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. 

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!

Snake Eater III... His Law (1992)

Directed by: George Erschbamer

Writers: John Dunning, W. Glenn Duncan (book Rafferty's Rules)

 

 

In my opinion, this final part of the legendary Snake Eater trilogy is actually the best in the series. Now, before the rabid fans of the first two parts tear me apart, let me try to justify this somewhat controversial statement: First of all, Snake Eater III is based on a book, which spices up its intellectual side a bit. And it has more breasts. I rest my case.

The influence of W. Glenn Duncan’s novel Rafferty’s Rules (which I haven’t read, but I’ll bet it’s a pure masterpiece) on the screenplay is obvious: Instead of rednecks, drug lords, mental institutions etc, we have a warm story of a biker gang that kidnapped a young reporter and spent several months drugging and raping her. When she finally escaped (or was let go, I don’t remember) she was so screwed up in the head that she automatically offered herself to anyone she met.

So, the girl’s parents are quite upset with this and they hire Lorenzo Lamas to track the bikers down and have them rubbed out, eliminated, maybe even killed. Initially, he refuses, saying that he doesn’t do that sort of thing, but when the girl’s mother replies “I think you do!” he immediately changes his mind and accepts. Someone with her persuasion skills would certainly be a fine addition to any RPG party.

The reason Lorenzo’s able to accept this time consuming task is that he’s suspended from the police again, this time for killing a guy who was trying to rob a cafeteria. I wonder if they have a limit on suspensions in the department... Anyway, now that Lorenzo has some free time, he finds himself a pretty cool sidekick named The Cowboy, who provides vital information for him and occasionally helps him kill people. Together they manage to bring down the gang and eliminate their leader, after which the girl is mysteriously cured. This sounds lake a lame horror movie, but that’s how it is.

Snake Eater III has all the action and humor of the first two parts, plus more nudity than both of them combined (which means simply more than the first, because the second one didn’t have any). All the main female characters take their clothes off at some point. For example, the girl that got tortured by the bikers (Valerie’s her name, I think) lifts her skirt and starts to pull down her panties immediately upon being introduced to Lorenzo, but unfortunately her boring father stops her (a short digression: If you analyze these movies carefully, you’ll notice that Lorenzo probably has some superpower that makes women strip in his presence).

The film has a good tempo and constantly alternates between fist fighting, shooting, sex and Lorenzo’s arniesque one-liners. The highlight is probably a scene in a bar where he fights this HUGE redneck, a moment of epic proportions, rivalling the legendary fight between Bruce Lee and Kareem Abdul-Jabaar in Game of Death. An interesting change from the previous installments is that Lorenzo has a full-time girlfriend in this one, which shows his romantic side. Of course, she’s completely useless, just like other female characters in the series.

 

Unfortunately, they have never made another Snake Eater movie and it burns my heart with sorrow. But at least Lorenzo went on and made many other brilliant movies.

Snake Eater II: The Drug Buster (1989)

Directed by: George Eschbamer

Writers: Don Carmody, John Dunning, Michael Paseornek

After a delay slightly longer than expected, we are back with another wonderful movie from Lorenzo Lamas' Snake Eater trilogy. The review is taken from here: http://speedtavern.blogspot.com/2011/10/snake-eater-ii-drug-buster-1989.html Click that link if you want to see some beautiful screenshots from the movie.

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Lorenzo Lamas returns as Jonathan “Soldier” Kelly in this sequel which is probably the weakest film in the trilogy, but that doesn’t mean it sucks or something, it’s just that it’s... the weakest film in the trilogy.

 

The story goes as follows: Lorenzo learns that a particularly nasty drug lord has been enrichening his merchandise with rat poison, which for some reason causes the death of some people. It comes as no surprise that Lorenzo is really pissed off and that he immediately sets sail for bringing down the said druglord and kicking his ass.

It’s also not a real surprise that he’s suspended; this time they don’t even bother to tell us why. This comes as a small problem for his mission, because he’s unable to use the standard police methods like shooting everyone and blowing everything up. Forced to keep a low profile again, he arms himself with a really big shotgun and goes to shoot everyone, but only manages to kill four or five bad guys before the police arrives.

He goes to trial, where his lawyer plays the temporary insanity (TM) card, resulting in him (Lorenzo, not the lawyer) being sent to a mental institution for evaluation, rather than jail. Apart from not being in jail, the institution has several upsides: First, the doctor that does the evaluation is a woman, so she eventually falls in love with Lorenzo. Second, the inmates are really a cool bunch, especially a crazy sex-obsessed former preacher whose “sermons” are probably the high point of the entire movie. Finally, the place is so well guarded that Lorenzo’s pals can go out and return unnoticed any time they like. They just don’t want to do it because the people outside are crazy.

Lorenzo however sees an opportunity and armed with his wit, fists and a black sidekick named Speedboat he goes about his business of destroying the evil drug master. Here lies the main problem with this movie – there’s a significant lack of fistfights.  Lorenzo and his pal base their operation on sabotage – for example, they blow up the evil guy’s warehouse, they poison his henchmen (and blow one of the up) in a restaurant, etc. etc. Finally, they get tired of that crap, kill the bastard and get arrested. End.

Anyway, it takes almost 80 minutes to get to the first fight, where Lorenzo is almost killed by this huge bearded guy, but luckily he notices a nearby bottle, breaks it on the guy’s head and then electrocutes him. We have a few shooting scenes, especially at the beginning and near the end of the movie, but we can say that in total this movie is a bit short on action.

All in all, as far as first two movies are concerned, I must say I’m not quite satisfied with Lorenzo’s performance in fights. However, he totally makes up for it with his superior endurance. This time he gets stabbed right in the back and later the aforementioned large bearded guy shoots him in the arm and in the leg, all of which does absolutely nothing to slow him, or even bring him any pain. Still, he should be more careful with his reputation – the way he walked right into the trap by not checking the corners of the room is really unflattering. A former Snake Eater should not allow that.

Female viewers would be interested to know that Lorenzo again takes his shirt off a few times, but doesn’t spend so much screen time topless as in the first movie. Male viewers should be warned that this time there’s no trace of female nudity.

Snake Eater (1988)

Directed by: George Erschbamer

Writers: Michael Paseornek, John Dunning

 

 

 

I have a confession to make: I had a movie blog before this one. In fact, I had tons of (crappy) blogs before this one, but the one I'm talking about is the one I actually liked. It was supposed to be about people who can kick your ass (like Lorenzo Lamas, Richard Norton, etc., leaving out the obvious ones like Chuck Norris or Arnie) and the reviews were pretty detailed and full of pictures. Of course, this was too much for me, putting those pictures was a real pain and it took me hours to update the damn thing each time. So I took a few months off and decided to create a different kind of blog, with shorter texts and without pictures, and also with a bit broader field of interest, which gives me the opportunity to update more frequently and ensure my readers (both of them) visit it regularly.

 

Still, I kinda like some of my old texts, so for the sake of completeness I'm gonna reprint them here, without the pictures. First, we're gonna cover Lorenzo Lamas' Snake Eater trilogy. The first movie was originally reviewed here: http://speedtavern.blogspot.com/2011/09/snake-eater-1988.html

 

And here goes the original text (click on the link above to see some screenshots):

 

 

 

This is the first part of a trilogy in which Lorenzo Lamas plays Jack “Soldier” Kelly, a former member of the Marines, currently a cop whose job is to look cool, make the women around him take their clothes off, deliver one-liners so devastating they would make Arnie blush and occasionally beat up some bad guy. In this movie he faces a band of Deliverance-style rednecks who killed his parents and kidnapped his sister, but we will get there in a moment.

First things first – the Snake Eaters are an elite division of the Marines whose speciality are actually the search & destroy missions and not something else that might have crossed your dirty mind. I’ll be first to admit that this was a relatively poor choice of words on the screenwriters’ part – they couldn’t theoretically have made it more gay, unless they’d named them Village People. And that one was already taken. Anyway, this is actually not that important, because, as I said earlier, Lorenzo is a former Snake Eater. The only thing that reminds us of his past is his belt buckle, which has a drawing of a snake on it. Apart from that, we are pleased to announce that Lorenzo doesn’t eat any snakes in any of the three movies.

Okay, anyway – the very beginning of the movie shows us a disastrous drug bust led by Lorenzo that got him suspended. Without going into too much detail, I will mention that we get to see a naked woman (she had to remove her clothes to show that she’s not wired, but she required the same of Lorenzo and he did it, but fortunately he kept his snake offscreen) and a general Dirty Harry attitude that drives his character. At the same time, said rednecks kill his parents and kidnap his sister with every intention of doing reeeaaally nasty things to her, like raping and stuff, but they never get around to that because something always interrupts. You would imagine they’d have some privacy deep in the woods, but no.  

Lorenzo doesn’t act in this one – he simply revels in his own coolness and generally keeps the same don’t-give-a-crap-gonna-kick-your-ass face expression throughout the movie, except for the very moment when he learns of the tragedy, when he looks down in sadness for about a second, but he gets back on the track really quickly.

Unfortunately, his self-confidence isn’t always followed by his actions. Of course, he did save the girl, but he also got himself into trouble far too many times, definitely more than someone of his reputation should allow. For example, the very first time he meets the rednecks, he starts a fight with them and gets heavily beaten (and there are only three of them!). He also steps into a bear trap, he gets shot etc., but luckily none of that does him any noticeable damage.

Snake Eater is a pretty good movie. It actually started great – the drug bust was really hilarious and after that we had a few juicy fistfights, all of that enriched with Lorenzo’s one-liners; unfortunately, things got a little quiet in the middle, with him trying stealth tactics to infiltrate the rednecks lair and all that, which was kinda gay. Also, the rednecks were totally inept and never managed to get any of the women to take their clothes off, which was a bit frustrating. Lorenzo, on the other hand, spends virtually the entire movie shirtless. Still, there’s enough action and humor to keep you entertained, so I would wholeheartedly recommend this one to all you B-movie lovers out there.