Category Archives: Movie Reviews

OVER THE TOP!

Posted on by
Reply

OVER THE TOP~ Menahem Golan, 1987, USA

overthetop

Over The Top tells the story of Lincoln Hawk (played by Sylvester Stallone,) a trucker on a quest to win a world championship arm wrestling tournament, and in the process, reconcile his relationship with his son, whom he abandoned the shit out of a decade prior. Along the way, Hawk must contend with cartoonish arm wrestling thugs, as well as his wealthy and corrupt father in law, played by suitably cranky old Robert Loggia, who uses his vast fortune to attempt to bully Hawk into handing over custody of his son. With mounting money problems, Hawk sees the World Championship as his only opportunity to turn it all around.  So, in summation, what the hell?

What the hell, indeed.

Now, Lincoln Hawk isn’t the biggest guy on the arm wrestling circuit- but he’s the one to beat. Why? Because he’s invincible. He’s a hard working, honest trucker with a super patriotic name, and he exists in a Sylvester Stallone movie. His coming was foretold by Teddy Roosevelt a thousand years before dinosaurs, and any who dare challenge him do so only to face their destruction, set to a rousing Kenny Loggins theme song. The 80’s were a different time.

So… Pros and cons.. Deal with this truth torpedo; this film’s production is fantastic. It’s very well made, the art department is kicking ass, and the photography in particular stands out as being excellent. We all know the situation at hand, however. This film was never going to be judged based on production value unless said production value was horrible. Over The Top is a damn 80’s movie about arm wrestling with Sylvester Stallone, people have already decided how they feel about it just based on that information alone… and mostly, that’s fair enough. I do have one criticism that I think is worth talking about, however. The film is even more two dimensional than you might expect- here’s a good guy, here’s a bad guy, no grey area whatsoever, even where it logically should exist. The narrative demands that the viewer just gloss right over anything that might cast Lincoln Hawk in a bad light, and there’s a lot to gloss over… For instance, why did he abandon his wife and son? “Who cares, he had a good reason, moving on!” That’s literally all the film wants to say about that topic, his “good reason” is never explored or revealed. I feel like that’s kind of important, and that’s the sort of added dimension that could really flesh this movie out… However, the only “fleshing out” that happens in Over the Top is the added flesh on screen you get when two sweaty dudes pop off their dirty, sleeveless t shirts in preparation for some man on man arm wrestling. Again- the 80’s, it was almost a different world.

No matter what the consensus may be, at the very least we now have an 80’s movie about professional arm wrestling, a movie where a grown man with a bleach blond mullet declares, very matter-of-factly that he is “The Smasher,” without a hint of shame, and where Stallone lifts weights while driving a semi truck.  No one can take that away from us… So breathe easy. I think probably everyone should see Over The Top. Actually, I need to rephrase that… NO ONE should see Over The Top, but everyone needs to have already seen it, like, years ago. When you were young. This needs to be at the base of your pyramid, but too far towards the top and your structural integrity will suffer, or you’ll reject the film altogether.

B

 

LADY TERMINATOR!!!!

Posted on by
Reply

LADY TERMINATOR ~ 1989, H. Tjut Djalil, Indonesia

lady_terminator_poster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The psychotronic landscape is littered with examples of bizarre and shoddy, foreign rip offs of popular Western properties. Often, these are done with cunning exploitation of loopholes and/or blatant disregard for copyright laws (Turkey is king in this arena). Many of these bizarro world doppelgangers are often great for a chuckle, but almost none of these movies can ever hold a candle to the film they imitate … Indonesia’s Lady Terminator is one shinning exception. Wow. This movie out-Terminators The Terminator over and over.

Glorious though it may be, though, underneath all the righteous splendor and gunfire, Lady Terminator IS a cheap knock off, albeit with a bit of local Indonesian flavor to spice things up and smooth things out. Let’s have a fun little look at how these two films are similar, and how they differ:

  • Our Terminator is a lady: First, most obvious difference, there’s no Indonesian Arnold in this flick. For our menacing murder delivery system, Lady Terminator has traded a teetering Austrian muscle man for an attractive white girl sporting regrettable 80’s frizz hair. This may have been done for the sole purpose of guaranteeing female nude scenes, but ever changing Indonesian censorship laws would force distributors to draw cartoon lightning over her grown up parts off and on as years went by, leaving the Lady Terminator with Laser boobs on some prints of the movie. The DVD release of this film by Mondo Macabro has an interesting feature on the film which explains this phenomena. Behold; Laser Bra:laser bra 2 The laser versions of the movie are automatically pretty funny for this reason, and I wish that there existed a version of The Terminator where Arnold has laser wang. Actually, by now there probably is, thank you Internet.
  • No robots, no time travel: The second biggest deviation from James Cameron’s 1984 film is that all the time travel and robots from the future are completely left out altogether, for reasons I am not privy to. Any attempt to explain this would be based solely on speculation (probably budget). Instead, this film involves magic… from the past! Some dude angers an evil witch, and she in turn curses his lineage, as witches are wont to do, claiming that at some point a descendant of his will become a terminator, or get stalked and terminated by a terminator, or something… Something terminator related will go down, is what the witch says. That’s what basically happens.
  • Snake: As everyone knows, the area in which Cameron’s The Terminator was most lacking was in it’s failure to feature a weird, weasel looking solider of fortune type guy with a blonde mullet named Snake. Fret not, Lady Terminator has you covered here, and he is spectacular.snake

Anyway, the film’s basic skeleton unravels pretty closely to the original. Lady Terminator wants to kill some girl, some guy opts to help her survive, there is a disco shoot out, Snake get’s involved, and a lot of people get blown away. A LOT of people. Lady Terminator is VIOLENT…. Cartoonishly, awesomely so. The body count leaves the original Terminator in the dust, and  as a matter of fact, SOMEHOW, this movie has a better “person digs out their own eyeball in a bathroom sink” effect than the real Terminator. Explain THAT to me.

Yeah, the move is super crappy, but I remind you that this is an Indonesian rip off of The Terminator that we’re talking about. I love Lady Terminator, and it deserves a lot of praise for managing to match The Terminator where it needs to and smoke it where it wants to.

snake 4

A+

Ninja Turtles….

Posted on by
1

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ~ 2014, Johnathan Liebsman, USA

teenage_mutant_ninja_turtles_ver14_xxlg

When I went to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I knew that it was going to be terrible… But the fact is, I could never be prepared for it to suck this badly, or in this way. I’m not even sure I can voice this clearly, but let’s give it a shot…

To be clear, I was among the many, many jaded former fans who were repulsed by early screen shots of the new Ninja Turtles, given that they are so damn hideous, but honestly, we have bigger problems. If the worst thing this movie had in it were lips and nostrils and an over the top pile of knives called “The Shredder,” I would have felt way better walking out of that theater. Now, after seeing the movie, I could not care less how the Turtles look. Who, to put it plainly, gives a shit? Did you see that film?! Don’t. If I listed what was wrong with this movie, the Turtle’s redesign wouldn’t even crack the top 5,000 flaws hammered into your brain and soul throughout the unmercifully lengthy run time of this satanic hog-orgy. I’ve already decided I was going to use much more R rated language to describe this, I can’t feel like I’ve been honest if I keep this PG-13.

So, the first thing wrong here is that this is, more than probably, the least engaging movie I have ever sat through. Is a Michael Bay movie funny? No, no it isn’t, but you at least can see and understand where the “jokes” are. Typically, these movies are made to be very bland, very universal, and very unobjectionable, so you get the same kind of humor that you might hear at a family reunion. No, it’s not really funny, but the jokes are easily spotted and if you don’t have a bad attitude you can understand why other people are laughing, and maybe even fake it yourself. That’s not happening here. From the beginning, I found myself confused by how flat, dis-interesting, unngaging and bland (even for this kind of film) the language, characterization and humor was. This isn’t a Michael Bay movie, it’s a Johnathan Liebsman movie, which is basically Michael Bay Jr… And you can feel it. This is what happens when you accept something so profoundly lackluster and insulting as Michael Bay, eventually they even water THAT down, and you get THIS. The writing is just embarrassing.

DEVIL’S ADVOCATE:  Let’s try to help this movie… SOMETIMES the Turtles are funny enough. Everything else isn’t even one dimensional. Is zero dimensional even a thing? I feel like this proves that it can be, under extreme circumstances.

About the Turtles… Remember the turtles of yesteryear? Well, forget them, because evidently they were too boring, so they’re gone. These are basically The Hulk, with a shell. They’re fucking bullet proof. “Only their shells are bullet proof!” So? Nobody seems to be able to hit the rest of their bodies, so in effect, bullet proof. Also, they have super strength. Why? Because clearly that’s the only way a movie can be entertaining. Remember when you’ve seen entertaining movies before and the characters weren’t super strong, or bullet proof, or eight foot tall monsters? Michel Bay doesn’t remember that, not at all. The degree of scrutiny applied to this movie’s script while in development had to be bellow kindergarten level. What is a table read like when Michael Bay is your producer? I imagine he stands the entire time, guzzling vitamin supplements, ceaselessly curling a ten pound weight and shouting things like “AWW, TIGHT, BRA, THAT’S HELLA FUNNY.” Also, he’s probably chewing gum and is definitely not paying attention. America is an overly-medicated society, but Michael Bay proves that adult attention deficit disorder is a real thing.

Here’s an interesting point we should talk about- at a time when a black Captain America, a black Flash, and a female Thor are making headlines, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles seems to be trying deliberately to go the other way. This movie is WHITE. It feels like they wanted as few non-whites in it as possible. Two asians, no ninjas, anything non-Caucasian is limited to only the minimum allowable number of token minorities. The Foot Clan you know and love from prior Ninja Turtle adventures is now just a terrorist group, they carry guns and have no idea what the hell karate is. Splinter is now Tony Shalhoub, definitely not Japanese, and he learned the martial arts from a book he found in the trash, and then he taught the turtles. Here, go find a “teach yourself kung-fu” book and try to teach yourself. Then, challenge a traditionally taught martial arts novice- just make sure your will is in order beforehand because he/she is going to stomp the shit out of you so hard you will actually disappear from the memory of the universe, you will simply cease to be, because the idea that you can train yourself and others from a book with absolutely no instruction and then possess any level of proficiency is so stupid that I am insulted it was even considered for inclusion here.

AND THE SHREDDER…. The entire movie, Shredder is such an afterthought, he amounts to nothing more than a thug, and absolutely not the film’s real villain. The really bad guy in this movie is Eric Sacks, played by William Fichtner. Throughout the movie, I constantly felt like some secret regarding The Shredder was only moments away from being revealed, but then it never happened, Shredder is never adequately explored, and his role and inclusion feels murky and unfinished. In fact, the movie clearly seems to be heading for the reveal that Eric Sacks is in fact The Shredder, but it then establishes that he isn’t. The truth is that there is more going on here than the uniformed might think, and this ties into my point above about a lack of diversity. I guarantee, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that initially, William Fichtner’s character Eric Sacks WAS going to end up being The Shredder. Part of how I know this, is because in early interviews, multiple cast and crew members, Fichtner himself among them, it was confirmed that William Fichtner WAS The Shredder. “Eric Sacks” even sounds like an appropriately Anglo-Saxonized version of “Oroku Saki,” the Shredder’s name in traditional Ninja Turtles cannon. However, after this word came out, fan backlash kicked in, mostly to the tune of “Wait, the Shredder is some white guy? Why? Why are there no Asians in your damn karate movie, Michael Bay?!” Shortly after this, reshoots commence, and suddenly, William Fichtner isn’t the Shredder anymore, and instead there is a super tacked on, badly smoothed out Shredder character crammed into the film, and the hope is that we just buy it and don’t notice. Nice try, Michael Bay, but not everybody can be a white guy.

Maybe the worst part of this shit show is Megan Fox’s April O’Neil. Now, Megan Fox isn’t a great actor, but the problems we have here are not her fault- this comes right down to the writers. April O’Neil is the central character in this film, and there is a predictably generic “it’s a small world” attempt to tie her in to the Turtles origins by placing her in the laboratory where they (and the newly white Splinter) were created, by her father, when she was a child. That would MAYBE fly, if the movie didn’t also want her to be a sleuthy, gum-shoe style reporter who would constantly work to unravel the mystery of who, what, and how these mysterious turtles could possibly exist. The key to a good mystery isn’t having your detective slowly piece together “Oh, yeah, I remember now, it was because of me!” It just can’t be both. April O’Neil can’t logically be involved in the way that she was with the turtles origin and still constantly struggle to piece together the very origin she was a part of, it’s just not good writing. Even worse, after she remembers, she just forgets again and Splinter has to re-explain what she just pieced together. Basically, the Megan Fox April O’Neil has a severe learning disability. That’s the only way her character’s actions makes any kind of sense at all.

So, there is, out there, a desire to just be happy and enjoy this movie, and this is wrong. If you want to argue with the overwhelmingly negative critical consensus that this movie is horse shit incarnate, then you’re wrong, and you should feel deep, deep shame. Let’s look at some of these arguments:

  • It’s a Kid’s Movie! : So what?! I’ve seen kid’s movies before, they don’t have to suck like this. That is not an excuse for this sham.
  • “I just want to enjoy my Ninja Turtles!” : Hey, bud, I liked the Ninja Turtles too, but it’s not enough for something to just be called The Ninja Turtles. It also has to NOT suck really hard. Here, do you like Spaghetti? If I feed you vomit and garbage but it’s called Spaghetti, are you going to get mad at people who act like your “spaghetti” is gross? Logic doesn’t follow, friend, you’re eating garbage and vomit. That’s what this movie is.
  • “You’re just mad because it’s different!” : Yes, exactly, I’m mad because it’s different in one key way, before, it wasn’t really, really, really horrible, and now it is. That’s a change that I do not support.
  • The old Ninja Turtles was dumb, too!: It wasn’t this dumb, and you know it. We all know it.

I’m just sick to my stomach thinking about this.

F-

 

FANTASTIC FOUR (1994)!!!

Posted on by
1

The Fantastic Four~ 1994/never, Oley Sassone, USA

In 1994, B-Movie titan Roger Corman served as executive producer on an ultra low budget big screen adaptation of Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four. The film was so bad that it was never released. This is currently the best Fantastic Four movie ever made.

Ffmovie1994I’m serious.

There are differing accounts of why this film never saw the light of day. Some, Stan Lee among them, state that the film was made by the producers in an attempt to avoid losing the rights to the franchise, and that the studio who created it had no intention of ever releasing it. Others say that Marvel purchased the rights to the film before it’s release and buried it, for fear that such an epic direct to video dud could harm the brand and stymy future Marvel films. I guess that was probably a good call. The market is saturated with super hero movies now, even if one bombs audiences are comfortable enough with the concept that a reboot before the dust settles doesn’t confuse anyone, but back then, the idea of a Comic Book Movie was a more fragile thing. This may have caused some problems in 1994.

Even though it never saw a proper release, bootleg copies of the film are easily obtained online, or in shady tape trading circles like the one Nick Cage goes to in 8MM (This is where I got my copy), and if you manage to get your hands on this thing you’ll quickly understand why a 1994 Marvel would want to disassociate themselves with this cheeseball nightmare. Why they didn’t do the same thing with the 2005 adaptation remains a mystery.

 The movie follows the comics quite faithfully, to a fault, in fact. While The Fantastic Four remains one of American comics greatest treasures, significant liberties need to be taken to adapt it for film. For instance, a scientist taking his friends into outer space only to ruin their lives by getting them blasted with space radiation screams “criminal negligence” to the litigation rich sensibilities of today’s audience, but apparently this was all cool back in the 60’s. That’s what happens in The Fantastic Four. Reed Richards, big deal science man, takes his girlfriend, her little brother, and his pal Ben into space and then destroys their lives forever by making monsters of them all. We end up with:

  • Mr. Fantastic, who is able to stretch his body like a rubber band, but unable to ever find a practical application for such an ability (The newer movies also seemed to have a hard time making this super power seem cool. I don’t know what the damn problem is, Disney/Pixar’s The Incredibles managed to pull it off pretty well.),
  • The Thing, who looks like a Ninja Turtle, sounds like Patrick from Spongebob and hates life more than Biocop
  • Invisible Woman who I guess can probably turn invisible
  • and the Human Torch, with the power of Earth’s most punchable face. The actor who plays the Human Torch seems to be trying to portray some manner of bleach blonde Corey Haim/Joey Lawrence fushion. He nails it, and you’re going to hate him.

Also in the movie; Doctor Doom, a weird underground thief dude who is probably based on the Moleman, and set designs worthy of the Adam West Batman TV series. Holy shit this movie is campy. And bad. Really, this this isn’t the movie the franchise deserved… But it happened. let’s not be Stalinist about this, the movie exists and is real, and the fact of the matter is, it’s kinda fun. Yes, it sucks like Satan’s Maelstrom, but I think even mainstream America no longer demands that something not be stupid in order for it to be enjoyable. Quite the opposite, all of our most popular stuff is stupid as hell.  We appreciate our campy nonsense these days, and I think that, as a people, we are now ready for 1994’s The Fantastic Four. Sadly, rumor has it all original prints of the film have been destroyed, making a proper release all but impossible. A true shame, because I think that 20 years in exile is enough, The Fantastic Four doesn’t hurt anymore.

C+

more movies

Human Centipede II!

Posted on by
Reply

Human Centipede II: Full Sequence~ 2011, Tom Six, USA, The Netherlands

human-centipede-2-poster

 

Human Centipede II had some big, gross shoes to fill. It’s predecessor, Human Centipede: First Sequence had enjoyed an unexpected level of success. For the sequel, writer/director Tom Six has the intimidating task of trying to out do his wildly popular film, and he mostly fails.

On some levels, this film is incredibly daring, and at least a little bit brilliant. By far, the greatest thing about this film is how outside the box it is as a sequel; in Human Centipede II, the preceding film is only a movie. In other words, the two do not take place in the same fictional universe. Therefore, the implication is that while the first film was only a movie,  this second installment takes place in the real world… Like, where you and I live. Well, where you live. This is a very abstract way to follow up a popular film, possibly borrowing from Wes Craven’s New Nightmare a little bit, but unlike New Nightmare, Human Centipede II is incredibly stylized, looking more like Eraserhead than the Human Centipede. The statement that “This is reality, and it’s infinitely more bleak and unnerving than fiction” is well captured, and in reality, this is the only thing about Human Centipede II that I really enjoyed. This concept is not limited only to the visual aesthetic, in fact every aspect of the film’s presentation is fuming with dark, nihilistic grief, filth, and misery, like the key party Edgar Allan Poe, Aleister Crowley and the dead members of Mayhem are probably throwing in Nifelheim right now. Human Centipede II is the ugliest movie I’ve ever seen, in every way. Our central character, Martin (somehow both protagonist and antagonist), is a squat, bug eyed mute who we are told is “retarded,” and is also obsessed with Human Centipede. He’s deeply motivated to create his own Human Centipede in real life, and that’s just what he does, much more successfully than the first film’s mad doctor, none the less. And he’s no highly functional smooth criminal, Martin is a bumbling piece of trash that does a terrible job every step of the way, but it doesn’t matter because he almost never comes up against any form of resistance. Almost anyone should have been able to put a swift end to his filthy machinations with little to no effort, but no one ever does. Martin is like some kind of cartoon sloth who is somehow able to carry out the most brutal atrocities known to Dutch culture, but couldn’t successfully purchase a pair of shoes if his life depended on it. It’s like the movie wants us all to know that horrible, terrible things are completely inevitable, and that every aspect of existence is hideous and dirty. Well, that’s what I got out of the film, at least.

I’m not sure that it’s fair to say that Human Centipede II is a bad movie just because it’s unpleasant to watch, but luckily that battle can be fought another day because the film suffers from enough unrelated detriments to render that discussion relatively unimportant. It’s clear that Six’s real intention here was to out do himself on shock value above all else, and to do this he mostly just makes the movie as gross as possible. Human Centipede II is poopier, rape-ier, pervier, and gorier than it’s predecessor by a long shot… And it’s just terrible. It just doesn’t add to the enjoyability of the film in any way, shape, or form, in fact, it’s a massive blow to the integrity of the piece. It’s beyond cheapened, and the filth doesn’t even feel artfully presented, it’s just gross for gross’ sake, and that’s all. Tom Six wanted to outdo himself. He wanted anyone who watched Human Centipede and shrugged it off as “not that hardcore” to quiver in shock at the terrible production he hath wrought. Well, we’ve seen it now, Mr. Six, and yeah, that was horrendously unpleasant. What of it?

There are lots of films out there right now pushing the bar for shock value, and some of them don’t actually suck. Why not watch them instead? Human Centipede II is a trip you really don’t need to take, so I would recommend that it be avoided.

According to IMDB, the third Human Centipede film has completed production. Hooray.

D-

Howard The Duck!

Posted on by
Reply

Howard The Duck~ 1986, Willard Huyck, USA

Howard the duck

Howard the Duck is a film about an anthropomorphic duck from another planet who is accidentally brought to Earth where he befriends a young woman and sets off on a 1980’s movie adventure. It was produced by George Lucas, based on a Marvel Comics character, and is famously remembered as an enormous flop, as well as one of the worst movies of all time. Time to drop the bomb on you; it’s not that bad!

I mean, yes, it’s bad… It’s hard to be objective about a movie with this kind of reputation and almost thirty years worth of baggage attached to it, but Howard the Duck is consistently listed as one of the worst movies of all time, and this, absolutely, is undeserved. The Michael Bay Transformers films are all worse, as are all of the Resident Evil movies. Avatar was worse! Without question each summer the studios churn out at least one action stuffed popcorn film that is worse than Howard the Duck, so for poor Howard, I think the time has come for his name to be cleared.

Howard The Duck does have problems. It’s too long, almost two hours.  It’s incredibly cheesey, and so, so 80’s, although at this point something like that is as likely to draw an audience as it is to repel one. How can we vilify Howard for being dumb and 80’s when that’s exactly why we love Big Trouble In Little China so much? Is there good 80’s stupid and bad 80’s stupid? I say no. All 80’s stupid is beautiful.

Another major failing of Howard the Duck? It’s a terrible adaptation of the source material, and is not very funny. The comic book garnered it’s cult following for it’s insight, it’s witty satire and it’s social commentary, as well as for the absurdities that talking alien ducks generate. The film has some of the absurdities down pat, but the satire has all been traded for bird puns, and not very good ones. Rolling Stone Magazine has become Rolling Egg, Raiders of the Lost Ark is Breeders of the Lost Stork… Stuff like that. I mean, Rolling Egg? Wouldn’t Crowing Stone have been better? Just off the top of my head. The humor just isn’t there like it needs to be, 90% of the jokes are some variation of “Howard is a duck, you guys!” over and over. Every now and again something legitimately funny happens, but only when the film chooses to focus more on the connection between the characters instead of harping on the obvious absurdities of the situation.

Maybe the biggest thing Howard the Duck has working against it is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. It’s much too adult to be a children’s movie, and at the same time too childish to be for adults. The damn thing is rated PG, but is full of sexual themes and adult content, including boner jokes, and duck nudity. I’m not kidding, there is frontal female duck nudity in this movie. Duck boobs. What was going on back in 1986?!!? Then there is the much maligned romantic and sexual relationship hinted at between Howard and human Lea Thompson. I mean, I’m not being too puritanical about this, am I? It’s creepy.

The truth is that the kind of Howard the Duck movie that needed to be made in 1986 was never going to happen, it would have required subversive, anti-Hollywood sensibilities like those found in Frank Hennenlotter, Peter Jackson, or even Sam Raimi, and back then nobody was going to give that kind of director the money needed for this kind of project. Peter Jackson hadn’t even released Bad Taste yet. Hollywood wasn’t ready to gamble like that, we would have been better off had we just waited.

But we didn’t, and it’s no great tragedy. Howard The Duck is kinda fun! It’s meant to be lighthearted and goofy, and really, it is. George Lucas’ name being attached to the project may have brought on the high expectations that ultimately doomed the film to critical ire, but it also brought along with it top notch special effects and an incredible art and sound department. The cast is also mostly pretty good, with the one exception of Tim Robbins, who is way over the top. None of the reasons to hate this movie hold up, hindsight has shown us this, and in the last thirty years we have suffered through much worse with giant, brainless smiles on our dumb faces. How many Mission Impossible movies are there now?!? Do you know how much money X-Men Origins: Wolverine made? Or the Twilight franchise?!?!?!

Doesn’t Howard deserve some love, after all this time?

C+

Avia Vampire Hunter!

Posted on by
3

Avia Vampire Hunter ~ 2005, Leon Hunter, USA

avia_vampire_hunter_big

WHOA!! Talk about slumming it… This is a grotesquely incompetent production. Let’s start at the beginning… So, I have no idea how this movie wound up at the top of my Netflix queue. It somehow arrived at my house unannounced, and I have no memory of having ever heard of it before. All in all, I am beginning to suspect paranormal intervention. Then I watched it. Wow. This thing is an epic turkey.
Avia Vampire Hunter is a remarkably boring and generic story about a woman who has devoted her life to hunting vampires because they “killed her baby.” …Okay? Mostly, her hunting amounts to wandering around parks and neighborhoods wearing budget conscious Matrix cosplay and carrying a ninja sword she bought of Amazon for 60 dollars. Sometimes she finds cheap, plastic skulls or other Halloween Store decorations laying around. On rare occasions she might use her flashlight. Every once in a while she manages, somehow, to find vampires, and then she kills them in a clumsy, slowly acted, badly choreographed fit of bellow average ninja fury. Your neighbor kids are probably making a movie that will surpass this in quality as we speak. Also, she apparently falls in love with a cop pretty much instantly early on in the movie, and at some point the movie tries to establish some sort of tension by floating the idea that maybe Avia is actually crazy and vampires don’t exist. That subplot remains very brutally underdeveloped.
There are a couple points we should probably talk about individually here. Let’s break it down:

  • MUSIC ~ First and foremost, Avia Vampire Hunter has the most hilariously inept use of score that I’ve ever seen in a movie. Yes, including Birdemic. This one wins out over Birdemic in this category. The music sounds like the editor clearly just bought a ton of public domain (I hope) music by different composers and jammed it in there with all the grace and subtly of an occupied porta-potty tumbling end-over-end down a long staircase. There is a valiant, if not completely insane effort to add suspense to scenes of Avia wandering about mindlessly by using the most suspenseful music available to man. The end result is equally comedic and pitiful. Who did this, and how is it that they didn’t know better?
  • VAMPIRES ~ This is the closest I can come to actually complimenting this shambling ambulance crash of movie- some of the vampires are creative looking. Others look like your typical mall goths. There is some variety here, but for some reason there is included in this film a vampire troop decked out in bloody blindfolds with Rick James hair and long sticks stuck onto their fingers (I think they’re supposed to be finger nails.) I don’t know why these are in the movie, or why they have bloody blindfolds, or really anything else about them, but in this sea of mediocrity and recycled cliches, these stand apart as slightly more imaginative, so I thought they deserved a mention, whatever the hell they are.
  • ROMANTIC SUBPLOT ~ The romance between Avia and Lieutenant Whocares (May not be his actual name- I don’t remember, and it’s just not worth a trip to IMDB to find out) is handled so, so terribly. They basically fall in love immediately despite their every interaction feeling skeezy and bleached of any form of humanity whatsoever. Toward the end of the film What’s-His-Name is informed that Avia might be insane, and finds himself under pressure to arrest her for murdering humans who she believes to be vampires (The movie never clarifies if she really is crazy or not)… When I say “put under pressure,” he’s not really put under any sort of pressure at all. Some guy just mentions it to him the same way a frat boy might say “Stay away from that chick, bro, she’s bad news.” This seems like it’s going to be a major plot point, but then he really doesn’t do anything. He acts like he has to, and then he just doesn’t. One gets the impression that writer/director Leon Hunter clearly tried really, really hard with this movie, even if his effort was totally fruitless, so this feels like a weird thing to establish and then completely fail to explore. Are we supposed to accept that Detective Whocares just decides to take her word for it? This is all part of the staggering stupidity with which Avia Vampire Hunter is so generously endowed. Also, it’s really hard to critique Avia Vampire Hunter without launching personal attacks against it’s director, come to find out. I’m trying, though.
  • TONE ~ This is the most damaging quality found in the fibers of Avia Vampire Hunter. It takes itself really, really seriously. If Leon Hunter had his way, this would not be a fun popcorn flick, this would be a heavy, emotional action piece which volleys between deep canyons of human drama and exciting sequences of sword play and horror. Frequently we are treated to scenes which are meant to show case the talents of our lead actress as she grapples with her inner demons in a struggle as heated and desperate as any Rick James vampire battle ever could be. Of course, no one in this movie can act, so in the end we would have been treated to a better acting tour de force had Hunter just filmed some shoes or a can of tomato sauce for a while. Really anything would have been better. Avia just looks like an idiot trying to wrap her mind around some simple concept she just saw on Sesame Street, but this movie so badly wants for her to be Meryl Streep yanking at your heartstrings like crazy. For all it’s effort, none of what Avia Vampire Hunter tries to do in establishing emotion lands at all, and the movie ends up being less authentic or emotionally hard hitting than say, Ernest Goes to Camp, or a McDonald’s commercial. That wouldn’t matter, but the effort is so apparent that this failure feels particularly devastating.

In closing, Avia Vampire Hunter is unforgivably terrible. Everything about it sucks. One time my mom accidentally filmed the inside of her pocket with her cell phone while she walked around the grocery store, and she asked me to help her delete it. I did, but before I removed this footage from her cellular device I was treated to a movie which bests Avia Vampire Hunter on every conceivable plane of human accomplishment.

Special note, this movie is still better than Sucker Punch.
F

Abominable!

Posted on by
Reply

Abominable~ 2006, Ryan Schifrin, USA

Abominable_movie_poster

As it stands, Abominable is the single best sasquatch movie ever made. This is the one to beat. It’s no small feat (no small feet!? Hilarious!), either, many quality films have come before, be they your family friendly Harry and the Hendersons, your spine tingling speculative documentaries like Legend of Boggy Creek, or your crowd pleasing horror romps like Shriek of the Mutilated or Night of the Demon, but of all these, Abominable is the one ring to rule them all. How can this be? Well, the first key to Abominable’s success is that it has gore and naked people. Even with glorious titan of entertainment John Lithgow slam dunking that mother like a champ, Harry And The Hendersons simply cannot compete with Abominable in this regard. Secondly, Abominable rips off Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Rear Window with apparently no remorse of any kind. The plot is damn near identical, a wheel chair bound man witnesses something terrible and tries frantically to warn those around him, but his claims are dismissed and thus he must race against time to prove himself before it’s too late. Now, in Rear Window we had Jimmy Stewart trying to convince people that Raymond Burr had murdered his wife. In Abominable, we have Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach star Matt McCoy trying to convince a house full of college girls that a Sasquatch is trying to eat them. Knowing that director Ryan Schifrin must have watched Rear Window and recognized the potential of remaking the film with the inclusion of a sasquatch and a house full of college girls is pretty awesome. In Hitchcock’s defense, there was virtually no way for him to have known how desperately Rear Window needed a Bigfoot type monster in it, no matter how glaringly apparent it is to us today. You see, Rear Window was released in 1954, a full four years before the term “bigfoot” was coined in 1958, and a full 13 years before the Patterson Film raised sasquatch public awareness and made him a household name. In other words, at the time of Rear Window’s release, Alfred Hitchcock may not have even known what a sasquatch was. Doubtless, he knew his film was missing some crucial component, though, and when he did see the Patterson footage years later there is no question in my mind that he was immediately hit with the realization that this is what his film so badly needed. I’m sure this shortcoming haunted him for the rest of his days, but happily we can now see that his suffering is at an end, because Ryan Schifrin has succeeded where Alfred Hitchcock could not, he has brought us the movie we’ve needed without knowing for over 50 years. Now we can all sleep easy knowing that future generations will never again have to settle for the inferior bigfootless 1954 version, now we have Abominable. Finally we are able to enjoy Hitchcock’s vision as it was always meant to be seen; a Sasquatch stomping about violently, the screams of young women echoing through the forest in utter futility as they are one by one dismembered for no apparent reason at all, and all of this transpiring before the wide, horrified eyes of Matt McCoy, himself nearly powerless to bring this bloody rampage to an end. Rarely can we see examples of films which bring this much wanted closure to our pained, desperate zeitgeist, but Abominable is that one special film out of a million. I mean, no disrespect to Jimmy Stewart, he’s one of my favorite actors ever, but go watch Jaws without the shark and let me know what you thought of it. Also, the sasquatch in this movie kinda looks like Luis Guzmán, which is clearly also a plus.

squatch guzmanSeeing double?!

A

Frankenstein Conquers The World!

Posted on by
Reply

Frankenstein Conquers the World ~ 1966, Ishiro Honda, Japan

frankenstein_conquers_the_world_poster_01

Awesome. This is maybe my favorite kaiju film ever, but knowing that it exists is actually a lot more fun that watching it, and takes less time. Anyway… It’s a simple story- Nazis find the still beating heart of Frankenstein’s monster, Nazis give heart to the Japanese for safe-keeping, Japanese take heart to Japan, Americans drop atomic bomb on Frankenstein’s heart, small Japanese boy eats the now atomic Frankenstein heart (because who wouldn’t?), boy grows into a gigantic Frankenstein’s monster, gigantic Frankenstein’s monster wrestles floppy eared turtle dragon, everyone lives happily ever after. So, it’s fairly boiler plate, all things considered.

Frankenstein Conquers The World (In which Frankenstein most certainly does not conquer the world) is  a treasure from a bygone era where if it wasn’t several stories tall, the Japanese just flat out didn’t wanna hear about it. “Frankenstein’s monster? Sounds good, tell me more. Wait- he’s NOT several stories tall!? Well, that’s you’re problem. Fix that and we’ll talk.” Around this same time, however, the Germans were renaming Godzilla (And various other Toho film monsters) “Frankenstein” and re-dubbing the movies for German release to contain explanations that Dr. Frankenstein was actually responsible for the appearance of the film’s giant monsters, so it appears that those two nations have a mutual need to project onto each others monster related film output. Understandable.

Frankenstein is not alone in Frankenstein Conquers the World, however. Baragon, an old Toho standby, turns up, eager to get Franken-Stomped ruthlessly for about 90 minutes.

baragonBehold- terror incarnate!

This same monster would also later turn up in other films to get slapped around by both Godzilla, and at one point, Ultraman, which kinda makes him the Homie-Hopper of the Kaiju world. I like to think of him more as the puppy dog of Godzilla’s extended family, however, because for a rampaging behemoth gone berserk, this thing is damn adorable, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll love watching his rhino horn, spiky back, and giant floppy, puppy dog ears wiggle about as he is relentlessly clobbered by a skyscraper sized Frankenstein over and over. This is probably a good time to remind readers that this is an actual movie, that was actually made. Presumably by adults.

baragon-vs-frankenstein

If we’re being serious, though, Frankenstein Conquers The World has it’s problems. Like many of the old Toho and related Kaiju films, the film is a little slow, and considering the ideal viewing audience for a movie like this is an unfocused gaggle of five year old boys, it would benefit from less talking and more furious monster combat. Today’s monster fans lack the attention span for lengthy exposition scenes shot in outdated 1960’s laboratories, regardless of their age. This isn’t enough to ruin the movie, though, and I recommend it highly for it’s sheer audacity, as well as for it’s no-holds-barred kaiju fisticuffs.

B+

GZ backGZ next

Antfarm Dickhole

Posted on by
Reply

Antfarm Dickhole ~ 2011, Bill Zebub, United States

image

The worst thing a psychotronic film can do is to be is boring. Anything else is forgivable, even encouraged. It’s almost unthinkable that a movie about a man with a colony of killer fire-ants that live inside of his genitals could manage to suck in a way that isn’t even fun to watch, but that’s what we have with Bill Zebub’s shockingly lackluster Antfarm Dickhole. Even the title sounds like this thing has just gotta be an automatic home-run, but buyer beware, this movie is not the classic it should have been. The gravity of this missed opportunity should not be lost on you.
The first sin of Antfarm Dickhole is that it knows it’s ridiculous. Uh oh. Insanity always works better when it’s sincere. Not only that, Antfarm Dickhole isn’t even a horror film, it’s a comedy. This is no minor flaw, it’s a mortal wound that leaves this movie dead before it even begins, because Antfarm Dickhole is not funny. At all. The only way something like this was ever going to be funny was inadvertently.
It is, however, shockingly self indulgent. Writer/Director Bill Zebub also acts in the movie, playing a neurotic/intellectual type who spends a good portion of the film jabbering on incessantly and basking in what Zebub must think is romantic tension with his blatantly too attractive female co-star. He comes across like a high school drop out version of Woody Allen that probably listens to a lot of Pantera and most likely doesn’t smell very good.
Even if you can get past all that, the film just flat out doesn’t deliver like it should. It falls short over and over in ways that should have been a no-brainer, and against all logic, it somehow just isn’t crazy enough. Antfarm Dickhole feels like an eternity with people you don’t want to hang out with harping on a joke that isn’t funny. It’s like the universe handed Bill Zebub a glorious, shining opportunity to soar, but he forgot it at the bus stop and doesn’t know where it went, so here’s this piece of crap instead. Tragic.

D