MASKED AVENGER VERSUS ULTRA-VILLAIN IN THE LAIR OF THE NAKED BIKINI

Masked Avenger Versus Ultra-Villain In The Lair of The Naked Bikini ~ 2000, Mark Savage, Australia

maskedavengerversusultravillain-ei1 (VHSCollector.com)

Whew boy… To start with, if you’re easily offended, please… Maybe just sit this one out. I’ve tried to avoid some of the more adult oriented films out there for a while, but we were always going to have to cross this line eventually. Now’s the time.

SO… The first thing we need to address with this film is the damn title. Masked Avenger Versus Ultra-Villain In The Lair of the Naked Bikini. Makes absolutely no sense. What the hell is a ‘Naked Bikini,’ and how would it have a lair? Never mind the fact that our masked hero isn’t avenging anyone, and our bad guy is never referred to as “Ultra-Villain.” He’s definitely a villain, I’ll give them that, but he’s really not all that ultra. Pretty much, he’s just a balding German dude who really wants to impregnate a virgin. Believe me, folks, theres nothing special about that. Luckily, we can clear up this confusing mess rather quickly; Masked Avenger Versus Ultra-Villain In The Lair of the Naked Bikini is not the film’s original title. This movie was originally supposed to be called (drum roll) The Masturbating Gunman. Yep. Now, obviously, not a whole lot of distributors are going to want to touch a movie with a title like that, so at some point, we wind up getting the name of the picture swapped for something more commercial that doesn’t actually have anything to do with the movie itself. It is unfortunate on many levels that in actuality, the original title would have been much more appropriate. Yeah….

THE PLOT: All across Australia, criminals know to fear the name “The Masturbating Gunman” above all else… A cunning and relentless detective with the physical strength of a gladiator and the nose of a ravenous blood hound, The Masturbating Gunman is a formidable combatant, and if you should find yourself on the wrong side of the law, he will stop at nothing until he brings you to justice… That is, unless he finds himself even the slightest bit sexually aroused, at which point he will fall to the ground and masturbate frantically for several minutes until.. Well, until he’s finished. It’s super gross, and it happens several times in the movie. Why nobody ever manages to blow his head off while he’s just going to town on himself is never adequately explained, but I guess the universe helps those who help themselves.

Anyway. So, that’s our main dude. Our villain, however, is just some evil, balding German dude, which, honestly, is just the very definition of generic. Guess it was slim pickin’s at the super-villain outlet store or something. Try harder, you guys. Anyway. Early on, our “Ultra-Villain” is released from prison, and because birds gotta fly, bee’s gotta sting, and Germans gotta conquer the Earth, he immediately launches his latest and greatest diabolical scheme- and it’s a doozy. Not really, he just wants to impregnate a virgin because he thinks that the birth of his son will usher in a new age for humanity or some such shit. Pretty boiler plate. Sadly, this is already a new age for humanity, and a lot has changed since our man got his tuckus tossed in the clink. For one thing, virgins are a hell of a lot harder to come by.

ANDY WARHOL'S DRACULA, Udo Kier, 1974

“Yeah, tell me about it!” (wonk wonk!)

Hoping for the best against all odds, Ultra-Villain sends his goons out to retrieve the future mother of his offspring, and try as thry might, they keep coming up empty handed, much to his teutonic chagrin. Finally, somebody has the brilliant idea to run out and nab a nun, figuring that’s damn near a sure thing, so far as virgin-napping is concerned. This plan seems pretty solid at first, and they actually  manage to successfully capture a nun without much fuss, but in a most inopportune coincidence, the nun they grab just so happens to be the sister of… The damn Masturbating Gunman. Rut roh, Rhaggy! Logically, a confrontation between the good guy and the bad guy is now inevitable, and that’s the movie.

So, clearly, this is a weird one. For those of you with more puritanical sensibilities, you’re probably better off obeying your instincts and steering clear, but it is worth mentioning that this is a comedy, with relatively scant nudity. Masked Avenger Versus Ultra-Villain In The Lair Of The Naked Bikini isn’t ever really trying to be sexy, the adult content is always played for laughs, and never to titillate. It gets pretty gross, but it doesn’t really ever feel smutty, more just super, duper crude. If you regularly watch South Park, then odds are you’ve been through worse than this already.

It’s also really, really low budget, and quite poorly made. The soundtrack is all cheap, horrible synth muzak, the sort that the British Commonwealth seems to be immune to, but which all Americans fear like kryptonite. It’s shot on video, and the photography is amateurish, to say the least. The audio throughout is uneven, and sometimes quite poor, and all of the action sequences require a lot of forgiveness, and more than a little imagination to follow. You’ll be surprised that this thing was released in the year 2000. Even with all of that already factored in, probably the single worst thing the film has working against it is how agonizingly drawn out everything is. Sequences drag on slower than a newborn turtle dragging an anchor across a freeway, and you could probably cut everything down to a crisp 45 minutes without losing any real content, if you really wanted to.

For some reason, however, I’m hesitant to look these many issues and count them as a mark against the quality of the picture, which seems weird. In watching MAVUBITLOFNB (to save time), one get’s the sneaking suspicion that the director is fucking with us. It’s just so at peace with how badly it sucks…  I just can’t shake the notion that for some reason, this is exactly the movie Savage wanted to make. Maybe I’m wrong, but it certainly seems to fit with the film’s sense of humor, and there is enough wit evident throughout the movie to suggest that the intellect behind this whole thing wouldn’t make some of these puzzling decisions without adequate deliberation. Mark Savage isn’t stupid enough to suck this badly. He’s punking us, you guys. Every time I watch it, I feel like there’s someone hiding behind a curtain and laughing their ass off at the frustrated expression on my face like it’s just freaking hysterical.

And actually, the film IS pretty funny! MAVUTITLOTNB is horribly crude, overly long, and badly crafted, but I’ve willingly sat through it a handful of times, and I’m happy that I own a copy. This movie sucks… and that’s… awesome? This paradox will destroy me if I think about it any longer, so with that, I conclude this review.

Actually, one more thing before I go; why in the hell does the main character’s “super hero” costume look almost exactly like the outfits worn by the bad guy’s henchmen? Seriously, that would be like if Luke Skywalker was indistinguishable from a Storm trooper. They both wear big, loose, blue jumpsuits and black face masks. This can’t have been an accident. It’s totally bizarre. Why would anyone do this!? I really can’t wrap my mind around it. Okay, I seriously better back off now. I can hear the sound of my sanity starting to crack under the weight of this movie’s nonsensical girth.

B-

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DEAD ALIVE!!!!

  1. Brain Dead/AKA Dead Alive ~ 1992, Peter Jackson, New Zealand

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Before New Line made the ballsiest gamble of the 21st century and entrusted him with directing the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson, honorary Hobbit and King Kiwi of the cinematic lexicon, was a handsomely bearded, but little known director, who spent the first phase of his career crafting some of the zaniest splatter films ever made. Like, obnoxiously, unreasonably zany.

It’s worth mentioning this was not necessarily the most hospitable environment for that type of cinema, either, the 1990’s were a bleak and dismal period for horror films on the whole. The genre had enjoyed a reckless hayday in the 1980’s, but by the close of the decade, the market had become saturated, the products dated, and mainstream audiences no longer gave a shit. The once proud horror subculture retreated underground like the primitive Morlocks that they are, and America’s first tier film studios lost faith in tentpole horror franchises of yesteryear, motivating them to move away from the likes of Freddy and Jason, and onto greener pastures, like Ace Ventura 2, Battlefield Earth, and Big Momma’s House. As such, 1992 yielded precious few zombie films, but one that it did produce was Brain Dead, or, as its known in the United States, Dead Alive. Luckily, sometimes it’s quality over quantity, and Dead Alive has quality on lock down.

THE PLOT: Lionel is a meek and unremarkable man who lives with his manipulative, over-baring mother Vera, in a small coastal town somewhere in New Zealand. Lionel is a straight up momma’s boy, Vera has him 200% under her thumb, and he doesn’t appear to have the strength of character to tell her to friggin’ back off now, or ever. In fact, Lionel is so incapable of letting go of his unhealthy relationship with his mother, that when she becomes zombified in a freak primate exhibit accident at the zoo (yep), he does everything in his power to conceal her condition from the public, even going so far as to round up all of her newly zombified victims and keep them hidden away in his basement. Seems like if he had any intention of moving out of his mother’s house, her turning into a homicidal ghoul would be as good a time as any to pull the trigger. Clearly, this birdie ain’t leavin’ the nest.

…But if Lionel won’t ever man up his own, a much needed catalyst arrives in the form of Paquita, a pretty young woman who meets Lionel through coincidence, and who quickly decides that he’s the man she’s going to marry, whether he likes it or not. For a time, Lionel tries to juggle these two relationships, but eventually this becomes infeasible, and he is forced to choose between his controlling, domineering mother, who makes all of his decisions for him… and his controlling, domineering girlfriend…. who makes all of his decisions for him… So, really, this is sort of a long trip to wind up right back where you started, but at least Paquita isn’t a zombie. He for sure upgraded.

Dead Alive’s dodgy super-motif doesn’t bother us. The journey is enjoyable enough that we aren’t deterred by Lionel’s half assed character arc, and the film is silly enough that we assume this lateral development to be deliberate. And anyway, this is easily the most true to life component in the entire film,  everybody knows somebody like Lionel, and that guy usually winds up with a Paquita. Most people even know a Vera!

braindead-5

Sadly, few of us have religious leaders like this guy in our lives.

It’s a hell of a movie. For years, Dead Alive was said to be the goriest movie ever made- a boast that’s easy to believe if you see the unrated version of the film. It really feels like if Peter Jackson could have conceived of a way to make this movie gorier, he would have done it. The much coveted “goriest film ever” crown has been snatched up more than once over the years- last I checked, Fede Alvarez’s remake of The Evil Dead is the curent record holder, but I’ll tell you this; Dead Alive still FEELS gorier. In fact, I’ve searched and searched, and no film feels quite as bloody as this one does. No matter how many gallons of red stuff Alvarez dumped onto a sound stage, Dead Alive will trump that volume through it’s execution. Truly, if you have any interest in gore cinema, this needs to be your next stop.

Dead Alive’s 1992 vintage is indeed a rarity. Zombies were sort of in hibernation during this period, meaning that Dead Alive came out after the second wave of zombie fiction, but before the third. More than likely this helps to make the film feel fresher, it’s not really part of any trend, and it’s not really a rehash of anything else, it’s a zombie film that was made because Peter Jackson wanted to tell a zombie story. Really, it’s a rare home run from an era where not many people even cared to swing the bat. If you’re a fan of Jackson’s Hobbit and or magical elf related motion pictures, or if you fancy yourself a fan of zombies, but kinda want to see a film that isn’t a broken mess of lowest common denominator pandering and heat chasing, then do yourself a favor and get this shit on your TV pronto. It’s plenty of fun.

A+

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Batman versus Superman : Dawn of justice

Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice~ 2016, Zack Snyder (ugh), USA

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Imagine that one day you’re browsing social media, and you come upon a photograph of some people playing joyfully in the snow. They’re smiling, laughing, having the time of their lives. They’ve even made a snowman, and you can see a kind of happiness in their faces that you remember from your childhood, but which you haven’t experienced in what seems like forever. This picture is getting mad ‘likes’, tons of shares, and everyone is commenting about how much they enjoy it. Meanwhile, the last photo you posted is a damn ghost town, initially ignored, and now forgotten, today it stands as a nagging illustration of your many failings in life, forever enshrined digitally and available worldwide. These people in the snow… Their popular photograph… This is an experience you must have for yourself. This need consumes you.

But there’s a problem; you don’t have snow. You look outside, and there’s not a single flake to be had. You NEVER really get snow, you live in Arizona, and it’s dry as a bone year ’round! I’ll tell you what you DO have, though: DOG SHIT! You have PLENTY of that! Enough to build a house!

So, you spread it all around your property, sprinkling it on your car, on the house, you make sure the ground has an even coat, and soon, it’s just like the picture! It’s a different color, it smells different, but such details are lost on you. To you, this looks great! A perfect reproduction! For the finishing touch, you even build a dog shit snowman, but you take the liberty of updating the no longer relevant snowman design that everyone else doesn’t seem to understand is broken, and after you’ve outfitted him with some wrap around shades and a trenchcoat, you have made a superior snowman that you fully believe will be embraced as the new standard in anthropomorphic snow mounds for all time. And now, the preparation is complete. You stand in your shitscape, and briefly, you feel pride… Except… Then you notice that you are alone. There are no people… No laughing children… And you don’t understand. Why?! What happened? You even went on Conan and showed everyone your sweet tribal arm tattoos, so what went wrong? You shake it off. “Hold it together,” you tell yourself, “the fans just need some time to process this…” Quickly, you upload your photo to Facebook, knowing that an avalanche of ‘likes’, comments, and shares is sure to come crashing down upon you, quickly elevating your photograph to one of the most treasured destinations on all of Facebook, and finally filling that emptiness inside that eats away at you every waking moment of every miserable day. This photo is your salvation, and you cannot wait for the people to embrace it.

But then they don’t. In fact, people don’t really seem to like your photo at all. You get a couple likes- but these are just the people who like anything you post no matter what. The rest of the world tries to ignore you, and the people who comment… Well, some of them actually seem to dislike what you’ve done. What happened?! How did your dream become a nightmare, and why can’t you have your own moment of happiness in the snow? Why? WHY!?

This emotional journey that I have taken you on is exactly the experience that Zack Snyder has experienced with the production and release of his latest (last? a guy can dream) motion picture; Batman V. Superman: Giant Hunk of Bullshit– oh, wait. Sorry. Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice. But hold up, dear readers, do not feel sympathy for Mr. Snyder, there is a corner booth reserved for him in the darkest corner of hell, and I assure you, he’s earned it. The real victims here are the fans. To them, I would like to extend my most heartfelt condolences. Honestly, I’m really sorry this happened to you.

THE PLOT~ Ugh. I want to skip this. We don’t need this. It’s bad, just take my word for it.

So, here’s the skinny: We KNEW this would suck. I knew it would suck from the moment that Snyder was named director (and therefore de-facto architect of the entire DC Comics Cinematic Universe,) but funnily enough, the WAY it chose to suck was entirely unexpected. For a comic book action film, this fucker is SO, SO, SO unforgivably slow and boring. The title of the fucking thing is “BATMAN VERSUS SUPERMAN“- there are not one, but TWO of the biggest superheroes of all time in the damn name of the movie– so why is it that if feels like four hours of slow, boring, clumsy exposition before we even get see anything remotely superhuman go down? The “fun” is kept on a tight leash throughout the entire film until the third act, which attempts to wad about nine storylines into 45 minutes of motion picture, dropping the most extreme overdose of superhero bullshit on you ever in one radically condensed portion of the movie. The structure of the film is basically this: ACT ONE: No where near enough, ACT TWO: No where near enough, ACT THREE: WAAAAY WAAAY TOO MUCH, The end. And why!? What’s the motivation here?! To catch up with Marvel, of course, but do they not see how foolish this is? This literally could have been like, eight movies, and with OTHER directors behind the camera, there could have even been some good ones in there. But instead, DC tries to match Marvel’s eight years of painstaking work to establish a well nurtured universe that fans will want to come back to time and time again with a single movie, and we end up with an overly long, horribly written, convoluted shit show. I can’t believe it, but even Man Of Steel was superior to this. Batman V. Superman is just as bad as we feared.

I feel like what must have happened here is that Snyder, knowing he is routinely criticised for being all shine and no substance, badly overcompensated, and tried to hold back on the action, mistakenly thinking that people not dressed in tights and talking was the same thing as character development. He knows he has to really bring the thunder sometime, though, so in the third act he drops the beat like crazy, and it’s so out of balance that the whole ship sinks. Batman V. Superman has a long list of problems, but I think this might actually be the single biggest flaw in the entire picture.

But what else wrong with the film? Well, ALL of the dialogue is bad. All of it. Jeremy Irons and Jesse Eisenberg especially have some lines that are just embarrassing, one that sticks out for me is even in the trailer:

Lois Lame: You’re psychotic.
Lex Luthor: It is a three syllable word for any thought too big for little minds.

That sounds like it should be printed on the front of a Wal*Mart T-shirt, and then worn by the most hopelessly socially awkward high schooler ever during an all night Deviant Art Marathon, not a piece of dialogue deemed suitable for inclusion in a major motion picture. Nobody smart would ever say that. That’s the dumbest, most embarrassing shit I’ve ever heard. Who wrote this? You did a bad job, you should feel terrible about yourselves.

Additionally, the plot is awful. There’s way too much going on here, predictably, so we end up wasting storylines which could have been their own movie, if handled by a more capable studio. It feels like the scripts for nine movies were just copy and pasted together into one overly long mess and then nobody bothered to proofread the results. We spend the first two thirds of the film trying to establish our character’s motives, and yet when things finally start to happen, nobody’s actions make any sense. Superman winds up being easier to manipulate than a senior citizen lost at the wrong bus stop, and Batman, in the act of murdering Superman, pulls a full 180 when he discovers that both of them have moms named Martha. That ends up being a major plot point. I’m serious. They go from nemesis to BFF in an instant, and learning the name of Clark Kent’s mom is what makes the difference. Imagine what’s going to happen when he meets the Hulk!

At the end of the day, millions of desperate people are going to pretend that this a good movie no matter what, and it’ll make money. It’s disheartening, but it’s true. We’re at a funny point in human history, these days we’ve become so dependent on media to dull the aches and pains of modern life that we’ve developed a kind of Stockholm Syndrome for bad artists. People want to love this so badly that they would have accepted absolutely anything. The whole film could have just been Zack Snyder in Superman tighty whities rolling around on the floor of a public restroom and humming the theme song to the 1960’s Batman TV show for three hours, and it still would have been defended to the death by legions of sad DC Comics fans who just want to have a good time at the movies. As it is, we have a film so critically reviled that it currently rests a full five percent more rotten that The Room on Rotten Tomatoes, and honestly, that’s where it belongs. Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice is a stinker I would not wish on my worst enemies.

Still a better movie than Sucker Punch.

F

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Leprechaun

Leprechaun– 1993, Mark Jones

Leprechaun 1993 1080p WEB-DL AAC2 0 H 264 HKD

Holiday-themed slasher films are a proud tradition for horror fans, and when it comes to larger than life, murderous, movie-maniacs, Warwick Davis in a green jacket sounds like about as logical a choice as any, to me. Evidently, the rest of the world thought so too, because it was with open arms that the we, as a global, human family, first welcomed Leprechaun into our lives way back in the naive, carefree days of 1993. The movie was a relative success, and in the years that followed, we ended up with way more sequels than we wanted, needed, or asked for. It’s the American way. I’ve also heard many people claim that an annual re-watching of Leprechaun has become a cherished St. Patrick’s Day tradition in some social circles, so certainly we can declare this whimsical horror jam to be a true classic, right?

Wrong, Leprechaun totally and completely fucking sucks. This is a terrible movie.

Drops-MicCome at me, bro.

THE PLOT- While renovating an old farmhouse, a group of unlikable morons inadvertently frees a malicious leprechaun, who had been trapped on the property in an old trunk. This gnarly little fairy creature proceeds to kill his way through the local population on a murderous, limerick-laiden rampage, with the intention of finding his much cherished and now stolen pot of gold. Also, none of our main characters die, which is a shame because every single one of them suck, and I wish more than anything that I could watch them breath their last, and know that they are finally gone forever.

We have a lot of ground to cover with this stinker, so I’mma dive right in.

I guess it’s not really the fact that Leprechaun sucks that is the problem, hell, tons of my favorite movies completely suck, especially in this genre. It’s more an issue of HOW Leprechaun chose to suck. This flick is super bipolar, it switches abruptly between more or less enjoyable sequences where Warwick Davis kills people or lurks around in the shadows, and terrible, boring sequences which last forever and manage to out bland Admiral Blandy McBlanderson of the Planet Blandtron. For real, we get the most boring, artless photography imaginable, a lame story, embarrassing dialogue, and characters nobody could possibly care about. Leprechaun feels like an R rated children’s movie. This stuff is the opiate of the ignorant.

The music is maybe the worst part of the whole shebang. The score is all shitty, Casio music which sounds like a mix of PBS standbys and what you’d see in one of Full Moon’s more mediocre productions. Here, in Leprechaun, this horrible music plays over the entire length of the picture, and any film, be it Taxi Driver or The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Movie, would instantly tank and remain forever banished to the realm of cinema’s most heinous rejects if they were shackled to a score this overbearingly fuck-awful. Luckily, however, this isn’t a situation where the music spoils a perfectly good film, because every other aspect of Leprechaun sucks with equal ferocity as well. Director Mark Jones captures the suspense and drama of the film’s scattered “horror” sequences with the sort of constant menace you might expect from an episode of Loony Tunes, except not as funny… And Leprechaun WANTS to be funny. Trust me, it’s not. This film just flat out sucks A to Z, and there’s nothing in here that works.

A legit claim to fame for this groan-fest is that it’s an early on-screen appearance of the now popular actress Jennifer Aniston, but she’s really just here as an outlet for the film to condenscend to women, which is another point that absolutely needs to be brought up; Leprechaun has a very disturbing “That’s cute, now get back in the kitchen” outlook on feminism. Aniston’s character does nothing but complain, fawn over dudes, and scream at spiders for the entire fucking movie. Really, if you twisted my arm and demanded I say one nice thing about Leprechaun’s treatment of this actress, I guess it would be that she’s really not sexualized all that much. No nude scenes, no wet t-shirts, no butt close ups (I’m looking at you Tobe Hooper,) so it COULD be much more exploitative… But she’s still really, really awful, and more than anything else, this whole thing is pretty telling of a harsh, deep seeded sexism, which hangs over every second of Leprechaun’s unforgivably long run time.

The other characters in the film aren’t a hell of a lot better, either. We spend a lot of time with an obnoxious, smart ass kid named Alex, and Ozzy, a mentally retarded man that Alex hangs out with. Even though Alex is like, nine, and knows nothing about the world around him, he seems to be a few notches above Jenifer Anniston in the groups social pecking order. Anniston and Ozzy, however, are more or less on the same level. Regardless, every single moment with those two is about as pleasant as a handjob from Edward Scissorhands. It’s beyond reason, I cannot rationalize why any human being would write a script like this. Firstly, that kid is just an annoying little shit, someone needs to tell him to shut the fuck up when the adults are talking. As for Ozzy, I’ve not seen an adult actor demean themselves to this extreme a degree since Dom Deluise REALLY started slumming it (see Going Bananas for an adequate example of this. jk, don’t ever see Going Bananas. Ever.) It’s basically an insult to the audience that this is our movie and these are our characters. Why did we accept this?!

The only times that Leprechaun feels watchable are during the its adequately imaginative kill scenes. Lep does do some fun stuff, even if he is really is just a squat, Irish, Freddy Kruger rip off. The character does have some potential, and Davis does a good job here. In fact, many of the Leprechaun sequels actually suck much, much less than this first outing, if you really wanted this movie to work, all is not lost, and you won’t have to wait long for a drastically improved sequel. I would just skip this thing if I was you, it’s flat out shitty, and most likely, I’ll never watch Leprechaun again.

…But people like this movie! I don’t know, I guess there is a good chunk of horror fandom that will watch just about anything… Maybe that in and of itself accounts for most of the Lep-Love out there in the world, but I have a different theory…. Bare with me; since Leprechaun is a movie which, as stated above, is often enjoyed annually during St. Patrick’s Day, I wonder if it’s a safe assumption that, by the time they hit play on the DVD player, most of the returning audience is already fully hammered, and possibly not even paying attention… I’m sure that could help make this thing more bearable. Aside from that, I theorize that 100% of Leprechaun’s remaining supporters fall into one of two categories;

1.
 Nostalgia addicts, people who are happy to overlook glaring inadequacies of literally anything that reminds them of a happier, simple time…
OR
2. …Warwick Davis. Ever the self promoter, Warwick Davis is more than happy to tell you about how great this movie is. Homeboy left the franchise kicking and screaming.

My official take: More like SUCK of the Irish! (zing!) Leprechaun totally blows.

D

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Monster Brawl!

Monster Brawl ~ 2011, Jesse Thomas Cook

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Monster Brawl should win an award for having one of the most straight forward and least misleading titles of all time. It’s called Monsters Brawl, that’s what it’s about, that’s what happens, and that’s what you’re going to see.  Monsters, who brawl. The movie has essentially no storyline, just the minimal exposition needed to show us each monster and then to explain that they’ll be brawiling. There’s a ring, two announcers, a ref, and monsters, who brawl… And that’s about it. Presumably, the financial backing for the film was handled by some kind of secret coalition of third graders.  It’s an exercise in simplicity, anything that doesn’t serve the purpose of working toward the brawling of monsters is stripped away and discarded. It’s more than a little juvenile, but you can’t really hold that against it, since you’re watching damn Monster Brawl. Who are you to judge? Plus, it’s well made. The low budget is apparent, but this is easily forgivable because the film doesn’t take itself very seriously. Monster Brawl clearly has one priority, to facilitate the brawling of monsters, and if you aren’t too cynical, you might have fun watching it. It won’t offer much for those demanding of less shallow viewing experiences, the truth is that if you’re willingly watching what basically amounts to Wrestlmania with werewolves and swamp monsters, you’ve sorta waived the right to complain about your movie being goofy. Plus, if it’s a choice between Monster Brawl and whatever Michael Bay abomination is stinking up your local multiplex theater, Monster Brawl is never the wrong choice. On the other hand, having read the description, if Monster Brawl doesn’t sound like something you’d enjoy, you’re probably right.

C+

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THE FLYING GUILLOTINE!

The Flying Guillotine ~ 1975, Meng Hua Ho

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Rare is it that a damn prop is able to steal the show like the Flying Guillotine did. It’s basically just a damn murder Frisbee, and it kicked ass so hard that after this movie came out, several additional films had to be produced, for the sole purpose of delivering Flying Guillotine related content into the eager eyes of human beings world wide. This thing is awesome, and you need to know about it.

But just what in the hell is a Flying Guillotine?

I’m glad you asked! Essentially, a flying guillotine is a ranged weapon used to decapitate people from a distance… You know, for the busy decapitator who’s always on the go. Essentially disc shaped, the user throws the Flying Guillotine at his/her target, and attempts to land it perfectly on their head; which is then sliced off using a simple net and blade system. So, it’s kinda like ring toss, only… you know… It decapitates the shit out of people. As an added bonus, the flying guillotine is outfitted with a length of chain, which allows the user to retrieve the weapon, head still in tow, in case they want to keep it for a souvenior or whatever. The outside rim of the weapon is lined in sharp, buzz saw type blades, which allow it to crash through walls, or saw through basically whatever stands between the user, and the righteous decapitation of whoever they toss the damn thing at. Have a look:

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Basically, it’s the most terrifying weapon in the world, there’s no defense against it, and if somebody throws it at you, your head is coming off for sure. The Flying Guillotine is nothing to scoff at, and if two flying guillotines impact one another while in flight, they freakin’ explode. Needless to say, putting this thing in your movie is basically a license to print money, and literally every film ever SHOULD have had a Flying Guillotine in it. Seriously, think about how rad 50 First Dates would have been if Sandler threw one of these things at somebody just ONCE. Also, how does Frisbee-golf work? I think this might be exactly like Decapitation Frisbee golf, also.

So, according to historical record, these things actually existed, although I kinda feel like I need to call B.S. on that one, historians. Anyway, regardless of how many ACTUAL, Chinese people had their heads Frolfed off in real life, I can tell you how many suffer that awesome fate in The Flying Guilotine: Way more than enough for this movie to be super entertaining.

THE PLOT~ When some corrupt ass Chinese emperor dude decides that he needs to be even shadier than he already is, he tasks his court of royal go-geters with the job of designing a newer, sneakier means of killing people without fear of reprisal. It just so happens that one of his more abstract thinking tinkerers comes up with an idea more or less immediately, and he crafts the world’s very first Flying Guillotine, a device which murders people so, so hard, and which is awesome. At first, the Emperor is enraged. “What if this device were turned against me?!” He thinks, but after he calms down a little bit, The Flying Guillotine really starts to grow on him. The decision is then made to round up the Kingdom’s best royal guards and develop a team of Flying Guillotine wielding super assassins, which is exactly what happens. At first, everything seems just dandy, until our troops start to realize that the Emperor is spying on them, and they no longer have any freedom whatsoever. The slightest sign of disloyalty puts you at the business end of a flying guillotine, and your only purpose in life is to basically murder anyone the Emperor wants you to, which often sucks. Ma Teng, our star pupil, isn’t really in love with this idea, so he soon goes awol, which leads to a massive confrontation between him and his former comrades. In the end, China is littered with severed heads, and rivers of thick, bright red, fake looking blood. I love this movie.

At it’s heart, The Flying Guillotine is more or less a cold war allegory, which seems a little weird. The Flying Guillotine itself is basically depicted as being unreasonable power in the hands of a corrupt government, so it becomes a stand in for the bomb; it’s a power no one should have, that will inevitably wind up in the hands of the person least worthy. Furthermore, the controlling, ever invasive environment our central characters find themselves in is very representative of Stalinist Russia, so The Flying Guillotine comes across as being something like a Kung Fu version of Animal Farm… but with like, a thousand headless bodies flailing about. I think it’s an improvement over Orwell’s work, but that’s my opinion.

From a technical perspective, the film makes out okay, but is pretty typical of an early 1970’s Shaw Brothers film, that is to say that it’s heavy on charm, but far from state of the art. The effects throughout are mostly pretty decent, and there is some ambitious use of specialty lenses here and there, although this tends to be more distracting than impressive. It’s pretty bloody, which is would really have to be, given the subject matter, but all the blood looks like bright red acrylic paint, which is at the same time awesome, and painfully unrealistic looking. Oh well, nobody cares, they compensate nicely via decapitations.

I think my favorite scene comes late in the film, when Ma Teng knows his former brothers in arms are likely to strike against him at any time. In a stroke of brilliance, he inlists the help of some local blacksmiths to create a device designed to defend against Flying Guillotine attacks; some kind of weird, metallic umbrella thing. It’s wacky as hell, but don’t laugh too hard, because the freakin’ thing actually works! Not only does it successfully deflect a Flying Guillotine attack, it also kills Ma Teng’s would be assassin in the process. This is clearly a major breakthrough in anti-decapitation technology, but unfortunately, the device wasn’t fully finished when Ma Teng was forced to use it, so it ends up only being good for one use.

Another great scene comes right at the film’s climax, which takes place in an awesome rocky outcropping/waterfall type location, and features a showdown between Ma Teng and a few of his former team mates. It’s a truly fantastic conclusion to the film, and it’s shot really nicely, as well. Like England’s Hammer Studios, The Shaw Brothers were renowned for their use of highly detailed and elaborate sets, and I do love them for this, but taking the camera and actors off the studio soundstages and into a natural environment for the film’s finale makes a huge difference, and really manages to give this last scene an impressive impact. This really takes it to eleven for The Flying Guillotine, but honestly, it’s kinda hard to go wrong when 9/10’s of your cast has no head by the end of the picture. This one was in the bag from day one. I ain’t even mad.

The Flying Guillotine turns up in several more movies, and I highly doubt that we’ve seen the last of it. If you’re new to the world of elaborate, long range decapitations, then I would recommend this movie as a good introduction to the wide, wild world of the o’ T.F.G. One way or the other, this is a solid and enjoyable film, and I recommend it.

A

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THE BEYOND!!!!

The Beyond~ 1981, Lucio Fulci, Italy

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THE BEYOND!

The Beyond is the second film in Lucio Fulci’s semi-official “Seven Gates of Hell” Trilogy, which is the very definition of squandered opportunity. SEVEN gates of Hell TRILOGY? Come on, dude. What’s the deal? We still got, like, four more gates of hell out there somewhere.

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What kind of person tells us he has seven gates to hell, and then only shares three? Fucked up.

Regardless, The Beyond is often thought of as one of Fulci’s best films, and that’s a reputation that I think is well deserved. This is, indeed, a good movie.

The plot really isn’t that impressive, though. It’s basically just a straight line that connects our protagonist’s introduction, with her eternal damnation. In short, she inherits a hotel (that’s good!) and wouldn’t ya know it, it’s built over one of the Earth’s seven, hidden entrances to Hell (that’s bad).  Immediately everything is really, really horrible, and then she goes to hell forever. A lot of secondary characters die, and that’s the movie.

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Awesome.

Just like with Suspiria, the weak plot isn’t really an issue, we didn’t come to The Beyond with high expectations for an engrossing narrative. What makes this film truly great is it’s superb execution. Like many of Fulci’s films, The Beyond is straught up dream like, and in fact, most of this shit just flat out doesn’t make sense at all. Is this a deliberate abuse of your suspension of disbelief, or evidence of incompetence on the part of the director? I tend to believe it’s the former, but either way, Fulci plays it straight, and when you experience the many frustrating lapses in basic logic alongside the film’s near constant air of menace, the end result is a wildly effective movie for those who have the patience to invest in it. The Beyond is scary for reasons that you can’t quite pin point, which seems to be a common goal amongst the Italian horror maestros of yesteryear. Fulci nailed it this time.

Good ol’ Lucio’s eye for cinematography is here in full force as well, this is a film that probably has a lot more love and care put into it’s aesthetic than you may notice if you don’t know what to look for. When Fucli was playing at the top of his game, he put out movies that got more beautiful the longer you picked at them, and that certainly is the case here. It’s also extremely gory, which is great, The Beyond is a full fledged Video Nasty, folks, and understandably so. The main jam here is lingering. Just lingering! This movie likes to find really, really gross shit, and then just rub your face in it for much longer than is required to get the point across. For gorehounds, that makes this movie well worth the cost of admission alone. For fans of Italian splatter cinema, it’s hard to argue against The Beyond as a must see.

Small gripe; People often call The Beyond a zombie film, which I think it ill-advised. Yes, there are zombies in this movie, but there’s also a whole lot of other stuff going on too. Calling this a zombie movie is sorta like saying that E.T. is a movie about bicycles. Even worse, if you’re looking for zombies specifically, this might leave you feeling underwhelmed, as they are most certainly not this film’s primary focus. If it’s the undead you crave, have a gander at this list for recommendations, because The Beyond really isn’t going to get you what you’re looking for.

Additionally, the movie also bares many traits which are very much typical of European productions of the era, but which also tend to turn off mainstream American horror fans, who expect a more accessible Hidden Gateway To Hell experience. Slow pacing, obnoxious English dubbing, and a sometimes aggravatingly negligent narrative, these are all here, and in spades. If you haven’t seen a lot of these films before, then you might have trouble with The Beyond. You need to think of these films like a hot tub; dip your toes in first to test the temperature, and then lower yourself in as your body adjusts to the warmth. If you just dive in, you’re gonna get burned.

Otherwise, The Beyond is absolutely great, and a highlight of Fulci’s epic filmography.

A+

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TERMINATOR GENISYS

Terminator Genisys ~ 2015, Alan Taylor, USA

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According to renown Cambridge Geneticist Aubrey de Grey, if advancements in medical science continue at the rate they have in recent history, the first human being who will live to reach the age of 1,000 is currently alive, somewhere in the world, today. It’s admittedly a controversial statement, but if this theory proves to be true, it would be nothing less than astounding. We don’t know who this person is, or where they will come from, but we do know one thing for certain; even with a lifespan well in excess of fourteen times the current average, this human being does not have enough time on Earth to justify wasting the two hours and five minutes it would take to watch Terminator Genisys, from start, to finish. No one does.

THE PLOT~ No. Fuck you. We’re not doing that. The plot here is not worth summarizing, it’s like most time travel films, clumsy, convoluted, and full of fucking holes. One difference, however, is that where most time travel movies have a written in complexity meant to keep the story interesting, or to distract from a weak narrative, the convoluted plot here is clearly crafted to serve one single, ultimate purpose: to explain just why in the hell Arnold Schwarzenegger is so freaking old. He’s a robot, why would a robot age?

TERMINATOR-GENISYS-7Will the King of One-Liners soon be adding “Help, I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” to his repertoire?

Paramount knew that the one and only reason they had to put this film into production was that they had Arnold back, at long last, so they go to great lengths to justify how unkind the years have been to him, and even with all the work they do, it still doesn’t really make sense. It’s dumb, but we could forgive it super easily if Genisys was at least entertaining… And it’s not. This film does nothing to numb the pain, it’s a shit show, plain and simple, and all the nostalgia in the world can’t keep it afloat. Please… I beg of you…. BELIEVE me when I say that I WANTED to love Arnold’s return to the Terminator franchise. I really did… But not like this… I never wanted this.

And who would!?!? Whoever asked for a soft reboot, PG-13 Terminator movie with an evil John Connor, a clueless Kyle Reese, an obnoxious know-it-all Sarah Connor, and an elderly old Terminator who learns how to love? Did anyone NOT try to kill themselves as they read this paragraph!?

Yeah, the Terminator in this movie is a good guy again. He shows up in the distant past and raises an orphaned Sarah Connor (for some reason?), who affectionately calls him “Pops,” like he’s her damn dad. (He’s a robot skeleton from the future designed to murder people, remember.) There’s a shit load of horrible dialogue in this film about Pops struggling to comprehend human emotions, and it helps to make the film about as much fun to watch as that shot in Home Alone where Marv steps on the nail.

Here’s a few groan-worthy lines I took the liberty of writing down:

SARAH CONNOR: “It isn’t just mating, I’m supposed to fall in love with him!”
TERMINATOR: “My files do not deal with love.”

(Sarah hugs The Terminator)
TERMINATOR: A meaningless gesture. Why hold onto someone when you know you must let them go?

SARAH CONNOR: The girl you came to save? She’s gone! I don’t need saving!

And of course, the new Terminator catchphrase:
TERMINATOR: Old- not obsolete.

Pretty bad, huh? Those are all real.

It also tries to be funny far more often than is appropriate, and it succeeds never. Really, there isn’t anything here that isn’t a complete failure, aside from the special effects, which are fine. There really couldn’t be a better example of the “Lipstick on a pig” phenomena at play, however, you can jazz a turd up with glitzy CG all you want, the end result is just a fancier, more expensive turd. That’s really all this movie is; a heinous, unwanted, unworthy turd, caked in glitter and lipstick. This is the kind of movie that actor’s leave off of their resumes. May it rot in hell.

F

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VIOLENT SHIT: THE MOVIE

Violent Shit: The Movie~ 2015, Luigi Pastore, Italy

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Sigh<… You’d think by now that I’d have learned a thing or two about not getting my hopes up, but when I read the announcement for this project, it got my attention. It’s such a bizarre turn of events;Violent Shit, the quintessential no-budget German splatter film, was being remade- and by the Italians no less! The new film would have a higher budget (not saying a lot), better production value (saying even less), and would sport an original soundtrack by legendary composer Claudio Simonetti! And if that doesn’t float your boat, it would even feature Euro-horror icon Giovanni Lombardo Radice (AKA John Morghen) in a central role! Holy damn, how could I not want to see this movie?

I’m not crazy about the Violent Shit films (I kinda hate them), but this is tantamount to humanity entering some totally bizarre cinematic echo chamber. Violent Shit was clearly influenced heavily by the Video Nasties that came before it, and now we have this imitation video nasty being made in Violent Shit’s image more than twenty five years later, as if the original movie was just a fan film based on something that didn’t exist yet. At the very least, it looked like this could lend some legitimacy to the franchise, and it would very clearly be worth checking out. So, suffice to say, I preordered the Blu Ray. Will I ever learn?

No, no I won’t. it should go without saying that for all the excitement this strange stage in the evolution of the Violent Shit series may have generated, you can save yourself the trouble; Violent Shit: The Movie is easily the worst film in the entire franchise. It’s kind of amazing that that’s even possible, but here we are. Amazing things happen everyday.

THE PLOT~ When a series of bizarre and brutal murders begin to occur throughout Rome, German authorities send a detective from Hamburg to cooperate with Italian police in investigating what they fear may be the return of legendary German super murderer Karl The Butcher. Naturally, our two detectives waste no time in their investigation to uncover the mysterious truth behind Karl’s return, and to stop the killer before he strikes again. That’s only the first half of the movie, however, after that, the film changes its mind and decides that it wants to be about Giovanni Lombardo Radice’s Satanic coke party, and all of the work the film did in it’s first half establishing characters and plot is tossed in the toilet and discarded forever. We see some sleazy Italians have sex, Karl makes a few brief appearances, and is then casually decapitated in someone’s backyard like it ain’t no thing, and then the fucking movie is over and Luigi Pastore laughs maniacally inside his ornate, cavernous mansion, because he knows you just watched his shitty movie and he has your money, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Holy smokes. This franchise deserved better. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but it really did. It’s probably as good at time as any to remind you what the original Violent Shit looked like:
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Yeah, it looked like garbage, complete and utter garbage, because that’s what it was. It was the product of a handful of German kids dicking around with a VHS camcorder on the weekends, and somehow, the world decided that this was a movie, and now people own copies of it on friggin’ DVD. Even this, meager as it was, was a better experience than what Pastore has done with the Violent Shit franchise.

In fact, why is this even a Violent Shit movie? It’s not even that violent! It’s a complete waste of the license. Karl The Butcher is basically delegated to the role of a party favor, in simple point of fact, this is a complete under-utilization of the Violent Shit brand. This movie is really just about Giovanni and his weird antique collecting/Devil worshiping shit that he’s into, which would be okay, since I do like seeing Radice back again, but damn it, you guys. You probably should have made SOME KIND of effort to make your Violent Shit movie a VIOLENT SHIT movie. Seems like that would obviously be important. I really can’t tell you how profoundly short this movie comes insofar as delivering what is expected of it. The only other franchise reboot I can think of that shit the bed to this dramatic of a degree is actually Leprechaun Origins, which is a Leprechaun movie that somehow forgot to put the Leprechaun in it. Yeah, that was actually worse… But still.

Violent Shit the Movie isn’t just bad, it’s puzzlingly bad. It’s frustrating, pointless, and every mistake it makes is so painfully obvious that it actually makes the experience of watching it irritating in ways which surpass the natural unpleasantness one would experience when sitting through a crappy movie. Violent Shit The Movie is the sort of bad that demands retaliation, like after having seen it, you feel like you’ve been wronged on a personal level. Truly, hell holds a special place for Luigi Pastore.

Oddly enough, Andreas Schnaas’ Anthropophagus 2000, his semi-illegal remake of Joe D’Amato’s 1980 video nasty, is, while still shitty, a much better experience, overall. Apparently, converting Italian to German works a lot better than the other way around.

F

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NINJA BUSTERS!!!

Ninja Busters~ 1984, Paul Kyriazi, USA

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Upon first glance, Ninja Busters pretty much just looks like hollow attempt to cash in on the Miami Connection craze, by offering a similar lost film from the same era to the irony-crazed, Alamo Drafthouse flunkies of 2015, but the shocking truth is that Ninja Busters doesn’t actually have a whole hell of a lot in common with the synth-metal tinged, tai kwon do brawl fest that was Miami Connection. Ninja Busters is, in fact, a comedy! And it’s a good one, too!

And don’t get me wrong, I thought Miami Connection was hilarious, but that comedy was entirely accidental. The humor in Ninja Busters is intentional, and its off-putting just how successful this movie is at doing what it actually wants to do. We don’t see that a lot in the deep recesses of Psychotronic film! This is a highly entertaining, surprisingly charming little movie that kept catching me off guard by how hard it DIDN’T suck ass. Ninja Busters actually goes the distance.

THE PLOT~ Chic and Bernie are two bumbling, loveable con men who profess to be masters of the martial arts, but who actually get their ass kicked on the regular, and mostly just want to chase girls. Through happenstance, they enroll in some weird, California dojo (because they want to meet girls), and are slowly accepted by their peers over the course of three years. For a while, it’s all good for our boys, until they manage to piss off a local gangster, who sends his army of deadly ninja to take Chic and Bernie out. This movie is absolutely, 100%, a goofball comedy, but you might be surprised how fast things get fucking awesome in the third act.

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So, what’s the deal here?

If we’re being fair, despite the fact that Ninja Busters has thus far failed to make waves quite the way that Miami Connection did when it was rediscovered, this is, in nearly every way possible, a much, much better film. I think it’s natural to compare the two, given the circumstances, but the superiority of Ninja Busters is pretty clear if you make an objective comparison. As fun as it is now, it makes sense that Miami Connection was panned upon its release, that’s a film which draws its considerable power from irony and irony alone, precisely because its actually just a shitty ninja film from the 1980’s. Ninja Busters, however, had even less of an opportunity to shine back in it’s day, and in truth, is was so much more deserving; if this flick had been available on VHS at my corner shop growing up, I would have happily watched it until the cassette fell apart. There’s something special about this movie, deep in its bones it’s just so wholesome and good natured, and I’d say the experience feels more akin to a wacky, upbeat comedy of the 1960’s than the glossy ass pop cinema that had become so much more common in 1984.

Our two leads, Bernie and Chic, have pretty strong chemistry together, as well, though they aren’t the best actors. Actually, much of the acting in Ninja Busters is predictably subpar, but it’s never enough to damage the film’s likability, which is considerable. Sid Campbell (who plays Chic, and who also co-wrote the picture along with William C. Martell) really carries the film, and its too bad we don’t see more of him in other movies. He’s kinda like what you’d have if Ernest P. Worrell had possessed at least a passable knowledge of the martial arts… And yes, that’s exactly as incredible as it sounds. Clearly, this is what my life has been missing all these years.

In a lot of ways, Ninja Busters feels less ambitious than Miami Connection, but that’s okay. The production is adequate, and it’s nice that the movie doesn’t overextend its reach and fall flat on its face like so many other movies from that decade did. Many of the sequences are legitimately funny, the dialogue is actually pretty good, and its remarkably easy to invest in the outcome of the story based on how likable our characters are. Really, likability is this film’s most precious resource, it really comes across that this movie was made with the best intentions; here is a movie that just wants you to laugh and have a good time, and unless you’re Oscar the damn Grouch, that’s probably exactly what you’ll do if you give Ninja Busters an hour and a half of your day.

It’s a shame that Campbell didn’t live to see this film finally be embraced by an audience the way it has since it’s recent rediscovery. Ninja Busters is a remarkable effort that deserved a lot better than it got, and in a world full of 80’s cinema that is celebrated ironically, it’s wonderful to find a film that can be enjoyed because of how good it is. It would be overkill to call Ninja Busters a masterpiece, but I can rest easily saying that I love this film, and I give it a strong recommendation.

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A

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