Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category

Silent Night, Deadly Night and Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Well the Christmas season is upon us and what better way to celebrate Christmas than to put ornaments on a tree and put presents under it? I don’t know but while we ponder that let’s also talk about evil Santa movies.

Silent Night Deadly Night is a mid-level entry in the holiday-themed slasher movie genre. It’s not a classic like Halloween but then again it’s not completely retarded like the Leprechaun pictures or Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Massacre which is not a real movie but would probaly be pretty stupid, in my opinion. Unless they got the right director but even then, I don’t know about that premise.

Basically what the movie is about is, they wanted to make a movie about a killer dressed as Santa Claus, so they went back and figured out all the psychological traumas that might lead to such a scenario. So they show how this kid named Billy is told by his crazy grandpa that Santa Claus punishes kids who aren’t good all year, and then right after that he sees his parents raped and killed by a criminal dressed as Santa, and then he goes to an orphanage where an abusive nun further instills the dogma of punishment and sexual repression into him, and then he gets pressured into being Santa for a toy store and gets drunk at the office party and rejected by a girl and next thing you know he’s go around with a fake beard and an axe yelling “punish” and impaling Linnea Quigley on a pair of antlers.

The movie gets less creepy and more ridiculous as it goes along. My favorite scene is when young Billy, forced by mother superior to sit on Santa’s lap, punches St. Nick out. Santa goes flying out of his chair along with the classic sound effect used when Poncharella or Hunter or somebody punches somebody out. Then Santa gets up, blood all over his fake beard, and yells “What the hell is wrong with that kid?” (more…)

Posted in Horror, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »

Christine

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

I don’t know if you remember this movie, it’s about a haunted car. In other words, it’s based on a Stephen King book. And that also means it’s a 50’s car that plays old Little Richard songs and crap while it kills people. I know the filmatists today are bad, they gotta put references to all the TV shows and movies from their childhood, but Stephen King is the original. This guy has been cannibalizing his childhood for decades. And also he’s been making up stories about inanimate objects killing people. Killer laundry machines and shit like that. Remember in the TV movie version of THE SHINING, there was a haunted fire hose that killed a guy? It’s alot like that only a car.

Actually, it’s a better movie than I remember it being when I saw it back in the ’80s, and I’m going to give most of the credit to Mr. John Carpenter. I’m not saying this is HALLOWEEN or THEY LIVE but it’s a good straightforward haunted car movie. The movie stars Keith Gordon (the kid from HOME MOVIES and DRESSED TO KILL) as a nerdy kid whose jock buddy tells him he needs to get laid now that he’s a senior and who gets his ass kicked in metal shop. They stab his sack lunch to death with a switchblade and he suffers the humiliation of everybody seeing that his mom packed him yogurt.

So what he does, he finds this old piece of shit car that he buys from a crazy old coot in a shack (Roberts Blossom, who was fucking brilliant in DERANGED). The old man doesn’t tell him that his brother just died in the car but he does tell him it’s named Christine. And that’s what the kid always calls it, “Christine,” not “my car.” And everybody acts like that’s normal, for some reason.

His parents don’t approve of the car so he gets a space in a garage inside a junkyard and starts fixing Christine up. This was before the invention of Pimp My Ride, so he puts the elbow grease in himself and he gets the job done. As he does it he becomes less nerdy, more manly, wears darker clothes, slicks his hair back, even starts wearing his collar up like he thinks he’s in the ’50s. Suddenly he has a girlfriend and he has the balls to call his dad “motherfucker” but nobody can really stand him because he’s obsessed with the fucking car. I mean Christine. (more…)

Tags: ,
Posted in Horror, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »

Cherry Falls

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Well there might be some individuals out there wondering, wouldn’t it be cool if you took a director like the dude who did Romper Stomper, and had him do a slasher movie. Well those individuals it turns out are wrong. Sorry boys.

Cherry Falls is the story of a killer in a small town who kills only virgins. In a small town called Cherry Falls.

You know what I mean? Virgins. In Cherry Falls.

I’ll let that one sink in. Anyway this one is a bit different from the current crop of teen slasher type pictures. It is made by australians, for one. The tone is a little darker and less jokey. Most of the actors look like they are really high school aged instead of in their mid to late twenties. And instead of not killing virgins, the killer kills ONLY virgins. So of course the gimmick is that the kids decide to have a big orgy so they can all a) not get killed b) get laid.

Unfortunately not much of interest is made of this premise. And it’s not THAT different from your urban legend the final cut or your scream 3 or your I know what they did for the summer, etc. Just like those pictures it is all leading up to some stupid surprise ending where it turns out one of the characters you thought you could trust is actually the killer. what I’m getting at is that Jay Mohr is not just a teacher, he is also a guy who dresses up as his mom to kill virgins. (more…)

Posted in Horror, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »

28 Days Later

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Mr. Boyle’s low budget zombie movie was the “surprise hit” of the summer according to various shitty entertainment magazines that I keep forgetting not to read. I thought it was pretty decent but it does not add anything significant to the zombie genre. Most of this material was already covered more thoughtfully and with better visuals in Mr. Romero’s classic series of films. Kids, if you have not seen them, stop doing your fucking homework and go rent NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DAWN OF THE DEAD and DAY OF THE DEAD, in that order. These are three great pictures that each make a statement about the time they were made in. Believe me your life will be improved by watching these movies.

28 DAYS LATER, at least on my one viewing, doesn’t seem to say much about our times. But it does repeat several ideas from Romero: a disparate group of survivors looking for a safe haven, a fun looting spree, a semi-domesticated zombie chained by the neck who later gets set loose as a weapon, a military base where the soldiers turn out to be a bunch of goons, a scene where they stop to get gas and one character wanders off and gets attacked by zombie kids and has to kill them. Yes, the zombies are faster than in Romero’s pictures, but we’ve also seen that in the great Return of the Living Dead.

I liked 28 DAYS LATER better near the end where it started to add more non-Living-Dead-retread twists. The idea of the soldiers using the continuation of the species as an excuse for rape. And of course the guy poking out eyes with his bare hands and then embracing his lover without even wiping off. Charming. I also enjoyed the loving relationship between the father and daughter. (more…)

Tags:
Posted in Horror, Reviews | No Comments »

The Cell

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Oh jesus I wanted to like this movie. I am a big fan of the artists, and shit if this one isn’t made by some kind of artist. I guess the dude is a mtv music video director named Tarsem. At first I thought “Holy shit Tarsem is directing now? I thought he was dead.” Then I remembered I was thinking of Sabu. Tarsem is a different guy.

Anyway this movie is about as pretty as I’ve ever seen when Tarsem lets loose. There are fantasy world imageries of magic horses and deserts and sailboats and the virgin Mary and weird doll people and little skeleton horses and evil clowns tying a dude’s intestines to a music box and etc. These don’t look like any movie I’ve seen before, they are bright and weird and perfectly designed like some kind of psychedelic painting, the ones made by a real master artist not just some hippie that paints mushrooms and mad hatters and hangs them up at the local cafe. I’m talking the real deal.

I mean this movie is great to hang on your wall but it’s not great to sit and watch. Who the fuck cares how pretty it is when all the movie is is a bad episode of Millennium. What it’s about is Eccentric Serial Killer (Vincent D’Onofrio) does Weird Torture Ritual to Young Girls (see Cabin By the Lake review above for similar serial killer shenanigans), gets caught exactly as he has a seizure and goes into a coma. So Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn use virtualistic reality type machines to go into his dream world and try to get him to admit where he has his last victim locked up. But then they just figure it out anyway without his help and then she stabs him and there is a bunch of weird ass shit that happens and then the movie ends and as far as anybody can remember, there wasn’t really much of a story. (more…)

Posted in Crime, Drama, Fantasy/Swords, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 5 Comments »

The Old Dark House

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

As you know I like to watch the classics but the only way to tell for sure if it is a classic is based on what channel it is on. This one was on American Movie Classics so that’s how I know. If it was on TBS or especially USA that would be another story. Anyway it is an old one from James Whale the director of Frankenstein.

Boris Karloff from the Frankenstein gets top billing but let’s be honest here, he’s playing a mute butler for christ’s sake. This is not a starring role it is strictly a gimp role in my opinion. I mean I know for a fact the man can talk, and can talk well. But you wouldn’t know it the way he’s typecasted in some of these pictures. Here he’s just a big oafish brute who gets drunk and tries to grab the pretty ladies. He looks like they left the Frankenstein makeup on him and pasted a beard over it the poor bastard.

Charles Laughton the famous hunchback is also in it playing a jolly gay guy (and by gay I do not mean jolly, that would be stupid to say that, it would be like he plays a jolly jolly guy. What I mean is he is gay or homosexual). Gloria Stuart is one of the two pretty young gals in the picture. She strips down to her antique undies at one point so if you liked her in the titanic movie, get ready to hit pause. (more…)

Posted in Drama, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »

Halloween: Resurrection

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

A couple years back you’ll remember that I reviewed the whole HALLOWEEN series. And I mean the WHOLE series. The first one, the middle ones, the last one. The very last one. The one where they got the original stars back, they got a halfway decent script, they brought everything full circle, they chopped that fucker’s head off and they cut to the credits. The end, forever. Never again. Against all odds, they came up with a decent wrapup to an endless series of bad sequels.

Well sadly what they went and did, they talked poor Michael Meyers into doing ANOTHER one, one that nobody in the world wanted, one more in the tradition of parts 4, 5 and 6, but even worse. I guess I can’t blame Mike, with a mug like that how you gonna get leading man roles. He’s a character actor at best unless he’s in HALLOWEEN, then he’s the star.

They never really mean it when they say a movie is the last in the series, but I’m telling you, I really mean it when I say this is the worst in the series. The premise is sort of a self consciously modernized HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. Busta Rhymes (the rapper who I think should play Dolemite instead of LL Cool J) is Vincent Price, because he’s gathered all these kids together to spend the night in Mike Meyer’s childhood home, and straps cameras onto them like some kind of REAL WORLD type show, but it’s broadcast on the internet instead of real tv. This premise makes the following unwise assumptions:

  1. the audience doesn’t know that nobody watches “internet programming”, especially live on a day they could be doing something else (i.e. Halloween)
  2. the audience believes home computers can download 100 live feeds of full screen tv quality digital video at the same time
  3. people still believe computers make blipping and blooping noise whenever you hit a key or a graphic appears on the screen
  4. we’re really gonna buy that this company won’t get paid for their event until after it’s over
  5. we really want to see a HALLOWEEN movie that is almost entirely about a group of kids walking through the shadows of one small house
    5b. and that we don’t mind if all they ever cut away to is a bunch of kids at a party standing in a room watching a computer screen with the kids walking through the shadows of that one small house.

I think I called UNDISPUTED asinine, but I wasted it, I should’ve saved that word for this one.

The one section that doesn’t revolve around the house is the ridiculous opening which explains away the great ending to the last movie. We are told that the Michael Meyers who attacked Laurie at the end and then got his head chopped off was actually a paramedic who Michael had switched clothes with! In this scene Michael tracks Laurie down at an asylum where she has set up a bunch of boobie traps and manages to hang him upside down. But he kills her anyway and frames one of the other inmates for the murder. I guess I wasn’t paying attention in this series – when did Michael and Laurie turn into fuckin MacGyver?

This is one of those embarassingly out of touch movies where they seem to think that being on the cutting edge of technology is enough to make the movie work, even though they’re not really on the cutting edge of technology. They keep cutting to shaky, fuzzy digital video footage from mini-cameras attached to the actors. This was an interesting new gimmick in 1986 when they did it in ALIENS. Now it’s 2002, it’s, what, ten or more years later. You’re gonna have to try a little harder to dazzle us, asshole.

As long as I had to see the fuckin thing, I wish I saw it in the theater so I could’ve heard everybody laugh every time they had a “subliminal” Michael Meyers face appear when the video flipped over. SPOOOOOOKKKY!

Busta Rhymes is the most charismatic individual in the movie, but he doesn’t get shit to do except talk to himself making wacky jokes like he thought the movie was supposed to be more along the lines of HOW HIGH. Supporting my theory that he should play Dolemite, there are scenes where he does fake kung fu on Michael Meyers and is overdubbed with Bruce Lee style squeals. We understand that he knows these kung fu moves because earlier he watched a kung fu movie, which was also overdubbed with Bruce Lee style squeals, even though it wasn’t a Bruce Lee movie. At the end Busta has a sudden change of heart and makes a half assed stick it to the man speech about the media exploiting violence, which I guess you learn after you’ve faced Michael Meyers. It’s like one of those dolphin encounters you can get.

There is one new addition to the Michael Meyers mythology: we now know that rappers are immune to his killing powers. When LL Cool J survived what seemed like certain death, I thought it was a fluke. This time Busta gets stabbed several times in the back, but appears again to save the day. At the end he gets a sling for an apparent arm injury but his rapping powers have healed over the stab wounds.

If Mike shows up again I wouldn’t bother calling the sherriff, just call the Wu-Tang Clan.

The asshole responsible for this poppycock is Rick Rosenthal, the director of HALLOWEEN part 2. That movie was okay but apparently he did a bad job so they had to fire him and have John Carpenter reshoot a bunch of the scenes. In an attempt to recapture that classic not-that-badness, they hired Rosenthal again and fired him again and replaced him with (I heard) Steve Miner, who doesn’t contribute any of the thrill he gave to part 7 or Friday the 13th parts 2 and 3-D. Before they did the reshoots, Dimension wasn’t even planning to release this piece of shit, but Ms. Curtis and Mr. Rhymes talked them into it. I guess you can’t blame Busta, he probaly told everybody he was in a HALLOWEEN movie and nobody believed him, and if they hadn’t released the movie he would’ve looked like a liar. Still, I’d rather be called a liar than be called the guy from HALLOWEEN 8.

One final question for you folks to ponder. How come they always got wires in these type of movies, and they always get cut and then they cause massive electro shock and fire. What kind of electricians do they have in Haddonfield, Illinois? They need to be more careful. Not that I don’t appreciate a livewire laying around here or there in case Busta needs to shock Michael Meyers in the dick. But there are kids in that neighborhood. Anyway, Michael’s house finally gets burned down at the end, so they’ve finally gotten rid of Laurie Strode and the Meyers house.

Or have they? I’m guessing Laurie faked her death, like she did in part 2 according to conversations in part 7. And the house was actually an innocent house that Michael switched with his house at the last minute.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »

Seed of Chucky

Friday, November 12th, 2004

Well judging from the low turnout for this picture in its first couple weeks, I might be the only one. But DAMN if I don’t love BRIDE OF CHUCKY. THat was the amazing slasher sequel landmark where the former Hong Kong director Ronny Yu knocked the CHILD’S PLAY series off into a weirdo direction where the killer doll suddenly gets a killer doll wife and it turns into a silly comedy, but with occasional moments of visual poetry courtesy of future oscar winning cinematographist Peter fucking Pau.

Now if you’re like me you remember the very end of BRIDE OF CHUCKY, suddenly a little sharp-toothed baby chucky pops out. It’s like the traditional sudden-jolt-ending used in every horror movie since CARRIE, but at the same time it’s a funny joke because you just KNOW it means we’re gonna get a SON OF CHUCKY some day. Or SEED OF CHUCKY it turns out due to the ambiguous gender of the baby.

SEED OF CHUCKY is the first movie in history to open inside Chucky’s penis, in a computer generated sequence about the actual Seed of Chucky having a go at the Egg of Tiffany, then growing into a baby. Then we skip forward and find the baby at the World Ventriloquism Championships in London. It turns out some random British punk rock fake-ventriloquist found the seed of chucky in the cemetery after BRIDE OF CHUCKY ended. The poor little doll is now living a Charles Dickens style childhood in a cage in London. His name is Shitface and he has the voice of LORD OF THE RINGS hobbit Billy Boyd as he tells us about his sorry existence in a hilarious voiceover.

It turns out the Chucky and Tiffany dolls have been somehow repaired (no explanation needed or offered) and are being used as puppets to star in a movie about their lives. The baby Chucky finds out and journeys to Hollywood where he accidentally does a voodoo spell to resurrect them, and also speaks Japanese to them (long story). (more…)

Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews | No Comments »

My Name Is Modesty and Frankenfish

Thursday, September 9th, 2004

VERN’S VHS PILE

Howdy boys. Well I know Moriarty’s got his DVD shelf that he’s real proud of and he has more DVDs than he will actually live to ever watch, which is good. Always wise to have that shit around to pawn, in my experience. I’m not saying he’s gonna get a whole lot for BASIC, GHOST SHIP, ROLLERBALL, MR. DEEDS, and that kind of crap (yeah, I studied that picture too), but hey, if it buys half a bowl of soup on a cold day it might be worth it. Always save for the future. Anyway I’ve got a couple more reviews of straight to video movies for you so I thought it was time I shared with you something very special. Not to brag or anything but this is Vern’s VHS Pile:

Yep, that’s right, that’s a pile of VHS tapes right there. Most of them are screeners, all of them are an obsolete format, and one of them is even a good movie. Two if you count the headcleaner. I know alot of people will not believe I actually have such a pile, so let me just head you newsies off at the pass and tell you that no, that is not fake, that’s a bonafide 100% real photograph, and all are owned by me, not rented like Ja Rule’s mansion on that episode of CRIBS I read about.

MY NAME IS MODESTY

Well the upcoming pictures I am reviewing today are the two at the top of the pile. We’ll start with what I figured was the most promising, MY NAME IS MODESTY. Or as the box says, QUENTIN TARANTINO PRESENTS MY NAME IS MODESTY.

It took me a minute to figure out what this was, but some of you may remember: a while back Mr. Tarantino was thinking about doing a movie of Modesty Blaise, the pulp heroine from comic strips and novels (I believe John Travolta is reading one of the books on the john when he dies in PULP FICTION). Well obviously he never ended up doing it, and Miramax’s option on the character was about to run out, so they hired Scott Spiegel to do a straight to video about the character’s backstory, to set up the “real” Modesty Blaise movie they might do some day (unless they decide instead to just buy up a bunch of Hong Kong movies and let them sit on the shelf for years).

A popular texas based web sight reported on this story about 2 years ago, when they said that the movie had been shot and the creator of Modesty Blaise was going around implying that he was not too happy about it. Then it sat on the shelf and we all forgot about it.

But there is exactly one way that a dusty old movie can escape the Miramax archives: by convincing Tarantino to put his name on it, even though he didn’t make the movie. If it worked for Jet Li it can work for Modesty Blaise. So just like the HERO trailer, this one tries to get visions of KILL BILL dancing in your head. The screener box mentions revenge twice (even though this is not a revenge movie). On the back it calls Tarantino “The Master of Action Storytelling!” and declares that “WOMEN ACTION HEROES ROCK!” Below that it says:

“-Catwoman………Catwoman

-Kill Bill………The Bride

-X-Men………Storm, Mystique, Rogue

-Daredevil………Elektra

-Die Another Day………Jinx

-MY NAME IS MODESTY………Modesty”

Well, that proves it I guess. This thing is gonna be huge!

Actually I really was hoping for the best. When people talk about Scott Spiegel they always go back to “co-writer of EVIL DEAD 2.” That doesn’t seem to mean much at this point, but the thing is, he already did a straight to video Quentin Tarantino Presents movie that I really liked. For whatever it’s worth, I still think FROM DUSK TILL DAWN PART 2 TEXAS BLOOD MONEY is the greatest achievement to date in straight to video sequeling. It’s not a theatrical level of quality but it’s alot of fun. Great premise, good cast (Danny Trejo, Robert Patrick, Bruce Campbell cameo, Woody Harrelson’s brother) and great sense of over the top cinematics. I mean this is a movie with POV shots inside a bat’s mouth, on a dog doing pushups, on an oscillating fan. For a cheap-o straight to video sequel shot in South Africa to jump out of the tv and kick you in the ass is a pretty impressive stunt. So I figured I could trust this dude to get me again.

The opening credits for MY NAME IS MODESTY had me going too, with a catchy theme song and a montage of action shots and spinning roulette wheels printed in candy colors. It’s a big blast of badass old fashioned energy and then the main problem is, well I think where the trouble starts is when after that the movie starts.

I’m not saying it’s terrible. It’s perfectly okay, I think. It’s just not fun to watch. The story is about Modesty Blaise, who runs the roulette table in a small European gambling establishment. A rival gang comes in, kills her boss and takes everybody hostage. She convinces their leader to play roulette with her. Every time she wins 3 games in a row, he has to let a hostage go. But every time she loses, he gets to ask her questions and she has to tell the truth. (no dares, sorry.) So he just asks her about herself and then she narrates her backstory, which involves being a young war refugee who fights with a stick, steals a car, then learns how to read and names herself. Exciting shit.

I don’t know anything about Modesty Blaise, I haven’t even seen the old movie with Monica Vitti. But I always meant to see it and that’s because I figured it would be, you know, entertaining. I checked a web site and it looks like this new movie stays pretty true to the details of the character’s backstory, but unless those book covers are lying, there seems to be a whole lot more action and thrills in there than in this movie.

Those opening credits promise “A MODESTY BLAISE ADVENTURE” but there’s not all that much adventure since the entire movie takes place either in the one room where they’re holed up or in some dismal Balkan wasteland somewhere in the past. There is no globetrotting or sneaking around or jumping off things. No helicopters blowing up, or even landing. No swinging on ropes, setting up traps, solving mysteries or breaking into museums. Nothing.

Well, there’s one short karate fight at the end, but not a memorable one.

But the biggest problem is there’s no humor at all. Not camp or otherwise. Not even much smiling. There’s an overbearing score that always sounds downbeat. The whole thing is so gloomy. It’s like a pilot for some syndicated show you’ve never heard of that you come across on cable one depressing Saturday afternoon.

The best thing about it besides the credits is Alexandra Staden, the actress who plays Modesty, is pretty good. She has an exotic look with ghostly light blue eyes. If you stretched Maggie Gylenhaal out so she was about 6 inches taller, she would look like this. But they don’t let her be very appealing. She’s always so serious.But I give her the benefit of the doubt. I figure this gal might not be a bad choice to play Modesty Blaise if they make another movie, but good this time.

FRANKENFISH

FRANKENFISH is a movie maybe you haven’t heard of but some of you comic strip fans are gonna shit your pants. I think you already know where I’m going with this. You see this movie marks the long anticipated return of Mark Dippe, director of SPAWN. Remember, it was a movie about a devil guy and there was an evil farting midget clown I believe. And that guy who’s famous for being cut out of KILL BILL, but he was also in EXIT WOUNDS – he was the main dude in SPAWN I believe.

Anyway yeah, big surprise but somehow the director of that movie ends up doing a straight to video movie about a giant mutant fish eating people. I was thinking maybe they would mix it up a little, give us something original like a giant mutant fish that falls in love with a jewel thief or discovers a shocking secret from his past or tries to join a spelling bee or something like that. Instead they just go the eating people route. oh well.

What you got here is basically a bad ripoff of a bad JAWS ripoff, this time updated with the amazingly different twist of its a genetically modified fish. Inspired by the snakehead fish or whatever it was that was in that lake somewhere. You heard the story. In this fictionalized account, there are a couple of giant mutant fish in a lake, and some people also in the lake. They get trapped in one small piece of swamp where almost the entire movie takes place. And they fight against the giant mutant fish. Every once in a while it hops out and eats somebody’s head or something. Towards the end you find out that it was not a product of Nature Gone Amuck or Man’s Hubris or Scientists Playing God. Actually it was one of those Evil Hunters who needed The Ultimate Prey so he created the Frankenfish. Because everybody knows that the ultimate prey is, a, uh, a fish. In the water. For hunting.

Anyway, this is kind of a bummer to admit but this movie is actually incredibly boring. For the first half of the movie they don’t even show the Frankenfish. That would be fine if it was a suspenseful movie with characters and plot. But this is fucking FRANKENFISH from the director of SPAWN. I don’t care if it worked in JAWS, when this movie has a buoy moving around to imply the presence of a large fish below, that’s NOT FUCKING SCARY. I don’t know who they are fooling with these type of movies, they must realize that there is not a single human being on this planet who will ever by scared in any way by this movie. Including kids. So quit pretending. Just show the goofy CGI fish and get it over with. I don’t care if Alfred Hitchcock made things scarier by not actually showing them. That doesn’t apply to fucking FRANKENFISH. The goofy CGI fish in our imagination is not any better/worse/different than the goofy CGI fish we’re gonna see later. So quit beating around the god damn bush.

There are no funny/scary/memorable/above average characters in the movie, although Richard Edson is in it (playing a rasta dude, somehow) and also Mark Boone Jr. from VAMPIRES. I remember Muse Watson (the killer fisherman from the I KNOW ABOUT YOUR LAST SUMMER pictures) was in there at one point but the fish must’ve ate him or something, I don’t know. I watched this shit yesterday, how am I supposed to remember it in that type of detail.

Anyway, I wouldn’t recommend anybody waste their time on this horse shit, but I do have to admit a couple things. Number one, the CGI effects are pretty decent for low budget straight to video crap. Not as good as STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 but way better than BOA VS. PYTHON for sure. There was one part where there was an explosion and they added a person flying out of the fire and into the water. That looked cool and I even rewound it to watch again. So good job computer people who did that shot.

Number B, I gotta admit there are a couple of inspired moments in this one. Like, at least 1, maybe 2 minutes worth of good material. I’m just gonna go ahead and ruin the best part for you so you either don’t have to watch it, or know what to look for if you catch it on cable. See, the giant mutant fish eats a guy’s head, right? And it keeps killing these people. Then it’s going after this one guy and actually jumps up on the dock and wiggles around. But the guy shoots it in the head before it can eat him.

So the guy gets up, walks into a little cabin and turns on a grill. He goes back out with a big knife, slits open the side of the fish, reaches in and pulls out its giant mutant fish heart. Then he brings the heart in, puts it on the grill for a minute. Gives it a couple spins but definitely keeps it pretty raw on the inside. Then he takes the heart and yells something like, “YOU KEELED MY BROTHER, NOW I EAT YOUR HEART!” and does just that, starts eating the heart.

I thought the gimmick was gonna be that the fish is still alive even after his heart has been cooked and eaten, but instead they went for the old “another fish jumps out and eats him” routine. It’s pretty deep though if you think about it. This guy was eating the fish’s heart to avenge his brother, but the fish too had a brother. It’s the same endless cycle of violence that Dr. King spoke about with his “eye for an eye leaves everyone blind” line, and that Shakespeare depicted so vividly in Titus Andronicus. I think alot of our presidents and secretaries of defense and terrorists and what not could learn a little something from FRANKENFISH. And more than that, they deserve to have to sit through it.

[A note for our British friends: it's true that most Americans really aren't too concerned about eating GMOs (genetically modified organisms), so it's not that farfetched that this dude would eat a barely cooked mutant fish heart to show off. It's a cultural thing.]

Anyway thanks everybody I gotta go now, I gotta polish the pile or something. thanks everybody

–Vern

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=18307

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Drama, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed

Wednesday, February 4th, 2004

What’s up boys–

A while back I reviewed for you boys a real good canadian teen werewolf picture called GINGER SNAPS PART 1. That was a real smart and original low budget picture for the teenage girls sort of like HEATHERS but with less showoffy dialogue and more werewolves and crap.

Well today I got me a special treat and that was a screener of GINGER SNAPS 2: UNLEASHED. There are alot of part twos coming to the video market this year and it’s very exciting but I guarantee none will be as good as this one. Also I know I had nothing to do with it but still I feel like I should personally apologize for that title. It means nothing! I mean might as well be GINGER SNAPS: RESURRECTION. Or reloaded or full throttle or farewell to the flesh. Or GS2 RETURN OF THE SNAPPING GINGER. That’s just a dumb title. Other than that I got no complaints about this well made sequel.

As you remember (well, I didn’t, but I’ve been punched in the head alot) our young female werewolf friend Ginger died at the end of GINGER SNAPS PART 1 (pre-unleashing). And her younger sister Brigette was left with the werewolf in her blood. In the world of this movie (Canada, I guess) werewolves do not turn back and forth from human to wolf, they turn slowly but permanently from human to wolf. Let’s call it being unleashed. (more…)

Tags:
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 1 Comment »

Page 21 of 22« First...1819202122