevenge, which had a terrific idea and execution, which makes the complete lack of imagination in this one even more surprising. 

In 3 Tagen bist du tot 2 (2009)

Directed by: Andreas Prochaska

Writers: Agnes Pluch, Andreas Prochaska

In 3 Tagen bist du tot was a completely generic Austrian slasher without a single trace of innovation over the already infinitely repeated formula. I was pretty confused when I heard about the sequel, wondering what could they possibly do to make it even less original than the first film (since, as we know, that's what sequels are for). For better or for worse, Andreas Prochaska decided to make a completely different film. While the first part was about a bunch of teenagers getting offed one by one by a mysterious killer, this one puts one single character in a situation heavily inspired by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and similar films.

 

It's one year after the events of the first film and Nina, the heroine, tries to put the traumatic death of all her friends behind and lead a normal life. However, she receives a mysterious call for help from Mona (the only other survivor, it's the one that impaled herself in the first film, unfortunately without success). She promptly returns to her hometown and finds that Mona and her father have left home, which is now inhabited by some Chinese people. Continuing with her quest, Nina will find herself in an isolated hotel run by a family of weirdos and will have to use all her skills to survive.

 

The first part of the film plays like a pretty nice mystery, with director Andreas Prochaska taking things slowly and using the wonderful Austrian winter landscape to create some memorable shots and accentuate the lead character's isolation and crap like that. However, while this is by no means bad, whoever watched the first film will want to see some killings and it takes almost 70 minutes for the first person to bite the dust. Also, even outside of the subjective perspective of a bloodthirsty slasher fan, the first hour definitely contains some overlong scenes which serve no purpose.

 

Fortunately, things get better. Immediately after the breaking of the ice, people start dying left and right and killings are really gruesome and at times very explicit (shows that Prochaska has learned quite a few things between the two films). Heads are beaten to a pulp, eyes are gouged out and don't even get me started about male reproductive organs (!). Alas, the fun part ends all too soon.

 

While by no means a masterpiece, this is a satisfying movie which even made me think it would be cool if Andreas Prochaska made another horror. The things that lower the overall grade are the aforementioned first half, which is too slow, a scene of full frontal male nudity and a scene where Nina takes a hot bath - with her clothes on! Oh yeah, there's also this cop from the first part. He doesn't run over anyone here, but he's involved in the most unconvincing scene in the film - without getting into too much detail, his car is supposed to be stuck in the snow and it doesn't look bloody stuck at all.

Inara, the Jungle Girl (2012)

Directed by: Patrick Desmarattes

Writer: Patrick Desmarattes

This film opens with some idiot rambling incoherently on and on and on about something before some other guy mercifully shoots him down, and it all takes place in some kind of jungle. Then we have the opening credits where most of the names look as if taken straight from a porno movie. Cali Danger? Madison Kitten? Sam SEXTON? I mean what the hell? Basically, at this point you're probably already aware that you're in deep trouble, but if you still have some doubts (hopeless optimist, eh?), the following few minutes will effectively shoot them down.

 

First we have an emo song (played in entirety, like three or four minutes) which introduces our lead character Inara, who's the daughter of some soldier who died recently. During that crappy song she mourns him and at the same time brings a whole new meaning to the words "bad acting". Then she talks to her father's superior officer (I forgot what was his rank exactly) and that useless conversation is quickly followed by yet another "song" during which Inara gets wasted with alcohol and then gets in fight with some military assholes whom she easily beats because her father taught her how to fight and other cool stuff.

 

This is only the first 10-12 minutes. Long story short - she agrees to go on a mission to some remote island, hoping to find clues about her father's death. The purpose of the mission is to get some precious material from the jungle that's swarming with hostile natives. But lo and behold! - the plane crashes, Inara survives and is taken hostage by the natives, who happen to be an all-female tribe (!) Yippeeee! You won't believe what happens next - there's a female bonding, our heroine learns the badness of the ways of the white man, joins the female team, becomes their queen and they kick ass! Eat that, James Cameron!

 

Every single scene in this movie is a mini-torture in itself. The entire budget of approximately 12 dollars obviously went to the pockets of mega stars like Cali Danger and Madison Kitten, so there was nothing left for less important things like special effects, military uniforms, locations, things like that. I won't even go into the sheer beauty of the screenplay and those passionate dialogues that make your heart (and the content of your stomach) want to jump out. Or how our heroine bonded with the natives (it was something like this: "We hate you and we'll kill you... OK, we're bonded"). The fight scene at the end is the most unconvincing thing ever (it's less realistic than the scenes of total destruction from Roland Emmerich's 2012). Quite simply put - there's not a single thing in this movie that's not the worst ever.

 

The only way this could possibly have worked is if all females were naked all the time, which they aren't. The tribe members sport nice two part swimsuits that successfully bring pain and misery to any viewer. If you imagine the worst possible softcore film by Jim Wynorski or Fred Olen Ray and take out all the nudity, you'll end up with something that looks like Godfather when compared with this one. Patrick Desmarattes, I really have nothing against you, I know it's a wonderful thing to make a movie, but please don't make a career out of this.

In 3 Tagen bist du tot (2006)

Directed by: Andreas Prochaska

Writers: Thomas Baum, Andreas Prochaska

 

In 3 Tagen bist du tot, or You Will Die A Horrible, Horrible Death In Three Days, You Mofo!!!11 Okay, I did improvise the translation a bit, but the essence is the same. The key part is that you're going to be dead in three days. Three, not seven. Eat that, Samara!

 

Unfortunately for the killer in this movie, he (or she) is a completely ordinary man (or woman) and lacks the cool superpowers like being able to come out of a TV screen and stuff. Oh, yeah, and the movie is crap, which might also be considered a problem in some circles.

 

The only thing that sets this Austrian slasher apart from the myriad of others is that it's, well, Austrian. If IMDb's to be trusted, it's the first one to come from this country that gave us, say, Adolf Hitler. Not that it brings much difference, anyway - the language is different but everything else you've seen millions of times. A group of friends start receiving scary messages! Gasp! They start dying! The horror! They desperately seek for a clue. A mystery! Could it perhaps be caused by something from their past??? Sure enough, after about an hour they finally remember something that should have been so damn obvious from the start (obvious to them I mean, not to the audience, because it's never mentioned in the movie prior to that point).

 

The story sucks, the characters are every bit artificial and annoying as their average American counterparts and even the killings leave a lot to be desired. Many of them are off screen, most of those that we do see are boring, so there are only two scenes that stand out. One is the only nice murder scene in the movie, that includes the neck of a victim and a broken edge of an aquarium. The other is an unintentionally hilarious moment where some stupid bitch tries to run away from the killer, falls off the balcony and impales herself. However, even the impact of that otherwise great scene is taken away by the fact that she survived that. Boring! Another scene that was cool and unintentionally funny is when this stupid cop hits a girl with his car. Unfortunately, the director failed to realize the huge comic potential in his story and decided to make a "serious" movie. A fail if there ever was one.

 

Amazingly, for some inexplicable reason, this thing has a sequel (!) and I'm forced to watch it by my OCD. On the other hand, if you value your time, skip this one.

Feast III: The Happy Finish (2009)

Directed by: John Gulager

Writers:  Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan

The third part of the best trilogy in the world picks up right where the previous one left off. The survivors from the roof finally manage to get into the jail and they meet another charismatic hero who promptly takes the lead. Their troubles are far from over, however. However strong the monsters, there's always a way to hurt them. But there's no defense from two insane and sadistic screenwriters who take every single opportunity to bring pain and misery to the group.

 

Feast III again brings the spirit of the second part, meaning - more humor and even more gruesome deaths than in the first part, but far less star power and a weaker overall look, especially when it comes to monsters. Of course, when you are enjoying the heck out of it with your friends, you'll hardly pay attention to it.

 

This part brings some more "heroes", most prominently a young martial artist called Jean-Claude Seagal (I kid you not) who spends most of his screen time with the Bartender, which doesn't have a good effect on his health. Their scenes are hilarious, particularly the now legendary Rambo III scene. Other characters also bring their share of fun, but I won't describe any of it lest I spoil it for you. If you liked Feast 2, there's absolutely no way you won't like this one. To freshen things up a bit, apart from the monsters we loved in the first two parts, the survivors also run into some kind of zombies.

 

I have only two small objections here. First, the movie is too short. Barely over an hour for something this good, that's simply unacceptable. Second, a large part of the movie takes place in the sewers and it's very claustrophobic and poorly lit, so most of the time you have no idea what's going on, which takes all the fun out of people dying. Okay, it's not that bad, you get used to it quickly, but still the second part was much brighter and cleaner (in terms of visibility, not the content).

 

We finish the story of this amazing series with one of my favorite quotes ever:

"You only need legs to kick ass, baby boy!"

I tre volti della paura (1963)

Directed by: Mario Bava

Writers: Marcello Fondatto, Alberto Bevilacqua, Mario Bava

 

I tre volti della paura (also known as Black Sabbath) is a horror anthology consisting of three stories directed by Mario Bava and based on literary works of Chekhov, Maupassant and Tolstoy. At least that's what the intro claims, but the IMDb and Wikipedia tell us that these are Ivan (and not Anton) Chekhov and Alexey (and not Leo) Tolstoy and they don't mention Guy de Maupassant at all, so I decided to omit this information altogether and just mention the screenwriters. The stories are as follows:

 

First, Il telefono, in which a woman is terrorized by a series of disturbing telephone calls apparently made by her ex boyfriend who freshly got out of jail (it was her testimony that put him there) and wants revenge, but not before he telephone terrorizes her a bit. He makes various kinds of threats and the woman is out of her mind, so terrified in fact that she promptly calls the polic..., no, sorry, she actually calls another woman, her former friend or lover or something. She begs her to come and make her company, even though they had a falling out long time ago. Some not entirely unpredictable plot twists ensue, resulting in some people dying. While the story is rather well directed, the acting is a bit dated and the score mostly comprises unnecessarily cheerful jazz music which effectively ruins the potential of suspense at every possible step. Watchable, but hardly memorable, it certainly has nothing on classics like When a Stranger Calls and Black Christmas.

 

The second story is called I wurdulak and is the longest and probably the most boring of the three. It is reminiscent of the Hammer horror films and takes place in 19th century Russia, where a young hero encounters an unusual family in some spooky village. They advise him to get the hell away from there because there's an imminent danger of a wurdulak attack. Of course, if he did, that would be the end of the movie, so he falls in love with one of the girls and decides to stay. At the stroke of midnight, the head of the family, played by Boris Karloff, returns after a five days absence - he had previously gone out to kill some Turkish wurdulak. What is that thing, anyway? Essentially, it's an undead creature that combines some features of vampires and zombies. The most prominent characteristic of wurdulaks is that they drink blood of the persons they loved during lifetime. Boris Karloff acts rather strange upon his return, bringing up the suspicion that he might have been wurdulaked himself, but that doesn't prevent the family from letting him stay in the house. As the night progresses, the family members demonstrate progressively more serious lack of common sense, giving the chance to the wurdulak team to thrive at their expense. This story is nicely shot and features some fine locations and it could have been almost good had the wurdulaks been made more scary (or scary at all). Unfortunately, they are a bit boring. The hero shows a serious charisma deficiency and the love story is quite silly, just as the rest of the screenplay, which features some genuine what-the-hell moments. For example, when Karloff had left the house, he had said he would be back in five days. If he's late, he's turned into wurdulak and is not to be let into the house. But he arrives exactly five days later, so his sons are at a loss as what to do. I mean, come on!

 

The third story, La goccia d'acqua, is the one that sets everything right. It's about a young nurse who has to prepare a deceased medium for the funeral, so she goes to her big and spooky house. In the process, she steals an expensive-looking ring from her finger because she won't need it where she's going, right? Wrong! You have probably seen more than enough horror movies to know what happens when you steal from the dead. Strange things promptly start to happen and the poor woman (the living one) is slowly driven to madness. This is a shining example of a haunted house story done right, where spookiness oozes from every corner, the highlight being the dead old woman herself. She is scary and disturbing when you first see her just lying motionlessly on the bed. Imagine what happens later! Don't be deceived by the fact that the movie was made in 1963 - this damn thing is scary.

 

The intro and the outro of the movie feature Boris Karloff, who acts unnecessarily silly, which is in contrast with the dead serious tone of all three stories. Overall, it's a hit and miss, but the third story is a must-see.

Bloodmoon (1996)

Directed by: Tony Leung (not THAT Tony Leung, I presume)

Writer: Keith W. Strandberg

Here's a martial arts movie posing as a thriller. Or is it the other way around? Whatever the case, the fighting part of the movie is rather good, while everything else is pretty much horrible.

 

The structure is typical of serial killer movies: There's this guy that kills people left and right. In charge of the police investigation is a funny black guy who's of course unable to find the killer, so the chief of police (Frank Gorshin in yet another gratuitously over-the-top performance reminiscent of his Batman days) asks a retired detective (Gary Daniels) for help in order the prevent the crazy maniac from killing everyone on the planet and causing an apocalypse. Of course, the victims are not randomly selected and finding the connection between them means finding the killer and it will also give Gary Daniels an opportunity to win back his wife who's pissed off about something, blah blah blah... Fairly standard stuff, without a trace of innovation of any kind.

 

However, what's of interest here is the way the murders are committed - each of the victims is a champion of some martial arts discipline and the killer is beating them in their own discipline before killing them. He's like Michael Phelps among the serial killer martial artists. It should also be mentioned that he wears a dreadfully silly costume and he's a computer wizard who teases the police by sending them cheesy provocative messages.

 

The fights are numerous and well choreographed, which comes as no surprise since pretty much everyone involved in the movie is a martial artist of some kind (this includes the director, the writer and all the lead actors). Unfortunately, there are some scenes where nobody's fighting and instead they're trying to talk and what not and it's really embarrassing. The highlight of this cheesiness is the scene where Daniels wins back his wife. I blushed during that one even though I was completely alone. Having someone walk in while you're watching this scene is worse than being caught watching porn by your grandmother. Everything except fighting is cliché after cliché and it gets really boring and tiring after a while. If you're a fan of martial arts, I recommend fast forwarding through these scenes and if you're not, skip the movie altogether.

Feast II: Sloppy Seconds (2008)

Directed by: John Gulager

Writers: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan

 

Feast II takes place right after the first part, in which, as we remember, a group of bar patrons was assaulted and pretty much wiped out by some disgusting monsters of unknown origin. To give a quick reminder, the only survivors were Honey Pie, who screwed the others by stealing the truck that was meant to be used as a means for escape, and the group who bravely fought the invaders throughout the night - Bozo, Tuffy and Hot Wheels. Unfortunately, we don't see those latter three in this sequel, so their destiny remains a mystery. Generally, Feast II is a bit short on stars, but that's perfectly OK, since deep characterization isn't exactly the point of the whole thing.

 

Biker Queen (Diane Ayala Goldner) arrives in the vicinity in the search for her sister Harley Mom. Unfortunately, we'll remember that she was earlier blown up by Bozo (Balthazar Getty), so the only part of her that Biker Queen discovers is a severed hand. Harley Mom was also played by Diane Goldner, but since she's John Gulager's wife, it would be a shame if she didn't appear again, so she got a new (but essentially the same) part. Instead of her sister, she discovers the Bartender, who also died in the first movie, but since it's Clu Gulager (John Gulager's father), it turns out he was only heavily wounded. He informs the Biker Queen about what happened to her sister, so she and her gang tie him up and they all set out for a small neighboring town of Smalltown so she can find Bozo and wreak horrible vengeance of him.

 

Smalltown is in the meantime completely devastated by the monsters and there are only a handful of survivors. By chance, the gang runs into none other than Honey Pie, so it's the Bartender who gets the first opportunity for revenge. He immediately starts beating the hell out of her and he bites her ear off. Then the gang shoots some other people and are finally united with the other survivors, who are an even more colourful bunch than the one from the previous film. They include Slasher, a used cars salesman and one of the most entertaining characters in the series, Secrets, his cheating wife, Greg Swank (her lover, played by Tom Gulager, John Gulager's brother), Thunder and Lightning, the midget wrestlers and the owners of the local key shop, their grandmother and some other minor characters. Throughout the movie, the group tries to reach the only safe place in town and that's the jail. However, they can't reach it because of the monsters, and besides an old drunk has locked himself in and won't let anyone inside.

 

Feast II is certainly an acquired distaste (I almost said taste). While the first part wasn't exactly shy about gross outs, the sequel takes things to a whole new level by introducing such beauties and monster raping a cat, a dissection scene with monster fluids of various kind flowing everywhere, another child being explicitly eaten, a dwarf cut in half whining about his penis being cut off, a decomposing elderly lady and the infamous catapult scene which I won't spoil, but it's certainly one of the most insane and disturbing things you've seen in your life, and yet at the same time so hilarious that you'll spend almost the whole time rolling on the floor with laughter and hating yourself at the same time because there's nothing funny about it. Yeah, right!

 

The best thing about Feast II is the complete disregard for human existence. While there was some teamwork in the first part, here it's almost nonexistent. Slasher is perfectly happy to throw Greg to the monsters, not as a means of escape, but simply for revenge. Greg at first tries to save an infant trapped in a car, but then he throws it in the air and runs off while monsters eat the baby. At the end of the "successful" test of the catapult (resulting in the death of the midget grandma), Slasher sings and dances. The whole group simply throws an injured biker girl to the monsters, et cetera. This is precisely the reason why people who should know better dismiss it as being "poorly written", "having undeveloped characters", "not being scary" and similar crap, completely missing the point of the whole thing.

 

And the point is to be entertained while watching people suffer and dying. Well, not exactly "people", the characters here are one-dimensional caricatures, and that's the way we love it. They are not likable and we are not supposed to feel any kind of connection to any of them or to root for them. They are simply there to die and amuse us. And their deaths are unpredictable and almost without exception hilariously funny. Some are the result of the work of the monsters, some happen by pure accidents and sloppiness and there's also a handful of scenes of people killing other people. It doesn't make sense to talk about "leading" and "supporting" characters in the traditional sense because literally anyone could be dead at any minute. This whole series is notorious for its violence and monster bodily fluids, but for me it's this total disrespect for our fellow man (both by the writers and the characters in the film) that makes it so unique. This could have been made with far less explicit violence, maybe even without the monsters, and it would still retain its charm.

 

Sloppy Seconds is not as claustrophobic as the first movie. While the main theme is similar (some people locked in some place, fending off the monsters), it has more locations and more outdoor scenes, which is a welcome change.

 

If you are lucky and still haven't seen this film (provided that you love horror and comedy and are a bit crazy), do yourself a favor and assemble a group of equally bloodthirsty friends and enjoy like you've never enjoyed before.

 

A few words about the DVD. Unlike the previous one, this one is seriously lacking in extra material. The subtitles are missing again, and there are only a two short featurettes - the 10 minute making of, which is quite informative and entertaining, but obviously rather short, and the five minute "Meet the Gulagers", which is a nice look at the way the three generations of Gulagers appear in the movie. John is the director, his father Clu, wife Diana and brother Tom play some of the "lead" roles (put in quotes because of... just read one of the earlier paragraphs, dammit!) and the baby that meets an unfortunate demise at the hands of that bastard Greg is none other than Tom Gulager's infant son. So it all gives quite a funny perspective on some of the events - like Diana Goldner beating her father-in-law, or Tom Gulager throwing his own son to the monsters.

 

Feast II and Feast III were shot back-to-back and in fact pretty much constitute one movie, which was split into two simply for the running time. So, unlike the first part, this one ends more abruptly than the Lord of the Rings movies. Since it's in essence just one movie, everything I said for the second part also goes for the third part, so I hope its review won't be this long and boring. Over and out.

Feast (2006)

Directed by: John Gulager

Writers: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan

Disclaimer: If you're expecting an objective review of this movie, you came to the wrong place. Feast (the whole series) is one of my favorite things ever and I love it to death. Every single second of each of the three movies. Okay, almost every single second (we'll come to that later). I pity people who are unable to enjoy it, because in this world there's nothing like Feast, never was and probably never will be, unless by some miracle we get Feast IV, and chances for that are really slim, seeing as how Dimension screwed up the Piranha franchise. Oh, well...

 

Now that we got that out of the way, what's this thing about, anyway? The plot is the simplest possible - patrons in a bar in a middle of nowhere are forced to fight off the invasion of some horrifying man-eating monsters of unknown origin (which is, strangely, explained in the trailer, but not in the movie). The bastards are fast, strong, ugly, extremely hard to kill and show zero regard for human life. This last thing also goes for some of the humans.

 

Surely, we have seen similar stories before, but its treatment is what elevates Feast and its sequels to the level of a masterpiece of modern cinema (note that I'm not saying "in my opinion". Feast is a masterpiece, it's a fact of life and people who think otherwise are simply wrong.) Basically, it all boils down one main thing: This is a perfect combination of horror and comedy and it succeeds where its more famous predecessors like An American Werewolf in London and Shaun of the Dead failed.

 

Simply put, this is the way to do it. An American Werewolf in London has some masterfully directed horror scenes (the beginning in the woods, that amazing subway sequence which makes you shiver, etc.), but it also has comedy (the porno movie scene, for example) which takes a lot of the impact of the horror scenes, so we end up with a movie that's too scary to be a comedy and too funny to be a horror. Similarly, Shaun of the Dead, even though it has zombies, is essentially a drama with some elements of comedy and horror, which are again clearly separated. For me this simply doesn't work (I'm one of the minority that prefers The Howling to An American Werewolf and I've never been a big fan of Shaun). If you already have great horror scenes, why downgrade them with comedy instead of making a pure horror? I think the real horror-comedy is just like a regular comedy, except it's too gruesome for you to show it to your grandmother. It has to have the same tone from the beginning to the end, where the comedy and horror scenes are not separated, but the comedy is contained in horror. So, the goal is not to have a scary scene where a werewolf kills a guy and then a funny scene where someone is telling a joke in a bar - you're supposed to have a funny scene where a werewolf kills a guy.

 

And Feast is that movie! It's a pure comedy from start to finish, and quite original at that. Right at the beginning we get a supercool infodump where each of the characters is introduced by an onscreen title, stating his or her name (or, rather, nickname), some fun fact and life expectancy. The real fun begins when we meet The Hero - he's handsome (I guess), charismatic, immediately takes the leadership, organizes the defense, gives orders and his life expectancy is, quote, "pretty f***ing good". And he dies two minutes later! So we are left with a leaderless motley crew of seemingly completely incapable losers and there's more than 80 minutes of the movie left! So right from the beginning you are aware that you're watching something different.

 

The non-stop fun here comes mainly from the movie's unpredictability. Melton and Dunstan simply avoided all clichés in their screenplay and in some scenes they made deliberate fun of them. For example, in all movies of this type (where a group of different people are forced to unite in a fight against a stronger enemy) there has to be a scene where someone takes the spotlight and starts to talk about working together, helping each other and similar crap. Here, Henry Rollins has the honor of having the opportunity to give an emotionally charged motivational speech to the others (all while he's wearing pink underpants) and while he encourages them, one guy rolls his eyes and Balthazar Getty simply asks "Are you gay?". This is just one example and the movie's full of them. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about, and if not - take my word for it, because I'm not spoiling more than necessary. Anyway, the fact that you simply have no idea who's going to die next and that everyone is primarily thinking of saving his (or her) own ass is a source of almost endless fun.

 

In addition to having brilliant and unpredictable characters, Feast is also a truly action packed movie. I've said that the monsters are deadly, so survival is the primary (and only) goal. Finally we have a film without stupid drama and stupid romances and big speeches and similar crap that almost always pops up and ruins everything. Not here. If the characters are not dying (which is pretty often), they are arguing with each other and making plans for the action, so we don't know who lost their father in Vietnam and who was left by their boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife etc. - and we don't care! We only want to see another horrifying death (man or monster, it doesn't matter) and the movie flawlessly delivers. In short, watching people die has never been this fun (except in Feast 2 and 3).

 

Another thing where Feast is different than (most of) the other horror films is its gruesomeness. It's not just that the monsters are eating people, crushing their heads, tearing off the limbs, et cetera - there are other things that will make you think "Now did I just see THAT?". Just one example is when people in the bar decide to show one of the monsters they've killed to other monsters, to demonstrate the human superiority (another brilliant idea by Henry Rollins). So, what do the other monsters do? Naturally, they eat the body and immediately proceed to have monster sex, resulting in another small monster a few minutes later. Some of the things they do to people are even worse (for example, I could live without the head rape scene, but this "could / could not / live without this or that" discussion will be an important part of my upcoming review of Feast 2, so I won't elaborate further here).

 

John Gulager's direction perfectly fits Melton's and Dunstan's screenplay. The pace is extremely fast, the camera frantically flies all over, but manages to catch everything important (makers of found footage films, take note!) and it doesn't shy away from violence. If there's a scene where a head is supposed to be crushed, we see a head being crushed. When a heroine is beating a trapped monster's head, we see monster teeth flying all around. Nothing is left to our imagination and I'm grateful for that. Speaking of monsters, we get the opportunity to see them in full glory and they are really well made and horrifyingly ugly, thanks to some great make-up work by Gary J. Tunnicliffe.

 

Feast, while being innovative, original and unprecedentedly disgusting,  still retained some conventional storytelling elements (for example, most of the characters are not completely insane), which proved to be a winning combination for most horror fans. It's rightfully considered a cult classic now. However, the sequels inexplicably managed to surpass it in insanity, so I enjoyed them even more (!). They will be reviewed here shortly and at the end of the review for Feast 3 I'll bitch a bit about the wasted potential of the Piranha series (I'm not exactly sure what does that have to do with Feast, but it crossed my mind, so...)

 

Just a quick note about the DVD - it contains about 40 minutes of additional material, including deleted scenes, outtakes, the making of feature and some interviews. John Gulager, Marcus Dunstan, Patrick Melton (who's very thin and looks like a total nerd, just like me, hahaha! :-) ) and some of the producers offer some interesting information about how the movie was conceived and realized, but my favorite part is the interview with Gary J. Tunnicliffe, the mastermind who designed the monsters (and even played one of them). He's a really funny English guy, totally interesting to listen to. Look for the funny story about the way he told his father that he wanted to do make-up. If you're one of the two regular visitors of this blog, you might remember him as a co-writer and co-director of the horribly bad movie called Megalodon . Fortunately, his special effects are spot-on.

 

Anyway, this movie is brilliant. Get it. Seriously.

Dark Circles (2013)

Directed by: Paul Soter

Writer: Paul Soter

I'd like to begin this review by saying "I'm not easily scared, but...", however, that would be a blatant lie. I'm very easily scared. Give me one Japanese long-haired ghost, and I'm already throwing a blanket over my head. So, the fact that I find this one of the scariest movies in recent years doesn't say much. However, scary or not, I think it's a very well made movie that's worth checking out, particularly (damn, what a difficult word for a non-English speaker!) for the performances of the two leads.

 

The movie starts with some cheerful music to which a young woman is enjoying the company of her newborn baby. This idyllic scene is quickly interrupted by a loud knock on the door. When the woman opens it, she finds a really scary bitch that's apparently injured (but we know better, right?) because there's this huge red spot on her belly. The young woman (the other woman is also young, but we will differentiate between the two by calling her a scary bitch) takes her in and proceeds to call help, but makes a mistake of leaving her baby unattended. Next thing you know, the scary bitch shows her true intentions and it isn't pretty.

 

Virtually plotless, the movie's sole intention seems to be to scare the viewer by having the scary bitch pop out of nowhere in almost every scene and do whatever the scary bitches usually do. In that regard, Dark Circles isn't unlike Shutter (of course, I'm referring to the Thai original and not that stupid American remake), but it's less scary and much more ambiguous. Who is that woman? Is she a ghost? A figment of their imagination? Does she come with the house? Is she perhaps real? I don't think this ambiguity was Soter's conscious intention. It just came as a natural consequence of the decision to put the scary bitch in just about every bloody possible scene, without a slightest regard of its context. One of the main characters is dreaming - what is (s)he dreaming about? Why, the scary bitch, of course! The husband is looking at some pictures and who's that on every single picture? You guessed it, the scary bitch! The wife looks through the window and lo and behold, it's the scary bitch standing by the tree in the garden! The wife looks in the mirror and take a wild guess who passes in the background! The scary bitch!

 

So, if scary bitches scare you, you'll probably find this scary, if not, you'll either stop watching after 15 minutes, or you'll try to ignore the nuisances and concentrate of what (I guess) is supposed to be the main theme of the movie, the relationship between the lead characters (a young couple with a baby), their personal problems, the way they deal with the parenthood, etc. This drama part is generally well written and is greatly enhanced by very good performances by Jonathon Schaech (damn, what a difficult last name for a non-English speaker!) and Pell James. They make their characters believable and even likable, in spite of their almost constant arguing.

 

I said "generally" in the last paragraph because everything isn't perfect. The young parents display a surprising lack of communication which can't just be explained by their, you know, lack of communication. The problem is the necessity to keep the story going to full length, and if they had a real conversation, the movie would be over in 15 minutes.

 

"You know what, darling? I keep seeing this scary bitch everywhere."

"You too? ZOMG, and I thought I was going crazy!"

"You're telling me! Now let's get the *censored* out of this house!"

This doesn't happen until nearly the end of the movie.

 

I haven't really talked about the plot, but you have probably gathered that there's this young couple with a baby, whose relationship is plagued by the scary bitch. There's also a lack of sleep, but that's also caused by the scary bitch. The scary bitch was probably supposed to be a means of support for the general character drama, but as I said before, Soter couldn't resist, so she got so much screen presence that she practically became the lead character herself, pushing the drama to the background. There are many scary scenes, which are mostly based on the well established patterns ("But honey, if I you are in another room, then who the bloody hell is this woman who lies in our bed???????"). There are also many completely unnecessary jump scares. However, that's all just the writing problem. The direction is spot-on, both in drama and horror parts. Soter has obviously seen his share of classics and he did a good job on emulating them and with his obvious talent I'm sure he'll soon find his original expression, which will make his subsequent movies kick ass.

 

By the way, this is Paul Soter from... Broken Lizard!?!?!?!

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009)

Directed by: Naoyuki Tomomatsu, Yoshihiro Nishimura

Writers: Shungicu Ushida (manga), Naoyuki Tomomatsu

Yoshihiro Nishimura has been one of my favorite directors ever since I saw the wonderful Tokyo Gore Police. I definitely prefer him to his colleague Noboru Iguchi, who (with the exception of The Machine Girl, which I loved) reaches for vulgar toilet humor too often, and besides, in my opinion, he harbours a bit unhealthy obsession with human ass.

 

Strictly speaking, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is primarily a Naoyuki Tomomatsu movie, but Nishimura is credited as a co-director and he also did the special effects, so he had a huge influence on the visual side of the movie, if not for the story. Speaking of Tomomatsu, his name wasn't familiar to me before, but after this movie I'll give him a chance, though titles like Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead and Eating Schoolgirls don't promise something that would be my cup of tea.

 

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is a successful J-sploitation splatterfest, which works simply because it's so damn entertaining. If you've seen any of Nishimura's films, you'll promptly find yourself on familiar ground when some cheerful pop music starts to play while fountains of blood flow and severed body parts fly around in slow-motion.

 

Basically, it's a story of a high-school love triangle, where a poor young boy called Jyugon is sandwiched between Keiko, the vice principal's daughter and (I guess) the most popular girl at school, and Monami, an extremely cute newcomer with mysterious background, with both of them wanting him to be their boyfriend forever. So, why the hell did I just call him "poor"? Well, for one, Monami is a vampire and wants to turn him into one, and Keiko is a bitch, at least at the beginning. Then she dies, is revived by her father (who, in his free time, is an insane Dr. Frankenstein wannabe) and turned into a horrifying cut-and-paste monster made of body parts stolen from different people. And she's still a bitch! Jyugon chooses the lesser of two evils, so he and Monami are forced to fight the disturbingly enhanced Keiko and her mad father throughout the rest of the movie.

 

As with other similar films, the plot is just there to serve as an excuse (heh, like we would need one) for hilarious over-the-top violence, body parts abuse and colourful characters which never get boring. To list everything would be impossible (not to mention undesirable), but some of the highlights are a wrist cut competition, a club of black wannabe girls (this alone in America would probably put the author in jail for a long time due to racism), vice principal who dresses like a witch doctor, inventive body part combinations (a severed arm used as a propeller, eyeballs instead of nipples, to mention just a few trivial examples) and of course endless mutilations whose crowd pleasing potential is immense.

 

It's recommended to see this in the company of your male friends, especially if you can pair it with a similar but longer film, like Nishimura's Helldriver. You can also play it to your girlfriend if you want to get dumped quickly. Whatever you do, don't miss it.

The Evil Below (1988)

Directed by: Jean-Claude Dubois

Writer: Art Payne

Sunken ships! Lost treasures! Curses! Underwater sequences! Mysterious deaths! Wayne Crawford! June Chadwick! If this doesn't sound like the best thing ever (not counting the Yoshihiro Nishimura films, of course), I don't know what does. Unfortunately, The Evil Below hardly lives up to its potential. While the leads are perfectly fine, both the screenwriting and the directing are beyond pale, which all abounds to something that probably won't bore you to death, but also won't feel much more stimulating than staring at a blank wall.

 

Wayne Crawford plays Max Cash, the captain of a small boat that's about to be confiscated by the bank or something, because Cash hasn't paid it off yet, and he doesn't have any cash (notice the striking irony of his name in relation to his financial status). The salvation apparently comes in the (beautiful) body of June Chadwick, who rents his boat to find a mysterious sunken Spanish galleon called El diablo, which was supposedly packed to the brim with various kinds of stolen treasure.

 

Of course, any kind of sunken old ship with lost treasure would simply suck without an appropriate curse to go with it, so the people on the island suddenly start turning up dead, including Max Cash's father. It doesn't take Isaac Newton to observe that everyone who died was somehow involved with the hunt for the treasure and, as our heroes investigate further, it becomes more and more obvious that the origin of all the fishy things that happen is supernatural in nature. Heh, this almost sounds like a contradiction in terms.

 

This story is a great starting point and could have been made into a really good B-movie, hadn't the authors (almost on purpose, it seems) avoided everything that would made things more interesting. For example, they never bothered to bring an element of danger for the lead characters in the treasure hunt. The underwater scenes are okay, but it's because underwater scenes are cool by default and not because there's anything special about them here. There aren't any real elements of danger like, say, failed oxygen bottles or giant octopuses or megalodons or... well, you get the idea. The movie even lacks the almost obligatory scene where one of the heroes is kidnapped and the other one forced to go and get something from some shark infested waters.

 

The murder scenes are obviously not the main focus here because they are next to non-existent. We see a supporting character alone somewhere, then he or she hears something (some of them also see a shadow of something that looks like a man with a hat), then he or she sees something (but we don't) and screams and the next day he or she is dead. Where's the blood spewing, where are the cut arteries, chopped off limbs, ripped-out hearts, bellies cut open? Well, they are in Yoshihiro Nishimura movies, one of which I'm going to see tonight, but they're certainly not here.

 

With all this left out, the only thing left to focus on are the lead characters and their relationship. The motive of a ship captain (or, more often, a private detective) and his client falling for each other despite (or exactly because of) their totally conflicting characters has been done to death before and it calls for some witty dialogue, arguments, fighting, things to liven up the relationship a bit. Unfortunately, in this movie, even though Crawford and Chadwick look good together, they are given only the most boring and generic lines. What a waste of good actors :-(

 

The Evil Below is, despite my good will, a movie that's hard to recommend. You can find better underwater sequences elsewhere and you can most definitely find movies where Wayne Crawford and June Chadwick are put to better use. Try for example Forbidden World, or a more recent Art Payne - Wayne Crawford collaboration Snake Island.

Ghost Machine (2009)

Directed by: Chris Hartwill

Writers: Sven Hughes, Malachi Smyth, Sven Hughes (original story)

To tell you the truth, my hearing isn't what it used to be and I watched this movie late at night, so I wasn't able to turn the volume up as much as it was required. The point I'm getting to is - I heard almost nothing of what the characters were saying at the beginning, so I had only a vague idea of who they were and where the story took place. Sure, they are some military types and it's some kind of abandoned prison, I gathered that much, but I missed the finer details.

 

I guess it wasn't that important anyway. The point is - we have some people in some abandoned prison (presumably) and they set up a rather cool setup for a military virtual reality simulation. Basically, in the simulator they run through the same rooms and corridors that exist in the real life, with the difference that in the simulation they have full military equipment, including weapons of choice. Neat!

 

The slight problem is - a scary female ghost has infiltrated the simulation and is killing people right and left. And it has that irritating super power ripped off from Freddy Kruger that anyone who dies in the simulation dies for real. It also seems to have a power to modify the scenery, erase a staircase here, add a wall there and similar. It seems that sometimes being a ghost rocks.

 

Fortunately, it's not one of those scary long-haired Japanese ghosts, otherwise I would've promptly stop watching. The ghost is well done and a bit scary, but it doesn't stare at you through the screen and the way it eliminates people is anything but ghostly - it uses chains and brings devastating damage to their physical bodies.

 

For what it is, Ghost Machine is a finely made film that keeps interest throughout, but there's hardly anything spectacular in it. For this kind of movie, to elevate above the average status, one ghost is not enough. Had the budget allowed it, they could have made a full scale ghost vs. military war, where the ghosts would use a Hellraiser-like arsenal of chains, hooks and similar stuff, while the army would respond with their ultrafancy futuristic weapons like plasma guns, BFG 9000, railguns et cetera. Oh well, maybe in the sequel... Overall, Ghost Machine is far from a must-see, but it's worth checking it out for its rather original idea.

Storage 24 (2012)

Directed by: Johannes Roberts

Writers: Noel Clarke (original idea and screenplay), Johannes Roberts (screenplay), Davie Fairbanks (screenplay), Marc Small (screenplay)

 

I really like it when a movie lives up to its title. This one promises us Storage 24 and boy do we get it! A whole truckload of Storage 24! In fact, the entire movie takes place... in STORAGE 24!.

 

Fortunately, there's a hideous alien monster that kills people in there, because, you see, a storage (24 or otherwise) in itself isn't a particularly interesting setting. Imagine this being a drama, where people just go around and talk and yell at each other and we have to wait all the way to the very end of the movie for someone to day of cancer... in a storage. I imagine that would really suck, even if the storage in question had been the infamous... Storage 24!

 

Apart from being faithful to its title and set in the Storage 24 (I would've felt really cheated if it had been Storage 23 or something), this was also a surprisingly cool movie. Generally, a low budget and a claustrophobic setting are a recipe for disaster, but Johannes Roberts turned out to be a pretty skilful director who managed to make it all work.

 

First of all, there are no crappy introductions - right at the beginning, the people in Storage 24 are startled by a loud noise, which upon further investigation turns out to be caused by a plane crash. One of the guys finds his car crashed by a plane engine and I thought at that moment that it would be really cool if he yelled something like "Donnie Darko, you son of a bitch!". Johannes Roberts obviously had different opinion, so he avoided this cheesy and nonsensical Donnie Darko reference.

 

The important thing about the crash (even more important than a squished car) is that it was a military plane that was carrying something really nasty. Our heroes soon find themselves locked in the Storage 24 (I don't really remember how that happened, I have this nasty habit of missing out on important details in movies) along with the mysterious content of the crashed plane. It's not a real surprise that said content is extremely hungry... and not a vegetarian.

 

The thing about that thing is that it's a very good looking thing. Don't get me wrong, it's not Cindy Crawford (hell, it's not even Keira Knightley!), in fact it's even uglier than most male members of the human population, but the design is great and worthy of a film with a much larger budget. Its mouth look slightly like Predator's and the body somewhat resembles a giant insect even though it walks on two feet and it likes eating people's faces with that hideous mouth of his.

 

So, anyway, it looks great, and there are plenty of scenes where you can see it in full glory. Low budget movies usually use that irritating monster POV during most of the killings and only show it at the end, but here it isn't like that. I imagine this was a wise production decision - save money on location and use it to make a decent looking monster. And it provides some nice bloody killings - for example, it was great when some older guy came to face the monster and tried to confuse it with his trash talk and the monster got pissed off and instantly ripped off half of his face.

 

The movie also avoids some usual clichés in the character department. Not only the black guy doesn't die first, he becomes the leading hero (!). We don't see this very often (we did in Creature two years ago, but that's about that). Of course, it might have something to do with the fact that the actor who plays that lead role was also a producer and one of the writers, but be that as it may, he's a very likeable character.

 

There's also some drama between the characters, which thankfully never gets overdone. The black guy has this blonde ex girlfriend who left him for unknown reasons and only later he finds out that she's been screwing his best friend for quite some time. That "best friend" is some white guy who looks OK at the beginning, but shows his true colours when crap hits the fan and turns into a major asshole. Luckily, all of these people (including another blonde and some other guys) are normal grown ups, so we don't have to put up with another brunette-blonde-stoner-black guy-geek formula that usually comes up when a film deals with younger people (teenagers or students).

 

Basically, these are the two main ingredients that make this movie not suck - the characters that resemble real life people and a well made monster. There's also some well placed humour scattered around, for example when the ugly Predator-like monster gets distracted by a toy puppy. Of course, this is not Alien or Halloween and you won't feel that kind of tension, but you will (probably) be entertained.

 

I also have to mention the ending, without spoiling it, of course. It's that usual twist ending that's certainly been seen before, but the way they did it here was quite... interesting. I certainly don't mind that kind of stuff, I immensely enjoyed the robot at the end of Feast 3, but some people will probably find it a bit out of place.

Road Rage (2000)

Directed by: Sidney J. Furie

Writer: Greg Mellott

 

 

Here's another review from the old blog. Click here to see this with some screenshots.

 

I don’t know how many of you are car chase scene addicts – I sure am! A car chase in a movie is like a great instrumental break in a rock song – it tends to overshadow everything else and I always wish there was more of it. Take for example the 1972 film Fear is the Key. It begins with a mindblowingly great (and long) car chase, but the rest wasn’t that good. In Bullit, which was of course a great film, car chase scene was the best part, too.



 

So what if someone made a movie consisting entirely of car chase(s)? Road Rage is that movie! Unfortunately, it’s really horrible. Okay, before we get into details, to respond to a question you’re asking – yes, of course, there’s Duel, a brilliant film, one that certainly predates Road Rage and serves as an obvious inspiration for it. However, Duel was primarily a thriller (or even horror), not an action movie. The main character being pursued for no reason by something large and terrifying and seemingly undestructible is a theme that has more in common with, say, Halloween than your regular car chase movies.

As much as I’d prefer to continue writing about Spielberg/Matheson’s masterpiece, sadly, we have to turn our attention to Road Rage, which, as I said, is a real action movie with lots of car chases and crashes. Similar to Duel, the main protagonists get into trouble straight away and are being chased to the very end. Everything else is different. First of all, there is no mystery about the pursuer’s identity – Casper Van Dien and his annoying female sidekick Sonia are being chased by her idiotic ex-boyfriend and his two equally idiotic friends. All three of them are dumb jocks (actually, two of them are, I don’t know about the third one) who look like they couldn’t tie their shoelaces, which is extremely disappointing especially if we, again, remember Duel and its mysterious antagonist whose face we never see.

 

Be that as it may, those three morons for some reason always appear on our heroes’ tail when they least expect it. They are never too upset about their truck exploding or falling off the side of the road or other similar minor annoyances. For example, they try to attack them on a gas station, hit a gas pump instead, there’s a big explosion, the truck is totally destroyed, but minutes later it’s as good as new. I don’t understand if they got a new one, or quickly fixed the one that exploded or... For a movie with such a simple story, it sure has its share of whatthehell moments. 

 

So, anyway, how the heck have they managed to ruin such a great and simple idea? Surely, a few continuity errors can’t be such a big issue. Well, the main problem is the screenwriter, who should be shot repeatedly in the head before he “writes” anything else (unfortunately, this movie is more than 10 years old and in the meantime he has “written” quite a few of them, which I’ll try my best to avoid). The characterization is absolutely horrible and the dialogs are the worst. Almost everyone has two or three (not very impressive) lines that they repeat over and over until you get sick. Take the main bad guy, the ex-boyfriend. Aside from looking like a complete dork, he constantly repeats how he loves Sonia. Remember, this is happening at the same time while he’s trying to kill her. His fat sidekick (the non-jock one) only cares about his truck not being damaged so it’s “You scratched my truck! Don’t hit my truck! You’ll ruin my truck! Don’t ruin my truck!” over and over and over again. As a bonus, his acting (if you can call it that) is terrible.

Sonia is really cute and while her conversations with Casper are made of the worst clichés ever (“You are a rich girl! You have everything!” “No, I don’t! My life sucks!” “No, it doesn’t!” “I love stars!” etc) it’s all relatively bearable until about halfway through the film when she finally loses her grip and starts yelling “I want to talk to him! Let me talk to him! Why is this happening to us? I wish I was dead! Let me die! I want to talk to him! Let me talk to him! Why is this happening? I want to die!” and similar. You get the idea. Anyone less cool than Casper would’ve probably thrown her out of the damn car under her stupid ex-boyfriend’s wheels. Anyway, Casper’s the only one that manages to fight the idiotic script and come out with some dignity left.

Or is he? There’s a scene when he and Sonia are out of gas and they stop a ranger (played by Catherine Oxenberg) to try to get a ride. The bad guys appear and immediately attack, Catherine gets out of the car and shoots at them, but they hit her and she rolls over to the side of the road. So, surely, our heroes immediately go there and help her, right? Wrong! They take her car and get the hell out of there without even turning their heads to see if she’s alive! And I presume we are supposed to root for them? Remember, this is Casper’s wife we are talking about! He probably had a lot of explaining (and dish washing!) to do to make up for that. If anyone cares, the ranger apparently did survive, but she didn’t appear again. Her sole purpose was to provide a new car after Casper’s limousine ran out of gas. 

 

Also, one of the first scenes in the movie is Casper being headbutted by that loser ex-boyfriend, which sucks big time. Johnny Rico would certainly have none of that!

 

Fortunately, the movie is not completely unwatchable. The action scenes are pretty cool, especially at the beginning, but there’s also some nice car chasing through the beautiful Canadian country at the end. Too bad they didn’t hire someone at least competent to write the script. Hell, I think even Kevin Smith would have written it better!

Exam (2009)

Directed by: Stuart Hazeldine

Writers: Simon Garrity (story), Stuart Hazeldine (story and screenplay)

Well, if you read the title and hoped for a horror story where an university exam quickly turns into a total carnage when a professor starts murdering the students who cheat in horribly nasty ways, you'll be disappointed to discover that's actually just a clever mystery movie that features less than 20 dead bodies. Oh, well...

 

Exam actually doesn't have anything to do with universities - it's about a job interview for an extremely powerful company. Eight candidates are put in a room and given a pencil and a piece of paper each. The invigilator, played by Colin Salmon, tells them that there's only one question and only one answer and he gives them the simple instructions: 1) Whoever damages their paper will be disqualified, 2) Whoever tries to contact him or the guard will be disqualified, and 3) Whoever leaves the room will be disqualified. I paraphrased a bit, but those are the general guidelines. However, for the candidates it is extremely important to remember (and follow) the exact way the invigilator phrased the rules.

 

The exam starts, the invigilator sets the timer to 80 minutes and leaves the room (but will reappear quite a few times through flashbacks) and the people are left alone with their papers and the guard who stands quietly by the door. Then they turn their papers to see what the question is, only to find out they are completely blank. And here's where the fun begins. It's not a simple matter of answering the question, they have to find the question first.

 

One woman starts to write something like a motivation letter and is promptly thrown out by the guard (a note for the more bloodthirsty readers: she's not decapitated, shot, or even murdered at all, just escorted out of the room). This is when the other candidates realize they have to pay extremely close attention to the invigilator's instructions. Their first discovery is that anything that's not explicitly forbidden is allowed - so they can freely talk to each other. At first they think that the infamous question must be hidden somewhere on their papers, so they start to analyse the surroundings and try to find a way to get the bloody thing to appear. If you've ever played a point and click adventure, you're on a familiar ground.

 

The strength of this movie lies not only in what its director/writer Stuart Hazeldine does, but also in what he avoids. With a setup like this, there's a number of clichés the movie could have fallen into. For example - a there-can-be-only-one type of contest where the characters discover that only one of them will win and all others have to die for some reason. Or that they all are going to die because they share some connection or a dark secret, which is the very reason why they are here in the first place. Or that the mysterious organisation is really evil and they do some weird experiments on humans or something like that. Instead, (at least for the most part) there's not a question of anyone dying - it's just about solving a mystery of the missing question and getting a job.

 

You might think this takes out a huge amount of suspense, but you would be wrong. First of all, the mystery itself is very interesting. It keeps you guessing from the first scene to the last and it packs quite a few nice surprises when our heroes come up with progressively more imaginative potential solutions, only to find them completely useless as the question stubbornly refuses to appear. So, even if human lives weren't at stake at all, we have an enjoyment of a nice little enigma without an obvious solution. However, we find out that for some of the characters getting this job is extremely important. Through some cleverly written dialogues, which give us enough information to understand the character motivation, but avoid unnecessary infodumps, we are informed that some kind of pandemic is happening outside, that many people have died, and that some of the candidates have had close encounters with the virus. The reason why they need the job is closely related to the true nature of the mysterious company, which is slowly revealed as we approach the end of the movie.

 

The story is very well written and, as I've mentioned before, is somewhat reminiscent of the point and click adventure games, where characters have to solve some problem by closely analysing their environment and, if necessary, combining different objects. The great part of its appeal comes from the way the characters are kept in total darkness as to what exactly do they have to do. They try something and it doesn't work. Then they try something else and it also doesn't work. Then another thing, and it doesn't work, too. In the process, some of them are disqualified either by making stupid mistakes, or by being tricked by someone else. Then suddenly they (and we) realize that the movie is almost over and they still haven't found the question. Is there a question at all? How many can be accepted at all? Would they all have passed if they had just sat in their places the entire time and avoided breaking the rules? So by constantly keeping you guessing about the nature of the whole thing, Hazeldine skilfully prevents you from complaining about the body count being lower than in a Yoshihiro Nishimura movie.

 

When it comes to the characters, there aren't many surprises there - there's a usual irritating I'm-so-smarter-than-you-so-I'm-gonna-boss guy who promptly takes the spotlight, along with some predictably tame women, but it will turn out that some of the other people are prepared to do much, much more than it seems at first. A nice touch here, and one that also adds to the detachment of the setting from our regular world, is that the characters avoid using real names and instead invent nicknames for themselves. When the nickname moment came, I thought "Of course, now they're gonna screw it all up and instead of using some obvious thing like skin colour, they're gonna go for some politically correct crap!", but I was again pleasantly surprised when that irritating white guy from the beginning of the paragraph immediately named them Black, White, Brown, Brunette, Blonde, etc. One of the ladies complained about this, to which I immediately yelled "Shut up!" at her, and fortunately the other characters ignored her, so the politically incorrect nicknames remained.

 

Obviously, I can't say much about the ending without spoiling it, so here are just a few general remarks: Both the mystery of the question and the point of the entire exam are explained, along with the motives of the recruiting organisation, and I liked the explanation. The nature of the question is not contradicted by anything that happened earlier in the movie, so there's no cheating on the part of the authors. So it's not one of those movies that end with another mystery (like Cube) or an earth shattering plot twist that you'll never forget as long as you live (like Saw), but the conclusion is logical and doesn't ruin the preceding events.

 

The atmosphere has a nice otherworldly quality to it. I have already mentioned the lack of character names (that always works well), but other things also must be mentioned. The soundtrack uses some great ambient music that goes very well with the progressively revealed apocalyptic nature of the whole thing. It never tries to jump in front and grab your attention, but instead does its job of providing a good atmospheric background. Second, the entire movie takes place in a single room. We get a few glimpses of the adjoining hallway, but other than that there's not a single exterior scene. The examination room doesn't have windows (obviously) and even the beginning of the movie, which shows the candidates preparing for the exam, is done entirely in close-ups, so it doesn't show any of the surroundings. It can't be stressed enough how risky this is - if you choose to put an entire movie in a single room and provide the information about the outside world only through dialogue, you can easily end up with a boring piece of crap, unless you are Alfred Hitchcock or Sidney Lumet. The fact that Hazeldine managed to pull this off speaks volumes. I'm glad that the majority of the viewers seem to share my opinion, as Exam has a pretty high IMDb rating. So, Stuart, when's the next movie coming out?