THE GUYVER!

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

The Guyver ~ 1991, Screaming Mad George, Steve Wang, USA, Japan

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The Guyver is a real roller coaster. When you first hear about it, you like “An America adaptation of a Japanese Ultraman style superhero? That sounds like it’s going to suck really, really aggressively.” But then you find out it has Jeffery Combs in it, and you’re like “Oh… Okay. That’s kinda cool.” Next, at five minutes into the film, you’re thinking “Whoa, this is awesome! How is this movie not huge?” But then, as the credits roll, you think “Oh. That’s why.” After that, you’re just really sad.

As you’ve no doubt guessed, The Guyver starts strong- really strong. Right away the movie does its best to win you over by putting its very best attribute front and center- that being film’s numerous and remarkable creature effects. Suitomation, animatronics, makeup effects, holy smokes, you guys, The Guyver does all of this, and it does it WELL. Rad monsters abound, and these are the sort of practical effects that Hollywood realy doesn’t want you to know are even possible. Too bad, Hollywood, The Guyver spilled the beans. We now know that not every movie has to be Mark Wahlberg standing in front of a green screen for three hours, you’re more than capable of making physical effects that actually look awesome, you just don’t want to, and I’m sick of your bullshit. Go to hell, and take your lowsy CG with you.

But I digress.

Although The Guyver goes off with a bang, it has absolutely no stamina, like a long distance runner that hauls ass at top speed for four minutes, topples over sideways, and never even comes within eyeshot of the finish line. One gets the feeling that directors Screaming Mad George and Steve Wang (Wait, really?) knew things weren’t quite panning out, and so from early on we see them attempting to compensate… With humor. The Guyver becomes progressively zanier as it lags on, but its exhaustingly short on legitimate comedy, and shitty jokes are a real ineffective consolation prize when you’re watching a film that should, by any and all logic, be epic as hell. And The Guyver is NOT epic. Films like this needs a big third act, something that would take place on a space ship, or hopping across rooftops trying to repel an alien invasion, Avengers style- what we get instead is a made-for-TV budgeted costume drama where the bulk of the action takes place in one of two abandoned warehouses, or in a secret, underground laboratory which looks very similar to an abandoned warehouse with a few computers scattered around. Your eyes will try to call in sick twenty minutes into this virtual snoozestraveganza of bland locations and disinteresting bullshit, and you won’t hold it against them. The Guyver gives us everything it has in the first ten minutes, and after that, it flounders about wildly.

It does have a virtual Sega Dreamcast of beloved genre actors, however, which helps. In addition to the aforementioned Jeffrey “Herbert West” Combs, here playing a scientist called “Dr. East” (cute), we also have Mark Hamill (who is NOT the lead), Michael Berryman, David Gale, and, most importantly, Jimmy Walker, of Good Times fame. Walker plays a character called Striker, who is, more or less, the comic relief, which means that he a shit load of screen time. At one point, in an example of truly desperate and shameless pandering, Striker busts out Walker’s classic sitcom catch phrase, “Dyno-mite,” which is really sad. It’s worth mentioning that the Striker character periodically raps (horribly), and also transforms into a monster which looks something like what you’d get if you fed Jar Jar after midnight.

jar jar Yeah… That’s him on the right… I’m not proud of myself for gathering this screen shot, by the way.

Other than the effects, and the wealth of familiar faces, absolutely nothing in The Guyver shines. The music is obnoxious, the characters are lame, and the actual lead actor is one of the blandest humans I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing. In addition, the editing is actually kind of obnoxious, this is the first film in recorded history which has somehow engineered a transition effect even more objectionable than the oft reviled Star Wipe. I’d say the film is worth watching for that alone, and you’ll know it when you see it. Afterwards, however, slide this puppy back in the Netflix envelope from whence it came and part ways with it forever, as this is a classic cinematic wasted opportunity that you don’t need to sit through.

D+

QUEEN OF BLACK MAGIC!!!!!

Posted on July 2, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Queen of Black Magic (AKA Black Magic Terror, apparently.) ~ 1983, Liliek Sudjio

Black Magic Terror US Twilight Video VHS

In the 1970’s and 80’s, Asia kicked it up a notch and hit us, the people of Planet Earth, with nigh countless bad ass genre films in a variety of enjoyable and distinct subgenres. One such subgenre was the magic/superstition/horror movie, which produced a number of rock solid genre classics, like Black Magic, Seeing of a Ghost, and Eternal Evil of Asia. Queen of Black Magic is an Indonesian contribution to this rich horror lexicon, and while it’s clearly a less technically sophisticated production than many of it’s Chinese predecessors, damn if it’s not impressive and entertaining all the same. Queen of Black Magic in particular has earned a reputation over the decades for it’s special effects, which are both gruesome, and impressive, given the film’s low budget, and scant resources.

Honestly, all of these movies are at least a little bit entertaining, because they draw on such a rich and fascinating folk tradition, which most Westerners are totally unfamiliar with. And there are hundreds of them! Probably most American horror fans have never even dipped their toe in the Asian Magic Horror Film well, and that well is deeper than you could ever imagine. Time to dive in.

THE PLOT~ Times are tough for Murni. Some time ago, Kohar, local lady-killer extraordinaire, charmed his way into her Jungle Pants, and she was powerless to resist his advances, because he is Kohar. Actually, let’s get to know this guy a little bit before we proceed.

GETTING TO KNOW KOHAR: UNDISPUTED STUD-MUFFIN OF SOUTHEAST ASIA

No woman can resist Kohar. Here are some of his finer points.

eyes back dagger kilt stache These qualities speak for themselves, Kohar is manhood incarnate, and a force to be reckoned with. The sad truth, though, is that he’s also a total dick. Having successfully executed Operation: “Bang Murni,” Kohar decides to temporarily pacify his deeply upset female conquest with the promise that everything was totally okay, because he was for sure gonna mary her real soon, Scount’s honor. Well, looks like the only Merit-Badges Kohar ever earned were in seducing ladies, Dope-Ass Back-Daggers, and being a fucking liar, because here we are, present day, and he’s marrying some other girl, while Murni is stuck sitting around like chopped liver. Totally uncool!

tears

I can’t tell if she’s crying because she’s sad, or if it’s because of that giant onion she’s caressing.

She’s pretty broken up about it, obviously, but Murni needn’t be too jealous for very long. You see, unbeknownst to anyone in the village, this here wedding is about to get kyboshed super hard, black magic style, because some unknown third party has decided to place a gnarly curse on Kohar’s blushing bride to be, thereby disrupting these nuptials but good. Enraged, Kohar decides he wants to bring justice to whoever the hell just ruined his big day; but, sadly, he has no idea who that person could be. “I’ll just blame Murni,” he thinks. “I probably haven’t ruined enough of her life yet, anyway.” Using his raw animal charisma and remarkable gift for public speaking, Kohar convinces a good chunk of his fellow villagers that there is at least a 15% chance that Murni totally did this, and is definitley a witch. Instantly, a mob is formed, and Kohar leads his fellow villagers through the balmy jungles of Indonesia on a quest to brutally murder an innocent girl who he had personally de-virginized only weeks prior. Long story short, neither Murni, or her mother, whom she lives with, end up having a very nice evening. Murni is drug out, beaten, and tossed off a cliff. When her mother pleads with the group to have mercy on Murni, Kohar slaps her unconscious and burns her house down. He’s a friggin’ dick.

kohar douche So, Murni tumbles down the cliff, shattering every bone in her body on the countless branches and stone outcroppings that she strikes on the way down, but thank goodness, some weird jungle hermit somehow catches her and takes her back to his secluded hell-cave, which just so happens to be littered with spooky black magic paraphernalia. No big deal! This Satanic Samaritan kindly nurses Murni back to health, before he hits her with some hardline, Darth Sidious style manipulation. “Listen, yo,” he says. “Them fools tried to kill you. You gotta get your revenge- black magic style! And I’ll train you in the ways of the dark side, so you can totally do it. You have to kill all of those people, or else.” Murni isn’t exactly elated with this proposal, but manipulative douche bags seem to have a way with her, and she agrees. Soon, Murni returns to the village to get her vengeance, which, and I can’t stress this enough, is really awesome. Highlights include a man who grows giant, disgusting blood blisters all over his face and arms, and of course, the demise of Kohar, who is actually forced to yank his own head off.

blister die gnarly drowned kohar no head 1 Kohar no head 2 Just… Just so, so awesome.

But the movie isn’t over. Next, a pious stranger from the city arrives in town, eager to pray at the local mosque, which the superstitious locals have long since abandoned. When he learns of the many black magic related issues the village has been dealing with in days of late, this wandering holy man decides that all they really need to turn it all around is some good ol’ fashioned churchin’ up. He takes it upon himself to lead this wayward flock back into the light, which actually kinda works, and that just pisses off Murni’s reclusive jungle mentor like you can’t believe. It’s clear that this town ain’t big enough for the two of them. Can these two opposing forces embrace one another and learn to coexist, or will the bad guy literally explode at the end of the movie?!?

Spoiler alert

Spoiler alert?

So, Queen of Black Magic is a story about redemption, but it’s also about resisting temptation. Murni’s problems all stem from how easily swayed she is, first by Kohar, and next by her black magic mentor man… Which, admittedly, murdering people with the powers of hell is a lot worse than banging some skeezeball, but it’s the same basic principles. In the end, the moral also stresses the importance of owning up to the wrongs you have committed, and accepting the punishments associated with them. Also, Murni almost marries her brother, but incest doesn’t really seem like a problem in this film’s self contained universe. Listen, just go watch this movie, it’s awesome.

As I mentioned above, the special effects in Queen of Black Magic really stand out as being pretty excellent for a low budget film of this caliber. They’re bloody, imaginative, and fantastically well executed, meaning that amateur films being made today have absolutely no excuse for shitty CG effects. You’re all lazy, do better.

Highly recommended.

B+

RAMPAGE!!!!

Posted on June 25, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Rampage ~ 2009, Uwe Boll, USA/Germany

Rampage-2009 Before we even get into the movie, let’s talk about this poster really fast. Firstly, I have no idea who that female character is, and I just watched this flick. It kinda looks like Elvira, without her makeup… Yeah, Elvira’s not in this movie. Secondly, I love the glowing praise from “Cool Awesome Movies,” who gives this film a whopping 8 stars!!! Apparently, four stars just wasn’t enough, they really liked Rampage. Who am I to argue?

I’m Chris Ochs, that’s who. Review time.

The single best thing that German director Uwe Boll ever did for his public image was to slowly disappear completely. Let’s talk about that.

In the earlier half of the last decade, openly hating on Uwe Boll was very fashionable, especially in film-centric social circles. By any and all reckoning, here was a man who rightfully deserved to wear the title of “Single worst film maker of all time,” and who was also a belligerent, incompentent dick head, whom nobody could tolerate even on the most basic, human level. According to popular belief, Boll had managed to exploit an obscure German tax loop hole, which allowed him to secure generous financing for a string of woefully ill-advised video game-to film-adaptations, each with relatively high budgets, and occasionally, recognizable actors. They were all unwatchably terrible, and earned consistently poor reviews, which Boll often felt a need to rebut. Inarticulate retaliatory statements from Uwe began to feel pretty commonplace, and the situation slowly began to snowball more and more, until Mr. Boll finally became universally seen as the most despised social pariah of the entire psychotronic film community.

uwe-bole

Which is weird, because he’s so charming.

But this was more or less temporary, simply because everyone kinda forgot about him. Once the video game thing had ran its course, Boll’s output became more obscure, and he lost even the faintest chance of ever again knowing the joy that is an American mainstream theatrical release. With his movies no longer rubbed mercilessly in our faces, the world soon found itself with better things to do, and even Boll’s widley accepted status as Humanity’s shittiest director came into question when Tommy Wisseau and James Nguyen hit the scene, jeopardizing Boll’s only accolade ever! Finally, at long last, Uwe Boll, Germany’s greatest living shame, became little more than a horrible, horrible memory for us all.

But he didn’t go away completely. Uwe Boll had just become easier to ignore. It seems that, unbeknownst to many, Boll’s directorial output didn’t actually slow down all that much, if at all. Year after year he somehow continued to churn out terrible movies, and in fact, he remains quite prolific, even to this day. Which is disappointing and terrifying.

In 2009, Uwe Boll directed Rampage, an exercise in shock value violence that has somehow proven to be one of his best received directorial efforts ever. The general consensus across the web is that this film isn’t horrid, putrid dog shit, and that’s a lofty goal which earlier Boll films, like Bloodrayne or Alone In The Dark, would never dare aspire to. Unfortunately, humans are often wrong, and this is one of those times. Rampage is horrible.

The film is best described as being kinda like Joel Shumacher’s Falling Down, as interpreted by some mentally ill teenage boy who needs to be sent to counseling immediately. I absolutely mean it, this movie is fucked up, and without reason, or purpose. It’s not even entertaining, and there’s no merit whatsoever to justify the considerable lapse in human decency required to watch or otherwise engage Rampage. This is not a joke, I mean it, If you find a copy of this movie in the possession of an adolescent, it’s right off to counseling with that one. That is a plain-as-day red flag.

THE PLOT~ Some sheltered, over privileged Millennial who has never known hardship decides that the world is over populated, and that he has the authority to make any sort of decision regarding the future of the human race, even though he’s just some shit head who isn’t qualified to do anything. This fucking tool, who knows absolutely nothing except for what he read on Facebook this morning, then concludes that it is his right to walk around town indiscriminately murdering dozens upon dozens of people, while wearing a bullet proof costume that he bought on the internet, even though the amount of humans who would need to die in order for literally any sort of impact on the Earth to be felt would be in the billions, meaning that he achieves absolutely nothing. So, this kid dresses up in his stupid little suit, marches out, and murders a whole bunch of people, which is really, really easy for him to do. Then, he frames the whole thing on his best friend, and retires home to the comfort of his parents house, where he can continue to not pay rent or get a job, i.e., exist as a non-contributing drain on resources, what a hypocrite.

And that’s the movie.

uwe-boll

“It’s my masterpiece!”

The violence in this movie is basically inexcusable, but heed my words, fellow movie nerds; do not take my scathing criticism for Rampage’s violent content as some sort of backhanded endorsement, I beg of you. this is not some psychotronic milestone that you need to check off your bucket list by any means, in fact, if you even have a psychotronic bucket list, then you’ve already spent a lot of time on films that are much, much more extreme than Rampage, and most likely every single one was a much better movie anyway. For instance, I’ve seen, AND loved many, many films which were much more violent, graphic, obscene, depraved- you name it. Films with similar themes, like Falling Down, Death Wish, Taxi Driver, Ms. 45, Dead Man’s Shoes, The Devil’s Rejects, I Spit On Your Grave, and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, all of these are films which I have seen, and appreciate. Why, then, are those movies a-okay, while Rampage is not? Really, there are two reasons.

1. Rampage isn’t good enough: Simple as that. You can be offensive, or you can suck ass, but if you do both, people are a lot less likely to tolerate your bullshit. A genius has some clout to work with, and can buy their way out of controversies. If you’re a doofus, you better pray that your movie at least brings in enough money to cover your ass, because if it doesn’t, then we’ll just run you out of town.

2. The director is an idiot: This does matter. It’s the difference between seeing violent content in a painting done by Leonardo Da Vinci, or seeing violent crayon scribblings perpetrated by some creeper with a learning disability. Boll has no thesis, his film has no subtext, it’s nothing more of what it appears to be at its most superficial layer, because that superficial layer is in fact Rampage’s ONLY layer. This film is so shallow that it’s emotionally alienating, and comes across as a joyless, empty exercise in bottom-of-the-barrel shock value for shock value’s sake- and that’s Boll at his worst. (See: Postal.) Rampage is, in essence, inexcusable, and socially irresponsible.

That being said, as far as I know, this is his best movie. I want to clarify that there are plenty of Uwe Boll films which I have never seen (thank freaking goodness,) but Rampage certainly beats all of his video game films by miles. It’s almost a real movie! The dialogue, and the acting especially is suspiciously decent and naturalistic. Kinda makes a guy wonder… Boll supposedly wrote this one, but I stand here before you and call bullshit on that, at least so far as the dialogue is concerned; Boll’s English isn’t good enough, literally any footage of him actually speaking is adequate proof of this. What had to have happened is that either Boll brought in a native English speaker to fine tune each and every line, or the actors themselves were given full license to re-work and/or improvise their dialogue as needed. The suggestion that these lines are word for word Boll cannot be entertained, it’s simply not true.

But that short list of positive things I can muster up on Rampage’s behalf has now exhausted me, and we’re back to facing the harsh, uncompromising truths associated with Uwe’s cinematic output. Rampage blows. It’s not smart enough to be as offensive as it is, and the end result feels uncomfortably empty, stupid, and lame. Really, the only thing we, as humans, can do is to band together and hope that if life exists elsewhere in the universe, that we can keep Uwe Boll’s body of work hidden from them forever, because we’re probably on thin ice as it is, and that’s just the thing to crack it.

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (AKA THE MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD AKA TURKISH STAR WARS!!!!!)

Posted on May 14, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (A.K.A. The Man Who Saved The World, AKA TURKISH STAR WARS!) ~ 1982, Çetin Inanç, Turkey

For decades, poor old Ed Wood (Rest in peace) has frequently been labeled the single worst director of all time. Really? If you really think that the man who brought us Glen or Glenda? lives at the absolute bottom of the cinematic barrel, then buddy, my suggestion would be that you clear your calendar, get your hands on some Turkish Pop Cinema, and prepare to have your damn mind blown, because you have no idea how far down that barrel actually goes. During the industry’s golden age (the devil-may-care European 1980’s), Turkey produced some of the most bat-shit insane movies ever known to mankind, and by comparison, Mr. Wood’s body of work would have appeared mature, reserved, and relatively well made. Here we are, thirty years later, and even deliberate attempts to match that magical 1980’s Turkish crazy don’t even come close. That’s probably for the best, take my word for it.

Possibly the most famous movie to come out of these truly bizarre artistic circumstances is Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, which, translated to English, apparently means The Man Who Saved the World, but to most psychotronic film fans around the world, it’s better known by it’s unofficial title; TURKISH STAR WARS.

I don’t know if Turkey even had copy write laws at this stage in the game, but Turkish film makers were evidently free to pilfer other people’s intellectual properties with impunity back in 1982. What you would get is this, Turkish folks would just go out and snatch up movies from The States (or wherever) and then Turkify the hell out of them, thereby crafting weird, Z-Grade, home grown imitations for the domestic market. Turkish Star Wars is, obviously, Turkey’s imitation of the Star Wars films, and while it doesn’t follow the plot of the Star Wars movies (it would have been a lot better off if it had) the movies DOES in fact use a good deal of stolen footage and music including numerous shots from Star Wars: A New Hope, as well as music from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and also Flash Gordon.

THE PLOT~ In the future, Mankind is finally at peace, or something, I think… Except that we got alien problems like you wouldn’t believe, so actually, we are very much at war. Yeah… Also, uh, the human brain is like, really amazing, or something… but aliens don’t have brains… so… That’s part of the story, I guess… Ummmm… Earth has, in what I would call a completely incoherent perversion of logic, been broken into several different pieces over the years, and these pieces have all drifted off into space, becoming independent planets… but really, that’s not ever adequately addressed… Nor is the fact that Earth is somehow protected by a huge shield, which was created by the united consciousness of the entire human race. Basically, that’s kinda like this movie’s answer to The Force, so you might call that THE TURKISH FORCE.

I’m sorry, I know that none of this makes sense, and frankly, it’s not going to get any better. Here we go!

So, we Earthlings launch all of our fighters off into space, and no surprise, the mightiest of all these warriors just happen to be two old, grizzled Turkish dudes, named Murat, and Ali. Turkish Star Wars generously provides us with a Turkish Darth Vader (called The Wizard), a Turkish Obi Wan Kenobi (an old Muslim holy man), and a Turkish Princess Leia (some trashy Def Leppard groupie who doesn’t even have any lines until the third act of the film), but they’ve got NO Turkish Luke Skywalker for us. Poor show! Instead, we get two lumpy Turkish Han Solos, in the form of Murat (played by somewhat legendary Turkish actor/psychopath Cüneyt Arkin) and Ali (played by Aytekin Akkaya, who looks like someone The Fonz would but pot from.) While “flying” their damn X-Wings (more on this later) into combat, Ali and Murat are apparently shot down, or magically transported, or SOMETHING to a floating chunk of Earth that was once…. Egypt? Maybe? I don’t know, you guys, but they wind up on a planet that has several important holy sites from Earth on it, and they have no space ships when they regain consciousness. They just wake up partially buried in dirt on an alien planet with no knowledge of how they got there, and the first thing they do after dusting themselves off is to try and formulate a plan to get laid by whatever alien chicks might be lurking around nearby. These guys!

From here it only gets worse. Turns out the evil Wizard (aforementioned Turkish Darth Vader, he looks like ass) wants to capture our heroes and study their brains so that he can learn the secret of destroying Earth’s force field. Eventually, paths cross, but 85% of this movie is Cüneyt Arkin punching things like a damn lunatic. Seriously, this is worth taking time to discuss; Cüneyt Arkin is fucking ridiculous.

If you see this man, haul ass in the opposite direction, but it’s probably too late.

This film is just fight scene after fight scene, and Arkin appears to have formulated his own branch of martial arts without any previous knowledge of hand to hand combat, or just being a rational human being in general. For Arkin, it’s about hitting more, and most importantly, as hard as possible, every single time. Where a normal man would punch once, Arkin punches 11 times, and every single blow is 100% of Arkin’s mental and physical energy, his face contorted into a red mask of irrational Turkish fury, and the sound effects his blows create are bassy, over-driven explosions that could never occur in the natural world. He looks like a sixty year old man with the mind of a child, who just smoked a bunch of meth while watching Bloodsport and then decided to crash a Furry convention and beat everyone to within an inch of their life. (Oh yeah, the aliens in this movie looks completely terrible, most of them are just an unintelligible mass of synthetic fur with bike handlebar streamers attached to their fingertips. Really.)

So, there’s these guys, we see A LOT of whatever the hell they are.

And this fucking thing. Who okayed these costumes!??!

Late in the film, Murat is treated to some long, drawn-out exposition pertaining to Islam, and Jesus, who for some reason lives underground now, apparently, and when that’s finally over, Turkish Obi Wan is like, “look, bro, you gotta go get this ancient, magical sword, plus also there’s a human brain made of gold over there, too. Go get it, you can’t let the wizard get that shit, cuz then he’ll destroy Earth I think!” This brilliant plan totally backfires because everyone in this film is an idiot, but that’s besides the point. What I wanted to highlight about this sequence is that the sword he recovers basically amounts to our TURKISH LIGHTSABER, and damn is it stupid. It’s enormous, and the dumbest looking thing I’ve ever seen in a movie. Here it is:

“Just holdin’ my sword. This movie is every bit as good as Star Wars. Why you laughin’, bro?”

Murat does kill a bunch of monsters with the sword, but he quickly realizes that a life where he doesn’t constantly punch things just isn’t worth living. Having firmly made up his mind, Murat takes this priceless, centuries old relic of human culture, and melts it down into a liquid, thereby destroying it forever. That’s step one. Step two is that he takes his friggin’ hands and deliberately dunks them into his newly formed super-heated pool of molten metal. Yep! Step three SHOULD be him screaming his ass off on a gurney while being hustled into the E.R., but this is Turkish Star Wars, so rather than melting his hands off into cauterized stumps like we all know would really happen, Murat is instead endowed with giant, golden gauntlets, thus finally granting him the ability to punch again, only this time with all the added might of a Turkish Lightsaber. Now in glove form! I think he also does the same thing to his feet, I don’t remember the little gold sneakers before… But anyway, this is the extreme to which Murat’s need to punch drives him, and he spends the remainder of the film violently punching monsters into furry, disembodied corpses. The twist ending is that he doesn’t actually punch the wizard to death, but shockingly, goes for a karate chop, which actually slices his astro-nemesis in half, lengthwise. Don’t get too excited, the effect is garbage.

The last thing a Furry sees before it dies.

More than anything else, Turkish Star Wars is a romance about one man’s undying love for punching things. In this film, there is no Turkish Death Star. We do briefly see the American Death Star at the beginning of the film, but it disappears without explanation and is never mentioned again throughout the rest of the movie. I think the implication is clear; Murat just punched the Death Star into dust over the course of a few afternoons and that was that; no photon torpedo’s required.

Everything here is bad, bad, bad. The only parts of Turksih Star Wars that aren’t unforgivably shitty are the parts that they just stole from somebody else, and they don’t even do that right. The sequence I mentioned before, which has Murat and Ali flying off to engage in their outer space dogfight, is pretty frustrating. In essence, it’s a collection of close ups of either actor wearing a motorcycle helmet and sitting in front of a screen which is playing clips from A New Hope. They reuse the same shots over and over, and often, the shot playing on screen behind them will cut to a new shot while our foreground footage does not, and vice versa. Additionally, the footage behind them regularly informs us that our pilots, who are facing directly into the camera, are frequently flying backwards, and sometimes, backwards while at a 45 degree angle. Come on, they couldn’t do better than this?! It’s just terrible.

Good work, Cüneyt. You’re totally in space right now.

There’s another famous sequence in the film that basically amounts to Ali and Murat’s Turkish Jedi training, where Murat fastens enormous boulders to his ankles and jumps all over the place.

Plus, look at that physique!

People seem to remember this scene as the centerpiece of the entire film, but I’m not sure why. I’ll agree, it looks completely silly, but no more so than any other sequence. At one point in film, Turkish Darth Vader drinks human blood through a crazy straw. That’s pretty silly. Later on, the bad guys capture Ali and Murat, and devise the ultimate, most unbearable, most inescapable form of torture ever, being buried alive! The movie really hypes this whole deal up, they really want you to think that this is just the most grim fate imaginable, and that no one could possibly be mighty enough to overcome so gruesome an ordeal… Then, when they actually do it, they just sort of toss a few scoops of dirt on our heroes and call it a day. Ali and Murat don’t look the least bit pained, they just sort of sit up, and the aliens flip out. The movie flips out, too, this incredible feat (sitting up) is really glorified as being an unparalleled display of strength and fortitude, and honestly, they had very, very little dirt on them when it happened. You also could have sat up and survived this alien torture, were it you in their shoes. It’s absurd, but the film doesn’t appear to realize this, and the truth is, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam is full of ridiculous shit exactly like that. All Turkish pop cinema is! Where Turkish Star Wars strays from the pack, however, is that it’s both wacky as fuck, and somehow, boring as hell. Most of you wouldn’t survive this film in a single sitting, and that’s the sad truth. In order to reach Turkish Star Wars, you must first travel through numerous lesser nonsense films, or else it’s going to feel like the longest 90 minutes of your life.

That’s Turish Darth Vader, by the way.

Yeah… It’s not that great. Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam ‘s notoriety is 100% due to it’s unlicensed connection to Star Wars, rather than any distinction it may have earned in it’s own right, positive or negative. Clearly, this is a complete piece of shit, but it’s not the shittiest of its ilk, nor is it even the craziest. So far as that goes, Turkish Star Wars is actually pretty middle of the road. People who like these movies tend to do so because of their high spirited enthusiasm, and wild, reckless abandon, but if you don’t come into Turkish cinema with a positive attitude and some hardcore rose-tinted glasses, it’s going to give you ample reason to hate on it with every fiber of your being. Whatever your take on Turkish cinema as a whole, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam is an experience to be had.

“FFFFUUUUUCCCCKKKK YYYYYOOOOUUUUUU, FFFURRRYYY MMMMAAANNNN!!!!!” – Murat. (P.S. This would make such an awesome poster.)

D+

RED SUN!!!!!

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Red Sun ~ 1971, Terence Young

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When a botched train robbery leaves a rascally gunfighter betrayed by his gang, he is forced to join forces with a mysterious Asian warrior on a secret mission in the American west. Though they are initially unable to see eye to eye, these two slowly form a mutual respect for one anther, and embark on a grand adventure set against the rugged backdrop of the American frontier, which climaxes in a dramatic, bullet riddled standoff in an old, Spanish style mission. Sound familiar? It damn should, because Shanghai Noon grossed over $99,000,000 worldwide, and that’s an exact description of that movie’s plot. The things is, though, I’m actually talking about Red Sun, the movie Shanghai Noon ripped off, and guess what? The plot is exactly the same in both films.

Some folks I’ve spoken to have claimed that Shanghai Noon was, in fact, an admitted remake of Red Sun, but after some research I have turned up no official acknowledged of the debt Shanghai Noon owes to this film, and therefore I think we can safely say this was probably not an official remake. If I’m correct, then a more accurate description of this phenomena would be ‘blatant plagiarism.’ Any argument that the concept isn’t identical is, frankly, silly, and even worse, the script for Red Sun must have served as a rough framework for Shanghai Noon, because the structure is completely identical in both films, aside from a few added subplots. There are even some gags and emotional beats from the 1971 original that you see repeated in the 2000 rip off, and it’s rare that any remake stays this close to it’s source material, even in the world of actual, and official remakes. You could convince me that my own mother was a sock puppet operated by sasquatch before you even had me considering the notion that the person who wrote Shanghai Noon had never seen Red Sun. No other claim could possibly be more unrealistic, without question, this was a calculated attempt to repackage something great, and distribute it as something original; Shanghai Noon is not homage, it’s theft.

Now, I’m not saying that I hate Shanghai Noon, far from it, in fact. Jackie Chan, who is basically the Mickey Mouse of martial arts, is a global treasure, and his cross demographic appeal doesn’t need to be defended. Similarly, that movie has Owen Wilson Owen Wilsoning harder than he ever has before or since, and all of our lives are richer for it. What I DO mean to say, however, is that if you liked Shanghai Noon the first time, then maybe you’d also like it the REAL first time; and Red Sun IS the REAL first time.

So, having established a little bit that these films are remarkably similar to one another, let’s quickly talk about the few things that make them different. First things first, Red Sun doesn’t have Jackie Chan, it has Toshiro Mifune.

red-sun-1971-001-toshino-mifune-medium-shot-looking-down_0 Awesome.

Mifune was actually born in China, but to Japanese parents, and is most readily identified as a Japanese actor, so in this version, our Asian delegates come not from China, but from Japan. This changes some superficial aspects of the movie, and gives us more swords, and less kung fu, but that it in no way hinders Red Sun’s ability to kick ass and be awesome. Jackie Chan and his hand-to-hand hijinks are fantastic, yes, but Mifune is a bad ass the likes of which we only see a few times per generation, and in this movie he brings the unreasonably cool art of samurai sword fighting to the American wild west with many a guttural bark and angular scowl, which is every bit as awesome in execution as it sounds on paper. Comparing Mifune to Chan is a real apples to oranges type situation, but I’d say the two are equally cool, regardless of how fundamentally different they are.

Similarly, where Shanghai Noon had Owen Wilson, here we have Charles Bronson, the impossibly easy-to-like murder enthusiast from the blood splattered Death Wish franchise.

RHSyHtX Charles Bronson’s natural habitat is pretty much anywhere, provided he’s pointing a gun at someone.

In Red Sun, Bronson totally kills it, literally, and figuratively. as an actor, Bronson always managed to balance sardonic, wry charm with gritty, violent menace in a way that made him equally intimidating and likable, and off the charts on both counts. He does that here as well as he ever has, making his character incalculably more bad ass than Wilson’s inept, gun-slinging charmer, but this feels entirely appropriate since Red Sun is a much rougher ride.

And it really is, Red Sun is darker, and much more violent than the good natured and outwardly comedic Shanghai Noon. Charles Bronson does tell a few jokes here and there, but his wisecracking never manages to outpace his body count, and Mifune only has two modes; scowl, and kill… Which is so, so awesome. Also, there’s some nudity in Red Sun, and the Lucy Liu/Princess Pei Pei character is absent entirely. Instead, our female lead is a prostitute played by Ursula Andress, who Charles Bronson kidnaps in order to piss off the bad guy. So, yeah. Murder and hookers. Maybe not a film to watch with the youngsters around, unless you want to train them to be awesome or something.

While Red Sun’s legacy is felt in every single moment of Shanghai Noon, the two films actually have differing thesis statements. Red Sun is basically a redemption story, with Charles Bronson playing the real central character, and Mifune teetering over into sidekick territory. In that film, Bronson and Mifune’s characters are roughly equal in their status as capable warriors, but Bronson has no moral compass and no sense of honor whatsoever. Through his meeting with Mifune, he witnesses firsthand the sturdy foreigner’s unwavering dedication to the samurai code, and Bronson slowly comes to understand the error in living life as a murderous, wise-cracking shit head. Thus, he decides to turn over a new leaf, a new, blood drenched, bullet riddled leaf, and maybe pay attention to morality every once-in-a-while. Shanghai Noon, on the other hand is more about Jackie Chan’s character, who, through his adventures with Owen Wilson, realizes that his centuries old beliefs and customs about honor and dedication to the Chinese Emperor are totally silly, and that instead he should just do whatever he wants, because China is really far away. Seriously, that’s the moral to that movie, go back and watch it. There are multiple scenes in the film where Chan says something about his oath to protect the princess, or what have you, and Wilson mocks him dismissively, saying that he’s in America now, the sun may rise in the east, but it sets in the West, so he shouldn’t feel shackled to the honor code he’s lived by for his entire life. This is basically an existential version of the “if they’re in a different area code, it’s not cheating” defense commonly used by douche bags and adulterers to justify the antics of their wayward genitals, and it’s also the exact opposite of the thesis statement seen in Red Sun. All things considered, I’m not wild about Shanghai Noon’s small minded and culturally reckless thesis statement. ‘Merca.

Anyway. This review has mostly been about how Shanghai Noon ripped off Red Sun, instead of actually reviewing Red Sun, so I guess did kind of a shitty job. Oh well. Sorry, folks! Let me quickly say this; Red Sun is awesome, and criminally under-appreciated. The Wilson/Chan dynamic you loved in 2000 actually worked even better in 1971 with Mifune and Bronson, and honest, the talent on screen here isn’t a step down from what you’ve already seen, it’s a step up. Plus, crazily enough, Red Sun is actually made MORE entertaining if you come into it having already seen Shanghai Noon like, a hundred times. It sort of makes the experience seem almost surreal, like you somehow found the “real” Shanghai Noon. It feels like some sort of secret movie that the world forgot, and that Wilson and Chan tried to bury. All in all, it’s a pretty great find, and oddly enough, I think that Red Sun is equally recommendable if you loved Shanghai Noon, OR if you hated it.

Well worth checking out.

The Lawnmower Man

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

The Lawnmower Man ~ 1992, Brett Leonard, USA

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The Lawnmower Man is a far out early 90’s horror film which boldly jumps into the once exciting world of VIRTUAL REALITY.

Remember when people were excited by Virtual Reality, or VR, if you’re hip? You probably don’t, because holy shit, that was decades ago… but no matter, circa 1992, the people of Pre-Myspace Earth really thought that Virtual Reality was gonna be super awesome, and they also thought, hilariously enough, that the technology needed was practically within our grasp. Let me set the stage for you; at that time, The Super Nintendo was straight up blowing people’s minds. Trying to perfectly replicate an interactive universe inside a digital environment back in the early 90’s was sort of like trying to travel to the moon when mankind was just starting to figure out how boats work. Today, pretty much every bozo on the street carries in their pocket a device which would have left 1992’s most jaw dropping technology in the dust, and we routinely drop the damn things into the toilet. The certainty with which The Lawnmower Man addresses it’s techno-speculation really makes watching it feel like coming upon a photograph of something really embarrassing you did in high school, only this time, the embarrassment impacts Western Civilization as a whole. Man. We sure were stupid back then, huh? Yes, and we still are.

The Plot~ Pierce Brosnan plays Dr. Lawrence Angelo, a cool 90’s scientist who has a pierced ear. Angelo is really smart, and his work is super important. What is his work, you ask? Pretty much he just straps monkeys into those weird gyroscopic things you used to see at the county fair and makes them play Atari Jaguar on stupid Virtual Reality headsets all day. For some reason, he thinks that this will stimulate the growth of brain tissue, which would thereby prove that video games actually make you smarter. Hard sell, Angelo, I think that by simply logging into X-Box Live we can pretty much disprove that little theory once and for all, but regardless, that’s what he does, until his work hits a road block when his test monkey loses it’s shit and attacks some people, who in turn, blow its little monkey head right off. Seeing how distraught Angelo has become after this regrettable setback, his black-hearted employers decide to send him home on a paid sabbatical, so he can chill the hell out and avoid losing his marbles altogether. They were foolish, though, to think that the ever obsessive Dr. Angelo would ever halt his research simply because it was proven to drive his subjects into fits of mindless, violent fury. On the contrary, having just now seen how potentially dangerous these experiments really are, Angelo does the one thing a scientist worth his salt would ever do, and that is to move directly into human trials without the oversight of any regulatory agency whatsoever. He does this in his basement, using a mentally retarded and possibly sexually abused man who mows his lawn. What ethics?

Jobe, the titular lawnmower man, responds well to his time in virtual reality land, and his intelligence does begin to improve. Enthused by his success, Angelo brings his findings to his employers, who are delighted, and Angelo is again allowed to continue his work in their vastly superior facilities. However, without telling Angelo, they also alter the programming for Jobe’s VR sessions to include the same aggression based programming that had previously driven Dr. Angelo’s chimpanzee insane, because scientists just like to do that kind of stuff sometimes. As a result, the now genius level Jobe not only gains godlike super-powers, but also vengeful, homicidal tendencies. That, boys and girls, is how Pierce Brosnan turned Simple Jack into a god-like Super Murderer with powers that rival the mighty Sega Genesis. Quiver in fear!!

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No idea what this is supposed to be.

The Lawnmower Man’s strategy is pretty clear; it wants to wow you. This movie wants to throw so many awesome, pixelated, computer generated effects at you that your head’ll just be spinning with disbelief. Unfortunately, today we find the picture absolutely defanged, declawed, neutered, and humiliated by time. Bubsy 3D, anyone? I’m sure that what Lawnmower Man brought to the table may have spun a head or two back in the early ’90s, but for today’s viewers, every single aspect of the film’s main attraction comes across as primitive, and embarrassing. It’s actually somehow worse than what you see in the “Atom-Age’ B-movies of the 1950’s, because at least most of us haven’t actually dabbled in atomic fission firsthand, but we damn sure know about playing video games. That’s a fact. The Lawnmower Man NEEDS to be futuristic, it NEEDS to be impressive, and it NEEDS to convince you that your freaking Nintendo 3DS might be giving you super powers slowly. If it fails to achieve these goals, then what you have is a movie that burdens itself with an impossible obstacle, and therefore simply cannot be taken seriously. It is for that reason that The Lawnmower Man is probably the most dated film I have ever seen.

It’s also sort of sort of offensive, and isn’t directed all that well… BUT…. at the end of the day, none of what bothers me about The Lawnmower Man is going to be enough to detour it’s potential fan base completely. This is a film about a man who murders people with what basically amounts to “Computer Magic,” and there will always be people who want to see that. Hell, the general criteria for what makes a horror film passable to mainstream horror culture is pretty damn lenient, and The Lawnmower Man clears most of those hurdles just fine. From an academic perspective, what he have here is a turkey, straight up, but The Lawnmover Man is somehow enjoyable on some primitive level, and I guess that’s better than nothing.

C-

Attack of the Beast Creatures!!!

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Attack of the Beast Creatures ~ 1985, Michael Stanley

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Attack of the Beast Creatures is:

A) Not very much fun to re-watch
B) Not very much fun to write about
And
C) Notorious.

That’s a bad combo, from my perspective, but I’m gonna try and power through this one anyway, since I’m essentially obligated to by the Film Nerd’s Code. Which is all secret, so don’t ask about it.

The truth of the matter is that not a hell of a lot happens in this movie. It’s ridiculous, and I guess sorta fun to watch, but Attack of the Beast Creatures is also nothing more than a straight forward, A-to-B monster flick with essentially no subtext to analyze whatsoever. The plot concerns a life-boat full of well-to-do Americans who wind up shipwrecked on a mysterious Island somewhere in the North Atlantic. Upon reaching these grim and foreboding shores, there is immediately dischord amongst the castaways, most of which is generated by a single grumpy old bitch named Mr. Morgan. Morgan later becomes the group’s resident liability when he suffers a debilitating leg injury, and is also a total sack of assholes.

Shaken by their time at sea but still hoping to be rescued, the group establishes a sort of base-camp on the beach and splits up to look for food, shelter, and water. One of our thirsty explorers heads off into the forest on just such a mission and quickly stumbles upon what looks to be a standing body of fresh water, which is good, since, you know, humans drink water and stuff. BOOM, guess what, doofus, that ain’t water, it’s flesh melting acid that looks exactly like water! Now you’re melting to death! Yeah, apparently Beast Creatures Island has little acid lagoons and ponds all over it, so locating drinkable water that doesn’t go all Hennesy Viper on you when you drink it is instantly bumped up to priority one. At least, until the damn Beast Creatures show up.

The Beast Creatures are, no surprise, the film’s real claim to fame- these little guys are famous for being some of the most feebly attempted movie monsters of the entire 1980’s. They look like cannibal themed treasure trolls which were probably purchased in bulk from a dollar store, and they can barely even move. They scurry around and gobble up people like terrestrial, humanoid pirahna, and are also apparently intelligent enough to practice some form of idol worship, but their most noteworthy contribution to the human experience is just that they looks fucking ridiculous. Without question, seeing a large group of adults clutching these toy figurines to their bodies and pretending that they’re being eaten alive is nothing short of hilarious, and realistically that’s the highlight of the movie. Thank you, Beast Creatures, the ways in which you have chosen to suck has brought much laughter and mirth to a world burdened with harsh, cruel realities, and we appreciate the much needed distraction you have provided.

CEb-U4CGkKGrHqEOKnEzw9fVWQBNR3WVG5Zw0_3 What’s actually more shocking about Attack of the Beast Creatures is the various ways in which this movie doesn’t suck. The script is short on subtext, yes, but certainly much more coherent than what you might see in comparable, more respected films (like Pieces, or anything by Jess Franco, for instance), and a lot of the dialogue is well written and surprisingly naturalistic. Even some of the acting and photography is decent or better, so Attack of the Beast Creatures kinda feels like a full length version of a first-term film-school assignment, where the over-achievers are randomly grouped together with future drop outs to create a project, with radically unbalanced results. Some people here did a good job…. Others certainly didn’t. The end result is a strange beast indeed.

The music is an oddity too, it sucks for reals, yet contributes to the film’s atmosphere in a way that is more successful than almost any other single factor in play. It sort of sounds like the Magnum Opus of some dude who auditioned for Gary Numan’s backing band but couldn’t make the cut. It’s almost good, what we have here is a lush, haunting synth oddyssey that runs more or less the entire length of the picture, and feels appropriate for the spooky, erie vibe the movie is going for. I think it works, it almost feels like an ultra dumbed-down version of the score for Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: der Zorn Gottes, which is, admittedly, a really bizarre comparion to make, but here we are. I kinda want it on my iPod, and it feels like what Nicolas Winding Refn was probably jamming to in ’85. tumblr_m1w49dG27w1qi7zhio1_500

This movie has a reputation which is too deeply ingrained and widely dispersed to be in anyway effected by what I say here, and if you were ever going to watch this film, your opinion wasn’t going to be influenced by my review one way or the other. You know the drill, this movie took a running jump at “scary” and landed in “hilarious,” but it’s plenty fun all the same if you’re into that kind of thing. Worth watching if you and your friends dig the DIY MST3K experience, but if you’re a more centered cinema enthusiast, Attack of the Beast Creatures would probably just fuck up your night.

RECOMENDED DOUBLE FEATURE: Attack of the Beast Creatures and Piñata Survival Island.

B-

Godzilla Vs. Megalon!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Godzilla VS Megalon ~ 1974, Jun Fukuda – Japan

godzilla-vs-megalon-japanese-poster Even the poster is lame.

The trajectory of the Godzilla franchise has never been a straight line. Sometimes these movies are real home runs… Other times Jet Jaguar shows up. Now, I don’t want to blame everything on Jet Jaguar, but 100% of the movies he shows up in suck. Anyway, moving on; one year after Godzilla VS. Gigan, we have Godzilla VS Megalon, another kinda sorta almost recycled Godzilla film, which is still much better than the full on totally definitely recycled Godzilla films we often see. This time, the aliens who use a monster to destroy us aren’t aliens, they’re humans, from the Earth’s core… So, kinda sorta new, but not really. This movie is pretty mediocre, and that’s probably being generous…

Godzilla-Vs-Megalon-Poster THAT’S a poster.

THE PLOT~ The people of Earth have begun conducting all their nuclear bomb tests underground. They think this is totally no big deal, but unbeknownst to them, all these subterranean H-Bombs are really pissing off the people of Seatopia, a lost, Atlantis style civilization, which exists beneath the Earth’s crust. (Also, Seatopia looks like a “Ancient civilization” themed Las Vegas casino, and their leader is an aging swinger in a toga.) Seatopia has had enough of this surface people bullshit, so they launch their defender, Megalon, which is basically a giant humanoid cockroach with drill hands that can spit fire bombs. “That outta take care of it,” they think.

Meanwhile, up on the surface, we have our three human characters, Goro (Apparently before growing a pony tail and two extra arms) his constantly present, loyal, male companion Hiroshi (are these dudes a couple?) and their young child Rokuro, who they probably adopted together. When we meet these three, Goro and Hiroshi have brought Rokuro to a nearby lake for a nice afternoon of recreation, and Rokuro is out on the lake piloting what can only be called some sort of Aquatic Goof-Mobile.

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Just then, a fissure opens in the lake bed, creating a whirling maelstrom of danger and death. Perhaps this was caused by Seatopia, the subterranean bomb tests, or perhaps the lake was just tired of something so stupid looking as Rokuro’s Goof-Mobile splashing about on it’s surface and chose to commit suicide. Regardless, just when it looks like his goose is cooked, Rokuro is saved by Goro and Hiroshi, who employ the use of a Liferope Gun that they had with them. LIFEROPE GUN!? What kind of technology is Japan holding out on us? They gave us Playstation, but not the Liferope Gun? Bizarre. Not only that, but check it out, Hiroshi and Goro have also built a humanoid robot called Jet Jaguar, presumably for sexual purposes. Jet Jaguar attracts the attention of some secret agents from Seatopia who are concerned that the robot might thwart their Megalon related plans. They must not know that Jet Jaguar is totally lame. Anyway, there are some twists, some turns, Jet Jaguar is highjacked by these spies briefly, but then escapes their control and somehow gains sentience. He then zooms off to Monster Island to ask Godzilla for help clobbering Megalon, and Godzilla happily agrees because by this point he has completely turned the corner from menace to hero. Anticipating Godzilla’s involvement, Seatopia sends for Gigan’s help, because they apparently work with whatever cosmic temp agency manages him, but they couldn’t afford Ghidorah. Jet Jaguar grows to kaiju size (he can do that, I guess), and the four players beat the shit out of each other for the rest of the movie. It’s not that awesome…

Monster role call!

GODZILLA- Just a big ol’ softy. In this one, Godzilla’s head has been redesigned, his eyes are much larger, and more frontal, which gives him a more humanoid and friendly appearance. Godzilla also observes different human customs, such as the shaking of hands, and feeling insulted when Megalon taunts him with his weird monster butt-slap dance. Things were getting a little Gamera by this point.
JET JAGUAR– A giant piece of garbage.
MEGALON– A giant bug.
GIGAN- Hey! Gigan’s back!

So, yeah… The movie has like, several car chases in it, which is new. There’s also a lot more human on human violence, some of which is kind of goofy. The whole film is much more light and silly than recent entries, and this is the movie where Godzilla does his much despised flying missile kick, a fighting move so ridiculous it was immortalized in the opening of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a program designed to mock cinematic insolence. In fact, Godzilla VS Megalon, as a whole, was riffed left, right and center by MST3K in 1991.

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GvM is a lull, an awkward misstep between the introduction of the relevant and much loved Gigan in the previous film, and the introduction of the relevant and much loved Mecha Godzilla in the sequel the following year. It’s a fumble, but it’s not super terrible. Really, GvM isn’t much of anything.

C-

Death Factory!

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Death Factory ~ 2002, Brad Sykes

On the off chance that any of you hate yourselves, or feel guilty, and want to cause yourselves some sort of anguish, I’ve got good news; there is a company called Brain Damage Films, they exist, they are a real thing, and they have got you covered, big time. One 90 minute Brain Damage movie is the mental and psychological equivalent to nine months in a P.O.W. camp, I promise, watch one, and you’ll have a terrible, terrible time. These movies are just the worst, and if you have some weird need to punish yourself, for really any reason at all, Death Factory is on par with an evening of beating yourself in the face. The difference is; with Death Factory, all your scars are inside, on your soul and brain. That’s going to be convenient when you go into work the next day and won’t have to explain to your boss what happened to all of your teeth.

THE PLOT~ This movie opens, like every Brain Damage movie I have ever seen (All two of them), With some lame nerd guy trying to hype you up for this horrible, horrible movie that you’re about to watch. He’s like, the mascot of Brain Damage, I guess, he dresses like an old school punk and speaks at the very bottom of his register, it’s really pretty embarrassing. Anyway. He summarizes the movie in what he hopes is an exciting way. He’s sort of like a bargain basement Crypt Keeper, except that he’s totally unlikable, and he probably has to pay for sex (When we all know the Cryptkeeper can get anyone he pleases.) Anyway, he’s here. Then the movie proper begins…

Death Factory is the very definition of generic, straight to DVD horror, and it is as bland as dry toast. The only thing this movie has that it can hope will differentiate it from the unending sea of scratched up, second hand DVDs left in apartment closets after weirdos get evicted is that it sucks a little harder than average. The premise is as such: Over and over, people continually break into an abandoned chemical factory, only to be murdered by a “Monster,” which is really just a goth chick with metal leg braces and blades strapped onto her hands. Apparently, this “monster” is an ex-employee who was mutated by exposure to biological weapons. The movie really overplays just how “mutated” she is, because as I’ve said, she doesn’t look mutated in the least. Right now there are eleven kids that look exactly like her employed at your local Hot Topic.

The main group we follow into this paint-by-numbers horror movie scenario is made up of people visibly in their 30’s (or older) playing college kids, and the film ends with a twist ending so banal that not even well known “twist ending” fetishist M. Knight Shyamalan would find his fancy tickled. It’s bad, and I don’t think this movie was ever intended to be watched, actually. I present this theory; Death Factory was made with the express purpose of filling shelves at Hollywood Video, it’s filler; it’s background decoration. They never dreamed anyone would actually rent it… But they were wrong, because me and my friends totally did. What fools we were.

All of the characters in this Death Factory are horribly written, directed and acted. Often, their behavior makes no sense whatsoever. For instance, at the begining of the movie, a couple breaks into the “factory” so they can find somewhere exciting to fool around. It’s the girl’s idea, by the way, that’s important to know for later. So, while in the midst of gettin’ down to business, the male spots this horrifying “mutant” peeking in at them, so he reacts to what he sees, like anyone would. This just pisses the girl off something fierce, she cannot believe how out of line he is for reacting. His momentary fear and surprise caused by being startled in a weird, scary place where they aren’t even supposed to be is apparently more than she is able to tolerate, so she yells at him and storms off, utterly incensed by his behavior, and even refuses to let him accompany her. “I just need to be alone!” She yells. Right, so she’s totally insane. What human would act like that?!

And it isn’t really her fault, she is the way she is because she’s been written by dummies, and it doesn’t end there. All characters in Death Factory suck in their own, stupid way, whether it be the 40 year old white woman who plays a college aged Latina, the dirty metal-head who would never be caught dead hanging out with a bunch of squares in real life, or the black man who plays a humiliatingly stereotypical black man. His portrayal is actually embarrassing enough that at first I thought he should be ashamed to have represented African Americans in this way, before I realized that the white actors should be no less ashamed for portraying white people the way this movie required them to. Really, no one escapes involvement with Death Factory without taking on a sizable chunk of bad karma. If reincarnation is real, these people will cruise into the next life as some kind of parasite that lives inside of anuses.

Another awesome Death Factory fact: Holy shit, this is NOT a factory. At no point, ever, in this movie, does the setting appear factory like in the least. These are just dilapidated bedrooms connected by unfinished, plywood hallways. What, every room in this factory is fully furnished with at least one couch and multiple chairs? This factory had a very avant garde “no machinery/shit load of couches” philosophy in regards to factory design. Why even call this Death Factory? So many questions, Brain Damage…

Also, Ron Jeremy plays a small role in this film. His part? A Drunken, stumbling hobo who dies right away. Yes, with everything Ron Jeremy has on his resume, I wouldn’t really start to feel ashamed until Death Factory. Why did he take this job, actually? Had he fallen on hard times? how hard could times actually be? Did they even pay him? No, Ron Jeremy. This isn’t worth it. Couldn’t you just start banging ventriloquist dummies or something? I refuse to believe that there wasn’t less demeaning work available to him.

Brain Damage addresses their viewer (viewerS? Could there be more than one?) as “gorehounds’, so you would expect them to at least deliver on the gore with their crappy little videos, and more or less, they do. I mean, it’s no-budget gore, but it’s in there. In this case, that adds up to maybe a few Halloween store props and a ton of fake blood that can just be caked on top of woundless flesh, and nothing more extravagant than that. They for sure try to milk it for all it’s worth, though, these shots drag on and on, and Brain Damage is not stingy with that fake blood. They really splash that shit on there. Expect to linger on shots of people writhing in gross, red goo for what will seem like an eternity, but anything more complicated than that is simply outside the budgetary restrictions of Death Factory… Which doesn’t really matter. It sucks left right and center no matter what, and more, or less graphic violence was never going to be Death Factory’s salvation. The best thing this movie could do for humanity is to be forgotten and promptly excluded from all written records. Oh, shit, why did I review it?

The Hollywood Video joke I made before actually isn’t far off, actually. Little Direct To Video studios like Brain Damage, or The Asylum, were primarily dependent on Video Store traffic in the last decade. With no talent associated with the project to bring audiences in, and nothing of merit in the production to warrant a word of mouth reputation, 100% of the demand for this movie was just people browsing who saw it on a shelf of their local video store and thought “What the hell?” If they rented it, they might have watched it, but they don’t rent it twice. Just being on the shelf at all was an example of Brain Damage’s business model succeeding, but now, those shelves are gone, and these movies are fighting to remain relevant in an era of vending machines, streaming video, and even shorter attention spans. I’ve seen plenty of Brain Damage’s products offered up by Netflix Instant View with the stink of desperation upon them, so I think the plan is to hope for a similar phenomena on a digital shelf, but we’ll see if it works out for them.

I hope it doesn’t. What they do is not art.

Thankskilling 3!

Posted on November 27, 2014 by Kristoph Johannes

Thankskilling 3 ~ 2012, Jordan Downey

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Thankskilling was a movie wherein a group of young people found themselves repeatedly menaced by a murderous, talking turkey, who would kill them one by one until finally being defeated by a lone survivor. It was not good. What we didn’t know at the time, however, was that Thankskilling was also a very real, very high stakes example of the phenomena outlined in cherished children’s book; If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. When people enthusiastically jumped at the chance to watch a turkey puppet swear and kill people, they unwittingly gave the go-ahead to director Jordan Downey to keep the bullshit coming. They gave him an inch, and he took a mile; welcome to Thankskilling 3.

THE PLOT~ Who the fuck knows?

Okay, so, I kind of know, but I feel angry having to explain it, due to how overwhelmed I am by its shittiness. Basically, Thankskilling 3 is an adventure comedy, not a horror comedy, in which several different types of “who gives a shit” become interwoven into a vast tapestry of raw, unprocessed nonsense. Firstly, we have Turkie, the killer Turkey from the first movie. He wants a copy of Thankskilling 2, which was apparently the worst movie ever made (in reality, it was never made. They skipped part two, aren’t they hilarious?). Copies are scarce, because the studio decided to destroy the film after seeing how horrible it was. If only they did that in real life. Opposite Turkie, we have two humans who are obsessed with colonial America, and a shit load of puppets. Yeah… Unless I missed somebody, there are only two actual human people in this movie, and the rest of the cast are all Z-Grade muppets, plus one animated cat, for some reason. This might almost sound cool on paper, but I beg of you; please, believe me when I say that it isn’t. One of these horrible, boring puppets is Yomi, a painfully unfunny character who eats up way too much screen time and who gives us nothing back.

yomi-in-thankskilling-3.-large-picture

Behold: Yomi; the worst character ever.

Her deal is that she’s “lost her mind,” and thinks that she can reclaim it through observance of the Thanksgiving holiday… Because she heard something about Thanksgiving providing “peace of mind.” Cute… See, this movie goes out of it’s way to provide explanations for the wrong stuff. They offer explanations only when those explanations kill jokes, other stuff that demands further clarification remains shrouded in vulgar, irritating mystery. It’s infuriating. But let’s get back to topic; Yomi. Yomi sucks so, so, bad, like damn Jar Jar, and is a real chore to tolerate. Basically; her felt ass shouldn’t be in the movie at all, and I can’t imagine why she was included. Wanna know what else shouldn’t be in the movie?! The movie. All of it. Every friggin’ frame. Thanksgiving 3 is unwelcome in this dimension, it should have remained stranded in the diseased imagination of Jordan Downey. Thanks, dude.

This thing is actually less funny that it’s predecessor! I counted three instances of successful comedy in the entire film- and I wasn’t laughing. I wasn’t even smiling, I could just tell that these three gags were actual jokes, rather than just boring, lame vulgarities and/or puns. The rest of the movie can’t actually give you what it advertises, which is nothing new from this trilogy. Can it be a trilogy if they half assed it to the point that there wasn’t even a part two? This is the first two movie trilogy in mankind’s regrettable history. Fuck, I hope it’s also the last.

What seems to have happened after the success of Thankskilling, motivated 100% by the sheer absurdity of the its premise rather than it’s execution, is that Downey became so enthused that he rapid fire spat out an unrefined, stream of consciousness style script, never once read over it, and then just put the movie out before he could even think about what he had done. Either that or his allergy medication left him deranged for the entire production cycle, and because the budget came from crowd-funding, there was no studio system in place to reign him in. This is an early example of how Kickstarter can screw the human race, we sometimes need a studio-head to step in and question the mad ravings of our writers and directors. This schizophrenic disaster is what can happen without these often detested, but apparently necessary safeguards, and none of these ideas should have made it even onto a rough draft of anything. And there are so, so many bad ideas in Thankskilling 3! Every concept is explained by introducing two additional and equally shitty concepts, and there is never any pay off. This movie is like a weird dream you wouldn’t even want to explain to your friends, because what would be the point?

I guess it does have a couple things going for it, though. The budget is clearly much higher than it’s poorhouse predecessor, and you feel that come across in the production value. The music feels especially professional, even if it does feature a lot more dub-step than any other DVD that I own. What you’re really going to appreciate in Thankskilling 3, however, is the art department, who really did a fantastic job. The sets, and many of the puppets, look excellent this time around, and clearly, this is where most of that budget went… but it still doesn’t redeem the movie.

The film is just bad madness, plain and simple. I actually really enjoy madness, typically, but this in’t Jodorowsky or Lynch, this is more like Battlestar Galactica meets the first season of South Park as related to you by an eight year old. If you’re going to give us madness, it at least has to be compelling, or rewarding somehow. This movie is just a joyless descent into The strata beneath mediocrity. You know what Thanksgiving 3 is like? Here’s a good way to explain it: You know like, when you wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, and you write it down because you’re convinced you’re a genius, but then in the morning you read it, and you’re like “Oh, damn. What was I thinking?” So then you just discard it, humiliated by the inadequacies of your sleep addled brain? It feels like Jordan Downey, woke up, wrote this script, and then instead of reading it and throwing it away the next morning, he just made the movie before he could even think about what was happening. And that’s terrible. Someone should have intervened, stepped up and said, “Hey, Jordan… I like you, and I want the best for you, but nothing in your movie makes any damn sense, and it all sucks. I think maybe you just need to put your script in the garbage… And then maybe let someone who isn’t high on cold medicine write a new one…”

Someone needs to stop this guy. I mean, seriously, YOMI!? Sober up, Downey, so you can feel the shame of what you’ve done. Honestly, give me a Jar Jar Binks solo film before you give me one more second with that nightmare.

Fantastic Crap Comics

by Christopher Ochs

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