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.

Barely Legal (2011)

Directed by: Jose Montesinos

Writer: Naomi Selfman

 

 

As we all know, the quality of The Asylum “films” (if you can call them that) generally ranges from simply unwatchable to “I want to rip out my eyes and pierce my ears and jump into a pool full of piranhas” kind of unwatchable. If you’ve seen one, you know the amount of pain it brings. However, there are a few titles (I’ve counted three so far) that by sheer fluke aren’t that devastating for your mental health. Mind you, certainly not because they are less stupid than the others, hell no! The fact is that they have certain other… “qualities” (hehe) worth mentioning. So, to repeat, if you see that a movie is from The Asylum kitchen, you are to avoid at all costs, unless it’s one of those (so far) three we’re going to review here. Now we’ll cover Barely Legal, and the other two are Snakes on a Train and Invasion of the Pod People.

Barely Legal is a “comedy” that’s by no means less idiotic than other films by this company. It’s kind of an inverted American Pie story – we have three smoking hot girls, all turning 18 on the same day, on the mission of losing virginity during their birthday party. It turns out that’s not as easy as it sounds (!)

Our three heroines correspond to stereotypes established long ago – one is smart (or, rather, less stupid than the other two), the other is a slut (yep, I guess this is the first time that we have a movie with a virgin slut) and the third is kind of a religious freak. The only inversion is that the “smart” one is actually a blonde. It takes really high disbelief suspension powers to swallow the story of three best friends sharing birthday and living together in a huge mansion with a swimming pool and everything. No parents are mentioned here, so it’s unclear who pays for all that.

Much more disappointing is the fact that this movie never manages to reach the atmosphere of those party movies it tries to copy. From the beginning, we are being promised that the 18^th birthday party will be something spectacular, never seen before, blah blah blah, however, when it actually starts, we never have that impression. Occasionally we meet some characters wandering around, sometimes something happens, but at all times it’s painfully obvious that there wasn’t enough money to hire the required number of actors for this kind of thing.

As far as comedy goes, it’s completely unfunny from the first to the last second, but thankfully it also manages not to be terribly disgusting. One notable exception is a scene of oral sex with a dog. I could really live without that one.

It’s obvious that it’s a horrible movie that fails both as a comedy and… well, as a film, so question is – why would anyone watch this? The answer is simple – this movie contains a ridiculous amount of nudity, far, far beyond what its more famous competitors like American Pie are willing to show. Once the party starts, it’s not easy to find a scene where no one is naked. All three lead actresses repeatedly take their clothes off and a huge, huuuuuuge plus is that all three of them are natural from head to toe. So, I would certainly recommend you to watch this one and feast your eyes. To reduce the amount of stupidity to which you’re going to be subjected, you can mute the movie and play some music of your own preference. Double win!

Teenage Caveman (2002)

Directed by: Larry Clark

Writer: Christos N. Gage

 

Chances are you have probably heard of this movie before, and if you’ve read a few interviews you might have noticed that most people tend to easily dismiss it as pure crap. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is probably the fact that this movie is pure crap. Now, as is often the case with low budget movies, that doesn’t necessarily make it unwatchable. That depends on your tolerance to irritating teenage idiots and the amount of weed you currently possess. Personally, I’ve never smoked weed, but a cousin of mine who did said that it made him enjoy some pretty questionable films, so I thought it might help in this case, too.

What little story this complete failure of a movie has goes something like this: There’s this tribe in a post-apocalyptic future and it has this really annoying religious fanatic as a leader. He preaches abstinence and similar stuff, but that doesn’t prevent him from having piles of dirty magazines under the bed and from screwing all the attractive females in the tribe. Damn hypocrite! Well, we all know what Mel Brooks said about kings, right? (Hint: He said “It’s good to be the king!”). However, he really crosses the line when he choses none other than his son’s girlfriend for the honour of inserting his royal higness into her. The son gets pissed off, kills him and he and his girlfriend leave the tribe with a bunch of other nondescript (teenage) characters. For the brevity of the text, I skipped a few not so important scenes, like the son being sentenced to death.

So, the party, led by the late tribe leader’s son (whose name is David, but we will call him Ronald Reagan for the remainder of this review) and his girlfriend (Sarah, to be called Barbara Bush from now on) wanders through the post-apocalyptic wasteland, only to stumble upon the remains of a Great City, whose name isn’t mentioned, but someone on the IMDb said it was Seattle, so I guess it was... Seattle. However, we will call it Portland.

Portland is of course deserted, however, our “heroes” stumble upon two young people (have you noticed that everyone’s young in Larry Clark’s movies?) who live there and enjoy everything that modern technology has to offer, including, but not limited to, movies, music, drugs, jaccuzi baths, computers, drugs, paintings on the walls, drugs, music, drugs, alcohol, fancy shmancy scientific equipment, drugs and similar stuff. One of them is Tiffany Limos, whom you might now from another Larry Clark movie and the other is the late Richard Hillman who delivers one of the most ridiculous performances I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but damn my shoes if he isn’t overacting like a bastard son of Crispin Glover and Matthew Lillard.

 

Anyway, Ronald Reagan and his sidekicks have no knowledge of any of this modern stuff (as you may recall, they’d spent their entire lives in a primitive tribe), so they readily throw away the patriarchal bonds that binded them and plunge into the pool of drinking, heavy partying, drugs, sex, alcohol, loud music, sex, drugs, computer games, sex and similar things. All except Ronald Reagan and Barbara Bush, who find their hosts suspiciously suspicious, and for the right reason!

 

It turns out that these two are actually somehow genetically modified and thus immortal (!) and they want to use the unexpected guests for some sinister experiments. Ronald Reagan and Barbara Bush try to warn the others, but fortunately they are just too stupid to listen, so they all die by spontaneous combustion. Don’t ask, just thank the heavens for little things. After that, Richard Hillman’s character transforms into a hideous monster and dies and I’m sure Tiffany Limos also dies, I just can’t remember exactly how. Ronald Reagan is apparently infected with the same substance that made those two immortal (we will not dwell on the fact that they are both dead) so he takes Barbara Bush and returns to take the control of his old tribe. End. Sorry, I spoiled that for you.

The stupidity of the screenplay is something we can live with, however, the horrible acting and the characters that are more than irritating pose more of a problem. Fortunately, the fact that almost all of them die in horrible ways atones for that a bit. What also sucked is that the movie never provides a decent post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Everything takes place indoors (in two or three rooms) and even when they condescend to give us an outdoor scene or two, it just sucks and it’s boring and it doesn’t show anything interesting. The only thing (apart from almost everyone dying) that makes this at least semi-watchable is Larry Clark’s fascination with naked teenage bodies. He sets the record for the most gratuitous bath scene ever – in this one, all the main characters just hop naked into the bath together, immediately upon being introduced. It’s not completely unwise to stop watching the movie when that scene ends (what’s even wiser is also skipping the part before that).