War Wolves (2009)

Directed by: Michael Worth

 

Writer: Michael Worth

 

 

 

 

 

The best short description of this movie would probably be - an action horror psychological drama about werewolves without werewolves. If you're a fan of werewolves (and who the heck isn't?) it's best to accept straight away that the creatures you're about to see are a completely different thing, it will reduce your suffering significantly. True, you could reduce it even further by watching something else, but what fun is life without pain?

 

The beginning of the movie, which of course sets the tone for everything that follows, is stunningly confusing and is a prime example of how not to direct anything. Some people (soldiers) are playing football (or, rather, that weird game similar to rugby that Americans like to call football even though it's mostly played by hands) somewhere. No idea who they are and where they are. Before we get a chance to even begin to get to know them, they are suddenly on a battlefield somewhere (no idea where) and are having their asses kicked by some bloodthirsty creatures. Of course, we don't see any violence or anything else even remotely interesting. Before we even get a chance to begin to understand what's going on, we are thrown a few months (or years?) forward. It appears that those soldiers are actually not dead, but have been bitten by the not-werewolf creatures and most of them are now turned into not-werewolves themselves. The only one who's still fighting the disease is, conveniently, Michael Worth, the writer/director of this mess. Some hot not-werewolf chicks (one of them his (former?) girlfriend) are coming to get him and make him join the dark side.

 

But that's not all! There's some hope for human kind after all - the pair of mean not-werewolf ass kickers Tim Thomerson and John Saxon are also in the vicinity and they also seek Michael Worth. What follows is an epic battle between good and ev... oh, sorry, I mixed it up with Lord of the Rings for some reason. What follows is a series of completely irrelevant and uninteresting events which leads, I think, to good guys winning or something. In the process, we get to see one of the most idiotic seduction scenes in history. I was going to post it here, but I can't find it on YouTube, so I guess you'll have to watch the movie after all. Tough luck.

 

The worst thing here (I'm assuming we are prepared for horrible script, weak direction, bad acting, etc.) is the way the monsters look. If you've ever seen a decent werewolf movie, you know that when someone's turning into one of them his teeth and nails grow, his ears get pointy, the nose starts to change etc. That there's the hair growth and then a complete change. But the creatures here never progress beyond this initial point. It's just big teeth and nails (and ears). I mean come on! If they had the money to create real werewolves, the movie would have been... well, it still would have been horrible, but at least it would have had werewolves! Give this one a miss.

Megalodon (2002)

Directed by: Pat Corbitt, Gary J. Tunnicliffe

Writers: Gary J. Tunnicliffe, Stanley Isaacs

Wow! I think this has to be one of the best megalodon movies made in 2002, topped only by Shark Attack 3! So, what is it that makes it so good? Well, nothing, actually. In fact, it's rather horrible :-(

The story somewhat deviates from the usual "Oh, no, the sea is infested with sharks, but we have a Very Important Competition That Will Bring Us A Lot Of Money to hold, so do we close the beach and lose money or pretend that nothing's happening and risk everyone's lives until some hero appears and saves everyone's asses?" cliché established in Spielberg's Jaws and repeated to death ever since. Here we have a rather claustrophobic setting of a huge sci-fi looking (but only from the outside) drilling platform deep in the ocean. That platform is situated in some kind of geologically sensitive area, which is of course the recipe for disaster. It doesn't take long for things to go wrong - some underground cave or something is unblocked, releasing a huge megalodon - sixty feet of prehistoric terror!!!1 Are you on the edge of your seat already?

 

If I saw such a huge prehistoric shark, I imagine I would be rather scared. Fortunately, the directors of this movie wisely decide to never let us truly experience that hugeness - the fake CGI shark is mostly shot completely alone in the water, without any solid objects in the background to allow for the comparison. That way, we are able to survive watching this film without dying of fear. Boredom, on the other hand, was a bit harder to repel...

 

Somehow, this movie is missing everything that makes for an enjoying shark experience. The setting itself effectively rules out beaches and topless beauties lying in the sun. The fact that the antagonist is a prehistoric shark that's supposed to be dead for millions of years (or something like that) makes impossible the traditional use of stock footage of real sharks. And the lack of money makes the existing CGI shark horribly unimpressive. Add to that the lack of horrifying death scenes and you have a movie that's best to avoid, unless you are a true megalodon fan. But even in that case, you're better off watching Shark Attack 3. The only good thing in the whole movie is the final scene - our heroine is on her boat and below her suddenly flows a huge terrifying shadow of sixty feet of prehistoric terror!!!1 This is a very nice short scene that slightly improves the bad taste left in your brain after watching (or preferably sleeping through) the rest of the movie.

Blood Scarab (2008)

 

Directed by: Donald F. Glut

Writer: Donald F. Glut

When I chose to watch this movie last night, I was expecting it to be a rather generic softcore flick. I usually hate those movies because they all somehow manage to make sex and nudity boring (I won't go into details now, perhaps some other time), but this one promised the possibility of being different. After all, it features vampires and the main role is played by Monique Parent. Quite enough for me.

 

It turns out that this is not an erotic film at all. Or, to be more precise, it's not a softcore movie as we know it but rather some kind of horror comedy with lots and lots of nudity (but no sex). The story follows the famous bloodthirsty countess Elizabeth Bathory, here married to a surprisingly incompetent Count Dracula who looks suspiciously like Billy Burke. Dracula bites the dust straight away, thanks to Renfield and some naked girls whom he had been spying on. Elizabeth is pissed off that, as a vampire, she's unable to walk during the daytime, so she forces the housekeeper and driver Renfield to find a way to correct that small defect. When you see how Renfield looks in this movie, you wouldn't trust him to be able to pour a glass of water for himself, but he's actually surprisingly efficient in his quest, which soon brings us the unusual combination of vampires and ancient Egypt, bloodsuckers, mummies, goddesses, curses and various other stuff. Not bad.

 

The most frustrating thing about this movie is the lack of sex scenes and it's something which you should be aware of in advance. It's not that everyone got frigid all of a sudden - on the contrary, there are plenty of scenes when some girls are willing to show some affection to one another, but just as they start getting to the point, the scene ends. What the hell is wrong with this director, I have no idea. Fortunately it's not all bad. The movie is perfectly aware of its limitations and never tries to be serious. The humor is not something out of a Coen brothers picture, but it will give you a smile here and there (for example, the very first time you see Dracula's moustache) and the story is not too boring.

 

The best thing of course is that all the actresses (except for Brinke Stevens, who appears in a cameo role) spend most of the time topless and Monique Parent is still sexy enough to melt a rock. She has a full frontal scene near the beginning when she takes a bath, but the real cake comes near the end, when she finally gains the ability to walk in the sunlight, and makes the best of it by enjoying a topless stroll around. This is something that can't be described in words, so you better get the movie and see for yourself, and I end this short review by again admiring this wonderful actress who'll probably still be hot when she's seventy or something.

The Helpers (2012)

Directed by: Christopher B. Stokes

Writer: Christopher B. Stokes

Some young people are traveling from some place to some other place for whatever reason and they have a car accident in the middle of nowhere. They walk to a roadside motel nearby and it happens to be full of wonderful people who promptly arrange for the car to be fixed and in the meantime offer our friends tons of free drinks, food and shelter for the night, which none of them finds the least bit suspicious, of course. But here's the twist - in the morning some of our friends find themselves dead, while others are tied up and watched via surveillance cameras by some "mysterious" figure. Hey, what kind of a hospitality is that? What kind of people are they? What the heck are they doing? Well, they first help you and then they kill you because they are... The Helpers!

 

I hope you are back in your chair after no doubt having fallen to the floor in shock and amazement by such a daring and original concept. But fear not - you'll soon find yourself on familiar territory when it turns out that everything in this movie has been done thousands of times before. Fortunately, Chris Stokes and his partners in crime bring at least some amount of originality by sheer ineptitude with which they abuse the whole concept.

 

I won't go into too much detail, because this movie is simply not worth it, and besides, you already know what to expect - irritating generic characters played by horrible actors, antagonists that are only slightly less irritating than the victims, dumb plot "twists" (if it makes sense to talk about them in a movie that has no plot), no imagination in killings (for example, they rip off a famous scene from The Hitcher not only once, but twice!), stupid screaming blonde bitches, completely pointless video surveillance scenes, jerk with a camera, et cetera. What stands out is the overall stupidity of all characters, which pushes the boundaries even for this type of film.

 

For example, I've already mentioned the victims' lack of suspicion about the downright weird behavior of their hosts at the beginning. When they have a car accident at the beginning, they simply don't walk twenty meters back to investigate what could have caused it. At a late stage of the movie, a "savior" conveniently appears and some of the survivors readily trust him, even though they had previously seen him with the killers (!). Examples like this are too numerous to mention. Add to that the obscenely absurd and ridiculous backstory (explained thankfully at the ending, when most of the viewers are already sleeping) and you have one heck of a failure. Just don't think that it's so bad that it's good. No, it's so bad that it's bad.

The ABCs of Death (2012)

Directed by: See the review

Writers: See above

You've all watched numerous films that consist of three (sometimes four) stories, but sure as heck you haven't seen twenty six different stories in one movie before! Apparently, some producer, whose name I forgot, came up with a brilliant idea to make some kind of horror alphabet - for each letter of the alphabet one short story whose title is a single word beginning with that letter. Each story was done by a different director - they were given only the letter and the title and of course the story were entirely up to them.

 

Good thing about this concept is that stories follow one another so rapidly that the movie hardly ever gets boring. The bad thing - well, it's not the fault of the concept, but the fact is that today it's hard to find twenty six (or even six) good horror directors to fill the space. Of course, it's impossible to please everyone - I could bitch about the absence of Alexandre Aja, David Bruckner, Marcus Dunstan, Darren Lynn Bousman, Hideo Nakata etc., but on the other hand I have to be pleased with the presence of Yoshihiro Nishimura and Ti West (even though he failed miserably). Even if some of them were present, there's no guarantee that they wouldn't have failed miserably like Ti West.

 

OK, anyway, on to the movie itself. I won't even try to describe each story separately (I've forgotten most of them, anyway), so just a few general remarks: The quality in general is below average and the lack of good ideas is horrifying. There are no vampires, werewolves, Japanese long haired scary ghosts (even though at least four or five directors are Japanese), or even ghosts of any kind, no decent (post)apocalyptic story (even though the first one is titled A is for Apocalypse) etc. What have we instead? Two stories are actually meta-movies about their directors' lack of inspiration, at least three of them heavily feature toilets, one is about farting (directed, not surprisingly, by Noboru Iguchi), one contains masturbation competition (this one is actually well done, but it's sick beyond words), one about (and titled) orgasm, many other aren't even horror and... you get the idea. If "toilet humor" is an appropriate term to describe most of today's comedies, then "toilet horror" is sure fighting for its place in our favorite genre.

 

The style and quality vary considerably, there are "normal" stories, some of them are animated, one contains stop motion animation, some (like O is for Orgasm) are so heavily stylized that it's hard to tell what the hell's going on, some feature traditional Japanese bloodbath insanity, but it's all at best watchable and hardly anything will make you go "Wow!", except...

 

... for better or worse, there is a story called D is for Dogfight, directed by Marcel Sarmiento (previously known for Deadgirl, which was an OK movie with an interesting idea, but not terribly spectacular), which is so above everything else story-wise and execution-wise that it's simply unbelievable. It's like putting Akira Kurosawa next to Kevin Smith. The story is about some guy, obviously a prisoner of some kind, who is forced to fight with a particularly vicious dog. Some nasty people are watching, placing bets, etc. So, the fight starts, the dog is biting the man, the man is hitting the dog, you know, standard stuff, and then... something clicks between the two of them and we have what's pretty damn close to a best ending ever. I was literally overwhelmed with joy and wanted to kiss Sarmiento (in a totally non-gay way, of course) on the forehead. Story aside, you simply won't believe how well this was made. Shot almost entirely in slow motion, it features probably the most realistic man-animal fight scenes ever, with close-ups of dogs teeth biting the man's flesh, but also of the dog's head being hit by the man, all of which will probably make you extremely uncomfortable for all the right reasons. Moreover, without a single spoken word, the story will make you feel sympathy for both the man and the dog, which makes the ending even more brilliant.

 

So, what's the problem? Well, the stories go in alphabetic order, so this one is the fourth from the beginning. That means that after something that's probably one of the best short movies ever made, something so seriously and professionally devised and executed, after that glimpse of brilliance you have to sit through twenty two mostly lame half-assed uninspired attempts. It would have been better if Sarmiento hadn't been there to remind us what the true greatness looks like.

The Lords of Salem (2012)

Directed by: Rob Zombie

Writer: Rob Zombie

 

In this new movie, Rob Zombie (temporarily?) abandons his favorite subject (serial killers) and goes boldly into the uncharted (for him, at least) territory of supernatural horror. Just a few quick introductory words before we get into this movie: First of all, I don't consider Zombie a second coming in the horror genre or something. House of 1000 Corpses was a guilty pleasure, The Devil's Rejects was almost great until that stupid crappy ending ruined everything and Halloween was a piece of crap. I haven't even bothered to watch the sequel. However, one has to admit that he's not a completely talentless filmmaker and his films generally look good - it's quite refreshing when you see something that reminds you of a B-movie from the eighties, instead of some repulsive garbage made by a couple of teenagers with a $500 camcorder. In short - with all his flaws, Zombie is one of the people that stand out in today's less than impressive genre output.

 

Now, as I said, The Lords of Salem is Zombie's attempt to do something slightly different than usual. Instead of serial killers, we have Satanism, witches (real ones, unfortunately without brooms and pointy hats), disturbing visions, disturbing "music" causing disturbing events, black magic, et cetera. The plot couldn't be simpler - Heidi (played by Zombie's wife and his regular cast member Sheri Moon) is a radio DJ at a station is Salem (as we know from our history lesson, it's where all those witches were burned). She has some stupid show which she runs with two uninteresting friends and they interview people and stuff and everything's good until one day they receive a mysterious record by an unknown group called Lords of Salem (you might remember them from the title). They play it in the show and it's just some simple (but extremely disturbing) theme repeating over and over again. I can't exactly name the style since it's not the music I listen, could be industrial or something. From the moment the record is played in the show, Heidi starts having disturbing visions and it turns out that the record is somehow related to a centuries old curse that some of the witches put on some witch hunter who burned them for being witches.

 

This is not half bad a story, but Zombie is not very interested in plot development - his primary goal here is to abuse the opportunity to create, through Heidi's visions, some quite memorable moments of genuine wtfness which may not make much sense, but hey! - they're quit memorable. The Lords of Salem is completely and totally style-over-substance (or even style-without-substance), which can be seen as a (temporary?) return to the House of 1000 Corpses days, but Lords are much more extreme in this regard. I won't even try to describe the many visions that constitute the core of the movie - suffice it to say that Zombie freely draws influence from people like Ken Russell, David Lynch, Roman Polanski, maybe even Takashi Miike and some other even more extreme maniacs like Noboru Iguchi and Yoshihiro Nishimura. If you like those filmmakers, you'll probably enjoy this insanity fest, if you can survive the slow beginning. The Lords of Salem is more of an extremely extended death metal music video than a movie, but I'm definitely not complaining. If you want movies to make sense, watch some family drama or something.

 

As usual, writing is Zombie's weaker point and the few scenes where the plot does "develop" are cheesy and unconvincing, but fortunately those are always quickly substituted with some hideous monster or someone getting their throat slit and everything's right again. Another very important thing - Sheri Moon gets naked! Finally! If you're still not convinced that this is Zombie's best work to date, you're hopeless.

Infected (2013)

Directed by: Glenn Ciano

Writers: Glenn Ciano, Robert Rotondo, Jr.

Obviously, with a title such as this one, there can be little doubt about what's going to be "happening" in the movie - i.e. yet another story about zombies that aren't actually zombies, because they're not dead, they're just... infected (insert some scary music). But does that make them any less dangerous? Hell, no! In fact, thanks to not being zombies, they can move fast, and they can also talk a bit, providing them with an occasional opportunity to fool someone and eat them.

 

Glenn Ciano (the guy who directed Incubus with Robert Englund, which I haven't seen, and after seeing this one I'll be sure to keep not seeing it for as long as possible) came up with a story about... hold on a second, did I say story? I apologize, there's none here. Just some people being killed and then the movie ends. But what serves as a great testimony to Glenn Ciano's writing and directing skills is the fact that the movie, despite being virtually plotless, manages to be more confusing than Primer and Southland Tales combined. There are some people there. Who are they? We have absolutely no idea. What do they do? Some of them seem to know each other. What is their relation? What are those other people? How do they know the main characters? Why did they come there? No clue. Where the hell is that place anyway? Sorry, no answer.

 

The ever decreasing collection of "normal" people is led by Michael Madsen and William Forsythe. I had absolutely no idea their careers have sunk so low. I could have perhaps expected Lance Henriksen, but those two? Hardly. Anyway, Madsen's voice over opens the movie by solemnly declaring that "the world has changed", to which I thought "Bitch, please, if you now tell me that you can feel it in the water, I'm gonna track you down and kill you!". Then they show us some cabin in the woods where Madsen and some other people are horribly upset about some creatures trying to break in and eat them. We then go back twelve months to find out what had happened earlier and discover that nothing actually happened.

 

Another hilarious feature here is the passage of time - everything seems to take place in a very short time span, like two or three days. But then you suddenly find yourself watching that scene from the very beginning and realize that actually a whole year has passed (and I'm not even sure Michael Madsen ever changed his shirt during that time). Time flies when you're having fun, right?

 

Is there a saving grace here, perhaps? Probably no. There's no nudity by any of the major female characters, some of the killings are watchable I guess, but that's hardly a consolation when absolutely nothing works in the movie. There's just one absolutely hilarious scene - Michael Madsen's pregnant wife locates a little girl whose father is turning into one of those things. She takes her away to protect her, but the father wants her back and starts a really tear jerking monologue of the "I am perfectly OK, please bring me back my daughter!" sort. The catch is - every once in a while he stops, looks to the side and lets out such a hideous monstrous growl that has to be heard to be believed. And after that, he continues with his talk pretending that nothing happened. The (probably unintentional) hilarity of this scene is far beyond the rest of the movie.